No answer was heard in reply. Probably a gesture had sufficed. “Will he resist?” “Possibly. These fugitives usually go armed.” “What shall we do if he threatens to fire?” Here an altercation ensued, during which Peek could understand little of what was uttered. But he had heard enough. His thoughts first reverted to his wife and his infant boy, and he pictured to himself their destitute condition in the event of his being taken away. Then the treachery of Charlton glared upon him in all its deformity, and he instinctively drew from the sheath in an inside pocket of his vest a sharp, glittering dagger-like knife. He looked rapidly around, but there was nothing to suggest a mode of escape. The only window in the closet was one over the door communicating with the office. Suddenly it occurred to him that, if he were to be hemmed in in this closet, his chances of escape would be small. It would be better for him to be in the larger room, whether he chose to adopt a defensive or an offensive policy. Seeing an old rope in a corner of the closet, he seized it with the avidity a drowning man might show in grasping at a straw. He listened intently once more to the whisperers. A low susurration, accompanied with a whistling sound, he identified at once as coming from Skinner, the captain of the schooner in which he had made his escape. Then some one sneezed. Peek would have recognized that sneeze in Abyssinia. It must have proceeded from Colonel Delancy Hyde. Standing on tiptoe on a coal-box, the negro now looked through a hole in the green-paper curtain covering the glass over the door, and surveyed the whole party. He found he was right in his conjectures. The captain was there with one of his sailors,—an old inebriate by the name of Biggs, both doubtless ready to swear to the slave’s identity. And the Colonel was there as natural as when he appeared on the plantation, strolling round to take a look at the “smart niggers,” so as to be able to recognize them in case of need. Two policemen, armed with bludgeons, and probably with revolvers; and Charlton, with a paper tied with red tape in his hand, formed the other half of this agreeable company. Peek marked well their positions, put his knife between his teeth, and descended from the box.