"What Comforter?" sighed Virgie, and there seemed a great blank, and then she heard a scream - was it she that screamed so? - and she was trying with all her might to get somewhere, and was fainting in the labor, but trying again and again, and then a calmness that was like gentle awe, strange because so painless, spread into her nature, and she only listened.

"My daughter," said a voice, "my own child! Call me 'father,' and say I am forgiven."

"Father! forgiven!" she murmured, and felt a warm face, that yet could not warm her own, shedding tears and kissing her, and close to it her arms were thrown tight, as if she never could let go, and everything was music, but wonderful.

She feared she must fall if she did not hold to him. Who was it that called her "daughter"? Why came those cold stars so close, as if to spy upon him?

Oh, holy purity, that held so fast and did not know, but trusted nature's quivering embrace! She wrestled with something, like a rock of ice, to move her eyes and see, or ere she was dashed down forever, the eyes that gushed for her. They were her master's.

"Master," she said, "whose am I?"

"Mine before God. Pure to my heart as your white sister, Vesta! White as young love, in fondness and trust forever!"

"And mother?" gurgled the girl's low notes; "where is she?"

"Yonder," said the Judge, "in Heaven, that will judge me, whither she winged in bearing thee to me!"

A happy light came over Virgie's face. She kissed her father twice, as if the second kiss was meant for her happier sister, and, raising her arms towards the sky he pointed to, whispered, "Freedom!" and died upon his breast.

CHAPTER XL.

HULDA BELEAGUERED.

Owen Daw brought the news of the repulse from Cowgill House and the wounding of Captain Van Dorn.

"Where is the little tacker, Levin?" asked Patty Cannon, furiously.

"Arrested, I 'spect," cried O'Day, boldly; "Van Dorn's hit in the throat."

"He'll not talk much, then," muttered the woman; "his time had to come. Where will I find another lover at my age? Why, honey," she chuckled to herself, in a looking-glass, "that son of his'n may come back. He's took a shine to Huldy: why not to me?"

At the idea another hideous thought came to her mind: to settle Hulda's fate in her young lover's absence, and monopolize the corrupting power over Levin Dennis, if he ever lived to see Johnson's Cross-roads again.

As individual fugitives returned, confirming the decisive repulse of the band, Patty Cannon's face grew dark, and her oaths low and deep; Cyrus James heard her say:

"If I could only hang some one for this! Joe Johnson's the white-livered sneak that would not go. I've hanged a better son-in-law."