exclaimed Jimmy Phoebus, looking the stranger over boldly,
yet with indifference, at last. "You're cuttin' a splurge, Levin, too.
Where's Meshach?"

"Can't see no sign of him, Jimmy. Guess Jack Wonnell hit it, an' he's
gone in the Jedge's. Mebbe he's buyin' of Jedge Custis's niggers. That's
this gentleman's business."

Jimmy Phoebus, himself no slight specimen of a man, gave another
glance at the stranger from the black cherries of his eyes, and,
apparently no better satisfied with the inspection, made no sign of
acquaintance.

"Whoever ain't too nice to drink with a nigger buyer," said the man,
independently, "can come in and set up his drink, with my redge, for I'm
rhino-fat and just rotten with flush."

There was a pause for somebody to take the initiative, but Jimmy
Phoebus, turning his big, broad Greekish face and small forehead on
the stranger, remarked:

"I never tuk a drink with a nigger buyer yit, and, by smoke! I reckon
I'm too old to begin."

The man stopped and measured Jimmy up in his eye.

"Humph!" he said with a sneer, "you look to be a little more than half
nigger yourself. If I was dead broke I'd run you to market an' git my
price for you."

"No doubt of it whatever, as fur as you're concerned," said Jimmy,
unexcited, while the man pushed Levin Dennis in towards the bar.

Either the new movement of Meshach Milburn, or the example of the
strange man, set Princess Anne in a tipsy condition that day. The
stranger was full of money, and treating indiscriminately, and the
pavement before the hotel was continually beset with the loiterers, and
the bar took money and spread mischief. So when, an hour after dark, the
unpopular townsman, avoiding the crowd, passed by on the opposite side
of the street, nearest his own lodging, one of the loudest and most
unanimous yells he had ever heard in his experience, rang out from the
Washington Tavern.

"Steeple-top! Steeple-top! Old Meshach's loose. Whoo-o-op!"

"Laugh on!" thought Meshach, "till now I never knew the meaning of 'let
them laugh who win.'"

He felt confirmed in his idea to be married in the Raleigh tile, and
when he saw Samson Hat, Milburn said: "Boy, brush all my clothing well.
Then go back to the livery stable, and order a buggy to be ready for you
at ten o'clock. At that hour set out for Berlin; and bring back Rhody
Holland with you in the morning."

"It's more dan thirty mile, marster, an' a sandy road."

"No matter. Take it slow. I