" said Tom
familiarly. "We thought we would drop in to warm by your comfortable
blaze, and see if you are in need of any little things we can get for
you. By the way," he added, putting his hand into his pocket, "it's a
long time since I gave anything toward buying a jar of snuff. Take that
till I come again."

"I see the captain has returned; and quite unexpectedly, too, I am
told," said Mark, pulling off his dripping overcoat and hanging it upon
a wooden peg in the chimney-corner. "I wish he might find the man who
wrote him that threatening letter and broke up his business. I am sure
he would make it warm for him."

"Every one of them triflin' hounds had oughter have a hickory wore out
on their bare backs," said the old woman, in tones which sounded so
nearly like the snarl of some wild animal that Tom Allison shuddered,
although he had often heard her speak that way before.

"Do you know who they are?"

"Of course she knows who they are," exclaimed Mark. "The question is, is
she at liberty to tell."

"Mebbe I know, an' mebbe I don't," said the woman, with a contortion of
her wrinkled face that was intended for a wink and a smile. "I aint one
of them folks who tells all they know. I am a master-hand to keep things
to myself when they are told to me for a secret."

"Everybody knows that, and it is the reason why everybody is so willing
to trust you," said Tom; and seeing that he had not given the old woman
quite enough to loosen her tongue, he turned to Mark and added: "I was
sure we would forget it, we are so careless. We came away from your
house without ever once thinking of that side of bacon we were going to
bring to Mrs. Brown."

"I knew we had forgotten something," said Mark regretfully, "and sure's
you live that's it. But it will keep till we come again, won't it,
mother? Who did you say wrote that letter?"

"You're very good boys to be always thinkin' of a poor crippled body
like me, who can't get about to hear a bit of news on account of the
pesky rheumatiz that bothers me night an' day," whined the old woman.
"Now when I was a bright, lively young gal----"

"Did I understand you to say that Jack Gray had something to do with the
abduction of his mother's overseer?" interrupted Mark, who knew it would
never do to let the old woman get started on the story of her girlhood.
"You astonish me; you do for a fact!"

"I disremember that I have spoke Jack Gray's name at all sense you two
have been here,"