y demonstrated by the remaining events of this chapter.

At precisely twelve o'clock on the night succeeding that which witnessed
the tragical event last narrated above, Uncle Jack held a long conference,
at the outer gate of his premises, with three mounted men, and shortly
thereafter might have been observed to visit his stable and dog-kennel,
lingering for some time in the vicinity of each. A half-hour or more was
consumed by the details of a preparation from which it was plain to be
seen some mystery was in course of evolution, and the old man, mounted on
his now full-rigged hunter, and swept forward in a tempest of dolorous
howlings, turned an angle of the close, and joined his weird visitors.

It will hardly be necessary to inform the reader that these men were K. K.
K. emissaries, who had been dispatched to secure the hunter and his dogs
to aid them in the difficult enterprise which they had undertaken; and
looking from one to the other of the new levies, he would have no
hesitancy in making up his mind that "Barkis was willin'," and the "yaller
beauties," as he was wont to term them, "spilin'" for nigger meat. These
latter were composed of a dozen brace of the best Florida breed of the
hybrid blood- and sleuth-hound, fat and frolicsome, wearing sleek coats of
yellow, and as to size, if put to the test, the runtiest of the runts
would have kicked the beam at fifty pounds. Leashed in couples, they made
rapid circuits around the now galloping horsemen, filling the night with
the music of their weird chorus, and falling to an indiscriminate and
discordant baying whenever hog or cow or other animate thing, startled
from their covert, stood still to guess at the intrusion. Three miles from
the point of starting, the main company was reached, and soon afterwards,
passing into the edge of the bottom, the dogs were released from their
slips, and at a word from the hunter, and directing a premonitory sniff at
their surroundings, sped into the darkness. For an hour or more the
hunters pressed their way through the pitchy swamps, now following a
scarcely distinguishable stock trail, now lightened upon by a gleam of
starlight from above, and not unfrequently committed for guidance to the
instincts of the animals they bestrode, without other report from the
excited yelpers than was too timidly given to be accounted much worth, or
called forth the response from some guttural cavity of the forest, "a
lie." Reaching the banks of