Now fulfil your
contract and earn your money!"
He put his spectacles in his pocket, stretched his gaitered slippers
before the fire, looked at his watch and let the crystal seal drop on
his sleek abdomen, and his vitreous, blue-green eyes filled with color
like twin vases in a druggist's window. He was ready and anxious to
substitute the ruffian for the tempter.
Patty Cannon, glancing at the money on the table, and bearing a lamp,
started at once through the house, calling "Huldy! Huldy!"
Nothing responded to the name.
She searched from room to room, peering everywhere, and made the circuit
twice, and, taking a lantern, went into the windy night and round the
bounds of the old tavern.
The house was easily explored, having no cellar nor outbuildings, and
the trap to the slave-pen was locked fast. The girl's shawl and hat were
also gone.
"She's heard us, I reckon," the old woman muttered; "she's run away an'
ruined me. Joe's cruel to me; Van Dorn is gone; without gold I go to the
poor-house. McLane is pitiless--"
She dwelt upon the sentence, and, with only an instant's hesitation,
turned into the tavern again and buttoned the outer door.
Beneath her feather bed she reached her hand and drew out a large
object, took a horn from the mantel and sprinkled it with something
contained there, and then, in a bold, masculine walk, stamping hard went
in the dark up the open stairs again, talking, as she advanced, loudly,
complaisantly, or sternly, as if to some truant she was coaxing or
forcing.
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