d the hut. Suspended from one of these was an
inert shape, mottled with yellow patches where the moonbeams filtered
through the leaves. It stirred, swayed, turned slowly, resolving itself
into the figure of an old man. He was hanging by the wrists to a rawhide
rope; his toes were lightly touching the earth.

"So! Now that Monsieur Rameau has had time to think, perhaps he will
speak," said the colonel.

A sigh, it was scarcely a groan, answered.

"Miser that you are!" impatiently exclaimed the colonel. "Your money can
do you no good now. Is it not better to part with it easily than to rot
in a government prison? You understand, the jails are full; many
mulattoes like you will be shot to make room."

"There is no--money," faintly came the voice of the prisoner. "My
neighbors will tell you that I am poor."

Both men spoke in the creole patois of the island.

"Not much, perhaps, but a little, eh? Just a little, let us say."

"Why should I lie? There is none."

"Bah! It seems you are stubborn. Congo, bring the boy!" Laguerre spoke
gruffly.

A man emerged from the shadows at the base of the tree and slouched
forward. He was a negro soldier, and, with musket and machete, shuffled
past the corner of the hut in the direction of the other houses, pausing
as the colonel said:

"But wait! There is a girl, too, I believe."

"Yes, monsieur. The wife of Floreal."

"Good! Bring them both."

Some moments later imploring voices rose, a shrill entreaty in a woman's
tones, then Congo and another tirailleur appeared; driving ahead of them
a youth and a girl. The prisoners' arms were bound behind them, and
although the girl was weeping, the boy said little. He stepped forward
into the candle-light and stared defiantly at the blue-and-gold officer.

Floreal Rameau was a slim mulatto, perhaps twenty years old; his lips
were thin and sensitive, his nose prominent, his eyes brilliant and
fearless. They gleamed now with all the vindictiveness of a serpent,
until that hanging figure in the shadows just outside turned slowly and
a straying moonbeam lit the face of his father; then a new expression
leaped into them. Floreal's chin fell, he swayed uncertainly upon his
legs.

"Monsieur--what is this?" he said, faintly.

The girl cowered at his back.

"Your father persists in lying," explained Laguerre.

"What do you--wish him to say?"

"A little thing. His money can be of no further use to him."

"Money?" Floreal voiced the w