“I reckon your heart’s tender, too!” he presently said.  Ware’s dull glance shifted to Fentress, but the colonel’s cold and impassive exterior forbade the thought that his sympathy had been roused.

“It isn’t that,” Ware muttered, moistening his lips.  He felt the utter futility of opposition.  “I am for letting things rest just where they are,” again his voice slid into a husky whisper.  “You’ll be running all our heads into a halter, the first thing you know—­and this isn’t any place to talk over such matters, there are too many people about.”

“There’s only Bess and the old woman busy outside,” said Murrell.

“What’s to hinder them from sticking an ear to a chink in the logs?”

“Go on, and finish what you’ve got to say, and get it off your mind,” said Murrell.

“Well, then, I want to tell you that I consider you didn’t regard me at all in the way you managed that business at the church!  If I had known what was due to happen there, do you think I’d have gone near the place?  But you let me go!  I met you on the road and you told me you’d learned Norton had been to see Bowen, you told me that much, but you didn’t tell me near all you might!” Ware was bitter and resentful; again he felt the sweat of a mortal terror drip from him.

“It was the best thing for you that it happened the way it did,” rejoined Murrell coolly.  “No one will ever think you had a hand in it.”

“It wasn’t right!  You placed me in the meanest kind of a situation,” objected Ware sullenly, mopping his face.

“Did you think I was going to let the marriage take place?  You knew he had been warned to keep away from her,” said Murrell.  There was a movement overhead in the loft, the loose clapboards with which it was floored creaked under a heavy tread.

“Who’s that?  Hicks?” asked Ware.

“It isn’t Hicks—­never mind who it is, Tom,” answered Murrell quietly.

“I thought you’d sent him out of the county?” muttered Ware, his face livid.

“Look here, Tom, I don’t ask your help, but I won’t stand your interference.  I’m going to have the girl.”

“John, you’ll ruin yourself with your damned crazy infatuation!” It was Fentress, no longer able to control himself, who spoke.

“No, I won’t, Colonel, but I’m not going to discuss that.  All I want is for Tom to go to Memphis and stay there for a couple of days.  When he comes back Belle Plain and its niggers will be as good as his.  I am going to take the girl away from there to-night.  I don’t ask your help and you needn’t ask what comes of her afterward.  That will be my affair.”  Murrell’s burning eyes shifted from one to the other.

“A beautiful and accomplished young lady—­a great heiress—­is to disappear and no solution of the mystery demanded by the public at large!” said Fentress with an acid smile.  Murrell laughed contemptuously.

“What’s all this fuss over Norton’s death amounted to?” he said.