hed and
waited, and bided my time as long as I intend to, and I am too old to
work as I have done."

"It seems to me a queer thing you have hid it so long, so many years,
when you might have turned it into gold. The old General ought to pay
well for the paper. Let's see it."

The response was in a man's voice, harsh and discordant, and, leaning
slightly forward, Regina saw the old servant from the parsonage
standing immediately beneath the window, fanning herself with her
white apron, and earnestly conversing in subdued tones with a
middle-aged man, whose flushed and rather bloated face still retained
traces of having once been, though in a coarse style, handsome. In
length of limb, and compact muscular development he appeared an
athlete, a very son of Anak; but habitual dissipation had set its
brutalizing stamp upon his countenance, and the expression of the
inflamed eyes and sensuous mouth was sinister and forbidding, as if a
career of vice had left the stain of irremediable ruin on his swarthy
face.

As he concluded his remark and stretched out his hand, Hannah laughed
scornfully.

"Do you take me for a fool? Who else would travel around with a match
and a loaded fuse in the same pocket? I haven't it with me; it is too
valuable to be carried about. The care of that scrap of paper has
tormented me all these years, worse than the tomb devils did the
swine that ran down into the sea to cool off; and if I have changed
its hiding-place once, I have twenty times. If the old General
doesn't pay well for it, I shall gnaw off my fingers, on account of
the sin it has cost me. I was an honest woman and could have faced
the world until that night--so many years ago; and since then I have
carried a load on my soul that makes me--even Hannah Hinton, who
never flinched before man or woman or beast--a coward, a quaking
coward! Sin stabs courage, lets it ooze out, as a knife does blood.
Don't bully me, Peleg! I won't bear it. Jeer me if you dare."

"Never fear, Aunt Hannah. I have no mind to do theatre on a small
scale, and show you Satan reproving sin. After all, what is your bit
of _petit larceny_, your thin slice of theft, in comparison with my
black work? But really I don't in the least begrudge my sins, if only
I might have my revenge,--if I could only get Minnie in my power."

"Bah! don't sicken me with any more of the Minnie dose! I hate the
name as I do small-pox or cholera. A pretty life you have led,
dancing after