immy turned it back, drew off the lock and dropped
the bar.

The moment he opened the door an almost insupportable smell came down a
shallow hatchway within, up which leaned a rough step-ladder, movable,
and of stout construction.

"That smell," said Phoebus, entering, and pulling the door close
behind him, "might be wool, or camel, or a moral menagerie from the
royal gardings of Europe, but I guess it's Nigger."

He went up the steep steps with some difficulty, as they were made to
pass only one person, and at the top he entered a large garret, divided
into two by a heavy partition of yellow pine, with a door at the middle
of it, and from beyond this partition came the sounds of crooning and
babbling he had heard.

The bright night, shining through a small gable window, revealed this
outer half of the garret empty, and not furniture or other appurtenance
than the hole in the floor up which he had come, and the door into the
place of wailing beyond, which was fastened by a long iron spike
dropping into a staple that overshot a heavy wooden bar. As he slipped
up the spike and took the bar off, Phoebus heard some person in the
room below mutter, and lock the great padlock upon the other door,
effectually barring his escape by that egress.

"We must take things as they come," thought Jimmy, grimly, "partickler
in Pangymonum, whar I am now."

He also reflected that the arrangements of this kidnappers' pen, simple
as they seemed, were quite sufficient. If authority should demand to
search the house, the double clothes-press below, with the ladder pulled
up into the loft, became a harmless closet hung with wardrobe matters,
and the inner closet a storeroom for articles of bulk; and no human
being could either go up or come down without passing two inhabited
floors and three different doors, besides the door to the slave-pen.

This last door Phoebus now threw open and walked into the pen itself,
stooping his head to avoid the low entrance.

For some minutes he could not see the contents at all in the total
darkness that prevailed, as there was no window whatever in this pen or
den, but he heard various voices, and inhaled the strong, close air of
many African breaths exhausting the supply of oxygen, and knew that
chains and irons were being moved against the boards of the floor.

"Thair ain't nothin' to do yer," Jimmy remarked, softly, "but jess squat
down an' git a-climated, as they say about strangers to our biliou