As Dinwiddie silently but violently recoiled Daphne Jane half stifled a scream, sprang through a stair door, shot the bolt and rushed upstairs. At the same instant he heard behind him a key slipped from its lock. He glanced back in affright, and trembling on legs too limp to lift, dimly saw the outer door swing to. As the darkness changed to blackness he heard the key re-enter its lock and turn on the outside. The pirate was a prisoner.
Daphne Jane, locking everything as she fled, whirled into her mistress's room and out of her mistress's clothes. Though quaking with apprehension so that she could scarcely button her own things on again, she was filled with the joy of adventure and a revel of vanity and mirth. The moment she could complete her change of dress and whisk her borrowed fineries back into their places she stole to a window over the door by which she had let the serenader in, softly opened it, and was alarmed afresh to hear two voices.
The words of the one in the room were quite indistinguishable, but those from the other on the outside, though uttered in a half whisper, were clear enough.
"No, seh, I ain't dead-sho' who you is, but I has ezamine yo' hoss, an' whilce I wouldn' swear you ah Mr. Pettigrew, thass the premonition I espec' to espress to my frien' Mr. March, lessn you tell me now, an' tell me true, who you ah.
"Yass, seh, I thought so. Yass, seh. No, seh, I know they ain't a minute to lose, but still I think the time ain't quite so pow'ful pressin' to me like what it is to you; I thought jess now I hyeard buggy-wheels, but mebbe I didn't.
"Yass, seh, I does think I has cause, if not to be mad, leas'wise to be ve'y much paained. You fus' kiss the young lady I destine faw my sultana, an' now you offeh me a briibe! Well, thass how I unde'stood it, seh.
"Seh? No, seh! that wouldn't be high tone'! But I tell you what I will do, seh. I'll let you out an' take yo' place an' make the young lady think her on'y mistake was a-thinkin' she was mistakened.
"Seh? Yass, I'm jess that se'f-sacrificin'. I'm gen'ous as the whistlin' win'. An' I'll neveh whisp' a breath o' all this shaameful procedu'e evm to my dear frien' March, ef so be that—an' so long as—yo' gratichude—seh?
"O nothin'. I wus jess a-listenin' ef that soun' was buggy wheels, but I know that don't make no diff'ence to you, yo' courage is so vas'. I'm the bravess o' the brave, myseff, an' yit jess to think o' takin' yo' place fills me as full o' cole shivehs as a pup und' a pump.
"Seh? O I say I'll neveh whisp' it so long as yo' gratichude continue to evince itseff fresh an' lively at the rate of evm on'y a few dollahs per month as a sawt o' friendship's offerin'.