to sleep when sleep was an impossibility! The memory of that
tragedy at the church door was a black horror to him; it gave
substance to his dreams, it brought him awake with writhing lips
that voiced his fear in the dead stillness of the night. The
days were scarcely less terrible. Steeled and resolute as his
will could make him, he was not able to speak of what he had seen
with composure. Being as he was in this terribly perturbed state
he had shirked his morning toilet and presented a proportionately
haggard and unkempt appearance. He was about to quit the table
when big Steve entered the room to say there was a white fellow
at the door wished to see him.

"Fetch him along in here," said Ware briefly, without lifting his
bloodshot eyes.

Brought into his presence the white fellow delivered a penciled
note which proved to be from Murrell, and then on Ware's
invitation partook of whisky. When he was gone, the planter
ordered his horse, and while he waited for it to be brought up
from the stables, reread Murrell's note. The expression of his
unprepossessing features indicated what was passing in his mind,
his mood was one of sullen rebellion. He felt Murrell was bent
on committing him to an aggregate of crime he would never have
considered possible, and all for love of a girl--a pink-cheeked,
white-faced chit of a girl--disgust boiled up within him, rage
choked him; this was the rotten spot in Murrell's make-up, the
man was mad-stark mad!

As Ware rode away from Belle Plain he cursed him under his breath
with vindictive thoroughness. His own inclination toward evil