a moth gone giddy in flame, "your
naughty music wakes echoes of what souls must hear in paradise."

"Then it isn't naughty," said Hortense, beginning to play fiercely,
striking false notes and discords and things.

"Hortense," said I.

"No--Ramsay!" cried Hortense, jangling harder than ever.

"But--yes!--Hortense----"

And in bustled M. Picot, hastier than need, methought.

"What, Hillary? Not a-bed yet, child? Ha!--crow's-feet under eyes
to-morrow! Bed, little baggage! Forget not thy prayers! Pish! Pish!
Good-night! Good-night!"

That is the way an older man takes it.

"Now, devil fly away with that prying wench of a Deliverance Dobbins!"
ejaculated M. Picot, stamping about. "Oh, I'll cure her fanciful fits!
Pish! Pish! That frump and her fits! Bad blood, Ramsay; low-bred,
low-bred! 'Tis ever the way of her kind to blab of aches and stuffed
stomachs that were well if left empty. An she come prying into my
chemicals, taking fits when she's caught, I'll mix her a pill o'
Deliverance!" And M. Picot laughed heartily at his own joke.

The next morning I was off to the trade. Though I hardly acknowledged
the reason to myself, any youth can guess why I made excuse to come
back soon. As I rode up, Rebecca stood at our gate. She had no smile.
Had I not been thinking of another, I had noticed the sadness of her
face; but when she moved back a pace, I flung out some foolishness
about a gate being no bar if one had a mind to jump. Then she brought
me sharp to my senses as I sprang to the ground.

"Ramsay," she exclaimed, "M. Picot and Mistress Hortense are in jail
charged with sorcery! M. Picot is like to be hanged! An they do not
confess, they may be set in the bilboes and whipped. There is talk of
putting Mistress Hortense to the test."

"The test!"

'Twas as if a great weight struck away power to think, for the test
meant neither more nor less than torture till confession were wrung
from agony. The night went black and Rebecca's voice came as from some
far place.

"Ramsay, you are hurting--you are crushing my hands!"

Poor child, she was crying; and the words I would have said stuck fast
behind sealed lips. She seemed to understand, for she went on:

"Deliverance Dobbins saw strange things in his house. She went to spy.
He hath crazed her intellectuals. She hath dumb fits."

Now I understood. This trouble was the result of M. Picot's threat;
but little Rebecca's voice was tinkling