"
CHAPTER XVI.
BELL-CROWN MAN.
As the Judge and Phoebus had turned the corner of the bank Samson Hat
appeared, driving down Princess Anne's broad main street a young white
girl.
"There's the nigger that set my peep in limbo," muttered the negro
dealer, "but even he shall go past to-day. This accursed town is packed
agin me."
He took a long look at Samson, however, who mildly returned it in the
most respectful manner, as if he had never seen the strange gentleman
before. "And now, my pals," Joe Johnson said, turning to Levin Dennis
and Jack Wonnell, "we will all three go down to the bay and I'll pervide
the lush, and pay the soap while you ketch the tarrapin, an' let me
sleep my nazy off."
"I'll go an' no mistake!" cried Jack Wonnell, who had been taking a
drink of pump-water out of his bell-crown. "So will you, Levin."
Levin Dennis hesitated; "I want to tell my mother first," he said,
"maybe she won't like me fur to go of a Sunday. She'll send Jimmy
Phoebus after me."
Joe Johnson took a bag of gold from inside his waist-band, hanging by a
loop there, and held up a piece of five before the boy's bright eyes:
"Yer, kid! That's yourn if you don't have no mother about it. Pike away
with me, pig widgeon, an' find your boat, and I pay you this pash at
sundown."
Levin's credulous eyes shone, and with one reluctant look towards his
mother's cottage he led the way into the country.
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