e and furtively watched Madelon preparing
supper.

She spoke never a word. Her red lips were a red line of resolution.
Her despairing eyes were fixed upon her work without a glance for
either of them.

However, when supper was set on the table, and she had blown the horn
at the door and waited, and nobody else came, she turned with sudden
life upon her father and her brothers, who had already begun to taste
the smoking hasty-pudding. "Where are the others?" she cried out,
shrilly. "Where are Louis and Richard?"

The men glanced at one another under sullen eyelids, but nobody
answered. "Where are they?" she repeated.

"You know as much about it as we do," Eugene said, then, in his soft
voice.

Madelon stood with wild eyes flashing from one to another. Then she
gave a sudden spring out of the room, and they heard her swift feet
on the chamber-stairs. The men ate their hasty-pudding, bending their
brows over it as if it were a witches' mess instead of their ordinary
home fare.

Madelon came back so rapidly that she seemed to fly over the stairs.
They scarcely heard the separate taps of her feet. She burst into the
room and faced them in a sort of fury. "They have gone!" she gasped
out. "Louis and Richard have gone! Where are they?"

David Hautville slowly shook his head. Then he took another spoonful
of pudding. The brothers bent with stern assiduity over their bowls.

"You have hid them away!" shrieked Madelon. "You have hid them away
lest Louis own that he saw blood on my hand, and Richard that he gave
me his knife! What have you done with them?"

Not one of the three men spoke. They swallowed their pudding.

"Father! Abner! Eugene!" said Madelon, "tell me what you have done
with my brothers, who can testify that I killed Lot Gordon, and save
Burr?"

David Hautville wiped his mouth on his sleeve, rose up, and took his
daughter firmly by the arm.

"We know no more what has become of your brothers than you do," said
he. "If they have gone away for the reason you say, your old father
would be the first to bring them back, if you were guilty as you say,
daughter of mine though you be. But we know well enough, wherever
your brothers have gone, and for whatever cause they have gone, that
you have done nothing worse then go daft, as women will, to shield a
fellow that's used you ill. You shall put us to no more shame while I
am your father and you under my roof. Abner, fill up a bowl with the
pudding."

Madel