"Dear Captain! pore honey!" she said; "to have his beautiful yaller hair tored out by the nigger hawk! Honey, he fell onto me, and I thought a bull had butted me in the stummick."

"He broke no limbs, Patty," the captain lisped, feeding himself in a dainty way - and Levin observed that his fork was silver, and his knife was a clasp-knife with a silver handle, that he had taken from his pocket"Chis! chis! if he had snapped my arm, the caravan must have gone without me to-night. I am sore, though, for Senor was a valiant wrestler."

"He'll git his pay, honey, when they sot him to work in Georgey an' flog him right smart, an' we spend the price of him fur punch. He, he! lovey lad!"

"I took this from him to-day when I searched him carefully," the captain said, handing Patty Cannon a piece of silver coin.

The woman, though she looked to be little more than fifty years of age, drew out spectacles of silver from an old leather case, and putting them on, spelled out the coin:

"George - three - eighteen - eighteen hunderd-and-fifteen!"

She threw up her head so quickly that the spectacles dropped from her nose, and Hulda caught them, and then Mrs. Cannon turned on Hulda with a ferocious expression and snatched the spectacles from her hand.

"Whar did the devil git it?" Patty Cannon asked.

"Ah! who knows?" the Captain lisped with pale nonchalance, giving one of those strong, piercing looks he sometimes afforded, right into the hostess's eyes. "It might be a coincidence: chis! chito! A shilling of a certain year is no rare thing. But, Madame Cannon, it becomes slightly curious when six such shillings, all numbered with that significant year, came out of the same pocket!"

With this he passed five shillings of the same appearance over to the hostess, and she put on her spectacles again and looked at them all, and dropped them in her lap with a weary yet frightened expression, and muttered:

"Van Dorn, who kin he be?"

"That is of less consequence, my dear, than whether we can afford to sell him."

The Captain was now looking at Hulda with the same strong intentness, but her eyes were in her plate; and, though Madame Cannon looked at her, too, with both interest and dislike, Hulda quietly ate on, unconscious of their regard.

"Shoo!" the woman said; "people kin scare theirselves every day if they mind to. We've got him, and, if he knows anything, it's all in that nigger noddle. So eat and be derned!"

"My guardian angel," the Captain remarked, with a blush and a stronger lisp, "you may not have observed that I have never ceased to eat, while you immediately lost your appetite. What will you do with the shillings?"

Mrs. Cannon took them from her lap, and rose as if she meant to throw them out of the window, her angry face bearing that interpretation.

"Stop, remarkable woman," the Captain said, pulling his soft, flaxen mustache with the diamond-flashing hand, "let your fecund resources stop and counsel, for I am only looking to your happiness, that has so abundantly blessed my life and banished every superstition from my heart till I believe in neither ghosts, nor God, nor devil, while you believe in all of them, and give yourself many such unnecessary friends and intruders. Chito! chito! as the Cubans say, and hear my suggestion before you throw away those shillings!"