“None.”

“None!  Then why should we compromise with you?”

“Because I’ve got the best hand to-night, and you know it.  For her, you know, you’ll do ’most anything—­now, won’t you?”

The fellow’s complaisant smile caused Arthur to look away with disgust.  He turned to Harold, and they were conferring about Rawbon’s strange proposition, when Oriana raised her head suddenly and her face assumed an expression of attention, as if her ear had caught a distant sound.  She had not forgotten little Phil, and knowing his sagacity and faithfulness, she depended much upon his having followed her instructions.  And indeed, a moment after, the plashing of the hoofs of horses in the wet soil could be distinctly heard.

“Them’s my overseer and his man, I guess,” said Rawbon, with composure, and he smiled again as he observed how effectually he had checked the gleam of joy that had lightened Oriana’s face.

“’Twas he, you see, that set the dog on Jim’s track, and now he’s following after, that’s all.”

He had scarcely concluded, when a vigorous and excited voice was heard, shouting:  “There ’tis!—­there’s the hut, gentlemen!  Push on!”

“It is my brother! my brother!” cried Oriana, clasping her hands with joy; and for the first time that night she burst into tears and sobbed on Harold’s shoulder.

Rawbon’s face grew livid with rage and disappointment.  He flung open the door and sprang out into the open air; but Oriana could see him pause an instant at the threshold, and stooping, point into the cabin.  The low hissing word of command that accompanied the action reached her ear.  She knew what it meant and a faint shriek burst from her lips, more perhaps from horror at the demoniac cruelty of the man, than from fear.  The next moment, a gigantic bloodhound, gaunt, mud-bespattered and with the froth of fury oozing from his distended jaws, plunged through the doorway and stood glaring in the centre of the cabin.

Oriana stood like a sculptured ideal of terror, white and immovable; Harold with his left arm encircled the rigid form, while his right hand was uplifted, weaponless, but clenched with the energy of despair, till the blood-drops burst from his palm.  But Arthur stepped before them both and fixed his calm blue eyes upon the monster’s burning orbs.  There was neither fear, nor excitement, nor irresolution in that steadfast gaze—­it was like the clear, straightforward glance of a father checking a wayward child—­even the habitual sadness lingered in the deep azure, and the features only changed to be cast in more placid mold.  It was the struggle of a brave and tranquil soul with the ferocious instincts of the brute.  The hound, crouched for a deadly spring, was fascinated by this spectacle of the utter absence of emotion.  His huge chest heaved like a billow with his labored respiration, but the regular breathing of the being that awed him was like that of a sleeping child.  For full five minutes—­but it seemed an age—­this silent but terrible duel was being fought, and yet no succor came.  Beverly and those who came with him must have changed their course to pursue the fleeing Rawbon.