feature, and proceeded, slowly and
reluctantly, to put on his coat, which he had thrown off at the
beginning of his labor. In the meantime I made no remark. Jupiter, at a
signal from his master, began to gather up his tools. This done, and the
dog having been unmuzzled, we turned in profound silence toward home.

We had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps in this direction, when, with a
loud oath, Legrand strode up to Jupiter, and seized him by the collar.
The astonished negro opened his eyes and mouth to the fullest extent,
let fall the spades, and fell upon his knees.

"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
his clinched teeth--"you infernal black villain!--speak, I tell
you!--answer me this instant, without prevarication!--which--which is
your left eye?"

"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! aint dis here my lef eye for sartin?" roared
the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his _right_ organ of
vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.

"I thought so!--I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
negro go and executing a series of curvets and caracoles, much to the
astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked mutely
from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.

"Come! we must go back," said the latter, "the game's not up yet;" and
he again led the way to the tulip-tree.

"Jupiter," said he, when we reached its foot, "come here; was the skull
nailed to the limb with the face outward, or with the face to the limb?"

"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
widout any trouble."

"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
beetle?"--here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.

"'Twas dis eye, massa--de lef eye--jis as you tell me," and here it was
his right eye that the negro indicated.

"That will do--we must try it again."

Here my friend, about whose madness I now saw, or fancied that I saw,
certain indications of method, removed the peg which marked the spot
where the beetle fell, to a spot about three inches to the westward of
its former position. Taking, now, the tape-measure from the nearest
point of the trunk to the peg, as before, and continuing the extension
in a straight line to the distance of fifty feet, a spot was indicated,
removed, by several yards, from the point at which we had been digging.

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