Delgado turned to his work once more, doggedly. ‘If him buckra, an’ if him stoppin’ up wit dem Dupuy,’ he said half aloud, but so that the wondering Peter could easily overhear it, ‘when de great an’ terrible day come, he will be cut off wit all de household. An’ de day doan’t gwine to be delayed long now, neider.’ A mumbled Arabic sentence, which Peter of course could not understand, gave point and terror to this last prediction. Peter turned away, thinking to himself that Louis Delgado was a terrible obeah man and sorcerer for certain, and that whoever crossed his path, had better think twice before he offended so powerful an antagonist. Meanwhile, Harry Noel was still riding on to Orange Grove. As he reached the garden gate, Tom Dupuy met him, out for a walk in the cool of the evening with big Slot, his great Cuban bloodhound. As Harry drew near, Slot burst away suddenly with a leap from his master, and before Harry could foresee what was going to happen, the huge brute had sprung up at him fiercely, and was attacking him with his mighty teeth and paws, as though about to drag him from his seat forcibly with his slobbering canines. Harry hit out at the beast a vicious blow from the butt-end of his riding-whip, and at the same moment Tom Dupuy, sauntering up somewhat more lazily than politeness or even common humanity perhaps demanded, caught the dog steadily by the neck and held him back by main force, still struggling vehemently and pulling at the collar. His great slobbering jaws opened hungrily towards the angry Englishman, and his eyes gleamed with the fierce light of a starving carnivore in sight and smell of his natural prey. ‘Precious vicious dog you keep, Mr Dupuy,’ Harry exclaimed, not over good-humouredly, for the brute had made its teeth meet through the flap of his coat lappets: ‘you oughtn’t to let him go at large, I fancy.’ Tom Dupuy stooped and patted his huge favourite lovingly on the head with very little hypocritical show of penitence or apology. ‘He don’t often go off this way,’ he answered coolly. ‘He’s a Cuban bloodhound, Slot is; pure-blooded—the same kind we used to train in the good old days to hunt up the runaway niggers; and they often go at a black man or a brown man—that’s what they’re meant for. The moment they smell African blood, they’re after it, like a greyhound after a hare, as quick as lightning. But I never knew Slot before go for a white man! It’s very singular—ex-cessively singular. I never before knew him go for a real white man.’