"Honey," cried Patty Cannon to Levin, giving him an affectionate hug, "have ye swallered yer liquor so smart as that? Why, I love to see a nice boy drink."

"But no more for him now, cajela," the Captain protested; "two such will make him fall off his horse. Bebamos, Patty! Esta excelente!" - drinking.

"How purty the Captain says them things," the madam cried to the gentleman within. "Maybe he's a mockin' his ole sweetheart. Oh, Van Dorn, if I thought you could forget me I would kill you!"

Levin noticed the rapid temper and demoniac face of this not unengaging lady as she spoke, her whole nature turning its course like a wheeling bat, and from plausibility to an instant's jealousy, and then to a dark tide of awful rage, took but a thought.

"Que disparate! hala o he!" Van Dorn lisped, sweetly, chucking the hostess under the chin; "but I do love to see thee so, thou charmer of my life. Never will I desert thee, Patty, whilst thou can suffer."

Her dark clouds slowly passed away as Levin turned from the place, but her small head and abundant raven hair showed the blood troubled to the roots, and the eyes, once rich with midnight depths, now glazing in the course of time, like old window panes, by age, searched the bandit's face with a strange fear:

"Van Dorn, time and pleasure cannot kill you: how well you look to-day. I think you are a boy, to be ruined again every time you love me, you blush so modestly. Where is that pot of color you paint your cheeks with even before me, whose blushes none can recollect? Why do you love me?"

"O dios!" said Van Dorn; "I love thee for these spells of splendor, dark night and noonday passion, the alternations of earth and hell that eclipse heaven altogether. I love to see thee fear, though fearing nothing here, because I see nothing that you fear beyond the grave. You hate this boy?"

"I hate him worse than wrinkles. Let him not come to me a child to-morrow; let him see ghosts long as he lives."

"How are the prisoners, Patty?"

"Why, the white nigger, dovey, is sick to-day; blood-loss and blisters have give him fever. My nigger, that I tied - ha! ha! a good job for Patty Cannon, at her age! - says t'other's a pore coaster named Jimmy Phoebus."

"Joe must be ready for a quick departure," the Captain exclaimed, "when we come back from Dover: it is a bold undertaking, and the whole of the little state will be aroused like a black snake uncoiling in one's pocket."

The woman pointed from her shoulder towards the inner room, and spoke even lower than before:

"Van Dorn, I have a customer."

"For negroes?"

"No, for Huldy. He shall have her."

* * * * *

As Levin Dennis stood at the cross-roads without, he saw a strange man ploughing in the farm so recently deserted by his hostess for the gayer cross-roads. The afternoon light fell on the sandy fields and struck a polish from the ploughshare, and, as the ploughman passed the brambly spot again, the buzzards slowly circled up, as if to protest that he came too near their young.