"Cannot! You mean you will not. Well, young woman, I'll find means to make you, for I have handled your kind before. Drop this dignity business, and remember you are a slave, talking to your master. It will be better for you, if you do. Where is Eloise Beaucaire?" "Why do you seek to find her? There is no slave blood in her veins." "To serve the necessary papers, of course." He spoke incautiously, urged on by his temper, and I marked how quickly her face brightened at this intelligence. "To serve papers! They must be served then before--before you can take possession? That is what I understood the sheriff to say." "Why, of course--the law requires that form." "Then I am not really your slave--yet?" her voice deepening with earnestness and understanding. "Oh, so that is how it is--even if I am a negro, I do not belong to you until those papers have been served. If you touch me now you break the law. I may not be free, but I am free from you. Good God! but I am glad to know that!" "And damn little good it is going to do you," he growled. "I was a fool to let you know that; but just the same you are here in my power, and I care mighty little what the law says. Sheriff, or no sheriff, my beauty, you are going to St. Louis with me tonight; so I advise you to keep a grip on that tongue of yours. Do you think I am going to be foiled altogether by a technical point of law? Then, by God! you don't know Joe Kirby. Possession is the main thing, and I have you where you can't get away. You hear me?" She had not moved, although her form had straightened, and her hand no longer rested on the table. Kirby had stepped close in front of her, his eyes glowing with anger, his evident intention being to thus frighten the girl into compliance with his wishes, but her eyes, defiant and unafraid, looked him squarely in the face. "I certainly hear," she replied calmly. "Your voice is sufficiently distinct. I am a slave, I suppose, and in your power; but I despise you, hate you--and you are not going to take me to St. Louis tonight." "What can stop me?" "That I am not obliged to tell you, sir." "But what will prevent? The sheriff? Puh! a few dollars will take care of him. The Judge is a friend of mine." "It is not the sheriff--nor the Judge; I place reliance on no friend of yours." He grasped at her arm, but she stepped back quickly enough to avoid contact, and the red lips were pressed together in a thin line of determination. Kirby could not have seen what I did, or if he did see, failed to attach the same significance to the action. Her hand had suddenly disappeared within the folds of her skirt; but the angry man, apparently blinded by the violence of his passion, his eagerness to crush her spirit, thought only that she counted on outside aid for deliverance.