d her foot.

"Don't rouse me with any of your hypocritical cant, Cunnil McLane! What
have you been teachin' that child to read an' write fur--out of your
Bible, too? What do you bring her presents fur, and hang around us when
we know you despise us all, except fur the black folks we can sell you
cheap? Haven't I been sold to men like you time and again before I was a
woman, and don't I know the sneaking pains that old men take to look
benevolent when youth an' beauty is fur sale; and how they pet it to
keep it pure fur their own selfish enjoyment? God knows I do!"

"Patty, you shock me!" the rubicund gentleman observed. "I have always
found you conservative before. Now, go and send sweet Hulda here, and,
for Heaven's sake, Patty, don't reveal this bargain to her."

"Is it a bargain, Cunnil?"

"It is, if she can be made willing to it."

"That she shall, or make her bed in the forest, where good looks are not
safe around yer."

Hulda was found at a window, looking out upon her former home, and at a
ploughman who had nearly completed the furrows in a large field, sparing
only some low places piled with brush, over one of which some buzzards
circled, lofty, yet intent as anglers watching their tackle. Hard as
that home had been to Hulda, she regretted leaving it for this men's
tavern, where her grandmother's saucy temperament found so many
incentives to bravado, and her caution, that had to be exercised in
Delaware, was quite unnecessary on the Maryland side of the line.

At the little hip-roofed white cottage Hulda had felt a sense of privacy
pleasing to her growing life, and her ability to read often charmed
Patty Cannon to a stillness that was like the hyena's sleep, and even
made her acquiescent and cordial.

But where she met men alone, unmodified by modest women's example, the
bold tendency of Patty was to out-do men, and lead them on to audacities
they would have feared to follow in but for her courage and policy; for
she could coax either young or coarse natures, as well as she could
drive.

These feats of strength and cunning, statecraft and desperation,
reminded Hulda of a book she had read about the Norman knights in
England kidnapping and robbing the poor Saxons; and one description of
King William the Conqueror suggested to Hulda that he was perhaps a
Patty Cannon in his times, as his body and legs were short and powerful,
like hers, and he could bend a bow riding on horseback that no other
knight co