"Oh! in that case the City will be along yet. She ought to be near now. I'll go down to the landing to look out for her. You don't mind sending one of your niggers to fetch my horse back to the house here? There's one of mine coming after, to take him home."
"Certainly not," said Henry, evidently pleased at the prospect of his visitor making such a short stay. "One of them shall go down with you at once."
"And look ye, Henry Woodley!" continued Bradley, with a change of tone, "now that I'm here, I may as well tell you what I intend doing. I want that $2,000. I want it d—d bad; and I mean to have it. I've asked you for it half a score of times, till I'm sick of asking. And now I'll give you till I come back from Orleans, which will be in about a fortnight. If you can't pay then, why I must get judgment on the bill, and take some of your niggers. I'm sorry to be sharp with you; but I must have the money."
"When you come back—a fortnight you say—perhaps I may have—"
The debtor was thinking that before a fortnight's time he might be relieved of his liability in a way his creditor little expected.
"Oh! d—n your perhaps!" rudely interrupted the latter. "If you don't have it—Hilloa! what's that?"
As he uttered this exclamation, we could hear Bradley rushing further out upon the porch, as if to inform himself of something that was passing outside.
There was an interval of profound stillness, and through a side-window in the drawing-room, in which the casement stood open, we could distinguish faint and far off the hollow sound of the "scape-pipe."
"By Jove, it's the boat! Ten chances to one if I'll be in time to catch her. Send after me for the horse!"
As he issued this impudent command, the unwelcome visitor hurried on through the gate, leaped into the saddle and went off at a gallop along the road, toward the landing.