Early in the spring of 1866 Ezzy frequently paddled his canoe over to “Woodstock,” where in a cabin on the riverside lived Jerry and Ceasar Butler, old bachelor brothers. Their sister Cassey, a widow of some six months, was their guest. The brothers for the most part lived out on the water, oystering, fishing and crabbing. Cassey liked her surroundings so much that her visit was now three months long, and she interested herself mostly in raising chickens and ducks. The dusky damsels in the neighborhood said Cassey was going to marry Brer Snake Bit Jim, a hand on Captain Stitchberry’s schooner, the “Margaret Jane,” and he had been keeping company, as they expressed it, with her for about five months. She was the loudest singer in Zion church, a _wholesale_ Baptist, and walked in the water like a pious one when immersion time came, and some uncharitable people said that when she came home from meeting chickens had better roost high. Though twenty years younger than Ezra, his war stories and adventures charmed her. She thought him a hero and soon they were betrothed. Ezra was not one of the slow-paced sort. Ezra’s young Marster was very much annoyed at the idea of his marrying Cassey. He knew her to be self-willed and high tempered, and told Ezra that if he brought her to Fairlands he would charge him $25 a year for his quarter and ten acres; but Ezra was too fond of telling war tales and having a listener that almost smothered him with caresses when he told of hair-breadth escapes. So one bright May day Parson Phil Demby pronounced them man and wife—his third wife. Ezra made a living crabbing, fishing, oystering and cultivating a little grain. He was an expert angler, and if a dinner was given by any of the gentry between May and November and a boiling rock wanted, Ezra was notified and he would be sure to catch the rock. He loved children and children loved him. If the overseers’ little ones wanted to go fishing, they would go to the garden and in sight of him commence to dig worms and when they reached the bateau, he would be there bailing or shoving her from shore. Soon he would add sufficient peelers and soft crabs to the bate, and then to the hurdle. Ezra’s pole, some eighteen feet long, was of cedar growth, with the bark stripped off; a coarse line and cork about the size of a duck egg, and when he gave a grunt and slashed it out, the water almost surged; but somehow or other, the fish, and good ones, too, loved his bait. “Ef’n you chilluns don’ stop er talkin’ an’ rockin’ dis boat I’ll paddle straight home. You pester de fish so dey won’ bite, an’ hit ’stresses me pow’ful.”