The firm of Isaac and Jacob Cannon allows no trespass, and
further concern themselves not. But we are at the Nanticoke."
"I'm obliged to you for the lift, Mr. Jacob Cannon," said Jimmy,
springing down, "and hope you may never find it inconvenient to have let
such a pack of wolves use your neighborhood to trespass on human natur."
CHAPTER XXIII.
TWIFORD'S ISLAND.
Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river-side, and a little
scow, half filled with water, and with only a broken piece of paddle in
it, was the only boat the pungy captain could find. The merchant's buggy
was soon out of sight, and the wide, gray Nanticoke, several hundred
yards wide, and made wider by a broad river that flowed into it through
low bluffs and levels immediately opposite, was receiving the strong
shadows of approaching night, and the tide was running up it violent and
deep.
Long lines of melancholy woods shut both these rivers in; an osprey
suddenly struck the surface of the water, like a drowning man, and rose
as if it had escaped from some demon in the flood; the silence
following his plunge was deeper than ever, till a goatsucker,
noiselessly making his zigzag chase, cried, as if out of eternal gloom,
his solemn command to "_Whip_ poor Will." Those notes repeated--as by
some slave ordering his brother to be lashed or one sympathetic soul in
perdition made the time-caller to another's misery--floated on the
evening light as if the oars of Charon echoed on the Styx, and broken
hearts were crossing over.
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