"Like dis, I reckon." He modelled the crown into a bell form with his finger.

Joe Johnson and McLane looked at each other a minute with mutual accusation and confusion, and the former unceremoniously knocked the negro down with his great fist.

"No gold of mine for this job, Joe Johnson," said Allan McLane; "in your conservatism to save your own skin, you have let your tool kill an innocent man."

He waved his hand, with all his strong will, towards the door, and shut it in the kidnapper's face. Then, in haughty emotion, not like fear, but disappointed pride and revenge, McLane sat down, glanced around him as if to determine the next movement, and instinctively reached his hand towards his Bible, which he opened at a marked page, and softly read, till tears of baffled vindictiveness and counterfeited humility stopped his voice, as follows:

"'To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up ... God requireth that which is past ... man hath no pre-eminence above a beast, for all is vanity.... a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion: for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?'"

When tears of pious vindictiveness had closed the reading, Colonel McLane spread his pongee handkerchief on the bare floor, and knelt in silent and comfortably assured prayer.

* * * * *

Black Dave had crawled into the room where Hulda partly heard these revelations, and he entered the large closet under the concealed shaft to the prison pen, where his groans and mental agony touched Hulda's commiseration. She opened the trap, and crawled there too.

"Hush, Dave!" she whispered. "What makes you so miserable?"

"Missy, I'se killed a man. Dey made me do it. I'll burn in torment. Lord save me!"

"Dave," said Hulda, "my poor father died for his offences. You can do no more; but, like him, you can repent."

"Oh, missy, I's black. Rum an' fightin' has ruined me. Dar's no way to do better. De law won't let me bear witness agin de people dat set me on. How kin I repent unless I confess my sin? De law won't let me confess."

"Confess your poor, wracked soul to me, Dave. The Lord will hear you, though you dare not turn your face to him."

"Missy, once I was in de Lord's walk. My han's was clean, my face clar, my stummick unburnt by liquor. I stood in no man's way; at de church dey put me fo'ward. My soul was happy. One day I licked a man bigger dan me. It made me proud an' sassy. I backslid, an' wan't no good to be hired out to steady people; so de taverns got me, an' den de kidnappers used me, an' now de blood of Cain an' Abel is on my forehead forever."

Hulda knelt by the murderer, and prayed with all her heart; not the self-conscious, special pleading of the prayer across the hall, but the humble prayer of the penitent on Calvary: "Lord, we, of this felon den, ask to be with thee in Paradise."