Nothing responded to the name.

She searched from room to room, peering everywhere, and made the circuit twice, and, taking a lantern, went into the windy night and round the bounds of the old tavern.

The house was easily explored, having no cellar nor outbuildings, and the trap to the slave-pen was locked fast. The girl's shawl and hat were also gone.

"She's heard us, I reckon," the old woman muttered; "she's run away an' ruined me. Joe's cruel to me; Van Dorn is gone; without gold I go to the poor-house. McLane is pitiless"

She dwelt upon the sentence, and, with only an instant's hesitation, turned into the tavern again and buttoned the outer door.

Beneath her feather bed she reached her hand and drew out a large object, took a horn from the mantel and sprinkled it with something contained there, and then, in a bold, masculine walk, stamping hard went in the dark up the open stairs again, talking, as she advanced, loudly, complaisantly, or sternly, as if to some truant she was coaxing or forcing. Finally, at McLane's chamber, she knocked hard, crying:

"Open, Cunnil! Here's the bashful creatur! She daren't disobey no mo'. Step out and kiss her, Cunnil!"

"Ha!" said McLane, throwing open his door, out of which the full light of fire and candles gleamed, "conservative, is she? Well, let her enter!"

As he made one step to penetrate the darkness with his dazzled eyes, Patty Cannon silently thrust against his heart a huge horse-pistol and pulled the trigger: a flash of fire from the sharp flint against the fresh powder in the pan lit up the hall an instant, and the heavy body of the guest fell backward before his chair, and over him leaned the woman a moment, still as death, with the heavy pistol clubbed, ready to strike if he should stir.

He did not move, but only bled at the large lips, ghastly and unprotesting, and the cold blue eyes looked as natural as life.

Patty Cannon took the chair and counted the money.

CHAPTER XLII.

BEAKS.

The wind was blowing in spells, like crowds moved during an argument, at one time mute as awe, again murmurous, and sometimes mutinous and fierce, when Hulda, having heard a few words only of her grandmother's overture, glided from the old tavern and passed on into the night, terrified but not unthinking, till she reached some large pines that seemed to say over her head, high up towards heaven: "Where now, oh where, oh-h-h wh-h-here, in the co-o-o-old, co-o-o-old w-h-h-h-ilderness of the wh-h-h-orld?"

"Anywhere!" answered Hulda, not afraid of cold or nature, so intense had become her fear of men and women. "Still, where? I might go to Cannon's Ferry and tell my tale to those hard-hearted merchants, or to Seaford and beg a shelter somewhere there; but first I will try our old cottage home again."

She went so quietly up the field lane that dogs could not have heard her, and, as she approached the little house, saw lights in it, and soon heard voices and saw moving figures within.

Knowing every knot-hole and crack of the little dwelling, Hulda soon had a perfect view of the contents of the house by standing in the dark, a little distance from one of the low, small windows.