the speaker who stood
before them, haggard, torn and bleeding, but with a quiet power in his
dark face and steadfast eyes.

"You?" said the master sternly, "What can you do?"

"I will tell you," said Landless, "but I must be freed from these bonds
first."

Another pause, and then Sir Charles, responding to a nod from his
kinsman, walked over to Landless, and with his rapier cut the ropes
which bound him.

"Now speak!" said the Colonel.

* * * * * *

The quarters lay, to all appearance, wrapt in the profoundest
slumber--no movement in the low-browed cabins, or in the lane or square;
no sound other than the croak of the frogs in the marshes, the wail of
the whip-poor-wills, and the sighing of the night wind in the pines. All
was dark save in the east, where the low stars were beginning to pale.
Below them glowed a dull red spark, shining dimly across a long expanse
of black marsh and water, and coming from Captain Laramore's ship,
anchored off the Point.

One moment it seemed the only light in the wide landscape of darkness;
the next the flame of a torch, streaming sidewise in the wind, cast an
orange glare upon the dead tree in the centre of the square and upon the
windowless fronts of the cabins surrounding it. The torch was in the
hand of the overseer, who went the rounds, striking upon each door, and
summoning the inmates of the cabin to the square. "The master wants a
word with you," was all the answer he vouchsafed to startled, sullen, or
suspicious inquiries. In five minutes the square was thronged. White and
black, servant and slave, rustic, convict, Jew, Turk, Indian, mulatto,
quadroon, coal black, untamed African--the motley crowd pressed and
jostled towards that end of the square at which stood the master, his
kinsman, the overseer, and Godfrey Landless. Behind them on the steps of
the overseer's house were the Muggletonian, Havisham, and Trail. They
had been unbound. In the Muggletonian's scarred face was stolid
indifference, but Trail looked furtively about until he spied Luiz
Sebastian, when he signaled "What is it?" with his eyes. The mulatto
shook his head, and continued to shoulder his way through the press
until he stood in the front row, face to face with the party from the
great house. On one side of him was the Turk, on the other an Indian.

The master stepped a pace or two in front of his companions, and held up
his hand for silence. When the excited mu