"Come, Sam, name your price for the box of papers. I understand your game, and I am ready to pay well for them. Let us close up the bargain and be done with it. This makes three times I have come to you on the same subject, and I am getting tired of your shilly-shallying," Mrs. Fielding cried, sharply and angrily, while Jewel, crouching down close to the fence, listened to every word, hoping to gain a clew to her mother's mysterious secret. But she was disappointed, for Mrs. Fielding was forced to go away at last unsatisfied. Neither bribes, persuasions nor threats could get anything out of the stubborn widower. It was true that Sam had the box of papers, but being exceedingly illiterate and suspicious regarding white folks, he imagined the papers to be deeds or something relating to the property he had inherited from Maria, and feared that if he gave them up he might lose all, for had not Maria become bitterly incensed at him for his trifling ways, and declared that she would not leave him a cent when she died? So, being unable to read the papers himself, and afraid to let any one else see them, Sam took refuge in a lie, to which he clung with dogged persistence, while chuckling to himself over his cleverness in outwitting the white folk who wanted to cheat him out of his cabin and five-acre lot. Mrs. Fielding's rapid footsteps died away in the dim distance, and Jewel rose from her crouching position cautiously, and leaned her arms on the low fence, debating with herself whether she should approach Sam or not, and make an effort to learn the strange secret which had changed her mother so terribly. A certain terror she had always had of the brutal, drunken scamp restrained the ardor of her desire. She would not trust herself with him near this lonely cabin, over which darkness was now settling, and which was some distance from any other human habitation. She would wait until to-morrow, and in the broad light of day try to cajole the important papers out of his keeping, for she felt sure that they related to her mother's secret. She waited for Sam to go in, dreading lest he should hear her footsteps in the road and pursue her. Then, too, she had decided to return home instead of seeking out the clairvoyant, and she did not wish to start back yet lest she should overtake her mother. So she concluded to wait a few moments, and that slight delay was fatal to the happiness of beautiful Flower. A man's footsteps came along the road, and she held her breath in fear; but the darkness hid her like a thick veil, and he went on toward the grove of trees, losing himself in the dense shadow. "Sam!" he called, cautiously, and she gave a violent start. Laurie Meredith! It was indeed Flower's lover, and as Sam replied to his call, he said: "You delivered those two letters so cleverly to Miss Flower that I wish you to take her another in the same cautious manner--to wait for a reply, and bring it to me at once. Can you do so?"