hts? Do we live in
the sovereign State of Massachusetts, or do we not, I should like to
know?"

"How about the Union, sir?" whispered Harley slyly.

"Hang the Union! Hang the Union, if it employ a parcel of thugs to do
its work!" said Mr. Bowdoin, so loud that there was a ripple of
laughter in the court-room; and the judge looked up from the bench and
smiled, for had not he dined with old Mr. Bowdoin in their college
club once a month for forty years? But a low-browed fellow who was
sitting behind the counsel at the table was heard to mutter "Treason."
Beside him in the prisoner's dock sat the slave; not cowed nor abject,
though in chains and handcuffs, but looking straight before him at the
low-browed man who was his master, as a bird might look at a snake.

"Which of those two is the slave?" asked Mr. Bowdoin in an audible
voice.

Again the room laughed. The clerk rapped order. The low-browed man
looked up angrily, and spoke to a deputy marshal whose face had been
turned away from Mr. Bowdoin before. He rose and started toward them.

"By Heaven," cried Mr. Bowdoin, "it is David St. Clair!"

IV.

But old Jamie knew naught of this, and the Bowdoins never told him.
They consulted much what they should do; but they never told him. And
Jamie went on, piling up his money. Three rolls were in the old chest
now, and all of Spanish gold. Doubloons and pistoles were growing
rarer, and the price was getting higher. But the old clerk was not
content with replacing the present value to the credit of "Pirates" on
the books; the actual pieces must be returned; so that if any
earringed, whiskered buccaneer turned up to demand his money from
James Bowdoin's Sons, he might have it back in specie, in the very
pieces themselves, that the honor of the firm might be maintained.
Until then, he felt sure, there was little chance the box would ever
be looked into. Practically, he was safe; it was only his conscience,
not his fears, that troubled him.

Since he had sent her that hundred dollars, he had heard nothing from
Mercedes. The Bowdoins did not tell him how her husband had sunk to be
a slave-catcher; for they knew how miserly old Jamie had become, and
supposed that his salary all went to her. While Jamie could take care
of her, it mattered little what the worthless husband did, save the
pain of Jamie's knowing it. And of course they did not know that Jamie
could no longer take care of her, and why.

But one day, in t