him, a low, full ripple of wholesome laughter, which evoked again a
wave of color to his sensitive face. Josephine St. Auban was a
prisoner,--a prisoner of state, in fact, and such by orders not
understood by herself, although, as she knew very well, a prisoner
without due process of law. Save for this tearful maid who stood
yonder, she was alone, friendless. Her escape, her safety even,
lay in her own hands. Yet, even now, learning for the first time
this much definitely regarding the mysterious journey into which
she had been entrapped--even now, a prisoner held fast in some
stern and mysterious grasp whose reason and whose nature she could
not know--she laughed, when she should have wept!

"My instructions were to take you out beyond this point," went on
Carlisle; "and then I was to lose you, as I have said. I have had
no definite instructions as to how that should be done, my dear
Countess." His eyes twinkled as he stiffened to his full height
and almost met the level of her own glance.

"The agent who conveyed my orders to me--he comes from Kentucky,
you see--said to me that while I could not bow-string you, it would
be quite proper to put you in a sack and throw you overboard.
'Only,' said he to me, 'be careful that this sack be tightly tied;
and be sure to drop her only where the water is deepest. And for
God's sake, my dear young man,' he said to me, 'be sure that you do
not drop her anywhere along the coast of my own state of Kentucky;
for if you do, she will untie the sack and swim ashore into my
constituency, where I have trouble enough without the Countess St.
Auban, active abolitionist, to increase it. Trouble '--said he to
me--'thy name is Josephine St. Auban!'