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The oppressive silence, as Joe Johnson slunk back, desperate with rage, yet unable to deny, was broken by Jack Wonnell's unthinking interjection: "Whoop, Jimmy! Hooraw for Prencess Anne!" "An' why did I git that egg an' make you smell it, Joe Johnson?
But the boat had to stop, as her keel scraped the mud in the almost dry thoroughfare, and a plain island man of benevolent, nearly credulous, face, hailed them, saying, stutteringly: "Ne-ne-neighbors, do-don't be sc-scared that a-way. We ain't he-eee-thens yer. Br-br-brother Wonnell's bringin' your taters and pone." "Come on, an' be damned to you?" Johnson cried to Wonnell.
The night I drove Virgie to Snow Hill I drove over poor Wonnell's body. A strange negro was seen here an enemy of your servant, Samson. The new cook at Teackle Hall thinks he fired the shot." The young rector felt the searching look of those resinous forester's eyes staring him through. "That shot was meant for me, William Tilghman." "Perhaps so."
As they trode in the soft grass and sand under the old storehouse they saw the bell-crowned hat a new one, brought from the ancient stock that very day shining glossily on Wonnell's high, eccentric head, as he sat in the hollow window of the old storehouse and talked to the mocking-bird, which he was feeding with a clam-shell full of boiled potato and egg, and some blue haws.
"Who told you, Jack Wonnell," spoke the bay sailor, "that Judge Custis was to be sold out?" "I won't tell you, Jimmy." "I told him," Roxy cried, after an instant's hesitation, while Jimmy Phoebus was grinding the stiff bell-crown hat down on Wonnell's suffocating muzzle. "I did think we was all going to be sold, and had nobody to pity me but that poor white man, and I told him as a friend."
Alone, unintimidated, but not altogether comfortable, Jimmy Phoebus proceeded to bail out the old scow, and wished he had accepted one of Jack Wonnell's hats to do the task, and, when he had finished it, the stars and clouds were manoeuvring around each other in the sky, with the clouds the more aggressive, and finally some drops of rain punctured the long, bare muscles of the inflowing tide, making a reticule of little pittings, like a net of beads on drifting women's tresses.
"It was the shot of a hired murderer, who mistook Wonnell's unusual hats for mine, that was not well described to him, or the description of which his drunken and excited memory did not retain." "Mr. Milburn, please save Vesta this suspicion."
"To Wilmington!" cried Judge Custis, staggering up. "Oh, my daughter! I have killed her." "What do they say, William, about Jack Wonnell's being found shot dead?" "It is generally said that he was killed by the negroes for gallantries to their color. Some talk of arresting little Roxy Custis." "What do you say, William Tilghman?" "I can say nothing.
The wound shows the shot to have come from a point below, where nothing but Wonnell's hat, and not his features, could be seen. The mistake of bell-crown for steeple-top shows that it was a stranger's job: the poor fool died for me. Now where did the bungler who killed me by proxy come from?" "I will be frank with you, sir. Joe Johnson, the kidnapper, was also here: Mary says so.
"Tom, say 'Roxy, an' I'll give ye some, Tommy! Now, boy! 'Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! purty Roxy! Poor ole Jack! poor ole Jack!" The bird flew around Wonnell's head, biting at the hat which stood in such elegant irrelevance to the remainder of his dress, and cried, "Meshach, he! he! he! Vesty, she! Vesty, Meshach! Vesty, Meshach!" but said nothing the village vagrant would teach it.
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