er-time. "Where was
the master?" He had gone to the mouth of the inlet with Sir Charles
Carew, who had grown impatient, and had sailed away under the Nancy's
patched sail. The under overseer was in the far corn-field, two miles
off.

"Are all the men in the fields, Barb?" asked Landless.

Barb informed him that they were, "as he might very well know, seeing
that the sun was half an hour high."

"Have you seen the man called Roach?"

No: Barb had not seen him; but she had heard the overseer tell Luiz
Sebastian to take two men and go to the strip of Orenoko between the
inlet and the third tobacco house, and Luiz Sebastian had been calling
for Roach and Trail.

Landless thanked her, and moved away without offering to bestow upon her
that which Barb probably thought her information merited.

"Do you find Woodson," he said to the Muggletonian, "and report this
murder, saying nothing, however, of what we know. I myself will go to
the tobacco house."

"Had I not best come with thee to hold up thy hands?" said Porringer. "I
would take up my text from the thirty-fifth of Numbers, and from
Revelation, twenty-second, thirteen, and deal mightily with the
murderer."

"No," answered Landless. "Woodson must be seen at once, or we ourselves
will fall under suspicion. And, friend, ask that thou and I may be the
ones to bury _him_."

CHAPTER XIII

IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE

The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the
larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt
of cedars. It was a lonely, retired spot, and the high, dark, windowless
structure with its heavy, low-browed door had a menacing aspect.
Landless expected to find the men within the building, instead of
outside attending to their work, and he was not disappointed. As he
walked through the doorway into the pungent gloom, the three started up
from the debris of casks, sticks, and pegs, amidst which they had been
squatting, with their heads ominously close together.

Landless strode up to Roach. "You murderer!" he said.

The convict recoiled; then with a bestial sound, half snarl, half bellow
of rage, he gathered himself for a rush. Landless awaited him with bent
body and sinewy, outstretched arms; but the mulatto interposed. Laying
his long, beautifully shaped, yellow hands upon Roach, he forced him
back against a cask, and, pinning him there, whispered in his ear. The
face of the wretch gradually resumed