But to compound the equation another unknown quantity of female force
arose beside my mother's lamp. A certain young Cannon, distantly of our
stock, must needs go see the world, and he returned with a fair demon of
a bride, and settled, too, at Cannon's Ferry. He lived to see the
wondrous serpent he had warmed in his arms, and died, they say, of the
sting. But she lived on, and, shrinking back into the woods to a little
farm my mother's sons rented to her, she lighted there a
Jack-o'-the-lantern many a traveller has pursued who never returned to
tell. With Ebenezer Johnson's progeny and her own siren sisters, who
followed Madame Cannon to the Nanticoke, the nucleus of a settlement
began, and has existed for twenty years, that only the Almighty's
_venire facias_ can explore."[2]
"That's my arrand, Jacob Cannon," quietly remarked Jimmy Phoebus. "I'm
a pore man from Prencess Anne. If you took me for a nigger-dealer you
did me as pore a compliment as when I asked if you was Patty Cannon's
kin. But I have got just one gal to love and just one life to lose, an'
if God takes me thar, I'm a-goin' to Johnson's Cross-roads."
Mr. Jacob Cannon turned and examined his companion with some twinkling
care, but showed no personal concern.
"Every man must be his own security, my dark-skinned friend, till he can
find a bailsman. That place I never take--neither the debtor's nor the
security.
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