which the full light
of fire and candles gleamed, "conservative, is she? Well, let her
enter!"

As he made one step to penetrate the darkness with his dazzled eyes,
Patty Cannon silently thrust against his heart a huge horse-pistol and
pulled the trigger: a flash of fire from the sharp flint against the
fresh powder in the pan lit up the hall an instant, and the heavy body
of the guest fell backward before his chair, and over him leaned the
woman a moment, still as death, with the heavy pistol clubbed, ready to
strike if he should stir.

He did not move, but only bled at the large lips, ghastly and
unprotesting, and the cold blue eyes looked as natural as life.

Patty Cannon took the chair and counted the money.

CHAPTER XLII.

BEAKS.

The wind was blowing in spells, like crowds moved during an argument, at
one time mute as awe, again murmurous, and sometimes mutinous and
fierce, when Hulda, having heard a few words only of her grandmother's
overture, glided from the old tavern and passed on into the night,
terrified but not unthinking, till she reached some large pines that
seemed to say over her head, high up towards heaven: "Where now, oh
where, oh-h-h wh-h-here, in the co-o-o-old, co-o-o-old w-h-h-h-ilderness
of the wh-h-h-orld?"

"Anywhere!" answered Hulda, not afraid of cold or nature, so intense had
become her fear of men and women. "Still, where? I might go to Cannon's
Ferry and tell my tale to those hard-hearted merchants, or to Seaford
and beg a shelter somewhere there; but first I will try our old cottage
home again."

She went so quietly up the field lane that dogs could not have heard
her, and, as she approached the little house, saw lights in it, and soon
heard voices and saw moving figures within.

Knowing every knot-hole and crack of the little dwelling, Hulda soon had
a perfect view of the contents of the house by standing in the dark, a
little distance from one of the low, small windows.

A table stood in the middle of the main room, on which was an old
mouldered chest with the earth clinging to it, and beside the chest were
bones and shreds of clothing on the riven lid of the chest.

"You swear that the evidence you give shall be the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God!" exclaimed a small,
chunky, Irish-looking person, presenting a book to be kissed by a
scrawny, chinless, goose-necked lad, whom Hulda immediately recognized
as Cyrus James.

"Sha