"He was a poet," said a third. "'Peared like as if he believed every
thing he preached. But, my sakes! we can't have sich things in _our_
church."

"She loved him, too, the hussy!" exclaimed a fourth. "She would have
been his slave if he had asked her. Oh! what misery she felt when she
knew that his passion for her was starving him, body and soul!"

They slipped away, with a feeling that, somehow, two very guilty
people had been punished in those two. The negroes made the funeral
procession. The Jew walked amongst the negroes.

"O Father Abraham," he said, chuckling to himself, "forgive me that I
stand here, no renegade to my faith, yet the only white Christian on
Chincoteague!"

Issachar was oyster-man, sailor, and sutler in one. He advanced money
to build pungy boats, knit nets, and make huts. He kept a trading
place, packed fish, and dealt with the Eastern port cities by a
schooner whose crew he shipped himself and sometimes commanded her. He
was a wrecker, too, prompt and enterprising; passed middle life, but
full of vitality; bold and cunning in equal degree; and he had been,
it was guessed, a slaver, and some said a pirate. He was called by the
negroes the King of Chincoteague. His schooner was named The Eli.

Chincoteague is the principal inhabited island along the one hundred
miles of coast between the capes of the Delaware and of the
Chesapeake--a coast of low bars, divided into long and slender islands
by a dozen inlets, which, almost filled with sand, permit only
light-draught vessels to enter; and it is destruction to any ship to