“Like I should take you out in her, Miss Betty?’ demanded Hannibal with palpitating anxiety.

They had entered the scattering timber when Betty paused suddenly with a startled exclamation, and Hannibal felt her fingers close convulsively about his.  The sound she had heard might have been only the rustling of the wind among the branches overhead in that shadowy silence, but Betty’s nerves, the placid nerves of youth and perfect health, were shattered.

“Didn’t you hear something, Hannibal?” she whispered fearfully.

For answer Hannibal pointed mysteriously, and glancing in the direction he indicated, Betty saw a woman advancing along the path toward them.  The look of alarm slowly died out of his eyes.

“I think it’s the overseer’s niece,” she told Hannibal, and they kept on toward the boat.

The girl came rapidly up the path, which closely followed the irregular line of the shore in its windings.  Once she was seen to stop and glance back over her shoulder, her attitude intent and listening, then she hurried forward again.  Just by the boat the three met.

“Good evening!” said Betty pleasantly.

The girl made no reply to this; she merely regarded Betty with a fixed stare.  At length she broke silence abruptly.

“I got something I want to say to you—­you know who I am, I reckon?” She was a girl of about Betty’s own age, with a certain dark, sullen beauty and that physical attraction which Tom, in spite of his vexed mood, had taken note of earlier in the day.

“You are Bess Hicks,” said Betty.

“Make the boy go back toward the house a spell—­I got something I want to say to you.”  Betty hesitated.  She was offended by the girl’s manner, which was as rude as her speech.  “I ain’t going to hurt you—­you needn’t be afraid of me, I got something important to say—­send him off, I tell you; there ain’t no time to lose!” The girl stamped her foot impatiently.

Betty made a sign to Hannibal and he passed slowly back along the path.  He went unwillingly, and he kept his head turned that he might see what was done, even if he were not to hear what was said.

“That will do, Hannibal—­wait there—­don’t go any farther!” Betty called after him when he had reached a point sufficiently distant to be out of hearing of a conversation carried on in an ordinary tone.  “Now, what is it?  Speak quickly if you have anything to tell me!”

“I got a heap to say,” answered the girl with a scowl.  Her manner was still fierce and repellent, and she gave Betty a certain jealous regard out of her black eyes which the latter was at a loss to explain.  “Where’s Mr. Tom?” she demanded.

“Tom?  Why, about the place, I suppose—­in his office, perhaps.”  So it had to do with Tom. . . .  Betty felt sudden disgust with the situation.

“No, he ain’t about the place, either!  He done struck out for Memphis two hours after sun-up, and what’s more, he ain’t coming back here to-night—­” There was a moment of silence.  The girl looked about apprehensively.  She continued, fixing her black eyes on Betty:  “You’re here alone at Belle Plain—­you know what happened when Mr. Tom started for Memphis last timeI reckon you-all ain’t forgot that!”