bosom glued into its winding-sheet, and the glory of
her hair, that had been handled by bantering outlaws, and in a rippling
wave of unbleached coal covered the grinning coquetry of her skull.

"Them that mocks God shall be mocked of him," said Jimmy Phoebus,
closing the door and putting some of the scattered bricks of the vault
against it. "Now, I reckon, I kin git to the cross-roads by a leetle
after dark."

CHAPTER XXV.

PATTY CANNON'S.

Phoebus passed along the side of a large, black, cypress-shaded
mill-pond, and found the boundary stone again, and took the angle from
its northern face as a compass-point, and, proceeding in that direction,
soon fell in with a sort of blind path hardly feasible for wheels, which
ran almost on the line between the states of Maryland and Delaware,
passing in sight of several of these old boundary stones. Not a dwelling
was visible as he proceeded, not even a clearing, not a stream except
one mere gutter in the sand, not a man, hardly an animal or a bird; the
monotonous sand-pines, too low to moan, too thick to expand, too dry to
give shade, yet grew and grew, like poor folks' sandy-headed children,
and kept company only with some scrubby oaks that had strayed that way,
till pine-cone and acorn seemed to have bred upon each other, and the
wild hogs disdained the progeny.

"Maybe I'll git killed up yer in this Pangymonum," Jimmy reflected; "an'
though I 'spose it don't make no difference whair you plant your bones,
I don't want to grow up into ole pines. Good, big, preachin' kind of
pines, that's a little above the world, an' says 'Holy, rolley,
melancho-ly, mind your soul-y'--I could go into their sap and shats
fust-rate. But to die yer an' never be found in these desert wastes is
pore salvage for a man that's lived among the white sails of the bay,
an' loved a woman elegant as Ellenory."

It was dark, and he could hardly see his way in half an hour. Sometimes
a crow would caw, to hear strange sounds go past, like an old
watchman's rattle moved one cog. The stars became bright, however, and
the moon was new, and when Phoebus came to a large cleared opening in
the pines, the lambent heavens broke forth and bathed the sandy fields
with silver, and showed a large, high house at the middle of the
clearing, with outside chimneys, one thicker than the other, and a porch
of two stories facing the east.

Though not a large dwelling, it was large for those days and for that
unf