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When Aunt Hominy, having under her protecting care the little children, came on board the Ellenora Dennis at Manokin Landing, Levin had been asleep, and knew nothing of the theft till it was too late to protest, and Johnson himself had sailed the cat-boat into broad water.
The girl, in her terror, as the carriage had descended the hill already and crossed the Manokin, seized the reins in Tilghman's hands and drew them with such frenzy that the horses, as they came to Meshach Milburn's store, were pulled into the open area before it, where something in their surprise or lying on the ground gave them immediate fright, and they dashed at a gallop into Front Street, the wheels passing over an object by the old storehouse that nearly upset the carriage.
The street they took for their run crossed a small arm of the Manokin, and led up to a gentleman's gate; but before this brook was crossed Tilghman, an experienced horseman and driver, had reined the flying animals into a nearly unoccupied street, called Back Alley, parallel with the main street of Princess Anne, but hidden from it by houses and gardens, and almost in a moment of time the whole town had been cleared, with hardly a person in it aware of such a vehicle going past.
The little Manokin river brought up oysters from the bay, and carried off the corn and produce. The great brick academy at neighboring "Lower Trappe" boarded and educated the brightest youths of the best families on the Peninsula; and these perceived, as the annual summers brought their fulness, what portion of their beauty remained with Vesta Custis.
While the proceedings described occupied the white people, the servants, Roxy and Virgie, in their clean Sunday suits, loitered around the bridge behind the store, or strayed a little way up the Manokin brook, hearing the mocking-bird rend his breast in all the ventriloquy of genius.
Where is my son? Why stays he, O my Levin?" "The tide is on the stand, cap'n, an' will turn in half an hour. It will take us up the Manokin with this wind by dark, ef we can get water enough in the thoroughfare without going around by Little Deil's." Johnson came out and made the same observations on wind and flood. "I reckon it's eighteen miles to the head of deep water on Manokin, Levin?"
He has had good wind" the pungy captain looked up and noted the breeze "to get him out of Manokin last night, and into the Sound; but he must beat up the Nanticoke all day, and we kin head him off by land, if that's his destination, before he gits to Vienna, an' make him show his cargo.
At the corner of old Front Street, and extending almost out upon the little Manokin bridge, stood Meshach Milburn's two-story house and store, with a door upon both streets. Though planted low, in a hollow, it stood forward like Milburn's challenging countenance, unsupported by any neighbors. "Don't it look like a witch's, Missy?"
The leaves were turning on the great sycamore-trees, and the maples along the rise in the road wore their most delicate garments of nankeen, while some young hickories, loaded with nuts, and a high gum-tree, splendid in finery, beckoned him out their way, across the Manokin bridge to the opposite hill, where the Presbyterian church overlooked the town.
The stuttering host seemed not to comprehend this sneering exclamation, and Levin Dennis said: "King Custis wasn't killed, was he, Pappy Thomas?" "It was his children's children his p-p-punishment was promised to," the island parson said, "and to the Lord a thousand y-years are but as d-days." "The tide is fuller, Levin," Joe Johnson cried, "your keel is clear. Now pint her for Manokin.
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