. The old white's temper was up at this sudden check, but
the woman behind him had a stronger will than he. She brought him to
a straining halt, and then she spoke to her brother.

"You let us pass!" she said, sternly.

"Where are you going?" he demanded. He looked uneasily at Dorothy as
he spoke. It was easy enough to see that she was a restraint upon
him, and that fair, timid face in its blue hood held his indignation
well in check.

"We are going to New Salem," replied Madelon. "Let us pass."

"I want to know what you are going for," said Eugene; and he tried to
speak with fire, but he still looked furtively at Dorothy.

Nobody had ever suspected how that lovely face of hers had been in
his dreams, unless it had been for a time Dorothy herself. Nobody had
noticed in meeting, of a Sabbath day long since, when Dorothy had
first returned from her Boston school, sundry glances which had
passed between a pair of soft blue eyes in the parson's pew and a
pair of fiery black ones in the singing-seats.

Dorothy, half guiltily in those days, had arranged her curls and tied
on her Sunday bonnets with a view to Eugene Hautville's eyes; and
always, when she returned from meeting, had gone straight to her
looking-glass, to be sure that she had looked fair in them. But
nobody had ever known, and scarcely she herself.

She had come to think later that she had perhaps been mistaken, for
never had Eugene made other advances to her than by those ardent
glances; and Burr had come, and she had turned to him, and thought of
Eugene Hautville only when he crossed her way, and then with a
mixture of pique and shame. Never by any chance did her eyes meet his
nowadays of a Sabbath day, and she listened coldly to his sweet tenor
in the hymns. Now, suddenly, she looked straight up in his face and
met his eyes, and a pink flush came into her white cheeks.

"Please to let us pass," she said, in her gentle tone, which had yet
a tincture of command in it. Any woman as fair as she, who has a
right understanding of her looking-glass, has, however soft she may
be, the instincts of a queen within her. She felt a proud resentment
for her own old folly and for Eugene's old slighting of her, and
indignation at his present attitude as she looked up at him with
sudden daring.

Eugene threw back his head haughtily. "She wants to see Burr Gordon,"
he thought, and would have died rather than let her think he would
stand in the way of it. He jerked th