rophecy and insult of
her. Then, turning on Eb-b-benezer Johnson, Lorenzo Dow cried out, 'The
dogs shall lie buried safer than his bones. Lay hold of him, brethren!'
And s-something in Lorenzo Dow's t-trumpet-blast made every M-methodis'
a giant. They s-swept on Ebenezer Johnson, the bully of thr-ree states,
an' beat him to the ground, an' raced his band to their boats, an' then
they th-hrew him into a little j-j-jail they had on the camp-ground,
f-for safe keeping."

"What did King Custis do then, Pappy Thomas?" asked Levin.

"Why, brethren, what did he do but use his f-f-family influence to g-git
out a warrant for the preacher and his m-managers, on the ground of
f-false imprisonment and s-slander! Lorenzo Dow got over into Maryland
s-safe from the warrant, but our p-presiding elder was p-put in jail
till he could p-pay two thousand dollars fine. It almost beggared the
poor Methodies of that day to raise so much money, but g-glory be to
G-god! we can raise it now any day in the year, and in the next
g-generation we can buy our p-persecutors."

"So Ebenezer Johnson, accordin' to the autum bawler's patter, got
popped in the mazzard, my brother of the surplice? But he didn't climb
no ladder, did he?"

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. So bingavast, my benen cove, and may you chant all
by yourself when I am gone!"

"God bless the boys!" the islander cried, "an' k-keep them from the
f-fire everlasting that is burning in your jug. And s-s-stranger,
remember the end of Eb-b-benezer Johnson, an' repent!"

The old man, barefooted, stoop-shouldered, stuttering, yet with a chord
of natural rhetoric in his high fiddle-string of a windpipe, stood
looking after them till they passed down the thoroughfare under the
jib-sail, and Joe Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush
intervened between them, he being apparently under a remnant of that
panic which had seized him on the camp-ground.

"That's a good man," Levin Dennis said, giving the tiller to Jack
Wonnell and raising the sail; "he preached to the Britishers when they
sailed from Tangiers Islands to take B