In an instant Rupert was on him, and, boy as he was, he struck the Provost a blow which, taking him unawares, staggered him. Leech recovered himself, however, and seizing the boy, slapped him furiously several times. Jacquelin was on his feet in a moment. He sprang toward the Provost, but the men interposed, and he sank back on his lounge, breathless and white.
“Hound, for that I will some day make a negro whip you within an inch of your life,” he said, beside himself.
Leech grinned in triumph and, walking up, leant over him officiously, as though to see if there were still any buttons left.
As he did so, Jacquelin raised himself and slapped him across the face. Leech with an oath sprang back and jerked out a pistol; and possibly but for an accident which gave time for the intervention of his men, Jacquelin Gray’s career would have ended then.
He looked so cool, however, and withal so handsome and intrepid as he lay back and gazed into Leech’s eyes, denouncing him fiercely and daring him to shoot, that Leech hesitated and turned toward his men for encouragement. As he did so, the door opened hastily and a curious thing happened. The great full-length portrait over the big fireplace, loosened, perhaps, by the scuffle with Rupert, or by the jar of the door as Mrs. Gray and Miss Thomasia, entered, slipped in its frame and at the moment that Leech turned, fell forward, sending the Provost staggering back among his startled men. When Leech recovered, his men interfered. They were not ready to see a man murdered before his mother. Baffled in this, the Provost determined on another revenge. He swore he would have Jacquelin hanged, and made his men take him out and put him on a horse. Jacquelin was unable to sit in the saddle, and fell off in a faint. At this moment Hiram Still, whom Mrs. Gray had summoned, came up and interposed. At first, the Provost was not amenable even to Still’s expostulations; but at length he pressed a wagon and had Jacquelin put in it, and hauled him off to the court-house, to jail, still swearing he would have him hanged. Mrs. Gray, having sent off by Blair in hot haste for Dr. Cary to follow her, directed Still to replace the picture, ordered her carriage, and, without waiting, set out for the court-house, accompanied by Miss Thomasia and Rupert.
They had hardly left when Still went into the house to set the picture back in its place. It was surrounded by a group of curious, half-frightened servants who, with awe, alternately gazed on it and on the yawning hole in the wall, making comments, full of foreboding. Still sent them all off except Doan, whom he kept to help him set the picture back in place. It was necessary to get up on a chair and lean half way in the hole and examine the sides where the nails were to be driven, and this Still did himself, making an examination of the entire recess, even moving a number of bundles of old papers.
“Ah!” he said, with a deep inspiration, as he ran his eye over one bundle, which he laid off to one side. He sent Doan out to get him some long nails, for, as he explained, he meant now to nail the picture up to stand till judgment day. The negro went with a mutter, half timid, half jest, that he wouldn’t stay in that hole by himself not for the whole Red Rock plantation and every mule on it. While he was absent Still was not idle. Doan had no sooner disappeared than the manager seized the bundle of papers he had laid to one side, and, hastily cutting the string which bound it, extracted several papers.
“I thought I remembered which one it was in,” he murmured. “I didn’t know when it was put in here as I’d ever git hold of it again.” He held the papers up so as to get the light over his shoulder on them.
“Yes, that’s the big bond with the paint on it, payable to me. I thought ’twa’n’t cancelled.”