property carried with it the WATER FRONT of divers valuable and
convenient sites for manufactures and the commercial ports of a
noble bay, as well as the natural embarcaderos of some 'lumbering'
inland settlements. Boone Culpepper would not sell. Boone
Culpepper would not rent or lease. Boone Culpepper held an
invincible blockade of his neighbors, and the progress and
improvement he despised--granting only, after a royal fashion,
occasional license, revocable at pleasure, in the shape of tolls,
which amply supported him, with the game he shot in his
kingfisher's eyrie on the Marsh. Even the Government that had made
him powerful was obliged to 'condemn' a part of his property at an
equitable price for the purposes of Fort Redwood, in which the
adjacent town of Logport shared. And Boone Culpepper, unable to
resist the act, refused to receive the compensation or quit-claim
the town. In his scant intercourse with his neighbors he always
alluded to it as his own, showed it to his children as part of
their strange inheritance, and exhibited the starry flag that
floated from the Fort as a flaunting insult to their youthful eyes.
Hated, feared, and superstitiously shunned by some, regarded as a
madman by others, familiarly known as 'The Kingfisher of Dedlow,'
Boone Culpepper was one day found floating dead in his skiff, with
a charge of shot through his head and shoulders. The shot-gun
lying at his feet at the bottom of the boat indicated the
'accident' as recorded in the verdict of the coroner's jury--but
not by the people. A thousand rumors of murder or suicide
prevailed, but always with the universal rider, 'Served him right.'
So invincible was this feeling that but few attended his last
rites, which took place at high water. The delay of the
officiating clergyman lost the tide; the homely catafalque--his own
boat--was left aground on the Marsh, and deserted by all mourners