s here a full quarter of a mile wide, on the opposite shore
bluffy, and in places bold, but, on the side where Phoebus had drifted
with the tide, clutching his old scow with mortal grip, there extended a
point of level woods and marsh or "cripple," as if by the action of some
back-water, and this low ground appeared to have a considerable area,
and was nowhere tilled or fenced, or gave any signs of being visited.

But the opposite or northern shore was quite otherwise; there the river
had a wide bend or hollow to receive two considerable creeks, and
changed its course almost abruptly from west to southwest, giving a
grand view of its wide bosom for the distance of more than two miles
into Maryland; and the prospect was closed in that direction by a
whitish-looking something, like lime or shell piles, standing against
the background of pale blue woods and bluffs.

Right opposite the spot where Phoebus had been stranded, a cleared
farm came out to the Nanticoke, affording a front of only a single
field, on the crest of a considerable sand-bluff--elevations looking
magnified here, where nature is so level; and at one end of this field,
which was planted in corn that was now clinging dry to the naked stalks,
an old lane descended to a shell-paved wharf of a stumpy, square form;
and almost at the other, or western, end of the clearing stood a
respectable farm-house of considerable age, with a hipped roof and three
queer dormer windows slipping down the steeper half below, and two
chimneys, not built outside of the house, as was the general fashion,
but naturally rising out of the old English-brick gables. All between
the gables was built of wood; a porch of one story occupied nearly half
the centre of that side of the house facing the river; and to the right,
against the house and behind it, were kitchen, smoke-house, corn-cribs,
and other low tenements, in picturesque medley; while to the left
crouched an old, low building on the water's edge, looking like a
brandy-still or a small warehouse. The road from the wharf and lane
passed along a beach, and partly through the river water, to enter a
gate between this shed and the dwelling; and from the garden or lawn, on
the bluff before the latter, arose two tall and elegant trees, a
honey-locust and a stalwart mulberry.

"Now, I never been by this place before," Jimmy Phoebus muttered,
"but, by smoke! yon house looks to me like Betty Twiford's wharf, an',
to save my life, I ca