alarm.

Not all the regret and compunction expressed by Master Hightower could
quell the rising surge of anger in the father's breast. His brow grew
dark, and Miss Thusa's darker still.

"To lock up a poor, little motherless thing, such a night as this!"
muttered she, putting her spectacles, the thermometer of her anger, on
the top of her head. "To leave her there to perish. Why, the wild beasts
themselves would be ashamed of such behaviour, let alone a man."

"Don't, Miss Thusa," whispered Helen, "he is sorry as he can be. I was
bad, too, for I didn't mind him."

"I do not wonder at your displeasure, sir," said the master, turning to
Mr. Gleason, with dignity; "I deserve to feel it, for my unpardonable
forgetfulness. But I must say in my defence, I never should have thought
of such a punishment, had it not been suggested by yourself."

"Suggested by me!" repeated Mr. Gleason, angrily; "I don't know what you
mean, sir!"

"Your eldest daughter brought me a message, to this effect--that you
desired me to try solitary confinement in the dark, as the most
effectual means to bring her to obedience; having no other dark place, I
shut her in my desk, and never having deposited a living bundle there
before, I really think I ought to be pardoned for forgetting her."

"Is it possible my daughter carried such a message to you from _me_,"
cried Mr. Gleason, "I never sent it."

"Just like Mittie," cried Miss Thusa, "she's always doing something to
spite Helen. I heard her say myself once, that she despised her, because
everybody took her part. Take her part--sure enough. The Lord Almighty
knows that a person has to be abused before we _can_ take their part."

"Hush!" exclaimed Mr. Gleason, mortified as this disclosure of Mittie's
unamiable disposition, and shocked at the instance first made known to
him. "This is not a proper time for such remarks; I don't wish to hear
them."

"You ought to hear them, whether you want to or not," continued the
indomitable spinster, "and I don't see any use in palavering the truth.
Master Hightower and Mr. Arthur knows it by this time, and there's no
harm in talking before them. Helen's an uncommon child. She's no more
like other children, than my fine linen thread is like twisted tow. She
won't bear hard pulling or rough handling. Mittie isn't good to her
sister. You ought to have heard Helen's mother talk about it before she
died. She was afraid of worrying you, she was so tender of your