had the fun of the rising."

"You are a philosopher."

"What's that?"

"A wise man. Tell me: If this plot remains undiscovered, and the rising
actually takes place, there will be upon each plantation before we can
get away an interval of confusion and perhaps violence. 'Tis then that
the greatest danger will threaten the planters and their families. You
yourself have no ill feeling towards your master or his family? You
would do them no unprovoked mischief?"

The boy opened his big blue eyes, and shook his head in a vehement
negative.

"Lord bless your soul, no!" he cried. "I wouldn't hurt a hair of
Mistress Patricia's pretty head, nor of Mistress Lettice's wig, neither.
As for the master, if he lets us go peaceably, we'll go with three
cheers for him! Bless you! they're safe enough!"

The sanguine youth next announced that he smelt bacon frying, and that
his stomach cried "Trencher!" and started off in a lope for the
quarters, now only a few yards distant. Landless followed more sedately,
and reached his cabin without being observed by the overseer.

CHAPTER XII

A DARK DEED

Three weeks passed, weeks in which Landless saw the mender of nets some
eight times in all, making each visit at night, stealthily and under
constant danger of detection. Thrice he had assisted at conferences of
the Oliverians from the neighboring plantations, who now, by virtue of
his descent, his intimacy with Godwyn, and his very apparent powers,
accepted him as a leader. Upon the first of these occasions he had set
his case before them in a few plain, straightforward words, and they
believed him as Godwyn had done, and he became in their eyes, not a
convict, but, as he in truth was, an Oliverian like themselves, and a
sufferer for the same cause. The remaining interviews had been between
him and Godwyn alone. In the lonely hut on the marsh, beneath starlight
or moonlight, the two had held much converse, and had grown to love each
other. The mender of nets, though possessed of a calm and high serenity
of nature that defied trials beneath which a weaker soul had sunk, was a
man of many sorrows; he had the wisdom, too, of years and experience,
and he sympathized with, soothed, and counseled his younger yoke-fellow
with a parental tenderness that was very grateful to the other's more
ardent, undisciplined, and deeply wounded spirit.

Upon the night of their eighth meeting they held a long and serious
consultation. Affairs were