nd trained--their
nature is too wild and fierce to be kept within bounds except
by fear and crushing. They are treacherous and savage, and most
repulsive in appearance. Though spoken of as black, they are
really chocolate-brown, but so covered with hair as to be very
dusky.

Being very cunning in their movements, it is always difficult to
know where they are, and there are often such long lapses between
the times they are heard of, that most people forget their
existence as a matter of any importance. But Mr. Orban knew that
his wife was haunted by a very constant horror of them--a dread
lest one night the blacks should make a raid upon their plantation,
as they had been known to do upon other white men's dwellings.

What neither Mr. nor Mrs. Orban realized was how much Eustace and
Nesta knew of certain terrible events happening from time to time
in just such isolated homes as their own. It was from the two young
white maidservants the children heard tales they listened to with a
kind of awful enjoyment by day, but which were remembered at night
with a shudder. The creaking of the wooden house in which they
lived as the boards contracted after the tropical heat of day, and
the weird sounds rising from the plantation below, held a hundred
terrors to be ashamed of in the morning.

Eustace and Nesta never spoke of these night panics to any one,
least of all to each other--they seemed so silly when broad
daylight proved there had been absolutely nothing to be cowardly
about.

By some unspoken rule Peter was never allowed to hear these
stories. He was always considered so very much younger than Eustace
and Nesta that even the servants had the sense not to frighten him.
So Peter's spirits were not damped by the thought of their father's
departure, and he knew nothing of the queer little tiff that had
taken place between Eustace and Nesta.

It is very odd how people can quarrel over a matter upon which they
are perfectly agreed; but they frequently do, especially when it
has anything to do with fear.

Nesta went to bed that night still in the sulks, with an air of
"You'll be sorry some day" about her every attitude. Eustace seemed
inseparable from his book, and disinclined to talk. He went heavily
to bed, more troubled than ever because, though his mother was
unusually merry, making much of all the presents from England, and
showing great interest in them, he saw she was very white, and
there was still a strange look