uld bend on foot with the legs planted firmly. He could not
read nor write, and was superstitious, yet cruel as the grave. All this
was true of Patty Cannon, whose feat of standing in a bushel measure and
putting three hundred pounds of grain on her shoulder has been related.

She often wrestled and bound, without assistance, strong black men
fighting for their liberties. She could ride horseback, sitting like
men, in a way to make Joan of Arc seem a maid of mere tinsel.

Hulda was dressed in her best clothes, her hair was tied in wide braids,
her fine features and large, tender, yet seeking, gray eyes, never had
been turned on Patty Cannon so directly.

Her grandmother abandoned in a moment an attempt to be complaisant, and
sternly ordered her to attend to Colonel McLane's chamber.

"I can support you no longer, huzzy," said the dark-eyed woman, her
cheeks full of blood. "Make haste to find some easy life or Joe shall
get you a husband. We are ruined. You must make money, do you hear!"

"Here is money, grandma!" said Hulda, producing some of the shillings of
1815.

At the first glance of these Patty Cannon turned pale, but, in an
instant, the hot blood rushed to her face again, and she swore a
dreadful oath and chased Hulda, with uplifted hands, into the chamber of
Allan McLane.

"Ah, Hulda, inflaming your poor grandmother again!" said that carefully
clad and game-fed gentleman. "Now, now, lovely girl, it's not
conservative. Honor thy father and mother, and grandmother, of course;
didn't I teach you that?"

"What is it to be conservative?" Hulda asked, sitting before the fire,
while the Colonel ran over her straight feet and tall, willowy figure,
and stopped, a little chilled by her clear, dewy eyes.

"Conservative? why, it's never to rush on anything; to oppose rushing;
to--to be a bulwark against innovations. To prefer something you have
tried, and know."

"Like you?" asked Hulda.

"Yes, your benefactor, instead of having some impulsive passion. Of
course, you never loved in this place?"

"It is the only place I know. To be conservative, as you call it, I
must take my life and opportunity as I find them, like something I have
tried and know."

"Ah, Hulda! I see you have a radical, perverse something in you, to
twist my meaning so close. You do not belong to this vile spot, except
by consanguinity. It would be perfectly conservative for you to look to
a better settlement."

"You have hinted that befo