"No," said the woman with an almost masculine surliness of tone.
"I got nothing to say." She pushed them into the attic, and,
closing the door, fastened it with a stout wooden bar.
Beyond that door, which seemed to have closed on every hope,
Betty held the tallow dip aloft, and by its uncertain and
flickering light surveyed her prison. The briefest glance
sufficed. The room contained two shakedown beds and a stool,
there was a window in the gable, but a piece of heavy plank was
spiked before it.
"Miss Betty, don't you be scared," whispered Hannibal. "When the
judge hears we're gone, him and Mr. Mahaffy will try to find us.
They'll go right off to Belle Plain--the judge is always wanting
to do that, only Mr. Mahaffy never lets him but now he won't be
able to stop him."
"Oh, Hannibal, Hannibal, what can he do there--what can any one
do there?" And a dead pallor overspread the girl's face. To
speak of the blind groping of her friends but served to fix the
horror of their situation in her mind.
"I don't know, Miss Betty, but the judge is always thinking of
things to do; seems like they was mostly things no one else would
ever think of."
Betty had placed the candle on the stool and seated herself on
one of the beds. There was the murmur of voices in the room
below; she wondered if her fate was under consideration and what
that fate was to be. Hannibal, who had been examining the
window, returned to her side.
"Miss Betty, if we could just get out of this loft we could steal
their skiff and row down to the river; I reckon they got just the
one boat; the only way they could get to us would be to swim out,
and if they done that we could pound 'em over the head with the
oars the least little thing sinks you when you're in the water.
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