Ha! the mort is dying. Well, to the garden
with her!"
At this he awoke, and turned his cold, light eyes on Levin, and leaped
to his feet.
"Did you hear me?" he cried. "It was only nums, kid, and jabber of a
nazy man. Some day this sleep-talk will grow my neck-weed. Don't mind
me, Levin! Come, lush and cock an organ with me, my bene cove!"
"If you mean brandy," Levin said, "I must have some or I'll jump out of
my skin. I feel like the man with the poker was a-comin'."
Joe Johnson gave him the jug and held it up, and the boy drank like one
desperate.
"How the young jagger lushes his jockey," the tall man muttered. "He's
in Job's dock to-day. I'll take no more. A bloody fool I was all
yesterday, an' oaring with my picture-frame. What place is this?"
"Deil's Island, sir."
"Ha! so it is. 'Twas Devil's Island once, till the Methodies changed it
fur politeness. This is the camp-meetin', then? Yer, Wonnell, take this
piece of money, an' go to some house an' fetch us a bite of dinner.
We'll wait fur you."
The tall man led the way to the heart of the grove of pines, where the
seeming town was found--a deserted religious encampment of durable
wooden shells, or huts, in concentric circles of horseshoe shape, and at
the open end of the circle was the preaching-stand, a shed elevated
above the empty benches and pegs of removed benches, and which had a
wide shelf running across the whole front for the preacher's Bible, and
to receive his thwacks as he walked up and down his platform.
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