Dinah indeed returned just as the sun was sinking. She carried a small bundle in one hand, and a broad-brimmed straw-hat in the other.
"Well done, Dinah!" Nat exclaimed as he returned after sitting for a couple of hours on the rocks near the fall, and found her in the cave. "How did you get the hat?"
"Jess as I said, sah; me found one woman who allus bery grateful to me-for sabing her chile. I tell her I want straw-hat. She said she could get me one, two, or tree hats in de house ob mulatto oberseer. She 'teal one for me. Most of de men down in de plain, so she take basket and go up to de house garden—ebery one take what dey want now. She get some green 'tuff, as if for her dinner; den she go round by mulatto man's house, she look in at window and see hats; she take one, put 'im in basket and cober 'im ober, den bring um back to me. She had red shawl; she gib it me, but I make her take dollar for it. Me hide de hat under my dress till me get away into de woods again, den me carry um. Now, sah, put um on. Dat suit you bery well, sah; you pass for young mulatto man when I got dis shawl cut up and sewn togeder. You please to know dat madame open her eyes lillie time ago, and know mam'selle and Dinah. Me gib her drink ob pine-apple juice wid water in which me boil poppy seeds; she drink and go off in quiet sleep; when she wake to-morrow I 'spect she able to talk."
"I don't like your going, Nat," Myra said when, the shawl having been converted into a sash, he put his pistols into it. "We have heard, you see, that the Bayous were not killed in the first attack, and I do not see that you can learn more."
"I should not run the risk, such as it may be, merely to ask that question. But I think that their coachman, Toussaint, must have saved them. I want to see him; possibly he may have made some arrangements for getting them down to the coast, and he might be willing to allow you and your mother to go down with them. Of course she would have to be carried, but that might not add much to the difficulty."
Receiving general instructions from Dinah as to the shortest route, he started, without giving time for Myra to remonstrate further. After two hours' walking he approached the plantation of Count Noe. The house was, of course, gone. Seeing a negro girl, he went up to her.
"Which is the house of Toussaint?" he asked.
She pointed to a path.
"It am de first house you come to," she said; "he used to live at de stables, but now he hab de house ob one of de oberseers who was killed because he did not join us."
On reaching the house indicated he looked in at the window, and saw the person he was looking for sitting at a table reading. He was now a man of forty-eight years old, tall in stature, with a face unusually intelligent for one of his race. His manners were quiet and simple, and there was a certain dignity in his bearing that bespoke a feeling that he was superior to the race to which he belonged and the position he occupied. Nat went round to the door and knocked. Toussaint opened it.