"Devil Jim Clark's," said Sorden.

The dwelling stood about forty yards back from the road, drawing nearly into the cover of the woods, and its little yard was made cavernous by thick-planted paper-mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a light was shining from it.

"Devil Jim's business-office," nodded Sorden.

"What's his business?" asked Levin, freshly.

"Niggers. He keeps 'em up thar between the garret and the roof - sometimes in the cellar."

"Does he want a business-office for that?"

"He's a contractor on the canawl, too, Jim is - raises race-horses, farms it, gambles a little, but nigger-runnin' is his best game. My skin! Yer comes Captain Van Dorn. I love him as I never loved A male."

"Van Dorn," spoke a voice from the house, "remember my family is particular. Your men must go to the barn. Come in!"

"Spiced brandy at the barn!" - a quiet remark from somewhere - was sufficient to lead the herd away, and, giving the order to "water and fodder," Van Dorn passed into the kitchen, thence through a bedroom to the chief room of the house, and up a small winding-stair to a scrap of hallway or corridor hardly two feet wide.

The man who led pointed to a trap above one end of this hall, and exclaimed, "Niggers there! family yonder!" - the last reference to a door closing the little passage.

He then opened a wicket at the side of the hall, admitting Van Dorn to an exceedingly small closet or garret room, barely large enough for the men to sit, and lighted by a lamp in the little dormer window seen from below.

"Drink!" said the man, uncorking a bottle of champagne; "I had it ready for you."

He poured the foaming wine and set the bottle on a sort of secretary or desk, and then looked anxiety and avarice together out of his liquid black eyes and broad, heavy face.

"Buena suerte, senor!" Van Dorn lisped, as they drank together.

"Hya! spitch!" nervously muttered Clark, cutting his own top-boots with a dog-whip. "I wish I was out of the business: the risk is too great. My wife is religious - praying, mebbe, now, in there. My daughters is at the seminaries, spendin' money like the Canawl Company on the lawyers. Nothin' pays like nigger-stealin', but it's beneath you and me, Van Dorn."

"A la verdad! This is my last incursion, Don Clark. Pleasure has kept me poor for life. To-day I did a little sacrifice, and it grows upon me."

"If they should ketch me and set me in the pillory, Van Dorn, for what you do to-night, hya! spitch!" - he slashed his knees"it would break Mrs. Clark's heart."

"I want this money to-night," said Van Dorn, "to make two young people happy. They shall take my portion, and take me with them out of the plains of Puckem."

"Oh, it is nervous business" - Clark's eyes of rich jelly made the pallor on his large face like a winding-sheet"hya! spitch! The Quakers are a-watchin' me. Ole Zekiel Jinkins over yer, ole Warner Mifflin down to the mill, these durned Hunns at the Wildcat - they look me through every time they ketch me on the road. But the canawl contract don't pay like niggers; my folks must hold their heads up in the world; Sam Ogg won't let me keep out of temptation."