Sorden's arms at the wagon, contemptuously said, as he mounted his mule
and vanished:

"I reckon he'll never discipline me no mo'."

Derrick Molleston, regretting the loss of his loping horse, bore out to
the wagon an object he had found striving to escape from the veranda at
the kitchen side, though with a gag in his mouth, and a skewer between
his elbows and his back.

"See me, see me!" the negro kidnapper spoke, hoarsely. "He's mine an'
Devil Jim Clark's. I tuk him."

"Why, it's Buck Ransom," Sorden said.

"An' I'm gwyn to sell him, too," the negro muttered, seizing the reins.
"You see me now! Maybe he cheated us. Any way, he's tuk."

The old wagon started at a run through the driving rain, the black
victim lying helpless on his back, and Van Dorn bleeding in Sorden's
arms, who continued to moan,

"I loved him as I never loved A male!"

Van Dorn made several efforts to talk, and often coughed painfully, and
finally, as they reached a lane gate, he articulated:'

"The Chancellor's?"

"Yes, dis is it," Derrick Molleston said. "See me, Cap'n Van. I's all
heah."

As they advanced up a shady lane, fire from somewhere began to make a
certain illumination in spite of the loud storm.

"It's Bill Greenley. He's set de jail afire," the negro exclaimed. "See
me, O see me!"

The conflagration gave a vapory red light to a secluded dwelling they
now approached, upon a bowery lawn, and Sorden saw a woman of a severe
aspect looking out of a window at the fire.

"What is the meaning of this trespass so late at night?" she called.
"Are you robbers? My aged husband is asleep."

"Madam," answered Sorden, "here is the husband of Mrs. Patty Cannon. She
was your brother's mother-in-law. I love this man as I never loved A
male. He is wounded, and we want him taken in till he can have a
doctor."

"Take him to the jail, then, if that is not it burning yonder," the
woman exclaimed, scornfully. "Shall I make the home of the Chancellor of
Delaware a hospital for Patty Cannon's men as a reward for her sending
my brother to the gallows?"

She closed the window and the blind, and left them alone in the storm.

"Drive, Derrick, to your den at Cooper's Corners, quick, then," Sorden
said.

As they left the lane a flash of lightning, so near, so white, that they
seemed to be within the volume and crater of it, enveloped the wagon.
One horse sank down on his haunches, and the other reared back and tore
from his harness, while