“I am not mistaken,” replied Harold.  “I have been made familiar with their baying while surveying on the coast of Florida.  Listen!”

The deep, full tones came swelling upon the night wind, and fell with a startling distinctness upon the ear.

“It’s my hound, Mister Hare,” said a low, coarse voice at the doorway, and Seth Rawbon entered the cabin and closed the door behind him.

CHAPTER VI.

“It’s my hound.  Miss Weems, and I guess he’s on the track of that nigger, Jim.”

Oriana started as if stung by a serpent, and rising to her feet, looked upon the man with such an expression of contempt and loathing that the ruffian’s brow grew black with anger as he returned her gaze.  Harold confronted him, and spoke in a low, earnest tone, and between his clenched teeth: 

“If you are a man you will go at once.  This persecution of a woman is beneath even your brutality.  If you have an account with me, I will not balk you.  But relieve her from the outrage of your presence here.”

“I guess I’d better be around,” replied Rawbon, coolly, as he leaned against the door, with his hands in his coat pocket.  “That dog is dangerous when he’s on the scent.  You see, Miss Weems,” he continued, speaking over Harold’s shoulder, “my niggers are plaguy troublesome, and I keep the hound to cow them down a trifle.  But he wouldn’t hurt a lady, I think—­unless I happened to encourage him a bit, do you see.”

And the man showed his black teeth with a grin that caused Oriana to shudder and turn away.

Harold’s brow was like a thunder-cloud, from beneath which his eyes flashed like the lightning at midnight.

“Your words imply a threat which I cannot understand.  Ruffian!  What do mean?”

“I mean no good to you, my buck!”

His lip, with the deep cut upon it, curled with hate, but he still leaned coolly against the door, though a quick ear might have caught a click, as if he had cocked a pistol in his pocket.  It was a habit with Harold to go unarmed.  Fearless and self-reliant by nature, even upon his surveying expeditions in wild and out of the way districts, he carried no weapon beyond sometimes a stout oaken staff.  But now, his form dilated, and the muscles of his arm contracted, as if he were about to strike.  Oriana understood the movement and the danger.  She advanced quietly but quickly to his side, and took his hand within her own.

“He is not worth your anger, Harold.  For my sake, Harold, do not provoke him further,” she added softly, as she drew him from the spot.

At this moment the baying of the hound was heard, apparently in close proximity to the hovel, and presently there was a heavy breathing and snuffling at the threshold, followed by a bound against the door, and a howl of rage and impatience.  Nothing prevented the entrance of the animal except the form of Rawbon, who still leaned quietly against the rude frame, which, hanging upon leathern hinges, closed the aperture.