"'The Lord is my shepherd,'" said the sailor, reverently; "'I shall not
want. He leadeth me by the still waters.' How beautiful Ellenory says
it. Look thar at the waters of the Nanticoke, beautiful as silver. Lord,
make 'em pure waters an' free, to every pore creatur!"
"To who! to who!" screamed a voice out of the hollow chimney.
"Well," answered Jimmy, hardly excited, "I ain't partickler. Ha! I
thought I knew you, Barney," he continued, as an owl fluttered out and
hopped up a ruined stairway.
"Now, British money ain't coined by Uncle Sam; what is the date? I can
make figgers out easy: Eighteen hundred and fifteen!' I was about to do
Ebenezer Johnson the onjustice of saying that he'd sold his country out
to ole Admiral Cockburn, but the war was done when this money was
coined. Whose was it?"
He removed more carefully some of the bricks, to put his hand in the
hollow depository left there, and, feeling around and higher up, brought
out the bronze hilt of a sword, on which was a name.
"Who would have thought this was a house of learnin'?" Jimmy said,
dubiously. "I can't read it. By smoke! maybe they've murdered somebody
yer. I reckon he was British. Ellenory kin read it, if I live to see her
agin."
There was nothing more, and, as he left the rotting old house, a crash
and a cloud of smoke rose up behind him, and the chimney fell into the
middle of the floor.
With the crane's sharp wrought-iron point and long leverage the pungy
captain succeeded, after tedious efforts, in breaking the links of the
chain and also in removing the linked cannon-ball from the woman's foot,
but he could not remove the iron band and link around her ankle.
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