ory yelp.

Suddenly her master had a new thought. He stepped onward to the next
lock of the fence, scrutinized its top rail, moved to, the next lock,
examining the top rail there, then to the next, the next, the next, and
at the seventh or eighth beckoned us.

"See, here?" he asked. "Think that ain't a runaway nigger? Look." A
splinter had been newly rubbed off the rail. "What you reckon done
that, sir; a bird or a fish? That's where he jumped. Look yonder,
where he landed and lit out."

The merest fraction of a note from the horn brought the two free dogs
to their master, and before he could lift Dandy over the fence Charmer
was on the trail. She threw her head high and for the first time
filled the resounding timber with the music of her bay.

["Mr. Chester," murmured Mlle. Chapdelaine, and once more he ceased to
read. Mme. Castanado had laid her hands tightly to her face. Yet now
she smilingly dropped them, saying: "Seraphine--Marcel--please to pazz
around that cake an' wine. Well, I su'pose there are yet in the
worl'--in Afrique--Asia--even Europe--several kin' of cuztom mo' wicked
than that. And still I'm sorry that ever tranzpire. But, Mr. Chezter,
if you'll resume?"

Chester once more resumed.]

XV

Hardy's incitements were no longer whispers.

"Dandy! Dandy!" he cried, with wild elation of voice and still no
emotion in his face. "Niggeh-fellah thah. Dandy! Ah, Dandy! look him
out!"

The music swelled from Dandy's throat. Away went the pair. The
younger couple, in yoke, trembled and moaned to be after them. The two
clerks had swung down three or four rails from the fence, and with
Hardy were hurrying their horses through, when the youngest dog, nose
to the ground and tugging his yokemate along, let go a cry of discovery
and began to dig furiously under a bottom rail. His master threw him
off and drew from under it "Mrs. Southmayd's" tiny beflowered bonnet.

"Good God!" exclaimed one of the boys as he held it up, "they've made
way with her!"

"Now, none of _that_ nonsense!" I cried; "she's given it to one of them
and they've feared 'twould get them into trouble!" But the three had
spurred off and I could only toss it away and follow.

The baying had ceased and an occasional half-smothered yap told that
the scent was broken. A huge grape-vine end, hanging from a lofty
bough, had enabled the run-away to take a long sidewise swing clear of
the ground; but as I came up th