-rows, to become the ground meal of the slave and
the cattle's winter substance. Joe Johnson's popularity was everywhere
apparent, and many a shout was given of, "Good luck to ye, Joe!" "Tote
us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe!" "Don't be too hard on them ar black
Blue Hen's chickens, Joe!"

Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his neighbors, or,
indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly addressed, but "Patty Cannon's man"
was the term of injured inferiority towards him after he had passed.

At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanticoke piercing to the
centre of Delaware state, and saw one large brick house of colonial
appearance dominating the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally
within the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the "lark" or the serious
occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, who trained his negro
scouts like a setter, or more often like a spaniel, and crossed the line
on appointed nights as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa
takes to the trails of the interior for human prey.

"Joe," said Van Dorn, "what is to be your disposition of the prisoners
we have?"

"All goes with me to Norfolk but one,--the nigger boxer; I burn him
alive on Twiford's island. If the white chap is too pickle to sell, I'll
throw him overboard; he ain't safe."

"_Ea! sus!_ it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have had many a blow
from a black, and stab, too. A dog will bite you if you lasso him."

"No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling."

"Then you are a bad trader. The negro's price is all the negro is; why
make him your equal by hating him?"

"I am a Delaware boy," Joe Johnson said, "and it's the pride with me to
give no nigger a chance. In Maryland you pets 'em, like ole Colonel Ned
Lloyd over yer on the Wye; he's give his nigger coachman a gole watch
an' chain because he's his son! What a nimenog! Some day he'll raise a
nigger that'll be makin' politikle speeches, an' then I don't want to
live no more."[5]

"_Chito!_ Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the post, son-in-law,
you're morose. I have had to eat with negro princes, dance with their
queens, and be ceremonious as if they had been angels."

"It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me! I couldn't do it, nohow."

"And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the lawyer Clayton, at
Dover, to-night: he may send me to the post, too; and I fear no Delaware
governor will take off the cropping of m