"Are all the men in the fields, Barb?" asked Landless.
Barb informed him that they were, "as he might very well know, seeing that the sun was half an hour high."
"Have you seen the man called Roach?"
No: Barb had not seen him; but she had heard the overseer tell Luiz Sebastian to take two men and go to the strip of Orenoko between the inlet and the third tobacco house, and Luiz Sebastian, had been calling for Roach and Trail.
Landless thanked her, and moved away without offering to bestow upon her that which Barb probably thought her information merited.
"Do you find Woodson," he said to the Muggletonian, "and report this murder, saying nothing, however, of what we know. I myself will go to the tobacco house."
"Had I not best come with thee to hold up thy hands?" said Porringer. "I would take up my text from the thirty-fifth of Numbers, and from Revelation, twenty-second, thirteen, and deal mightily with the murderer."
"No," answered Landless. "Woodson must be seen at once, or we ourselves will fall under suspicion. And, friend, ask that thou and I may be the ones to bury him."
CHAPTER XIII
IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE