ll the crowd knew who his instigator was;
but, like a man, he died and never told."

"Van Dorn, you hurt me," Patty broke out; "I cannot laugh to-day, and
these tales depress me, honey. Where shall we go when you are well?"

"_La gente pone, y Dios dispone!_ Stay yet, and chat awhile. I would
not, for the world, see you discouraged,--you, unfathomable angel! who,
in this mangy corner of the globe, looked abroad over the land like
Catherine, from her sterile throne, over the mighty steppes, and levied
war upon the hopes of man. How you did trouble Uncle Sam, great Patty,
robbing his mails for years between Baltimore and the Brandywine! Young
Nichols still serves his term for that shrewd trick you taught him, of
cutting the mail-bags open as he sat, with the corrupted drivers, on the
crowded stage, stealthily throwing the valuable letters in the road, to
be gathered by a following horseman.[10] _Es admirable!_ Young Perry
Hutton, reared by you to kidnap, then to drive the mail and filch its
letters--a Delaware boy, too--perished on the gallows for killing a
mail-driver more scrupulous than himself, who detected him under his
mask.[11] Young Moore--was he your connection, darling?--stopping the
mail-stage at the Gunpowder Forge, fell under the driver's buckshot.[12]
And Hare--"

"Captain," called Patty, "I see men and boys all over the fields yonder,
running and digging and dragging away the bresh. Is them ole buryins of
mine suspected?"

"Pshaw! darling, 'tis your warm imagination, and Joe's unkindness. I
would make you happy with the memory of your daring acts. _Que
maravilla!_ In your little pets you stamped a life out, when another
woman would only stamp her foot. There was that morning when your fire
would not burn, and a little black child bawled with the cold and
angered you; if its body is ever dug up where it was laid, the skull
cracked with the billet of wood will tell the tale. You once suspected
me of truantry from your charms--_Quedo, quedo!_ exacting dame--and the
pale offspring of poor Hagar you threw upon the blazing backlog, and
grimly watched it burn. The pursued children whose cries you could not
still, that yet are stilled till hell shall have a voice, not even you
can number. Evangelists, O Patty, dipping their pens in blood of saints
to write your crimes, would make the next age infidel, where you will
seem impossible, and all of us mythology!"

"Be still!" the woman cried, rising and walking, in