to save him! Hush, ye chattering black crow! Say
anything about this to a living soul, and I'll have yo' flogged! Now
trot out the whiskey bottle and pour it down him."

CHAPTER VII.

When Courtland's eyes opened again, he was in bed in his own room at
Redlands, with the vivid morning sun occasionally lighting up the wall
whenever the closely drawn curtains were lightly blown aside by the
freshening breeze. The whole events of the night might have been a
dream but for the insupportable languor which numbed his senses, and
the torpor of his arm, that, swollen and discolored, lay outside the
coverlet on a pillow before him. Cloths that had been wrung out in
iced water were replaced upon it from time to time by Sophy, Miss Dows'
housekeeper, who, seated near his bedhead, was lazily fanning him. Their
eyes met.

"Broken?" he said interrogatively, with a faint return of his old
deliberate manner, glancing at his helpless arm.

"Deedy no, cunnle! Snake bite," responded the negress.

"Snake bite!" repeated Courtland with languid interest, "what snake?"

"Moccasin o' copperhead--if you doun know yo'se'f which," she replied.
"But it's all right now, honey! De pizen's draw'd out and clean gone.
Wot yer feels now is de whiskey. De whiskey STAYS, sah. It gets into de
lubrications of de skin, sah, and has to be abso'bed."

Some faint chord of memory was touched by the girl's peculiar
vocabulary.

"Ah," said Courtland quickly, "you're Miss Dows' Sophy. Then you can
tell me"--

"Nuffin, sah absomlutely nuffin!" interrupted the girl, shaking her head
with impressive official dignity. "It's done gone fo'bid by de doctor!
Yo' 're to lie dar and shut yo'r eye, honey," she added, for the moment
reverting unconsciously to the native maternal tenderness of her race,
"and yo' 're not to bodder yo'se'f ef school keeps o' not. De medical
man say distinctly, sah," she concluded, sternly recalling her duty
again, "no conversation wid de patient."

But Courtland had winning ways with all dependents. "But you will answer
me ONE question, Sophy, and I'll not ask another. Has"--he hesitated
in his still uncertainty as to the actuality of his experience and its
probable extent--"has--Cato--escaped?"

"If yo' mean dat sassy, bull-nigger oberseer of yo'se, cunnle, HE'S
safe, yo' bet!" returned Sophy sharply. "Safe in his own quo'tahs night
afo' las', after braggin' about the bloodhaowns he killed; and safe ober
the county line yes'day