. "Now come in and take
supper with us, captain," she continued, her voice still in a quiver
with recent emotions.

"Well, I don't keer if I dew, jest fer to bind the bargain, you knaow.
I told the boy I'd be back, but I reckon they won't wait long. Ship
folks don't wait much on nobody."

Judith turned toward the house, followed by the peddler. Sanford Browne
was still sitting in the entry just as Judith had left him, surprised
and in a sense paralyzed by the sudden and effective opposition which
his wife had offered to the gratification of his only grudge.

"Mr. Browne!" called Judith, almost hysterically, her tense nerves
suddenly shaken again. "What's that? Something's happened down at the
quarters."

Looking through the wide passage into the dim twilight beyond, she
could see running figures like shadows approaching the house. Sanford
Browne rose at his wife's summons in time to meet the convict Lewis,
still manacled, as he rushed into the passage at the back of the house
and dashed out again at the front. Browne attempted to arrest his
flight, crying out, as he made an effort to seize him, "Stop, you old
villain, or I'll kill you!" But the momentum of the flying figure
rendered Browne's grasp ineffectual, and in a moment he was out of
doors, just as Bob and Jocko and the other servants entered the passage
in a pell-mell pursuit.

As the running man emerged from the darkness of the passage, Perkins,
thinking his profit in jeopardy, threw himself athwart his path, and
cried: "Here! Where be you a-goin' so fast with them things on your
wrist?"

"To hell and damnation!" yelled Lewis, striking the peddler fair in the
breast with both manacled hands, and sending him rolling on the ground.

The convict did not pause a moment in his flight, but, with the whole
pack in full cry after him, dashed onward to the bank and down it.
Before any of his pursuers could lay hands on him he was aboard the
sloop.

"Ketch him! Ketch him!" cried Captain Perkins, once more on his feet,
and giving orders from the top of the bank.

The cabin boy had just emerged from the cabin to call the man to
supper. He and the sailor tried hard to seize the fleeing man, but
Captain Lewis swerved to one side and ran round the gunwale of the
sloop with both men after him. When he reached the stern he leaped
beyond their reach, and plunged head first into the water, sinking out
of sight where the fast-ebbing tide was now gurgling round the rudde