s gone away. Pore Jack! Roxy!
Roxy! Roxy!" the mourner at the window above chattered sleepily to the
nodding bird.

The negro at the corner of the old warehouse, half covered by the
willow's shade, peered up with blood-shotten eyes to distinguish the
covering on the bird-tamer's head.

He saw Jack Wonnell sitting backward on the window-frame, swaying in and
out, as he lazily tempted the mocking-bird to sing, and once the
bell-crown hat, so singular to view, came in full relief against the
gray sky.

"It's ole Meshach," said the negro, silently, with desperate eyes. "I
hoped it wasn't. Dar is de hat, sho!"

He cocked his huge horse-pistol, and took aim directly from below.

"Pore Jack! Pore Jack! I reckon Roxy won't have pore Jack, caze Tommy
won't sing. Sing, Tommy, little Roxy's pet: 'Pore Jack! Pore--'"

The great horse-pistol boomed on the night, and in the smoke the negro
rushed into the bush and sought the fields.

Down from his seat in the window-sill the witless villager came
backward, all bestrewn, measuring his body in the sand, where he lay,
silent as the other shadows, with his arms extended in the frenzy of
death, and his mouth wide open and flowing blood.

Jack Wonnell had paid the penalty of being out of fashion.

The mocking-bird, aroused by the loud report, leaped into the empty
window-sill to seek his tutor, and set up the lesson he had learned too
late:

"Poor Jack! Poor Jack! Roxy! Roxy! Roxy!" came screaming on the night,
and all was still.

* * * * *

William Tilghman was driving back from Whitehaven in the melancholy
thoughts inspired by the departure of his cousin, whom he had at last
seen go into the great wilderness of the world the passive companion of
her husband, like the wife of Cain, driven forth with him, when the
carriage was arrested at the ancient Presbyterian church--which
overlooked Princess Anne from the opposite bank of the little river--by
a woman almost throwing herself under the wheels.

"Why, Lord sakes! it's our Virgie!" cried Rhoda Holland.

The girl, with all the energy of dread, sprang into the carriage by
William Tilghman's side and threw her arms around him:

"Save me! Save me!"

"What ails you, Virgie?" cried the young man, assuringly. "You are in no
danger, child!"

"I am sold," the girl gasped, with terror on her tongue and in her wild
eyeballs. "Miss Vesty's sold me to her Uncle Allan. He's sent the
kidnappers after