The road from the wharf and lane
passed along a beach, and partly through the river water, to enter a
gate between this shed and the dwelling; and from the garden or lawn, on
the bluff before the latter, arose two tall and elegant trees, a
honey-locust and a stalwart mulberry.
"Now, I never been by this place before," Jimmy Phoebus muttered,
"but, by smoke! yon house looks to me like Betty Twiford's wharf, an',
to save my life, I can't help thinkin' yon white spots down this side of
the river air Sharptown. If that's the case, which state am I in?"
He rose to his feet, bailed the scow, which was nearly full of water,
and began to paddle along the shore, and, seeing something white, he
landed and parted the bushes, and found it to be a stone of a bluish
marble, bearing on one side the letter M, and on the other the letter P,
and a royal crown was also carved upon it.
"Yer's one o' Lord Baltimore's boundary stones," Phoebus exclaimed.
"Now see the rascality o' them kidnappers! Yon house, I know, is
Twiford's, because it's a'most on the state-line, but, I'm ashamed to
say, it's a leetle in Maryland. And that lane, coming down to the wharf,
is my way to Joe Johnson's Pangymonum at his cross-roads."
A sound, as of some one singing, seemed to come from the woods near by,
and Phoebus, listening, concluded that it was farther along the water,
so he paddled softly forward till a small cove or pool led up into the
swamp, and its shores nowhere offered a dry landing; yet there were
recent foot-marks deeply trodden in the bog, and disclosed up the slope
into the woods, and from their direction seemed to come the mysterious
chanting.
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