en were now its only occupants and the mother,
gross and shapeless, turned an expressionless face on the intruders; but
the daughter shrank into the shadow, her burning glance fixed on Betty.

"Here's yo' guests, old lady!" said Mr. Slosson. Mrs. Hicks rose from
the three-legged stool on which she was sitting.

"Hand me the candle, Bess," she ordered.

At one side of the room was a steep flight of stairs which gave access
to the loft overhead. Mrs. Hicks, by a gesture, signified that Betty and
Hannibal were to ascend these stairs; they did so and found themselves
on a narrow landing inclosed by a partition of rough planks, this
partition was pierced by a low door. Mrs. Hicks, who had followed close
at their heels, handed the candle to Betty.

"In yonder!" she said briefly, nodding toward the door.

"Wait!" cried Betty in a whisper.

"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