the cave, jubilant. His bold and sagacious plans were
thus far successful; and it only remained to carry them out with the
same inexorable energy.

"Sit here." Augustus took one of the giant's stools. "I have a few words
to say to this man: in the mean while, one of you"--turning to Penn and
Carl--"hasten to the sink, and ask Stackridge to send me as many men as
he can spare. Bring a couple of the prisoners--we shall need them."

"I'll go!" Carl cried with alacrity.

"And," added Pomp, "if there are any wounded needing my assistance, have
them brought here. I shall not, probably, be able to go to them."

While he was giving these directions, with the air of one who felt that
he had a momentous task before him, Bythewood sat on the rock, his head
heavy and hot, his feet like clods of ice, and his heart collapsing with
intolerable suspense. The gloom of the cave, and the strangeness of all
things in it; the sight of the corpse near the entrance,--of Toby, at
Virginia's suggestion, wiping up the pools of blood,--Virginia herself
perfectly calm; Penn carefully untying and straightening the pieces of
rope that had served to bind Lysander,--all this impressed him
powerfully.

"I suppose," said he, "I am to be treated as a prisoner of war."

Pomp smiled. "Answer me a question. If you had caught me, would you have
treated me as a prisoner of war?--Yes or no; we have no time for
parley."

"No," said Augustus, frankly.

"Very well! I have caught you!"

Fearfully significant words to the prisoner, who remembered all his
injustice to this man, and the tortures he had prepared for him when he
should be taken! But he had not been taken. On the contrary, he, the
slave, could stand there, calm and smiling, before him, the master, and
say, with peculiar and compressed emphasis, "_Very well! I have caught
you!_"

"You promised that not a hair of my head should be injured."

"The hair of your head is not the flesh of your body. No, I will not
injure _the hair_!"--Pomp waited for his prisoner to take in all the
horrible suggestiveness of this equivocation; then resumed. "Is not that
what you would have said to me if you had found me in your power after
making me such a promise? The black man has no rights which the white
man is bound to respect! The most solemn pledges made by one of your
race to one of mine are to be heeded only so long as suits your
convenience. Did you not promise your dying brother in your presence to
giv