"Nor can I sometimes, till the sinful truth comes to me from her own bold lips. Oh, sir, I am not as wicked as she!"

"How kin you be wicked at all," Levin asked, "when you look so good? I would trust your face in jail."

"Would you? How happy that makes me, to be trusted by some one! Nobody seems to trust me here. My mother was never kind to me. Captain Van Dorn is kind, but too kind; I shrink from him."

"Where is your mother now?"

"She has gone south with her husband, to live in Florida for all the rest of her life, and we are all going there after father gets one more drove of slaves. You are one of father's men, I suppose?"

"Who is your father?"

"Joe Johnson."

"That man," murmured Levin. "Oh, no, it is too horrible."

"Do not hate me. Be a little kind, if you do, for I have watched you here hours, almost hoping you never might wake up, so beautiful and pure you looked asleep."

"And you - that's the way you look, Huldy. How kin you look so an' be his daughter."

"I am not his child, thank God! He is my stepfather."

"What is your name, then, besides Huldy?"

The girl blushed deeply and hesitated. Her fine gray eyes were turned upon her beautiful bare feet, white as the river that flashed beneath the window.

"Hulda Bruinton," she said, swallowing a sigh.

"Bruinton - where did I hear that name?" Levin asked; "some tale has been told me, I reckon, about him?"

"Yes, everybody knows it," Hulda said, in a voice of pain; "he was hanged for murder at Georgetown when I was a little child."

Levin could not speak for astonishment.

"I might as well tell you," she said, "for others will, if I conceal it. I can hardly remember my father. My mother soon married Joe and neglected me, and Aunt Patty, my grandmother, brought me up. She was kind to me, but, oh, how cruel she can be to others!"

"You talk as if you kin read, Huldy," said Levin, wishing to change so harsh a topic; "kin you?"

"Yes, I can read and write as well as if I had been to school. Some one taught me the letters around the tavern - some of the negro-dealers: I think it was Colonel McLane; and I had a gift for it, I think, because I began to read very soon, and then Aunt Patty made me read books to her - oh, such dreadful books!"

"What wair they, Huldy?"

"The lives of pirates and the trials of murderers - about Murrell's band and the poisonings of Lucretia Chapman, the execution of Thistlewood, and Captain Kidd's voyages; the last I read her was the story of Burke and Hare, who smothered people to death in the Canongate of Edinburgh last year to sell their bodies to the doctors."