who flits like a shadow before him, the two are soon standing among some
bushes that form a strip of thicket running along the roadside.

"Now, what air it?" asks Woodley of the coon-hunter, with whom he is
well acquainted--having often met him in his midnight rambles.

"Mass Woodley, you want know who kill Mass Charl Clancy?"

"Why, Bill, that's the very thing we're all talkin' 'bout, an' tryin' to
find out. In coorse we want to know. But who's to tell us?"

"Dis nigger do dat."

"Air ye in airnest, Bill?"

"So much in earness I ha'n't got no chance get sleep, till I make clean
bress ob de seecret. De ole ooman neider. No, Mass Woodley, Phoebe she
no let me ress till I do dat same. She say it am de duty ob a Christyun
man, an', as ye know, we boaf b'long to de Methodies. Darfore, I now
tell ye, de man who kill Charl Clancy was my own massr--de young un--
Dick."

"Bill! are you sure o' what ye say?"

"So shoo I kin swa it as de troof, de whole troof, an' nuffin but de
troof."

"But what proof have ye?"

"Proof! I moas seed it wif ma own eyes. If I didn't see, I heerd it
wif ma ears."

"By the 'tarnal! this looks like clar evydince at last. Tell me, Bill,
o' all that you seed an' what you heern?"

"Ya, Mass Woodley, I tell you ebberyting; all de sarkunistances c'nected
wif de case."

In ten minutes after, Simeon Woodley is made acquainted with everything
the coon-hunter knows; the latter having given him full details of all
that occurred on that occasion when his coon-chase was brought to such
an unsatisfactory termination.

To the backwoodsman it brings no surprise. He has already arrived at a
fixed conclusion, and Bill's revelation is in correspondence with it.

On hearing it, he but says:--

"While runnin' off, yur master let fall a letter, did he? You picked it
up, Bill? Ye've gob it?"

"Hya's dat eyedentikil dockyment."

The negro hands over the epistle, the photograph inside.

"All right, Bill! I reck'n this oughter make things tol'ably clur.
Now, what d'ye want me to do for yurself?"

"Lor, Mass Woodley, you knows bess. I'se needn't tell ye, dat ef ole
Eph'm Darke hear wha dis nigger's been, an' gone, an' dud, de life ob
Blue Bill wuldn't be wuth a ole coon-skin--no; not so much as a
corn-shuck. I'se get de cowhide ebbery hour ob de day, and de night
too. I'se get flog to def, sa'tin shoo."

"Yur right thar, I reck'n," rejoins the hunter; then continues,
reflectingly, "