Mr. Ware seemed on the whole edified by the captain’s unorthodox point of view.

“My mother was the true grit though; she came of mountain stock, and taught us children to steal by the time we could think!  Whatever we stole, she hid, and dared my father to touch us.  I remember the first thing of account was when I was ten years old.  A Dutch peddler came to our cabin one winter night and begged us to take him in.  Of course, he opened his pack before he left, and almost under his nose I got away with a bolt of linen.  The old man and woman fought about it, but if the peddler discovered his loss he had the sense not to come back and tell of it!  When I was seventeen I left home with three good horses I’d picked up; they brought me more money than I’d ever seen before and I got my first taste of life—­that was in Nashville where I made some good friends with whose help I soon had as pretty a trade organized in horseflesh as any one could wish.”  A somber tone had crept into Murrell’s voice, while his glance had become restless and uneasy.  He went on:  “I’m licking a speculation into shape that will cause me to be remembered while there’s a white man alive in the Mississippi Valley!” His wicked black eyes were blazing coals of fire in their deep sockets.  “Have you heard what the niggers did at Hayti?”

“My God, John—­no, I won’t talk to you—­and don’t you think about it!  That’s wrong—­wrong as hell itself!” cried Ware.

“There’s no such thing as right and wrong for me.  That’ll do for those who have something to lose.  I was born with empty hands and I am going to fill them where and how I can.  I believe the time has come when the niggers can be of use to me—­look what Turner did back in Virginia three years ago!  If he’d had any real purpose he could have laid the country waste, but he hadn’t brains enough to engineer a general uprising.”

Ware was probably as remote from any emotion that even vaguely approximated right feeling as any man could well be, but Murrell’s words jarred his dull conscience, or his fear, into giving signs of life.

“Don’t you talk of that business, we want nothing of that sort out here.  You let the niggers alone!” he said, but he could scarcely bring himself to believe that Murrell had spoken in earnest.  Yet even if he jested, this was a forbidden subject.

“White brains will have to think for them, if it’s to be more than a flash in the pan,” said Murrell unheeding him.

“You let the niggers alone, don’t you tamper with them,” said Ware.  He possessed a profound belief in Murrell’s capacity.  He knew how the latter had shaped the uneasy population that foregathered on the edge of civilization to his own ends, and that what he had christened the Clan had become an elaborate organization, disciplined and flexible to his ruthless will.

“Look here, what do you think I have been working for—­to steal a few niggers?”