Clayton, "what were those stakes I saw some distance
back, running north and south across the fields?"
"A railroad survey."
"Who is making it?"
"They say Meshach Milburn, of Princess Anne."
"Goy!" exclaimed Clayton, "I'll beat him."
* * * * *
For two or three days the three men, still studying the canal suit,
drove over a picturesque country, visiting the old manor of the
Labadists and their Bohemian patron, Augustine Herman, the homestead of
the late treaty minister, Bayard, and the ancient Welsh Baptist churches
among the hills of the Elk and Christiana, where some of Cromwell's
warriors lay. It was the favorite land of Whitefield, and in the
neighborhood was an iron furnace Judge Custis examined with melancholy
interest, as one of the investments of General Washington's father more
than a hundred years before, when the Indians made the iron. They also
went to Turkey Point, where the British army was disembarked to capture
Philadelphia, and Knyphausen's division obliterated the history of
Delaware by carrying her records away from Newcastle. Returning from one
of these pleasant journeys, two messages from different points seared
Judge Custis's eyeballs:
"Your wife died at Cambridge." "Your daughter is very ill at
Wilmington."
"To Wilmington!" cried Judge Custis, staggering up. "Oh, my daughter! I
have killed her."
CHAPTER XXXVII.
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