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He would wash his hands of all further connection with Murrell, he had other things to lose besides Belle Plain, and the present would be as good a time as any to let the outlaw know he could be coerced and bullied no longer.
Mahaffy's thin lips twisted themselves into a sarcastic smile. He turned to the judge, who spoke up quickly. "Did he carry a bundle and rifle?" he asked. Murrell gave eager assent. "Well," said the judge, "he stopped here along about four o'clock and asked his way to the nearest river landing." Murrell gathered up his reins, and then that fixed stare of the judge's seemed to arrest his attention.
They went silently from the house and again crossed the lawn to the terrace. Under the leafy arch which canopied them there was already the deep purple of twilight. "Do you reckon it were Captain Murrell shot Mr. Norton, Miss Betty?" asked Hannibal in a shuddering whisper. "Hush Oh, hush, Hannibal!
The next decade, or that ending about 1840, however, offered a still greater instance of outlawry, one of the most famous ones indeed of American history, although little known to-day. This had to do with that genius in crime, John A. Murrell, long known as the great Western land-pirate; and surely no pirate of the seas was ever more enterprising or more dangerous.
"You'd be slow to tell me I couldn't count on you, Tom, and you'd be slow to think I couldn't manage this thing when the time's ripe for it!" But no trace of this all-sufficient sense of confidence, of which he seemed so certain, showed on Ware's hardened visage. He spat away the stump of his cigar. "Sure as God, John Murrell, you are overreaching yourself!
Besides, they have terrible enemies in the negro-traders, whom they look down on socially, and really drive them into sympathy with the negroes. Mr. Murrell, for instance, has a grand plan for a slave insurrection. He says white society is all against him, and he'll get even with it." "See me, see me!" hoarsely chimed in another voice.
"Freedom!" spoke the girl, awakening; "oh, I must find it." The next that Virgie knew, she was in a cabin loft, and voices were heard speaking in a room below. "See me!" said one; "we sell you, dat's sho'! See me now! You make de best of it. Sam Ogg yer, we sold twenty-two times. Sam will be sold wid you and teach yo' de Murrell game."
However, the planter was greatly shocked by the discovery he presently made that she was engaged in a vigorous correspondence with Charley. "I wish to blazes Murrell had told those fellows to kick the life clean out of him while they were about it!" he commented savagely, and fell to cursing impotently.
He was on his way to Fayetteville, where he intended to spend the night, and perhaps a day or two in looking around, when the meeting with Betty and Murrell occurred. As Murrell disappeared in the direction of Balaam's, Carrington took a spiteful kick at the unoffending coin, and strode off down the Fayetteville pike. But the girl's face remained with him. It was a face he would like to see again.
He heard Slosson curse drunkenly, and a whispered word from Murrell. The two men slowly crossed the truck patch, and the boy's glance followed them, his eyes starting from his head.
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