“And you don’t know what that means, I suppose?” he insisted, savagely, angered by her coolness.  “Perhaps the sheriff did not explain this.  Yet, by God!  I believe you do know.  Someone spread the word before we ever got up here—­that damn lawyer Haines likely enough.  That is why the others have disappeared; why they have hidden themselves away.  Who was it?”

“I cannot answer.”

“Oh, I reckon you can.  Why did they run off and leave you here?”

“I cannot answer.”

“Damn you, stop that!  Don’t try any of your fine airs on me.  Do you know who and what you are?”

She rested one hand on the table in support, and I could note the nervous trembling of the fingers, yet her low voice remained strangely firm.

“I know,” she said distinctly, “I am no longer a free white woman; I am a negro, and a slave.”

“Oh, so you know that, do you?  Then you must also be aware that you are my property.  Perhaps it will be well for you to remember this in answering my questions.  Now tell me who informed you of all this?”

“I cannot answer.”

“Cannot!  You mean you will not.  Well, young woman, I’ll find means to make you, for I have handled your kind before.  Drop this dignity business, and remember you are a slave, talking to your master.  It will be better for you, if you do.  Where is Eloise Beaucaire?”

“Why do you seek to find her?  There is no slave blood in her veins.”

“To serve the necessary papers, of course.”

He spoke incautiously, urged on by his temper, and I marked how quickly her face brightened at this intelligence.

“To serve papers!  They must be served then before—­before you can take possession?  That is what I understood the sheriff to say.”

“Why, of course—­the law requires that form.”

“Then I am not really your slave—­yet?” her voice deepening with earnestness and understanding.  “Oh, so that is how it is—­even if I am a negro, I do not belong to you until those papers have been served.  If you touch me now you break the law.  I may not be free, but I am free from you.  Good God! but I am glad to know that!”

“And damn little good it is going to do you,” he growled.  “I was a fool to let you know that; but just the same you are here in my power, and I care mighty little what the law says.  Sheriff, or no sheriff, my beauty, you are going to St. Louis with me tonight; so I advise you to keep a grip on that tongue of yours.  Do you think I am going to be foiled altogether by a technical point of law?  Then, by God! you don’t know Joe Kirby.  Possession is the main thing, and I have you where you can’t get away.  You hear me?”

She had not moved, although her form had straightened, and her hand no longer rested on the table.  Kirby had stepped close in front of her, his eyes glowing with anger, his evident intention being to thus frighten the girl into compliance with his wishes, but her eyes, defiant and unafraid, looked him squarely in the face.