This stairway had no baluster, and was not safe in the dark
for strangers to the house.
Satisfying himself by an interior observation, as he had suspected
exteriorly, that there was no cellar under Johnson's tavern, the sailor
slipped up the stairs, intent to find where Judge Custis's property and
Ellenora's wayward son had been concealed. The second story had a hall,
which opened only at the front of the house and upon the upper piazza,
and four doors upon this hall indicated four bedrooms. One of them was
ajar, and, peeping through, Phoebus saw, extended on a bed, oblivious
to all the righting and din outside, Joe Johnson the negro-trader, his
form revealed by a lamp and the open fire.
An impulse, immediately repressed, came on the sailor to draw his knife
and stab Johnson to the heart, as probably the villain who had shot him
from the cat-boat. The negro-trader wearily turned his long length in
the bed, and Phoebus slipped back along the hall to the only door
besides that was not closed fast, leading into the room at the rear
southern corner of the house.
This door creaked loudly as it was opened, and a man of a bandit form
and dress, who was lying on a pallet within, revealed by the bright
moonlight streaming in at two windows, half roused himself as Jimmy
crouched at the door, where a partition, as of a very large
clothes-press, taking up fully half the room, rose between the intruder
and the occupant.
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