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And he flew alongside of Mercurius to the steeple-top: but this time the devil had not his tail round his neck. “I will let thee off thy bet,” said he to the demon; for he could afford, now, to be generous.
"No, man," Dennis said, "it was a hat on a man's head ole Meshach Milburn's steeple-top. I was a follerin' of him." "Stow your wid!" the man clapped the hat back on Levin's head. "You're a poor hobb, anyhow. Is thair any niggers to sell hereby?" "Oh, that's your trade, nigger buyin'? Well, there's mighty few niggers to sell in Prencess Anne.
But he paid no attention to anybody, until once, at court time, some carousing fellows hired Jack Wonnell to walk up to Meshach Milburn and ask to swap a new bell-crown for the old decrepit steeple-top. Looking at Wonnell sternly in the face, Meshach hissed, "You miserable vagrant! Nature meant you to go bareheaded. Beware when you speak to me again!"
At first they crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks: but when it grew hotter and fiercer when it crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great furnace when it shone upon the opposite houses, and lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each habitation when through the deep red heat and glow, the fire was seen sporting and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock of St Sepulchre's so often pointing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted light like something richly jewelled when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting the longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of brightness when wall and tower, and roof and chimney-stack, seemed drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view, and things the most familiar put on some new aspect then the mob began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and shouts, and clamour, such as happily is seldom heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire, and keep it at its height.
Otherwise he would have done so aye, would have thrown himself, headforemost, from the steeple-top, rather than have seen them watching him with eyes that would have waked and watched although the pupils had been taken out. Again, again, the dread and terror of the lonely place, and of the wild and fearful night that reigned there, touched him like a spectral hand.
His eccentricity had no apparent harmony with anything else nor any especial sensibility about it. The boys hooted his hat, and the little girls often joined in, crying "Steeple-top! He's got it on! Meshach's loose!"
Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent astonishment to the house-servants, assembled to gaze upon it from the foot of the hall.
For the first time a flash of fire came from the pungy captain's black cherries of eyes, and his huge broad face of swarthy color expressed its full Oriental character: "The last time I saw you, Joe Johnson, was not a-lurking in Judge Custis's kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin' of the Judge's t'other visitor, Milburn of the steeple-top: it was a-huggin' the whippin'-post on the public green of Georgetown, State of Delaware, an' the sheriff a-layin' of it over your back; an' after he sot you up in the pillory I took the rottenest egg I could git, an' I bust it right on the eye where that nigger bruised you yisterday!"
One of the first buildings to be put up in Ipswich, Massachusetts, was a church built on a ledge above the river, and in that church Satan tried to conceal himself for purposes of mischief. For this act he was hurled from the steeple-top by some unseen instrument of righteousness with such force that his hoofmark was stamped into a solid stone near by.
One of the first buildings to be put up in Ipswich, Massachusetts, was a church built on a ledge above the river, and in that church Satan tried to conceal himself for purposes of mischief. For this act he was hurled from the steeple-top by some unseen instrument of righteousness with such force that his hoofmark was stamped into a solid stone near by.
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