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 a mile and came out at a different place … that is all. Do you think that Giles will help me? Don't tell your brother."

Virginia reflected; emotion gave way before the need of action.

"It is better that you remain here until after dark," she said presently, "then you shall come to the house and we will take care of you and see that you get safely back to England. I shall return now; I shall send you a basket of food by a man whom I can trust and as soon as my brother returns I will see that he has you brought"

"Hands up, niggeh!" rasped a harsh, metallic voice. "Step one side, please, ma'am!"

There were four of them. They had trailed their quarry with a dog, a cur possessed of scent and some random corpuscles of hound blood; a dog used for the hunting of the small local deer and trained for this purpose to course silently. The trail was taken at a spot on the soft bank of the canal where one of the stealthy watchers had found the print of the big, naked foot.

These men were of a low type; they were the descendants of the refuse and sweepings of British manufacturing towns, brought to colonize districts where no man would live. From such spring the "crackers," "sandhillers," "poor whites," or "white trash," as the negroes correctly designate them. Where these have been transplanted to better soil, there has been some regeneration; one sees this among the mountaineers of the Cumberland and other ranges. Where nature has grudgingly supported them they have only continued to exist—ignorant, cowardly, savage, cruel; hospitable, it is true, 279