from me yer by your
fire, and my voice outside the door will keep her in yer till day."

McLane went to his portmanteau and unlocked it, and took out rolls of
notes and a buckskin bag of gold.

The yellow lustre seemed to flash in Patty Cannon's rich black eyes,
like the moon overhead upon a well.

"How beautiful it do shine, Cunnil!" she said. "Nothing is like it fur a
friend. Youth an' beauty has to go together to be strong, but, by God!
gold kin go it alone."

He counted out two piles, one of notes and one of gold, using his gold
spectacles upon his hawk nose to do so, and said:

"Patty, I've bought many a grandchild _with_ the old woman, but this is
the first child I have bought _from_ the grandmother. Now fulfil your
contract and earn your money!"

He put his spectacles in his pocket, stretched his gaitered slippers
before the fire, looked at his watch and let the crystal seal drop on
his sleek abdomen, and his vitreous, blue-green eyes filled with color
like twin vases in a druggist's window. He was ready and anxious to
substitute the ruffian for the tempter.

Patty Cannon, glancing at the money on the table, and bearing a lamp,
started at once through the house, calling "Huldy! Huldy!"

Nothing responded to the name.

She searched from room to room, peering everywhere, and made the circuit
twice, and, taking a lantern, went into the windy night and round the
bounds of the old tavern.

The house was easily explored, having no cellar nor outbuildings, and
the trap to the slave-pen was locked fast. The girl's shawl and hat were
also gone.

"She's heard us, I reckon," the old woman muttered; "she's run away an'
ruined me. Joe's cruel to me; Van Dorn is gone; without gold I go to the
poor-house. McLane is pitiless--"

She dwelt upon the sentence, and, with only an instant's hesitation,
turned into the tavern again and buttoned the outer door.

Beneath her feather bed she reached her hand and drew out a large
object, took a horn from the mantel and sprinkled it with something
contained there, and then, in a bold, masculine walk, stamping hard went
in the dark up the open stairs again, talking, as she advanced, loudly,
complaisantly, or sternly, as if to some truant she was coaxing or
forcing. Finally, at McLane's chamber, she knocked hard, crying:

"Open, Cunnil! Here's the bashful creatur! She daren't disobey no mo'.
Step out and kiss her, Cunnil!"

"Ha!" said McLane, throwing open his door, out of