“Old woman, where is your silver?”
Silence.
“Where is the silver?”
By this time the smoke-house was on fire and a half dozen bales of cotton were burning. The negro slaves gathered in terror.
Soon the white-haired man came back, his face purple, his eyes bloodshot, his step tremulous.
“Give me my watch, Mary.”
“Why, Henry, it is not theirs!”
“Give it. They have choked me nearly to death.”
The old man staggered to his chair. They had taken him to the swamp, and bending a small sapling over the road, stretched a rope upon it and said:
“Now, old man, tell where you keep your gold.”