"
"_Oh! ayme! ayme!_" softly laughed Van Dorn, his blush not coming now;
"you forget, Hulda, that I believe in nothing."
They had hardly gone four miles when a little, low-pitched town of small
square houses, strewn about like toy-blocks between pairs of red outside
chimneys, sat, in the soft, humid October morning, along the rim of a
marshy creek that, skirting the hamlet, flowed into the Nanticoke River
a few miles, by its course, above Twiford's wharf. Two streets, formed
by two roads, ended in a third street along the sandy, flattish river
shore, and there stood four or five larger dwellings, like their
humbler neighbors, built of wood, but with bolder, greater chimneys,
rising into the air as if in rivalry of four large ships and brigs that
lay at anchor or beside the two wharves, and threw their masts and spars
into the sailing clouds, making the low forest that closed river and
village in, stoop to its humility. But the beautiful river, with
frequent bluffs of sand and woods, flowing two hundred yards wide in
stately tide, and bearing up to Cannon's Ferry fish-boats and pungies,
Yankee schooners and woodscows, and the signs of life, however lowly,
that floated in blue smoke from many hearths, or sounded in oars,
rigging, and lading, seemed to Hulda human joy and power, and she cried
to Levin:
"Levin, oh, look! Did you ever see as big a place as this? Yonder is the
road to Seaford, just as far as we have come! The big ships are taking
corn for West Indies, and bringing sugar and molasses.
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