At the distance of about a mile, Broad Creek, like a tributary river,
flowed into the Nanticoke from the east, fully a quarter of a mile wide,
and half a mile up this stream an old, low, extended, weather-blackened
house faced the river, and seemed to grin out of its broken ribs and
hollow window-sockets like a traitor's skull discolored upon a gibbet.
It was falling to pieces, and along its roof-ridge a line of crows
balanced and croaked, as if they had fine stories to tell and weird
opinions to pass upon the former inhabitants of the tenement.
"There, I have hearn tell," said Jimmy, as he drew in to the bank, and
took the woman into the scow and began to tow her along the beach,
wading in the water, "_there_, I have hearn tell, lived the pirate of
Broad Creek, ole Ebenezer Johnson, who was shot soon after the war of
'12 at Twiford's house down yonder."
"For kidnapping free people?" asked the woman, without interest, the
question coming from her desolate heart.
"In them days they didn't kidnap much; it was jest a-beginnin'. The war
of '12 busted everything on the bay, burned half a dozen towns, kept the
white men layin' out an' watchin', and made loafers of half of 'em, an'
brought bad volunteers an' militia yer to trifle with the porer gals,
an' some of them strangers stuck yer after the war was done. I don't
know whar ole Ebenezer come from; some says this, an' some that.
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