When, therefore, the light of the flickering pine torch fell obliquely on Thorne's dark figure and caught a gleam from the polished mountings of his gun, and another from the brass of the cartridge belt, which to the terrified darkeys looked like a cincture of fire, they became possessed with the idea that the most malevolent of all the spirits, perhaps the devil himself, was upon them. Calling on their Maker with more urgence than they ever did at "pray'r meetin'," they grabbed up their belongings and addressed themselves to flight. The bags, flopping up and down on their backs, held them to their speed, by corporeal reminder of what they had to lose if the devil should overtake them, and the molasses in the bucket slopped over the sides and sweetened the dust at every jump. The bucket top had bounced off in the first burst and sped down the road before them, and the owner, feeling that he had no time to lose, never dreamed of stopping to look for it. Every now and then the bucket banged against his leg causing him to feel that the evil one might be gaining, and to yell "Oh, Lawdy! Oh, Lawdy!!" at the top of his lungs. The torch-bearer had flung away his light, thinking to elude the devil in the darkness, and all his soul was in his heels. Thorne laughed a little, in a mirthless fashion; but he was too miserable to be amused. While the men talked, black jealousy had crept around the old magnolia and linked arms with him. Twice in the same evening this name had crossed him. Who the devil _was_ this Jim Byrd? These men had spoken of him as the avowed lover of Pocahontas, the man she would eventually marry. The girl herself had admitted him to be a dear and valued friend--a friend so dear that his going had left a blank in her life. The power he had but now felt to be his own, suddenly appeared to be slipping into other hands. Another sickle was sharpening for the harvest; other eyes had recognized the promise of the golden grain; other hands were ready to garner the rich sheaves. Thorne's heart grew hot; angry blood surged from it and inflamed his system; every nerve tingled; his eyes glowed, and his fingers tightened on the barrel of the gun beside him. His consciousness of antagonism grew so intense that it seemed to annihilate space and materialize his distant rival into an actual presence; his feeling was that which animates brutes when they lock horns, or fly at each other's throats; and, could the emotional force which swayed his soul have been converted into physical force and projected through space, Jim would never have seen the light of another day.