“Ware!” he cried.

“How are you, Carrington?” said the planter.

“You are wanted at Belle Plain,” began Carrington, and seemed to hesitate.

“Yes—­yes, I am going there at once—­now—­” stammered Ware, and gathered up his reins with a shaking hand.

“You’ve heard, I take it?” said Carrington slowly.

“Yes,” answered Ware, in a hoarse whisper.  “My God, Carrington, I’m heart sick; she has been like a daughter to me!” he fell silent mopping his face.

“I think I understand your feeling,” said Carrington, giving him a level glance.

“Then you’ll excuse me,” and the planter clapped spurs to his horse.  Once he looked back over his shoulder; he saw that Carrington had not moved from the spot where they had met.

At Belle Plain, Ware found his neighbors in possession of the place.  They greeted him quietly and spoke in subdued tones of their sympathy.  The planter listened with an air of such abject misery that those who had neither liked nor respected him, were roused to a sudden generous feeling where he was concerned, they could not question but that he was deeply affected.  After all the man might have a side to his nature with which they had never come in contact.

When he could he shut himself in his room.  He had experienced a day of maddening anxiety, he had not slept at all the previous night, in mind and body he was worn out; and now he was plunged into the thick of this sensation.  He must keep control of himself, for every word he said would be remembered.  In the present there was sympathy for him, but sooner or later people would return to their sordid unemotional judgments.

He sought to forecast the happenings of the next few hours.  Murrell’s friends would break jail for him, that was a foregone conclusion, but the insurrection he had planned was at an end.  Hues had dealt its death blow.  Moreover, though the law might be impotent to deal with Murrell, he could not hope to escape the vengeance of the powerful class he had plotted to destroy; he would have to quit the country.  Ware gloated in this idea of craven flight.  Thank God, he had seen the last of him!

But as always his thoughts came back to Betty.  Slosson would wait at the Hicks’ place for the man Murrell had promised him, and failing this messenger, for the signal fire, but there would be neither; and Slosson would be left to determine his own course of action.  Ware felt certain that he would wait through the night, but as sure as the morning broke, if no word had reached him, he would send one of his men across the bayou, who must learn of Murrell’s arrest, escape, flight—­for in Ware’s mind these three events were indissolubly associated.  The planter’s teeth knocked together.  He was having a terrible acquaintance with fear, its very depths had swallowed him up; it was a black pit in which he sank from horror to horror.  He had lost all faith in the Clan which had terrorized half a dozen states, which had robbed and murdered with apparent impunity, which had marketed its hundreds of stolen slaves.  He had utterly collapsed at the first blow dealt the organization, but he was still seeing Murrell, pallid and shaken.