I was awakened¹, after the breakfast hour, by a tap on my door. Why it gave me consternation² I could not have told; I dare say my inveracities of the day before had failed to digest. "Come in," I called, and in stepped my two fishermen.  
Their good mornings were pleasant, but, "Fact is," said one, "we're bothered about your client."
 
"The lady who passed through here last evening?"
 
"Yes, it looks as though----"
 
"Go on while I dress. Looks as though--what?"
 
"As though she wa'n't what you thought, or else----"
 
I smiled aggressively: "Pardon, I know that lady. 'Or else,' you say? What else? Go on."
 
"Oh, you go on dressing³. Do you know them darkies are hers?"
 
"Hoh! Are your teeth yours? Why do you ask?"
 
He handed me a newspaper clipping:
 
 
Two Hundred Dollars Reward. Ran away from my plantation⁴ in ---- county of this State, on the ------ day of ------ the following named and described slaves; father, mother, daughter, and son: . . . A reward of fifty dollars will be paid to any person for the capture and imprisonment⁵ in any jail, of each or either of the above named. Etc.
 
 
With a laugh I returned the thing and went on dressing. "It doesn't," I said aloud to my busy image in the mirror, "describe my client's darkies at all." I faced round: "Why, gentlemen, if this isn't the most astonishing----"
 
"Ho-old on. Ho-old on! Finish your dressing. We're told it does describe two of them and we thought we'd just come and see for ourselves."
 
"And you followed the unprotected lady?"
 
"We followed four runaway⁶ niggers, sir! Else why did they take to the woods inside of a mile from that house where you left the coach? Oh, you're dressed; come along; time's flying!"
 
Determined⁷ to waste all the time I could, "Wait," I said, strapping⁸ on my pistol. "Now, gentlemen, we'll follow this matter to the end, beginning now, instantly. But it must be done as----"
 
"Oh, as privately⁹ as possible! Certainly!"
 
"Certainly. You want the reward and you want it all. But understand, I know you're in error, and I go with you solely¹⁰ to prove you are. Now, by your theory----"
 
"Oh, come along!" We went. I killed time over my coffee, and in getting a saddle for one of my hired span. "You must excuse us if we're not polite," my friends apologized after another flash of impatience¹¹. "Of course those niggers are not on the run in broad day, but their trail's getting cold!"
 
"You're not as bad-mannered as I am," I laughed as we mounted, but their allusion¹² to hounds made me enjoy the burden of my six-shooter.
 
As we ambled¹³ off, "What were you going to say," one asked me, "about our 'theory,' or something?"
 
"Oh! I see you think Mrs. Southmayd must have met up with company and left her servants to follow on to the next station alone."
 
"Exactly. We tracked the darkies along the edge of the road; but her horse tracks--we could only see that no horse tracks left the road where any of their man tracks left it."
 
When we had gone a mile or so one of the boys turned to leave us by a neighborhood road, saying: "I'll rejoin you, 'cross fields, where you turned back last night. I'm going for the dogs."
 
"Stop! Gentlemen, this is too high-handed. Do you reckon I'll let you run down those four innocent creatures with hounds? I swear you shan't do it, sirs."
 
"See here," said the one still with me, "come on. We'll show you the very spots where those innocents left the road one by one, and if you don't say they've used every trick known to a nigger to kill their trail, we'll just quit and go home. Does that suit you?"
 
"Not by a long chalk!" I retorted as I moved with him up the pike. "Those poor simpletons--alone in a strange land, maybe without a pass, at any moment liable to meet a patrol--how easy for them to make the fatal mistake of leaving the road and hiding their tracks!"
 
"All right, come ahead, you'll see fair play."
 
We passed the scene of the breakdown¹⁴ and then the house to which the coach had been drawn¹⁵. I saw the coach in a stable door. By and by a turn in the pike revealed the other clerk and a tall, slim horseman just dismounting among four lop-eared, black-and-brown dogs coupled two and two by light steel breast-yokes. With a heavy whip and without a frown this man gave one of them a quick cut over the face as the brute¹⁶............