“A charming creature!” Darke tauntingly continues, kissing the carte, and pouring the venomous speech into his victim’s ear. “It’s the very counterpart of her sweet self. As I said, she sent it me this morning. Come, Clancy! Before giving up the ghost, tell me what you think of it. Isn’t it an excellent likeness?”
To the inhuman interrogatory Clancy makes no response—either by word, look, or gesture. His lips are mute, his eyes without light of life, his limbs and body motionless as the mud on which they lie.
A short, but profane, speech terminates the terrible episode; four words of most heartless signification:—
“Damn him; he’s dead!”
Chapter Six.
A coon-chase interrupted.
Notwithstanding the solitude of the place where the strife, apparently fatal, has occurred, and the slight chances of its being seen, its sounds have been heard. The shots, the excited speeches, and angry exclamations, have reached the ears of one who can well interpret them. This is a coon-hunter.
There is no district in the Southern States without its coon-hunter. In most, many of them; but in each, one who is noted. And, notedly, he is a negro. The pastime is too tame, or too humble, to tempt the white man. Sometimes the sons of “poor white trash” take part in it; but it is usually delivered over to the “darkey.”