“Do?” laughed the drunkest of the four. “Root him out, of course. And you’re li’ble to keep your hair tidier if you’ll take us straight off to where you’ve hid him.” “I’ve told you twice to get out of here,” she replied, not a faintest trace of fear in her authoritative voice. “And now I tell--” “Yes,” growled the man, suddenly turning savage at her words, “and your husband, old Yankee Sessions, told me to get out of his house once, a few years back. I was just out of pen, and I was hungry. I stopped here and told his black butler to rustle me some grub and a little spending-money, or I’d cave his woolly head in. That’s the way to speak to niggers. And he--” “That’s the way nobody but ‘poor white trash’ ever speaks to them, down here,” contradicted Mrs. Sessions. “I remember the time. Ehud was sick abed with quinsy and--” “And just as I’d got that nigger so scared that he’d do anything I told him,” snarled the bushwhacker, drink and a sour memory combining to enrage him, “down them stairs rushes old Yankee Sessions, half-dressed, and wavin’ a sword in his hand. And he kicked me--yes, kicked _me_--out of his house, the dirty Yank. I reckon here’s where I square accounts with his long-tongued widder.” He lurched to the stair-foot and caught Mrs. Sessions roughly by the shoulder. “Show us where you’ve hid the blue-backed cur!” he ordered. “Or we’ll--” He got no further. At his brutal touch Mrs. Sessions had involuntarily cried out. A cry of stark indignation, not of terror. And in the midst of the guerrilla’s surly threat she saw the unshaven mouth grow speechless and slack; the drink-bleared eyes widen in crass horror. The unwashed paw fell inert from her shoulder. The man reeled back a step as though struck across the face. He was staring stupidly at the stairway. And his fellows had followed the direction of his gaze. All this in the fraction of a second; even as Mrs. Sessions turned to note the cause of the strange panic. Out of the darkness of the upper landing had sprung a terrible figure. For an instant, as it gathered itself to bound down the broad and shallow flight of stairs, it was vaguely and weirdly outlined by the uncertain candlelight below. A man, towering, fierce; coatless and without waist-coat. His face was white and distorted with wrath. His eyes blazed in the half-light like living coals. His gray hair was a-bristle. Above his head flashed a sword-blade. “Yankee Sessions!” croaked the drunken guerrilla, in babbling fear. “Yankee Sessions’s ghost! Just as he came at me that day when--” The man at the stair-head cleared the intervening steps in three bounds. With a berserk yell he was among the guerrillas, his swirling sword giving forth a million sparks of reflection from the candle-glow. There was a moment of wild turmoil; of clashing, of yells, of madly stamping feet.