r glance--for her lips were silent!--kept them back for
the instant.

But fiercer passions were at work among them, the desire for
retaliation and bitter hatred of the patroon, which speedily
dissipated any feeling of compunction or any tendency to waver,

"Kill him before his lady love!" cried a piercing voice from behind.
"Did they not murder my husband before me? Kill him, if you are men!"

And pressing irresistibly to the front appeared the woman whose
husband had been shot by the deputies. Her features, once soft and
matronly, flamed with uncontrollable passions.

"Are only the poor to suffer?" she continued, as her, burning eyes
fell on the young girl. "Shall she not feel what I did?"

"Back woman!" exclaimed one of the barn-burners, sternly. "This is no
place for you."

"Who has a better right to be here?" retorted the woman.

"But this is not woman's work!"

"Woman's work!" Fiercely. "As much woman's work as for his trull to
try to save him! Oh? let me see him!"

Gently the soldier, now partly recovering his strength, thrust the
young girl behind him, as pushing to the foreground the woman regarded
him vengefully. But in her eyes the hatred and bitter aversion faded
slowly, to be replaced by perplexity, which in turn gave way to
wonder, while the uplifted arm, raised threateningly against him, fell
passively to her side. At first, astonished, doubting, she did not
speak, then her lips moved mechanically.

"That is not the land baron," she cried, staring at him in disappointment
that knew no language.

"The woman is right," added a masquerader. "I know Mauville, too, for
he told me to go to the devil when I asked him to wait for his rent."

At this unexpected announcement, imprecations and murmurs of
incredulity were heard on all sides.

"Woman, would you shield your husband's murderer?" exclaimed an
over-zealous barn-burner.

"Shield him!" she retorted, as if aroused from a trance. "No, no! I'm
not here for that! But this is not the patroon. His every feature is
burned into my heart! I tell you it is not he. Yet he should be here.
Did I not see him driving toward the manor?" And she gazed wildly
around.

For a moment, following this impassioned outburst, their rough glances
sought one another's, and the soldier quickly took advantage of this
cessation of hostilities.

"No; I am not the land baron," he interposed.

"You aren't?" growled a disappointed lease-holder. "Then who the devil
are y