Ascending a few steps, leading into a centre building-where the slave merchant is polished into respectability-we enter a small room at the right hand.  Several men, some having the appearance of respectable merchants, some dressed in a coarse, red-mixed homespun, others smoking cigars very leisurely, are seated at a table, upon which are several bottles and tumblers.  They drank every few minutes, touched glasses, uttered the vilest imprecations.  Conspicuous among them is Marco Graspum:  it is enough that we have before introduced him to the reader at Marston’s mansion.  His dark peering eyes glisten as he sits holding a glass of liquor in one hand, and runs his fingers through his bristly hair with the other.  “The depths of trade are beyond some men,” he says, striking his hand on the table; then, catching up a paper, tears it into pieces.  “Only follow my directions; and there can be no missing your man,” he continued, addressing one who sat opposite to him; and who up to that time had been puffing his cigar with great unconcern.  His whole energies seemed roused to action at the word.  After keeping his eyes fixed upon Graspum for more than a minute, he replied, at the same time replenishing his cigar with a fresh one—­

“Yee’h sees, Marco,—­you’r just got to take that ar’ say back, or stand an all-fired chaffing.  You don’t scar’ this ‘un, on a point a’ business.  If I hain’t larned to put in the big pins, no fellow has.  When ye wants to ‘sap’ a tall ’un, like Marston, ye stands shy until ye thinks he’s right for pulling, and then ye’ll make a muffin on him, quicker.  But, ye likes to have yer own way in gettin’ round things, so that a fellow can’t stick a pinte to make a hundred or two unless he weaves his way clean through the law-unless he understands Mr. Justice, and puts a double blinder on his eye.  There’s nothing like getting on the right side of a fellow what knows how to get on the wrong side of the law; and seeing how I’ve studied Mr. Justice a little bit better than he’s studied his books, I knows just what can be done with him when a feller’s got chink in his pocket.  You can’t buy ’em, sir, they’re so modest; but you can coax ’em at a mighty cheaper rate-you can do that!” “And ye can make him feel as if law and his business warn’t two and two,” rejoined Anthony Romescos, a lean, wiry man, whose small indescribable face, very much sun-scorched, is covered with bright sandy hair, matted and uncombed.  His forehead is low, the hair grows nearly to his eyebrows, profuse and red; his eyes wander and glisten with desperation; he is a merciless character.  Men fear him, dread him; he sets the law at defiance, laughs when he is told he is the cunningest rogue in the county.  He owns to the fearful; says it has served him through many a hard squeeze; but now that he finds law so necessary to carry out villainy, he’s taken to studying it himself.  His dress is of yellow cotton, of which he has a short roundabout and loose pantaloons.