In the meantime poor Célandine found herself hurried down the mountain by Hippolyte and his band, in a state of anxiety and alarm that would have paralysed the energies of most women, but that roused all the savage qualities dormant in the character of the Quadroon. Not a word of her captors, not a look escaped her; and she soon discovered, greatly to her dismay, that she was regarded less as an auxiliary than a hostage. She was placed in the centre of the band, unbound indeed, and apparently at liberty; but no sooner did she betray, by the slightest independence of movement, that she considered herself a free agent, than four stalwart blacks closed in on her with brutal glee, attempting no concealment of a determination to retain her in their power till they had completed their merciless design. “Once gone,” said Hippolyte, politely affecting great reverence for the Obi-woman’s supernatural powers, “never catchee no more!—Jumbo fly away with yaller woman, same as black. Dis nigger no ’fraid of Jumbo, so long as Missee Célandine at um back. Soon dark now. March on, you black villains, and keep your ranks, same as buckra musketeer!” With such exhortations to discipline, and an occasional compliment to his own military talents, Hippolyte beguiled their journey down the mountain. It seemed to Célandine that far too short a space of time had elapsed ere they reached the skirts of the forest, and even in the deepening twilight could perceive clearly enough the long low building of _Cash-a-crou_, now called Montmirail West. The lamps were already lit in the sitting-room on the ground floor. From where she stood, in the midst of the band, outwardly stern and collected, quivering with rage and fear within, the Quadroon could distinguish the figures of Madame la Marquise and her daughter, moving here and there in the apartment, or leaning out at window for a breath of the cool, refreshing evening air. Their commander kept his men under covert of the woods, waiting till it should be quite dark. There was little to fear from a garrison consisting of but two ladies, backed by Fleurette and Bartoletti, for the other domestic slaves were either involved in the conspiracy or had been inveigled out of the way by its chief promoters; yet notwithstanding the weakness of the besieged, some dread of their ascendancy made the negroes loth to encounter by daylight even such weak champions of the white race as two helpless women and a cowardly Italian overseer.