"Hola! oh! How came that great alliance?"
"She was housekeeper; he was a close old bachelor and must break a leg. 'Well,' she says, 'you're a daddy; justice is your trade, and I must have it.' So, from bein' his peculiar, she becomes the madam; but she inwented the kid."
"I have never been in Dover; how shall I tell where Lawyer Clayton dwells?"
"It's on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin' by the state-house—a long, roughcast house in the corner, three stories high, with two doors; the door next the state-house is his office. Go past the state-house, which has a cupelo onto it, an' you see the jug an' whippin'-post. He's got 'em handy fur you."
Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now well out of his system, and he thanked God he had refused Patty Cannon's burning dram, else he might be this night—he thought it with remorse—the reckless mate for Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows for him.
"And now, Van Dorn, I turn back," Joe Johnson said; "I have a job to do down the Peninsuly. McLane has become the owner of a gal thar, an' wants her sneaked. I takes black Dave with me, an' when I'm back, my boat will be ready an' my cargo packed. Then hey fur Floridey!"
He unhaltered his horse at the tail of the wagon, mounted him, and rode back across the stream. Van Dorn touched his horses and entered the dense woods in a byway to the north.
"Get up here, Master Levin, and ride by me," the Captain said, very soon, and he lifted Levin's old hat from his head and looked at his bright hair parted in the middle, his fine, large eyes, needing the light of knowledge, and his soft complexion and marks of good extraction.
"Where is thy father, Levin, to let thee go so ragged, with such graceful limbs and feet as these?"
"Shipwrecked," said Levin; "gone down, I 'spect, on the privateer."