day, while chopping wood, severely sprained my right wrist.
My mother had bound it up and put my arm a sling, so that I could not
use it, and I therefore remained at home while my father and Dan were
out. The only persons in the house besides my mother, Kathleen, and
myself, being Biddy and Dio. Rose had gone to assist the wife of a
settler at some distance whose child was ill. I had been kept awake by
the pain my wrist caused me during the night, and while attempting to
read had fallen asleep, when I was aroused by the sound of the rough
voices of two men at the front door demanding admittance, and abusing
Biddy in no measured terms for refusing to let them in.

"It'd be mighty curious, now, if I'd be afther lettin' strangers into
the house while the cap'n is away," answered Biddy, who had evidently
seen them coming, and had confronted them on the threshold; "in here you
don't put your feet 'till the masther comes home to give ye lave, an'
unless yez keep more civil tongues in your head that'll not be likely."

"Are you the only person in the house?" asked one of the men.

"An' what if I am the only person? I am as good as a dozen such
spalpeens as you!" cried Biddy in high tones.

"You've got as good as a dozen tongues in your head, you saucy jade,"
answered one of the men, with a laugh.

"Saucy or not saucy, you don't come in here. I'm left in charge, with
the mistress busy in one room an' my ould mither, who came all the way
out from Ireland when I was a slip of a girl, sick in bed in another, so
I'll ax you not to spake so loudly, or you'll be afther disturbing them.
Now just sit down on the bank outside 'till the cap'n comes, or mount
your horses and ride away about your business."

"Come, come, Mistress Sharptongue, whether the cap'n shows himself or
not, we intend to look round the house inside and out. We are hunting
for a runaway nigger, and we understand that Captain Loraine has a black
boy, and if he is not the one we are looking for, he's pretty sure to
know where the other is. These free niggers ought to be hung up on the
nearest trees wherever they are to be found; they are a pest to the
country!"

"Sure is it Pater ye mane!" exclaimed Biddy in an indignant tone;
"nigger though he may be, he is more honest than many a white man."

"Keep a civil tongue in your head, Misess Impudence or it may be the
worse for you," said one of the men.

Biddy gave a scornful laugh.

"I'll be after t'achi