larm," he answered, "as true as God's
above us, you will feel my hand on your throat! It's my turn now, miss;
and I am not to be trifled with. Will you have me for your husband--yes
or no?"

"No!" she answered, loudly and firmly.

I burst open the door, and seized him as he lifted his hand on her. He
had not suffered from the nervous derangement which had weakened me,
and he was the stronger man of the two. Naomi saved my life. She struck
up his pistol as he pulled it out of his pocket with his free hand and
presented it at my head. The bullet was fired into the air. I tripped
up his heels at the same moment The report of the pistol had alarmed
the house. We two together kept him on the ground until help arrived.

CHAPTER XII. THE END OF IT.

JOHN JAGO was brought before the magistrate, and John Jago was
identified the next day.

The lives of Ambrose and Silas were, of course, no longer in peril, so
far as human justice was concerned. But there were legal delays to be
encountered, and legal formalities to be observed, before the brothers
could be released from prison in the characters of innocent men.

During the interval which thus elapsed, certain events happened which
may be briefly mentioned here before I close my narrative.

Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, broken by the suffering which he had gone
through, died suddenly of a rheumatic affection of the heart. A codicil
attached to his will abundantly justified what Naomi had told me of
Miss Meadowcroft's influence over her father, and of the end she had in
view in exercising it. A life income only was left to Mr. Meadowcroft's
sons. The freehold of the farm was bequeathed to his daughter, with the
testator's recommendation added, that she should marry his "best and
dearest friend, Mr. John Jago."

Armed with the power of the will, the heiress of Morwick sent an
insolent message to Naomi, requesting her no longer to consider herself
one of the inmates at the farm. Miss Meadowcroft, it should be here
added, positively refused to believe that John Jago had ever asked
Naomi to be his wife, or had ever threatened her, as I had heard him
threaten her, if she refused. She accused me, as she accused Naomi, of
trying meanly to injure John Jago in her estimation, out of hatred
toward "that much-injured man;" and she sent to me, as she had sent to
Naomi, a formal notice to leave the house.

We two banished ones met the same day in the hall, with our
traveling-bags in o