“But I shall have all the slave-hunters in the Confederacy after me if I try to get away.” “Do not fear. We have golden keys that open many doors of escape.” Clara did not hesitate. She had faith in Esha’s quickness, as well as in her own, to detect insincerity. And so she was persuaded that her safest present course would be to go boldly into the house of the very man she had most cause to dread! It was agreed that the three should leave together at once. Clara went to her sleeping-room, and there, encountering the chambermaid, made her a present of two dollars, and sent her off. Laura was absent at the dressmaker’s. “I would like,” said Clara, “to find out at the bar what charge has been made for my stay here, and pay it.” “Let me do it for you,” suggested the quadroon. “If you would be so kind!” replied Clara. “Here are fifteen dollars. I don’t think it can come to more than that.” Without taking the money, Josephine left the room. In five minutes she returned with a receipted bill, made out against “Miss Tremaine’s friend.” This receipt Clara enclosed, together with a five-dollar gold-piece, in a letter to Laura, containing these words:— “I thank you for all the hospitality I have received at your hands. Enclosed you will find my hotel bill receipted, also five dollars for the use of such dresses as I have worn. With best wishes for your mother’s restoration to health and for your own welfare, I bid you good by. P. B.” The three women now passed through a side entrance to the street where the carriage was in waiting; and before half an hour had elapsed, Clara was established in the blue room of the house in Lafayette Square,—the invalid lady had seen her and approved,—and Esha, like a faithful hound, was following her steps, keeping watch, as Ratcliff had directed, though for other reasons than he had imagined. Hardly had Clara left the hotel, before Vance called. He had come, fully resolved to wring from her, if possible, the secret of her trouble. Much to his disappointment, he learned she had gone and would not return. He called a second time, and saw Miss Tremaine. That young lady, warned and threatened by her father, now displayed such a ready and facile gift for lying, as would have highly distinguished her in diplomacy. “Only think of it, Mr. Vance,” said the intrepid Laura, “it turns out that Miss Brown has been having a love affair with one of her father’s clerks, a low-born Yankee. He followed her to New Orleans,—managed to send a letter to her at Mrs. Gentry’s,—Clara went forth to find him, but, failing in her search, came to claim hospitality of me. This morning her father—a very decent man he seems to be—arrived from Mobile and took her, fortunately before she had been able to meet her lover.”