She threw down the spade, ran forward, and seized the girl’s shoulder, while a scowl of mingled fear and rage darkened her countenance.

“You are watching, trailing me like a bloodhound!  Is it any of your business where I go?  Suppose I do choose to come here and say my prayers among the dead, while other folks are sound asleep in their beds, who has the right to hinder me?”

“Don’t tell stories, Hannah.  If you really said your prayers, you would never have come here to sell your soul to Satan.”

Tightening her clutch, the old woman shook her, as if she had been a slender weed, and an ashen hue settled upon her wrinkled features, as she cried in an unnaturally shrill quavering tone: 

“Aha! you were eavesdropping yesterday in the church.  How I wish to God it had all blown down on you!  And you watched me,—­you mean to disgrace me,—­to ruin me,—­to arrest me!  You do!  But you shall not!  I will strangle you first!”

“Take your hands off my shoulders, Hannah.  Do you think you can scare me with such wild desperate threats?  In the first place, I am not afraid to die, and in the second you know very well you dare not kill me.  Let go my shoulder, you hurt me.”

Very white but fearless, the young face was lifted to hers, and before those wrathful glittering eyes that flashed like blue steel, Hannah quailed.

“Will you promise not to betray me?”

“I will promise nothing while you threaten me.  Sit down, you are shaking all over as if you had an ague.  When I came here I had no intention of betraying you; I only wanted to prevent you from committing a sin.  Are you going to have a spasm?  Do sit down.”

Hannah’s teeth were chattering violently, and her trembling limbs seemed indeed unable to support her.  When she sank down on the stone base of the shaft, Regina stood before her, leaning more heavily upon the cane.

“I heard all that you said yesterday, yet I was not ‘eavesdropping.’  You came and stood under the window where I sat, and if you had looked up would have seen me.  When I learned you were engaged in a wicked plot, I determined to try to stop you before it was too late.  I followed you here, hoping that you would give that paper to me, instead of to that bold, bad man; for though you did very wrong, I can’t believe that you have a wicked cruel heart.”

She paused, but the only response was a deep groan, and; Hannah shrouded her face in her arms.

“Hannah, did my mother ever injure you, ever harm you, in any way?”

“Yes, she caused me to steal, and I shall hate her as long as I live.  I was as honest as an angel until she came that freezing night so many years ago, and showed me by her efforts, her anxiety to get the paper, how valuable it was.  Beside, it was on her account that my nephew went to destruction; and I was sure all the blame and suspicion would fall on her:  it seemed so clear that she stole the