ards me
with your foot."

"I'll go to hell first," was the sullen reply.

"As you please. I will give you until I count twenty. If those papers
are not in my hands, then I will shoot you like the dog you are."

The murderer uttered a dreadful curse. Landless began to count. Roach
made an irresolute motion of the hand that held the lists. Landless
counted on, "fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--" With another oath
and a grin of rage Roach dropped the papers upon the board at his feet.
"Now push it towards me," said Landless.

With a brow like midnight the other did as he was bid. Still covering
his men, Landless stooped quickly, and took up the precious papers,
assured himself that they were all there, and placed them in his bosom.

"Now," he said, leaning his back against the doorpost, and regarding
the three baffled rogues with a grim eye, "I have a few words to say to
you. I speak first to you, Trail, and to you, Luiz Sebastian. These
papers have told you little that you did not know before. It was not the
information that you gained from them that made them so valuable; it was
the possession of them, the possession of actual proofs of this
conspiracy which you might hold over our heads, or, if the notion took
you, might sell to Colonel Verney?"

"Senor Landless sees the thing as it is," said Luiz Sebastian.

"Well, you no longer possess these proofs, and are therefore just where
you were yesterday."

"Listen, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian gloomily. "This plot does
not please us. It is too much in the hands of those who call themselves
soldiers and martyrs, whom our master calls fanatic Oliverians, and whom
I, Luiz Sebastian, call accursed heretics. The servants have no say in
the matter; they are to follow like sheep where these others lead. The
slaves are not even to know of it until the last moment. A handful of us
who have white blood in our veins are let into the secret, that we may
incite the blacks when the time is come; but are we consulted? Are our
opinions asked, our wishes deferred to? I, Luiz Sebastian, who have been
through three insurrections in the Indies, and who know how such things
should be managed; has my advice been craved as to this or that? You
make us promises. Mother of God! how do we know that those promises will
be kept? By St. Jago! the insurrection may arrive, and the planters be
put down, and next year may find us slaves still, with but a change of
masters!"

"It is