"Another?" they dryly asked as they used his cigar for a light. So far had he fallen in the general esteem.
He chose not to hear. "I wish," he insisted, "we could save him from it."
"Why, yes!—wish you could. But 'we' ain't us. We sporting men, we're mighty bashful, you know."
"Naturally," admitted the senator.
"Yes, glass, with care. But there's another mistake maker we wish you wished you could save. We ev'm might help."
"Aha!" thought the senator. He was right, after all. He had felt confident that these men, treated by Hugh as they had been, would privately "have it in for him"; that they would be glad of any safe chance to "get away with him"—not so utterly as to imperil their necks, yet not too lightly for their spiritual comfort the rest of their days—and that they saw their chance just where he saw his.
"Ye-es?" He mused. They let him muse. The exhorter, he reflected, having picked up the trail and opened the cry—trail which the headlong twins had so witlessly overrun—these older dogs were on it hot; trail of the Gilmores and "Harriet." Somewhere on that trail the captain's son would show up, and when the game should be treed they would be able, in the general mix-up, to "go and see Hugh" and "cook his goose."
The musing ceased. "You mean the actor?"
The pair warmed up. "Yes, sir-ee, him. That fellow's making a mistake we might help you to handle. God! sir, he's a nigger-stealer. His wife has got a stolen nigger wench with her now. Had her these ten years. Save him. Save them."
"Our friend John the Baptist suggests that," began the senator.