"Sartain!" returned the American. "I guess that we had purty considerable tough skrimmageing about us. What with the Indians, and the riglars, and the skinners, and the cow-boys, there warn't no keeping a beef-cretur in the pen, nor sleeping ten winks at a time. You'd have thought the devil was let loose." "And no doubt he was, as he always is in war," said Downwithit, "or rather he sent forth his legions to vex your persecuted land; for his only proper habitation on earth is this sin-devising city of London!" "That a berry true, massa," interposed the negro, "for Massa Backwoodsley often say, 'Ivory, I whop you, sure as a devil in London;' and he always do it. But folk say, another devil in Ameriky, for all that. He know story of man what see um and talk to um. He not b'lieve it at all, dough. Good parson sometime preach about he's tempatation." "That's a fact," added Mr. Pokehorn, "and an awful strange history it is, if true. If you want to hear the story, the nigger can fix you; for he's precious tonguey and wordy about them devildoms, and witches, and wild Indians, when he sits in the mud in the sunshine, at Rams-Babylon and High-Forks, keeping the helps from work, or at a maple-log fire in the winter." "Then, my sable friend," said Downwithit, "with the good leave of all present, we'll have it now." "Why, I'll tell you what it is," answered Pokehorn, "if it will happify the ould 'squire, the nigger shall have his own head for once in a while; so fire away, Ivory, and when you're not right I'll set you wrong myself." "Iss, massa," began the negro; "ebbery body like a hear ole Ivory tell he story about a PLUNDER CREEK: "In um ole ancient time of York, afore a great war, all a West Indy keys and a Long Island Straits and Sound war' a berry full of a ugly cruel pirates;--s'pose massa often heard of they;--and um ould folk, what sure to know, say a devil fuss help 'em get plunder, and then larn 'em how to hide it safe, in a middle of dark stormy nights, under bluffs, and up a creeks, all along shore, nighum Bowery Lane.--S'pose massa know a Bowery Lane, in um end of York?"