“Just across to George Hicks’s.”

“For what purpose?”

“You’ll know in plenty of time.”  And Slosson leered at her through the darkness.

“Hannibal is to go with me?” asked Betty tremulously.

“Sure!” agreed Slosson affably.  “Your nigger, too—­quite a party.”

Betty stepped into the skiff.  She felt her hopes quicken—­she was thinking of Bess; whatever the girl’s motives, she had wished her to escape.  She would wish it now more than ever since the very thing she had striven to prevent had happened.  Slosson seated himself and took up the oars, Bunker followed with Hannibal and they pushed off.  No word was spoken until they disembarked on the opposite shore, when Slosson addressed Bunker.  “I reckon I can manage that young rip-staver, you go back after Sherrod and the nigger,” he said.

He conducted his captives up the bank and they entered a clearing.  Looking across this Betty saw where a cabin window framed a single square of light.  They advanced toward this and presently the dark outline of the cabin itself became distinguishable.  A moment later Slosson paused, a door yielded to his hand, and Betty and the boy were thrust into the room where Murrell had held his conference with Fentress and Ware.  The two women were now its only occupants and the mother, gross and shapeless, turned an expressionless face on the intruders; but the daughter shrank into the shadow, her burning glance fixed on Betty.

“Here’s yo’ guests, old lady!” said Mr. Slosson.  Mrs. Hicks rose from the three-legged stool on which she was sitting.

“Hand me the candle, Bess,” she ordered.

At one side of the room was a steep flight of stairs which gave access to the loft overhead.  Mrs. Hicks, by a gesture, signified that Betty and Hannibal were to ascend these stairs; they did so and found themselves on a narrow landing inclosed by a partition of rough planks, this partition was pierced by a low door.  Mrs. Hicks, who had followed close at their heels, handed the candle to Betty.

“In yonder!” she said briefly, nodding toward the door.

“Wait!” cried Betty in a whisper.

“No,” said the woman with an almost masculine surliness of tone.  “I got nothing to say.”  She pushed them into the attic, and, closing the door, fastened it with a stout wooden bar.

Beyond that door, which seemed to have closed on every hope, Betty held the tallow dip aloft, and by its uncertain and flickering light surveyed her prison.  The briefest glance sufficed.  The room contained two shakedown beds and a stool, there was a window in the gable, but a piece of heavy plank was spiked before it.

“Miss Betty, don’t you be scared,” whispered Hannibal.  “When the judge hears we’re gone, him and Mr. Mahaffy will try to find us.  They’ll go right off to Belle Plain—­the judge is always wanting to do that, only Mr. Mahaffy never lets him but now he won’t be able to stop him.”