“For my part, since that deal is over and done with by this time, I don’t care how long I have to wait for a boat,--it can neither mar nor make so far as I am concerned,” said the broker, as he puffed his cigar and walked with long, meditative strides up and down the stone pavement.
Floyd-Rosney did not concur in this view. He had expected all the early hours that some of the neighboring negroes would come to the house, attracted by the rumors of the commotions enacted there during the night. Thus he could hire a messenger to take a note or a telephone message to the nearest livery establishment and secure a conveyance for himself and family to the railroad station some ten miles distant. He feared that hours, nay a day or so, might elapse before one of the regular packets plying the river might be expected to pass. Those already in transit had, doubtless, “tied up” during the storm, and now waited till the current should compass the clearance of the débris of the hurricane floating down the river. The steamers advertised to leave on their regular dates had not cast off, in all probability, but lay supine in their allotted berths till the effects of the storm should be past, and thus would not be due here for twelve or twenty-four hours, according to the distance of their point of departure.
As, however, time went on and the old house stood all solitary in the gay morning light as it had in the sad moon-tide, Floyd-Rosney reflected that no one had gone forth from the place except the robbers and the roustabouts who had rowed the party down from the _Cherokee Rose_, returning thither immediately. It was, therefore, improbable that any rumor was rife of the temporary occupation of the Duciehurst mansion. Hence the absence of curiosity seekers. Moreover, even were the circumstances known, every human creature in the vicinity with the capacity to stand on its feet and open and close its fingers was in the cotton fields this day, for the sun’s rays had already sufficiently dried off the plant, and the industry of cotton-picking, even more than time and tide, waits for nobody. For “cotton is money,--maybe more, maybe less, but cotton is money _every time_,” according to the old saying. These snowy level fields were rich with coin of the republic. The growing staple was visible wealth, scarcely needing the transmuting touch of trade. No! of all the wights whom he might least expect to see it was any cotton-picker, old or young, of the region.