prepared for the emergency. She held a butcher-knife
concealed under her folded arms. With this she cut the cords above
Toby's thumbs. It was done in an instant.

"Now, take this and run! If they go to take you, kill them!"

She thrust the handle of the knife into his hand, and pushed him from
the shed. Terrified, bewildered, weak, he seemed moving in a kind of
nightmare. But somehow he got around the corner of the shed, and
disappeared in the darkness.

The brothers saw him go. They were drawing water at the well, and
handing it to Lysander in the house. But they had been told to hand
water, not to catch the negro. So they looked placidly at each other,
and said nothing.

The fire was soon extinguished; and Lysander, with his coat off, pail in
hand, excited, turned and saw his "fiend" of a wife seated composedly in
a chair, regarding him with a smile sarcastic and triumphant. He uttered
a frightful oath.

"Any more of your tantrums, and I'll kill you!"

"Any more of yours," she replied, "and I'll burn you up. I can set fires
faster than you can put them out. I don't care for the house any more
than I care for my life, and that's precious little."

By the tone in which she said these words, level, determined, distinct,
with that spice which compressed fury lends, Captain Lysander Sprowl
knew perfectly well that she meant them.

The brothers looked at each other intelligently. One said something in
German, which we may translate by the words "Incompatibility of temper;"
and he smiled with dry humor. The other responded in the same tongue,
and with a sleepy nod, glancing phlegmatically at Sprowl. What he said
may be rendered by the phrase--"Caught a Tartar."

Although Lysander did not understand the idiom, he seemed to be quite of
the Teutonic opinion. He regarded Mrs. Sprowl with a sort of impotent
rage. If he was reckless, she had shown herself more reckless. Though he
was so desperate, she had outdone him in desperation. He saw plainly
that if he touched her now, that touch must be kindness, or it must be
death.

"Have you let Toby go?"

"Yes," replied Salina.

"We can catch him," said Lysander.

"If you do you will be sorry. I warn you in season."

Since she said so, Lysander did not doubt but that it would be so. He
concluded, therefore, not to catch Toby--that night. Moreover, he
resolved to go back to his quarters and sleep. He was afraid of that
wildcat; he dreaded the thought of trusting himsel