“Open the door, Tom,” commanded Murrell.

“It is close in here,” agreed the planter.

“It isn’t that, but you smoke the meanest cigars I ever smelt, I always think your shoes are on fire.  Tom, do you want to get rid of her?  Did yot mean that?”

“Oh, shut up,” said Tom, dropping his voice to a surly whisper.

There was a brief silence, during which Murrell studied his friend’s face.  When he spoke, it was to give the conversation a new direction.

“Did she bring the boy here last night?  I saw you drive off with him in the carriage.”

“Yes, she makes a regular pet of the little ragamuffin—­it’s perfectly sickening!”

“Who were the two men with him?”

“One of ’em calls himself judge Price; the other kept out of the way, I didn’t hear his name.”

“Is the boy going to stay at Belle Plain?” inquired Murrell.

“That notion hasn’t struck her yet, for I heard her say at breakfast that she’d take him to Raleigh this afternoon.”

“That’s the boy I traveled all the way to North Carolina to get for Fentress.  I thought I had him once, but the little cuss gave me the slip.”

“Eh—­you don’t say?” cried Ware.

“Tom, what do you know about the Quintard lands; what do you know about Quintard himself?” continued Murrell.

“He was a rich planter, lived in North Carolina.  My father met him when he was in congress and got him to invest in land here.  They had some colonization scheme on foot this was upward of twenty years ago—­but nothing came of it.  Ouintard lost interest.”

“And the land?”

“Oh, he held on to that.”

“Is there much of it?”

“A hundred thousand acres,” said Ware.

Murrell whistled softly under his breath.

“What’s it worth?”

“A pot of money, two or three dollars an acre anyhow,” answered Ware.

“Quintard has been dead two years, Tom, and back yonder in North Carolina they told me he left nothing but the home plantation.  The boy lived there up to the time of Quintard’s death, but what relation he was to the old man no one knew.  What do you suppose Fentress wants with him?  He offered me five thousand dollars if I’d bring him West; and he still wants him, only he’s lying low now to see what comes of the two old sots—­he don’t want to move in the dark.  Offhand, Tom, I’d say that by getting hold of the boy Fentress expects to get hold of the Quintard land.”

“That’s likely,” said Ware, then struck by a sudden idea, he added, “Are you going to take all the risks and let him pocket the cash?  If it’s the land he’s after, the stake’s big enough to divide.”

“He can have the whole thing and welcome, I’m playing for a bigger stake.”  His friend stared at him in astonishment.  “I tell you, Tom, I’m bent on getting even with the world!  No silver spoon came in the way of my mouth when I was a youngster; my father was too honest—­and I think the less of him for it!”