"High doings, friend!" a man's voice raspingly spoke; "I'm concerned for
thee!"
"Git out of my way or I'll stab you!" Levin cried, between his new ardor
to do his duty and the idea that he had already been intercepted by
Patty Cannon's band.
"Ha, friend! I'm less concerned for myself than thee. Thou wilt not stab
a citizen of Camden town at his own door?"
"For Heaven's sake, let me go, then!" Levin pleaded. "The kidnappers is
coming to Dover in a few minutes. I want to tell Lawyer Clayton!"
Immediately the other person, a tall, lean man, wheeled and dashed after
the dark object ahead, which Levin, following also hard, found to be a
large covered wagon--something between the dearborn or farmer's and the
family carriage.
"Bill," the Quaker called to the driver, "spare not thy whip till Dover
be well past. Here is one who says kidnappers are raiding even the
capital of Delaware. I'm concerned for thee!"
The driver began to whip his horses into a gallop, and cries, as of
several persons, came out of the close-curtained vehicle.
"What's in there?" Levin asked the Quaker, who had rejoined him;
"niggers?"
"No, friend," the Quaker crisply answered, "only Christians."
They crossed a mill-stream, and soon afterwards a smaller run, without
speaking, and came to a little log-and-frame cabin in a fork of the
road, where Levin's horse tried to run in.
"Ha, friend! Is it not Derrick Molleston's loper thee has--the same that
he gets from Devil Jim Clark? What art thou, then? I feel concerned for
thee.
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