haps it might be a party from the up-river settlements, hunting
down here?"

Tony nodded, and something like the ghost of a smile crept athwart his
sallow face.

"Huntin'? Yes, sah, that's what it mought be," he said, quickly. "But
it's game yuh wouldn't want tuh bag, Phil. Sure enough, they's coon
huntin'; but not the kind that has the bushy striped tail."

Phil was quick to grasp his meaning.

"Do you think they're after some fugitive negro? Is that what you
mean, Tony?" he demanded; while Larry's innocent blue eyes began to
distend, as they always did when their owner felt surprise or alarm.

"Sure," Tony asserted, confidently. "I orter know the bay o' a hound.
That dawg is on the trail o' a runaway convict; an' yuh see nigh all
the chain gang is black."

They all listened again. Somehow, since learning Tony's opinion, the
sound, as it came welling out of the swamp far away, seemed more
gruesome than ever. Phil could easily in imagination picture the
scene, with a posse of determined keepers from the convict camp
following the lead of dogs held in leash, and chasing after a wretched
fugitive, who had somehow managed to get away from bondage in the
turpentine pine woods.

"Poor critter!" muttered sympathetic Larry. "He's only a coon, and
perhaps he deserves all he got; but it makes me shiver to think of his
being hunted like a wild beast, all the same."

"Will they get him, do you think, Tony?" asked Phil.

"Don't know. Most always do, some time. Yuh see a feller as runs away
like that ain't got no gun nor nothin'. How c'n he git anythin' tuh
eat in the swamps? Now, if 'twas one o' us, as has always lived thar,
we'd be able to set snares an' ketch game; but a pore ignorant coon
don't know nothin'. Sometimes they jest starves tuh death, rather'n
give up."

"Then they must be treated worse than dogs," declared Larry; "because
no man, white or black, would prefer to lay down and die, to being
caught, if he didn't expect to be terribly punished."

Tony shrugged his shoulders at that.

"Don't jest know," he said; "but I heard folks say as how 'twas a bad
place, that turpentine camp, whar the convicts they works out their
time. Reckon I done heard the dawgs afore, too."

"Something familiar about their baying, is there?" queried Phil.

"They sure belongs tuh the sheriff," Tony declared; "an' he must a be'n
called in by them keepers tuh help hunt this runaway convict."

"The sheriff, Tony--do