ie," commented Antonia, biting a fresh thread, "he would
be none the worse for a stout piece of cloth to his garment."

"But we have naught to match with it. I would like to set in a little
heresy cut from one of the Sieur de la Tour's good Huguenot doublets."

The girlish faces, bent opposite, grew placid with domestic interest.
Marie's cheeks ripened by the fire, but the whiter Hollandaise warmed
only through the lips. This hall's glow made more endurable the image of
Jonas Bronck's hand. "When was it cut off, Antonia?" murmured Marie,
stopping to thread a needle.

The perceptible blight again fell over Antonia's face as she replied,--

"After he had been one day dead."

"Then he did not grimly lop it off himself?"

"Oh, no," whispered Antonia with deep sighing. "Mynheer the doctor did
that, on his oath to my husband. He was the most learned cunning man in
medicine that ever came to our colony. He kept the hand a month in his
furnace before it was ready to send to me."

"Did Monsieur Bronck, before he died, tell you his intention to do
this?" pressed Marie, feeling less interest in the Dutch embalmer's
method than in the sinuous motive of a man who could leave such a
bequest.

"Yes, madame."

"I do marvel at such an act!" murmured the lady of St. John, challenging
Jonas Bronck's loyal widow to take up his instant defense.

"Madame, he was obliged to do it by a dream he had."

"He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?" smiled Marie.

"Yes," responded Antonia innocently, "and all manner of evil fortune. I
have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me
everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would
fall not only on me but on every one who loved me."

The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of
superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas
Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could
she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the
continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature
a secret one. Shame, gratitude, the former usages of her life, and a
thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And
if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a
dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her
from her ghastly