One of the men, who were those precious villains Troup Jeffers and Ross Ruffin, bound the wrists of the unconscious youth behind him, while the other ordered Nita to bring them food, threatening to kill her brother before her eyes in case she refused. The terrified girl hastened to obey; but, as with trembling hands she prepared the table with all that the house afforded in the way of provisions, her mind was filled with wild schemes of escape and rescue. Her mother was absent, having gone to sit with the dying child of their only near neighbors, a negro family living a short distance down the river. While the girl thus planned, and strove to conceal her agony of thought beneath an appearance of bustling activity, the slave-catchers dashed water in her brother's face and used other means to restore him to consciousness. In this they were finally successful. The moment that he was sufficiently recovered to realize his situation and recognize the men who had treated him so shamefully, he demanded to be set at liberty, claiming that he was free by birth, and that even if he were not, the price of his freedom had been paid several times over by the annuity that Philip Emathla had relinquished on his account. "Oh no, you're not free, my lad, as you'll soon discover," replied Mr. Troup Jeffers, with a grin. "You're property, you are. You was born property, and you'll always be property. Just now you're my property, and will be till I can get you to a market where your value will be appreciated. As for the cash handed over by that old fool of an Injun, it warn't more than enough to pay for the cut that young catamount give my friend here, and for my injured feelings. It warn't never intended to pay for you. So shut your mouth and come along quietly with us, or we'll make it mighty oncomfortable for ye. D'ye hear?" "But my father was a white man, my mother was a free woman, and I was born--" "Shut up! I tell ye!" shouted the trader, angrily. Determined to be heard, the youth again opened his mouth to speak, when, with a snarl of rage, the brute sprang forward and dealt him several savage kicks with a heavy cowhide boot that proved effective in procuring the required silence. While the attention of both men was thus engaged, Nita managed to slip unobserved from a back door of the house. With the swiftness of despair she fled along the shadowy forest trail that led to the neighbor's cabin, a quarter of a mile away. There she hoped to obtain help for her brother's rescue. When she reached it, she found to her dismay that it was dark and empty. Its door stood wide open, and the poor girl received no answer to her terrified callings. CHAPTER IV CAPTURE AND ESCAPE OF NITA PACHECO