"The savage?" muttered the enraged man. "All Laflin's doings I suppose. Sixty days within which to prove your loyalty," he muttered. "The black flag of the buccaneers of reconstruction marked not with death's heads but by red stars!" A score of carpenters were plying their vocation on the plantation. A confusion of sounds, such as sawing and hammering, drowned the melody of the singing birds, and Aleck like the boldest of pirates, was caracoling here and there giving orders; and fashionably dressed negro women strolled offensively and imperiously over the grounds.
"Mars Jon," exclaimed Ned, "I dun and tole yu so; now yu sees fo yosef."
Before the deed of purchase was recorded, the devilish freedmen were enforcing their claim to the plantation by visible, notorious and violent occupation. The colonel and Alice were sitting in the verandah one beautiful starlit night; there was scarcely the rustle of a leaf and the full-orbed moon was shining with a radiant splendour. Of course there was but one event to think about. Was it not a grief that lay like a dead bulk upon the heart, all the day and all the night; and peopled their dreams with negroes and ogres too?
"Thank God," exclaimed Alice "mother is out of it all. They were but heaping the fagots around the furnace when she so wearied went home to her eternal rest. Now the fires are all consuming."
"My daughter," said Colonel Seymour dejectedly after awhile, "I will go to my grave with the knowledge that the Bowden debt has been paid; and not one cent do I owe upon it. It is possible I may err, but as God is my judge, this great loss has come upon me, through the devilish machinations of Laflin, in the employment of the schoolmistress, to occupy the office in which he knew my valuable papers were deposited. An ingeniously devised plot doubtlessly, but one distressingly successful."
"Mars Jon," interrupted Clarissa quite seriously, "Haint yu neber foun dem papers yit, yu was er sarchin fur?"
"No indeed, and I do not believe I shall ever find them."
"Grate King! Ole marser I specks dem dere pizen niggers shoolickin eround de offis dun und stroyed em outen puryfied cussedness."
"Quite likely," rejoined the Colonel.
"Lemme studdy er minit," said Clarissa. "Pears lak Ned gin me sum papers to stow erway in my ole blue chiss. Wud yu kno hit ef you wast to see hit mars Jon? Don't speck it is wurf nuffin do. Ned he gin hit to me way back yander, I dismember how long ergo, und he tole me to put it in de blu chiss, twell he ax for hit. Don't speck hit is ergwine to do mars Jon no good do, but hit haint ergwine to pizen noboddy ef hit don't doo no good. I'm ergwine to fetch it rite now."