eaven as well as
you when she dies,' he continued passionately; 'as well as any of us; as
well as the minister! What did you come here for? Haven't you driven my
life almost to death ever since I can remember; and isn't that enough,
but you must come here and kill my darling, my dear, my love?'

He knelt where she lay on the ground.

'Hear the boy,' cried the father, in a rage equally terrible and far
less noble. 'Hear the boy go on about the baggage!'

The boy still knelt, unheeding anything save the senseless form beside
him.

'Wasn't it enough that you should wanton with a young woman in this
style, but you must do it on the holy Sabbath day?' the old man
continued. 'Mother,' he cried, jerking the words over his shoulder at
his wife, who stood behind him, 'do you bring such profligates as this
into the world, to disgrace a pious man's fame and bring his house to
sorrow? Let him go forth--my oldest and youngest born, and eat husks
with the swine; he shall have no portion, and there shall be no fatted
calf killed when he returns!'

Still the youth knelt, and now his head had fallen upon the prostrate
body, and he was covering her cold hand with kisses.

'Look here, young man,' the father cried, 'leave go that girl's hand and
come into the house; as true as there's a God in Israel I'll teach you
what a stout rawhide is made of!'

Just at this juncture neighbor Hopkins and his wife, warned by
quick-flying little Martha that something terrible was going on at
Deacon Fletcher's, appeared, hurrying towards the spot.

Peter Hopkins was considered a somewhat ungodly but a very just man, and
while the Deacon most highly disapproved of his spiritual state, and
doubted that he and 'vital piety' were strangers, he still respected
Peter's rugged honesty and directness of purpose, and ranked him
foremost among the 'world's people.' He was a man of powerful frame and
strong impulses, and when his feelings were aroused he stood in awe of
no man, high or low. When he forced his way into the arbor, therefore,
the Deacon paused in his invective and made no remonstrance.

Peter Hopkins at once put the worst construction on the scene before
him. He saw in the son of Deacon Fletcher only a seducer, in poor Hannah
Lee only a victim, and his blood rose to boiling heat. Without pausing
to ask any question, grasping at one guess, as he supposed, the whole
sad history, he seized Jason by the collar, and, lifting him up, dashed
him vi