“No—­when?”

“This evening.  Vincent is down there now.”

“Well, you may be sure they suspect something.  I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to speak to Vincent?”

“Of course not!  What have we to tell him?  Simply my suspicions and Clem’s chatter.  The little moke may have been lying; I can’t see that any of them do much else.”

“The worst of it is, these Southerners are very sensitive about any allusion to the negroes.  They would pooh-pooh anything we might say that was not backed by proof.  It’s a mighty uncomfortable fix to be in, Dick, my boy; though, ’pon my soul, I believe you enjoy it!”

Dick grinned deprecating.

“I think you do, you unfledged Guy Fawkes.  I know nothing would give you greater joy than to put on a mask, grasp a dagger in your hand, and go to Wesley, crying, ‘Villain, your secret or your life!’ Dick, you’re a stage hero; you’re a thing of sawdust and tinsel.  Come to the parlor and hear Kate play the divine songs of Mendelssohn; perhaps, night-eyed conspirator, to whirl Polly or Miss Rosa in the delirium of the ’Blaue Donau.’  Come.”

But there was neither dance nor music when they reached the drawing-room.  Everybody was there; Vincent had just come, and the first words Jack and Dick heard glued them to their places.

“Yes, all the negroes on the Lawless’, Skinner’s, and Lomas’s plantations have gone.  Butler has declared them contrabands of war, and a lot of Yankee speculators have been sneaking through the plantations, filling their ignorant minds with promises of freedom, a farm, and a share of their masters’ property.  Their real purpose is to get the negroes and hold them until the two governments come to terms, and then they will get rewards for every nigger they hold.  Oh, these Yankees can see ways of making money through a stone-wall,” and Vincent laughed lightly, as though the incident in no way concerned him.  “Captain Cram, who is in camp just below in the oak clearing, is ordered to scour the river-bank to the enemy’s lines near Hampton, so we need have no fear of these enterprising apostles of freedom interfering with our niggers.”

“I don’t think one of them could be induced to leave us if offered all our farms,” Mrs. Atterbury said, a little proudly.

“There isn’t one of them that I haven’t brought through sickness or trouble of one sort or another, and there isn’t one that wouldn’t take my command before the gold of a stranger.”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Atterbury,” Mrs. Sprague ventured, mildly.  “Gold is a mighty weight in an argument.  I have known it to change the convictions of a lifetime in a moment.  I have known it to make a man renounce his father, dishonor his name, belie his whole life, deny his family.”