s through the
hall, outer the kitchen inter the yard, ez if he was justice of the
peace; and when he gets there he sez, 'Fetch out his hoss and harness
up, and be blamed quick about it, and tell Ned Blandford that Dick
Demorest hez got to leave town to-night, and ez ther ain't a blamed
puritanical shadbelly in this hull town ez would let a hoss go on hire
Sunday night, he guesses he'll hev to borry his.' And afore I could
say Jack Robinson, he tackles the hoss up and drives outer the yard,
flinging this two-dollar-and-a-half-piece behind him ez if I wur a
Virginia slave and he was John C. Calhoun hisself. I'd a chucked it
after him if it hadn't been the Lord's Day, and it mout hev provoked
disturbance."

"Mr. Demorest is worldly, but one of Edward's old friends," said Mrs.
Blandford, with a slight kindling of her eyes, "and he would not have
refused to aid him in what might be an errand of grace or necessity. You
can keep the money, Ezekiel, as a gift, not as a wage. And go to bed. I
will sit up for Mr. Blandford."

She passed out and up the staircase into her bedroom, pausing on her way
to glance into the empty back parlor and take the lamp from the table.
Here she noticed that her husband had evidently changed his clothes
again and taken a heavier overcoat from the closet. Removing her own
wraps she again descended to the lower apartment, brought out the volume
of sermons, placed it and the lamp in the old position, and with
her abstracted eyes on the page fell into her former attitude. Every
suggestion of the passionate, half-frenzied woman in the kitchen of the
house only four doors away, had vanished; one would scarcely believe she
had ever stirred from the chair in which she had formally received
her husband two hours before. And yet she was thinking of herself and
Demorest in that kitchen.

His prompt and decisive response to her appeal, as shown in this last
bold and characteristic action, relieved, while it half piqued her. But
the overruling destiny which had enabled her to bring him from his hotel
to her mother's house unnoticed, had protected them while there, had
arrested a dangerous meeting between him and herself and her husband in
her own house, impressed her more than all. It imparted to her a hideous
tranquillity born of the doctrines of her youth--Predestination! She
reflected with secret exultation that her moral resolution to fly from
him and her conscientiously broken promise had been the direct