chen
again till I tell ye to. If I catch you pryin' around may I be ----,
eyes and liver, if I don't cut your heart out."

* * * * *

In about half an hour Levi's friends came; the first a little, thin,
wizened man with a very foreign look. He was dressed in a rusty black
suit and wore gray yarn stockings and shoes with brass buckles. The
other was also plainly a foreigner. He was dressed in sailor fashion,
with petticoat breeches of duck, a heavy pea-jacket, and thick boots,
reaching to the knees. He wore a red sash tied around his waist, and
once, as he pushed back his coat, Hiram saw the glitter of a pistol
butt. He was a powerful, thickset man, low-browed and bull-necked, his
cheek, and chin, and throat closely covered with a stubble of
blue-black beard. He wore a red kerchief tied around his head and over
it a cocked hat, edged with tarnished gilt braid.

Levi himself opened the door to them. He exchanged a few words outside
with his visitors, in a foreign language of which Hiram understood
nothing. Neither of the two strangers spoke a word to Hiram: the
little man shot him a sharp look out of the corners of his eyes and
the burly ruffian scowled blackly at him, but beyond that neither
vouchsafed him any regard.

Levi drew to the shutters, shot the bolt in the outer door, and tilted
a chair against the latch of the one that led from the kitchen into
the adjoining room. Then the three worthies seated themselves at the
table which Dinah had half cleared of the supper china, and were
presently deeply engrossed over a packet of papers which the big,
burly man had brought with him in the pocket of his pea-jacket. The
confabulation was conducted throughout in the same foreign language
which Levi had used when first speaking to them--a language quite
unintelligible to Hiram's ears. Now and then the murmur of talk would
rise loud and harsh over some disputed point; now and then it would
sink away to whispers.

Twice the tall clock in the corner whirred and sharply struck the
hour, but throughout the whole long consultation Hiram stood silent,
motionless as a stock, his eyes fixed almost unwinkingly upon the
three heads grouped close together around the dim, flickering light of
the candle and the papers scattered upon the table.

Suddenly the talk came to an end, the three heads separated and the
three chairs were pushed back, grating harshly. Levi rose, went to the
closet and brought