I heard them coming through the house, across the boarded floor.

The one was a rapid, firm, military footstep, accompanied with the clicking of a spur, and the other was unmistakably the "pad, pad" of a blackfellow.
We all turned round and looked at the door.

There stood the sergeant of Desborough's troopers, pale and silent, and close behind him, clinging to him as if for protection, was the lithe naked figure of a black lad, looking from behind the sergeant, with terrified visage, first at one and then at another of us.
I saw disaster in their faces, and would have held up my hand to warn him not to speak before Mrs.Buckley.But I was too late, for he had spoken.

And then we sat for a minute, looking at one another, each man seeing the reflection of his own horror in his neighbour's eyes..