The negro picked up his helpless fellow-African and lifted him on his back, starting off in mingled avarice and terror, and saying,
"Derrick's gwyn home, sho'. See me, see me!"
Van Dorn put his finger at his throat, where blood was all the while trickling, and, with a gentle cough, extorted the sounds:
"Leave me—under a bush—to—die."
"No," cried Sorden, raising Van Dorn also upon his back; "I love him as I never loved A male."
The fire of the burning jail lighted their return into the outskirts of Dover and to the gallows' hill, where stood the scaffold, split with the lightning from cross-beam to the death-trap. As they halted opposite it to rest, a horse and rider came stumbling past, and Molleston, dropping his burden, shouted:
"Bill Greenley, dat's our hoss. We want it."
"His is the hoss that's on him," cried the escaped horse-thief, looking scornfully up at his own gallows as he lashed his blinded animal along in the rain.
"Cheer up, Captain Van," John Sorden said, soaked through with the rain; "'t'ain't fur now to Cooper's Corners."