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."

"Must you read such things to her?"

"I think that is the only influence I have over her. Sometimes she looks
so horribly at me, and mutters such threats, that I fear she is going to
kill me, and so I hasten to get her favorite books and read to her the
dark crimes of desperate men and women, and she laughs and listens like
one hearing pleasant tales. My soul grows sick, but I see she is
fascinated, and I read on, trying to close my mind to the cruel
narrative."

"Huldy, air you a purty devil drawin' me outen my heart to ruin me?"

"No, no; oh, do not believe that! I suppose all men are cruel, and all I
ever knew were negro-traders, or I should believe you too gentle to live
by that brutal work. I looked at you lying in this bed, and pity and
love came over me to see you, so young and fair, entering upon this life
of treachery and sin."

Levin gazed at her intently, and then raised up and looked around him,
and peered down through the old dormers into the green yard, and the
floody river hastening by with such nobility.

"Air we watched?" he inquired.

"By none in this house. All the men are away, making ready for the hunt
to-morrow night. The river is watched, and you would not be let escape
very far, but in this house I am your jailer. Joe told me he would sell
me if I let you get away."

Levin listened and looked once more ardently and wonderingly at her, and
fell upon his knees at her uncovered feet.

"Then, Huldy, hear me, lady with such purty eyes,--I must be