bridge. Your conversation was heard,
every word of it, by a third person, who lay concealed under the planks,
behind you."

"A villanous spy!" articulated Augustus.

"No spy--but the man you two were at that moment seeking to kill: Penn
Hapgood, the Schoolmaster."

It was a blow. Poor Bythewood, too luxurious and inert to be a great
villain, was only a weak one; and, wounded in his most sensitive point,
his pride, he writhed for a space with unutterable chagrin and rage.
Then he recovered himself. He had heard the worst; and now there was
nothing left for him but to cast down and trample with his feet (so to
speak) the mask that had been torn from his face.

"Very well! You think you know me, then!"--He seized her wrists.--"Now
hear me! I am not to be spurned like a dog, even by the foot of the
woman I love. You reject, despise, insult me. As for me, I say this: all
shall be as I have pronounced. Your father, your lover,--not Fate itself
shall intervene to save them! And as for you----"

Again he heard a rustling by the ravine; this time so near that it
startled him. He looked quickly around, and saw, slowly peering through
the bushes, a dark human face. Had it been the terrible front of the
Fate he had just defied, the soul of Augustus Bythewood could not have
shrunk with a more sudden and appalling fear. It was the face of Pomp.

XLV.

_MASTER AND SLAVE CHANGE PLACES._

The sergeant and his men were several rods distant: the bush through
which that menacing visage peered was within as many feet. Augustus
reached for his revolver.

"Make a single move--speak a single word--and you are food for the
buzzards!" came a whisper from the bush that well might chill his blood.
"You know this rifle--and you know me!" And in the negro's face shone a
persuasive glitter of the old, untamable, torrid ferocity of his
tribe--not pleasing to Augustus.

"What do you want?"

"Give your revolver to that girl--instantly!"

"I have men within call!"

"So have I."

Through the bush, advancing noiselessly, came the straight steel barrel
of a rifle that had never missed fire but once: that was when it had
been aimed by Augustus at the head of Pomp. Now it was aimed by Pomp at
the head of Augustus; and it was hardly to be expected that it would be
so obliging as to remember that one fault, and, for the sake of
fairness, repeat it, now that positions were reversed. Bythewood
hesitated, in mortal fear.

"Obey me! I s