A tramping sound in the back yard drew both men to the door.
“Who ish dat?” demanded Dan, peering into the darkness of a shady part of the enclosure.
“There goes a —— nigger! Here he goes! Here he goes!” shouted the old slave-catcher.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” cried the Jew; but while he yet spoke it was too late.
“I’ve got ’im! I’ve got ’im!” cried the old man, running to his fallen game.
“Co im quick! Co im quick, Meester Paker! Somebody vill shoot you,” and the excited little man caught the murderer’s arm and dragged him into the house, while the dusky form of Nat Wellman crept on all fours into a yard still further to the rear, and found safety in a deeper shade.
Filled with such terrors the night wore on, and Marmor’s were not the only infants that sobbed themselves to sleep in the midst of those dreadful alarms, though many were laid in the shadows of the cornfields or the dampness of the swamps that surrounded the besieged town.
“Ich vill make ine shling, vat vill make Old Bob shleep, so Ich vill!” muttered Dan, as he mixed a few drops of laudanum with a fresh mug of the steaming beverage. “Ich hab no more mens killed by mine house.”
The patient was at length awakening great echoes in his bed room, with his stentorian breathings, notwithstanding renewed disturbances upon the premises, and that most Christian Jew stole up to Marmor’s retreat.
“For your life, Meester Marmor, do co hide somevare! Dey pe hunt you, and say dey vill purn your house. Dey shware dey vill hab you. Dey say you be ine —— scallavag, ine republican, and dat you pringht ammunition to de nigger militia.”