"What's the other thing? You said a thing or two," asked Ramsey. "Her wages, ain't it, for eleven years?" "Ho, ho!" laughed madame in amiable scorn, while---- "Paid!" cried Ramsey. "Mrs. Gilmore's always paid her!" "Knowin' she was a runaway? and who' from?" Madame bowed sweetly, yet with an aroused sparkle. "Humph!" said Ramsey, watching the boat back out and lay her course for Island Thirty-five, "I'd have done as they did, either of them." She stepped into the freshening breeze. The inquirer's eyes rested on her, bluer than ever. "Don't you propose to collect?" he asked. "Most certainly not!" sang Ramsey at full height. "Not a sou," said madame, looking about in grand amusement. "Not a pic-ah-yune--hoh!" "But she's going back into yo' hands?" "My 'an's," said madame. "And you'll never sell her?" "Can't!" laughed Ramsey, with eyes ahead. "You can hire her." "Yes," said Ramsey, turning. "Oh, yes." "Well, what'll you take, from the right bidder, for that girl's free papers dated ahead to when you come of age, bidder takin' all the resks?" "You said down-stairs you wasn't an abolitionist!" He twinkled. "Well, down-stairs I wa'n't, and in general I ain't. I'm a Kentuckian. But I've got an offer to make." He turned to the Courteneys: "I allowed to make it to this young gentleman first, alone, an' get his advice--an' the commodo's if he'd give it; but the' ain't anybody in this small crowd but what's welcome to hear it, even this young lady, considerin' that she's jest heard so much worse again' me--insinuated--down-stairs." There was a pause. Old Joy murmured and Madame spoke the daughter's name, adding something in French. "_Moi_," replied Ramsey, planting herself and gazing up the river, "_je prefere_ to stay right here." The mother's smile to the Kentuckian bade him proceed, but he still addressed Hugh and the grandfather: "You see, that girl down-stairs, 'Harriet,' 'Phyllis,' has been free--Lawdy, free's nothin', she's been white!--fo' ten years. Now, if she goes back home, there may be no place like it, but she's got to be black again. Well, think what that is. I've been weighin' that fact while I looked into her eyes and listened to her voice, an' thinks I to myself: 'If I was this girl, this goin' back to be black would mean one of two things: I'd either die myself, aw I'd kill some one, maybe sev'l.' True, I'm pyo' white an' she ain't, quite, but I don't believe her po' little drop o' low blood makes her any mo' bridlewise 'n what I'd be." While the speaker's smile drew smiles from madame and the commodore, Ramsey turned to him a severe face and in the same glance managed to see Hugh's, but Hugh's might as well have been, to her mind, the face of a Chickasaw bluff. "Well, what then?" she asked the gold hunter.