of which rose a rude cabin, in whose doorway stood a woman
serving out bowls of loblolly to half a dozen tow-headed children.

Half an hour later, Patricia, rested and refreshed, took her seat behind
the oxen, which the owner of the cabin had harnessed up, with much
protestation of his eagerness to serve the daughter of Colonel Verney,
emptied her purse in the midst of the open-mouthed children, and bade
kindly adieu to the good wife. Darkeih curled herself up in the bottom
of the cart, and Landless and Regulus walked beside it.

In two hours' time they were at Verney Manor, where they found none but
women to greet them, Rendered uneasy by the storm, Woodson had
despatched a messenger to Rosemead, who had returned with the tidings
that no boat from Verney Manor had reached that plantation. The overseer
had ill news with which to greet the Colonel and Sir Charles when at
midnight they arrived unexpectedly from Green Spring. Since then every
able-bodied man had deserted the plantation. There were no boats at the
wharf, no horses in the stables. The master and Sir Charles were gone in
the Nancy, the two overseers on horseback. A Sabbath stillness brooded
over the plantation, until a negro woman recognized the occupants of the
ox-cart lumbering up the road. Then there was noise enough of an
exclamatory, feminine kind. The shrill sounds penetrated to the great
room, where, behind drawn curtains, surrounded by essences, and an odor
of burnt feathers, with Chloe to fan her, and Mr. Frederick Jones to
murmur consolation, reclined Mistress Lettice. As Patricia stepped upon
the porch, Betty Carrington flew down the stairs and through the hall,
and the two met with a little inarticulate burst of cries and kisses.
Mistress Lettice in the great room went into hysterics for the fifth
time that morning.

CHAPTER XVIII

A CAPTURE

At noon the next day returned the search party, dispatched by the
Colonel on receipt of his daughter's information, and headed by Woodson
and Sir Charles Carew. In their midst, bound with ropes, and seated
behind one of the mounted men, was Roach. His clothing hung from him in
tatters, and witnessed, moreover, to the quagmires and mantled pools
through which he had struggled; his arm had been injured, and was tied
with a bloody rag; blood was caked upon his villainous face, scratched
and torn in his breathless bursting through thickets; his red hair fell
over his eyes in matted elf-locks; his lip