Levin had been brought up from Twiford's wharf the night before by the
pretty maid whom Jimmy Phoebus had so much frightened, and this was
his first day of restful feeling, having slept off the liquor fumes of
Sunday, the exciting watches of Monday, and the mingled pleasure and
pain, illness and interest, love and remorse, of Tuesday.
He had felt already the earliest twinges of youthful fondness for the
young girl he had spent the day with at Twiford's, while lying sick
there from a disordered stomach and nervous system, and her amiability
and charms, more than the temptation of unhallowed money, had changed
his purpose to escape at Twiford's and give information of the injury
inflicted upon Judge Custis's property.
It hardly seemed real that he had been an accessory to a felony and a
witness to a murder--the stealing of a gentleman's domestic slaves and
the braining of the smallest and most helpless of them, nearly in his
sight; yet so it had happened, and he felt the danger he was in, but
hesitated how to act. He had accepted the money of the trader, and
passed his mother's noblest friend on the river without recognition,
while a dastardly ball had probably ended poor Phoebus's career. To
all these deeds he was the only white witness, the only one on whose
testimony redress could be meted out.
He felt, therefore, that he was a prisoner, and his life dependent on
his cordial relations with the bloody negro-dealer and his band; and
Johnson had reiterated his promise that if Levin joined them in equal
fraternity he should make money fast and become a plantation proprietor.
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