nteresting creature he had so
unexpectedly and, as he thought, so strangely discovered there.

Arriving at Twiford's in the night, Johnson had sent him to bed there,
and pushed on himself with the negro property to Johnson's Cross-roads;
and, when he awakened late the next day, Levin had found a beautiful
wildflower of a young woman sitting by his pallet, looking into his
large soft eyes with her own long-lashed orbs of humid gray, and
brushing his dark auburn ringlets with her hand. As he had looked up
wonderingly, she had said to him:

"I have never seen a man before with his hair parted in the middle, but
I think I have dreamed of one."

"Who air you?" Levin asked.

"Me! Oh, I'm Hulda. I'm Patty Cannon's granddaughter."

"That wicked woman!" Levin exclaimed. "Oh, I can't believe that!"

"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.