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There were seven dogs in their pack. Six of them were common deer-hounds—large tan-colored animals, staunch and swift; and when they once opened on a trail, how they would make the woods ring with their music! The other was an Irish greyhound, a present from Uncle Dick. He stood nearly three feet high at the shoulders, and was as fleet as the wind. He was good-natured enough generally, but savage when aroused.

The country about Mr. Gaylord’s plantation was but thinly populated, and wild in the extreme. His nearest neighbor, Mr. Bell, lived three miles away, and the nearest settlement was at Bellville, forty miles distant. Mr. Gaylord’s family had but little intercourse with the family of Mr. Bell. The younger members engaged in a pitched battle occasionally; and their fathers, when they met on the road, merely saluted each other in a dignified manner, and passed without speaking. Mr. Bell did not seem to be on good terms with anybody except a brother who lived in New Orleans (Will’s father and Seth’s), and who was equally unpopular with himself. He had at one time stood high in the community (the village of Bellville was named after him), but of late he had gone down hill rapidly in the estimation of his former associates. There was a mystery surrounding him that none could penetrate. He was engaged in business of some kind, but no one knew what it was. For two years he had been making money rapidly—much faster than he could have made it by cultivating his orange plantation—and the settlers had at last become suspicious, and hinted that he was engaged in some traffic that the authorities would one day put a stop to.