“Hab yer had enough?” asked Antoine.
Victor uttered an affirmative bark.
“Wall, now,” said Antoine, “you jes take dis ere glub, an’ don’t yer come back till you fine out su’thin’ ’bout de owner ob it. Understan’?”
The dog again barked assent, and Antoine, escorting him down-stairs and out-of-doors, gave him the glove. Victor at once seized it between his teeth and trotted off at “double-quick,” up St. Charles Street.
During the interval of waiting for Victor’s return, “Tell me now, Peek,” said Vance, “of your own affairs. Have you been able to get any clew from Amos Slink to guide you in your search for your wife?”
“All that he could do,” replied Peek, “was merely to confirm what I already suspected as to Charlton’s agency in luring her back into the clutch of Slavery.”
“I must make the acquaintance of that Charlton,” said Vance. “And by the way, Hyde, you must know something of the man.”
“I know more nor I wish I did,” replied Hyde. “I could scar’ up some old letters of his’n, I’m thinkin’, ef I was ter sarch in an old trunk in the house of the Widder Rusk (her as is my sister) in Montgomery.”
“Those letters we must have, Hyde,” said Vance. “You must lay your plans to get them. ’T would be hardly safe for you to trust yourself among the Rebels. They’ve an awkward fashion of hanging up without ceremony all who profane the sanctity of Confederate scrip. But you might send for the letters.”
“That’s a fak, Kunnle Vance. I’m gittin’ over my taste for low society. I want nothin’ more ter do with the Rebels. But I’ve a nephew at Montgomery,—Delancy Hyde Rusk,—who can smuggle them letters through the Rebel lines easy as a snake kn cahrry a toad through a stump-fence. He’ll go his death for his Uncle Delancy. He’s got the raal Hyde blood in him,—he has,—an’ no mistake.”