an Dorn to
an exceedingly small closet or garret room, barely large enough for the
men to sit, and lighted by a lamp in the little dormer window seen from
below.

"Drink!" said the man, uncorking a bottle of champagne; "I had it ready
for you."

He poured the foaming wine and set the bottle on a sort of secretary or
desk, and then looked anxiety and avarice together out of his liquid
black eyes and broad, heavy face.

"_Buena suerte, senor!_" Van Dorn lisped, as they drank together.

"Hya! spitch!" nervously muttered Clark, cutting his own top-boots with
a dog-whip. "I wish I was out of the business: the risk is too great. My
wife is religious--praying, mebbe, now, in there. My daughters is at the
seminaries, spendin' money like the Canawl Company on the lawyers.
Nothin' pays like nigger-stealin', but it's beneath you and me, Van
Dorn."

"_A la verdad!_ This is my last incursion, Don Clark. Pleasure has kept
me poor for life. To-day I did a little sacrifice, and it grows upon
me."

"If they should ketch me and set me in the pillory, Van Dorn, for what
you do to-night, hya! spitch!"--he slashed his knees--"it would break
Mrs. Clark's heart."

"I want this money to-night," said Van Dorn, "to make two young people
happy. They shall take my portion, and take me with them out of the
plains of Puckem."

"Oh, it is nervous business"--Clark's eyes of rich jelly made the pallor
on his large face like a winding-sheet--"hya! spitch! The Quakers are
a-watchin' me. Ole Zekiel Jinkins over yer, ole Warner Mifflin down to
the mill, these durned Hunns at the Wildcat--they look me through every
time they ketch me on the road. But the canawl contract don't pay like
niggers; my folks must hold their heads up in the world; Sam Ogg won't
let me keep out of temptation."

"Do you fear me, Devil Jim?"

"Hya! spitch! No. If all in the trade was like you, I could sleep in
trust. If you go out of it, so will I."

"Then to-night, _penitente!_ we make our few thousand and quit. Give up
your cards and I my _doncellitas_, and we can at least live."

They shook hands and drank another glass, and then Van Dorn said:

"Send up to me, _hermano!_ the lad who will reply to the name of Levin.
With him I would speak while you give the directions! Poor coward!" Van
Dorn said, after his host had descended the stairs, "he can never be
less than a thief with that irksomeness under such fair competence."

At that moment a beautiful maid or woma