"Two years or sech a matter," remarked Mr. Simmons complacently.
"Then that's the reason you think Abercrombie ain't harboring my nigger?" inquired Mr. Gossett scornfully.
"But, Colonel," drawled Mr. Simmons, "what under the sun ever got the idee in your head that Addison Abercrombie is harboring your nigger?"
"It's as simple as a-b ab," Mr. Gossett replied with energy. "He tried to buy the nigger off the block and couldn't, and now he thinks I'll sell if the nigger'll stay in the woods long enough. That's the reason he's harboring the nigger. And more than that: don't I know from my own niggers that the yaller rapscallion comes here every chance he gets? He comes, but he don't go in the nigger quarters. Now, where does he go?"
"Yes, where?" said Mr. Gossett's son George, who up to that moment had taken no part in the conversation. "Three times this month I've dealt out an extra rasher of bacon to two of our hands, and they tell the same tale."
"It looks quare," Mr. Simmons admitted, "but as sure as you're born Addison Abercrombie ain't the man to harbor a runaway nigger. If he's ever had a nigger in the woods, it's more'n I know, and when that's the case you may set it down fer a fact that he don't believe in runaway niggers." This was a lame argument, but it was the best that Mr. Simmons could muster at the moment.
"No," remarked Mr. Gossett sarcastically, "his niggers don't take to the woods because they do as they blamed please at home. It sets my teeth on edge to see the way things are run on this plantation. Why, I could take the stuff that's flung away here and get rich on it in five years. It's a scandal."
"I believe you!" assented his son George dutifully.
Chunky Riley heard this conversation by snatches, but he caught the drift of it. What he remembered of it was that some of his fellow servants were ready to tell all they knew for an extra "rasher" of meat, and that the hunt for Aaron would begin the next morning,—and it was now getting along toward dawn. He wanted to warn Aaron again. He wanted especially to tell Aaron that three men were sitting on the fence waiting for him. But this was impossible. The hour was approaching when Chunky Riley must be in his cabin on the Gossett plantation ready to go to work with the rest of the hands. He had slept soundly the first half of the night, and he would be as fresh in the field when the sun rose as those who had slept the night through. As he turned away from the fence a dog in the path leading from the spring to the stile suddenly began to bay. The men tried to drive him away, and one of them threw a stick at him, but the dog refused to be intimidated. He bayed them more fiercely, but finally retreated toward the spring, stopping occasionally to bark at the men on the fence.