“Tend to yer soul!” repeated Tom, contemptuously; “take a bright lookout to find a soul in you,—­save yourself any care on that score.  If the devil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won’t find one.”

“Why, Tom, you’re cross,” said Haley; “why can’t ye take it pleasant, now, when a feller’s talking for your good?”

“Stop that ar jaw o’ yourn, there,” said Tom, gruffly.  “I can stand most any talk o’ yourn but your pious talk,—­that kills me right up.  After all, what’s the odds between me and you?  ’Tan’t that you care one bit more, or have a bit more feelin’—­it’s clean, sheer, dog meanness, wanting to cheat the devil and save your own skin; don’t I see through it?  And your ‘gettin’ religion,’ as you call it, arter all, is too p’isin mean for any crittur;—­run up a bill with the devil all your life, and then sneak out when pay time comes!  Bob!”

“Come, come, gentlemen, I say; this isn’t business,” said Marks.  “There’s different ways, you know, of looking at all subjects.  Mr. Haley is a very nice man, no doubt, and has his own conscience; and, Tom, you have your ways, and very good ones, too, Tom; but quarrelling, you know, won’t answer no kind of purpose.  Let’s go to business.  Now, Mr. Haley, what is it?—­you want us to undertake to catch this yer gal?”

“The gal’s no matter of mine,—­she’s Shelby’s; it’s only the boy.  I was a fool for buying the monkey!”

“You’re generally a fool!” said Tom, gruffly.

“Come, now, Loker, none of your huffs,” said Marks, licking his lips; “you see, Mr. Haley ‘s a puttin’ us in a way of a good job, I reckon; just hold still—­these yer arrangements is my forte.  This yer gal, Mr. Haley, how is she? what is she?”

“Wal! white and handsome—­well brought up.  I’d a gin Shelby eight hundred or a thousand, and then made well on her.”

“White and handsome—­well brought up!” said Marks, his sharp eyes, nose and mouth, all alive with enterprise.  “Look here, now, Loker, a beautiful opening.  We’ll do a business here on our own account;—­we does the catchin’; the boy, of course, goes to Mr. Haley,—­we takes the gal to Orleans to speculate on.  An’t it beautiful?”

Tom, whose great heavy mouth had stood ajar during this communication, now suddenly snapped it together, as a big dog closes on a piece of meat, and seemed to be digesting the idea at his leisure.

“Ye see,” said Marks to Haley, stirring his punch as he did so, “ye see, we has justices convenient at all p’ints along shore, that does up any little jobs in our line quite reasonable.  Tom, he does the knockin’ down and that ar; and I come in all dressed up—­shining boots—­everything first chop, when the swearin’ ’s to be done.  You oughter see, now,” said Marks, in a glow of professional pride, “how I can tone it off.  One day, I’m Mr. Twickem, from New Orleans; ’nother day, I’m just come from my plantation on Pearl river, where I works seven hundred niggers; then, again, I come out a distant