so familiarly termed an "old girl," took their departure,
leaving Bristol, Fox, Mrs. Winslow and the melancholy pile of packages
surmounted by aromatic red herrings in a state of solemn, moody silence.

Bristol was first to break the stillness, which he did by asking rather
testily:

"You think Fox and I have had something to do with this, don't you?"

She looked at him a moment as if she would read his innermost thoughts,
and replied: "No, I don't! It comes from some of those strumpets of
mediums, and I would give a good deal--a good deal, mind you,
Bristol!--to know who it was. I'd--I'd----"

"What would you do?" asked Fox, putting her on her mettle for a savage
answer.

"I would either burn them out, poison them, push them over the falls, or
lie in wait for them and shoot them!"

Mrs. Winslow said this with as much sincerity and coolness as if giving
an estimate on any ordinary business transaction, and evidently meant
it.

"Oh, you wouldn't kill anybody, Winslow," replied Fox airily.

"Wouldn't I, though, Mr. Fox?" she rejoined with the old glitter in her
eyes and paleness upon her upper lip that had at an earlier period
worried the Rev. Mr. Bland; "wouldn't I? If you had fifty thousand
dollars in your trunk, I would kill you, appropriate the money, cut you
up and pack you in the trunk and ship you to the South--or some other
hot climate by the next express!"

She was just as earnest about the remark as she would have been in
carrying out the act; and after Fox had congratulated himself, both
aloud cheerfully and in his own mind very thankfully, that neither his
trunk, or for that matter his imagination, contained any such gorgeous
sum, he went to his own room for the night, leaving the very excited
Mrs. Winslow and the very calm Mr. Bristol to contemplate the groceries
and each other.

After a few minutes' brown study she suddenly turned to her companion
with: "Bristol, you and I are pretty good friends, aren't we?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"And haven't I always treated you pretty well?"

"Yes; with one exception."

"What is that?"

"The sleep-walking you did in my room."

"Oh, that's nothing, Bristol. Never happened but once, and won't occur
again. Otherwise I have treated you pretty well, haven't I?"

Bristol felt compelled to confess that she had.

"Well, then," she continued wheedlingly, "will you do me a favor?"

"What is it?"

"I want you to take a walk with me."

"Pretty late, W