Yearly, during and after the war, the June floods had swept across that plantation, the water standing from four to forty feet deep above every inch of its soil. The old plantation house, surrounded by its stately lawns and shaded by its colossal evergreen oaks, was abandoned, and now after sixty years the stone ruins stood in the midst of an almost impenetrable swamp and cypress trees nearly as large around as a man’s body grew in the center of the building, their branches protruding above where the roof had been. The first gray streaks of dawn showed in the sky when Mobile led his panting and exhausted followers between the walls of this old house and allowed them a moment’s rest. “Don’t take too long to blow, brudders!” Mobile warned them, his own tongue hanging out like a hot dog’s, his mouth spread wide, showing a gold front tooth. “Ef de white folks follers us, dey’ll come right straight to dis here house an’ start deir hunt from here. I knows ’em!” “Whut you fetch us here fer, den?” Pap Curtain inquired indignantly. “Us niggers is got to hab some money,” Mobile informed him, “an’ I knows whar a white man has hid some. Less git it, an’ ’vide up, an’ scoot!” He walked through the briars and underbrush, stumbling among the fallen stones, to a certain corner; then motioning for silence, he listened. “Dat mought be wind,” he muttered uneasily. “Den again, it mought be a steamboat puffin’ up de river. Den, agin, it moughtn’t.” Raising a large stone, he kicked at the dirt underneath, then suddenly ceased his operations and listened. Then in the dim light his face became ashen, turning a scar upon his cheek white, and his heart thumped like a drum. He let the rock fall back upon the treasure, and motioned to Pap and Mustard to follow, leading them four times around the walls and crisscross through the center and then back to the entrance. “Listen, niggers!” Mobile chattered. “My Gawd, listen!” Far across the swamp they could hear distinctly a steady repetition of three short sounds followed by a long, lowing bellow like a bull: “_Ow, ow, ow! Oo-oo-oo-o!_” “Whut’s dat?” Mustard asked. “_Nigger dogs!_” Mobile cried with a voice like a sob. “_Bloodhounds!_” An uncontrollable sobbing seized the negro and his fright was pitiable. Mustard and Pap, having no experience with such dogs, looked at him uncomprehendingly. Finally, Mobile dropped to the ground and listened. Then rising, he announced: “A whole pack, niggers--dogs an’ men! We’ll never git outen dis swamp alive--dem dam’ dogs’ll gnaw our bones! Come on, less see kin we make it to de Massacre Bayou!” They started on a straight line, running side by side. Then within a hundred yards they faced a slough as large as a lake, no one knew how deep with mud and water. Taking a long detour around this, they looked back and in two miles of running, still found themselves in plain sight of the Kerlerac plantation house.