nd it passed them headlong into the open air; passed them and
_dropped apart_, as it were, into the stream before the door.

For many years thereafter the slumbers of Farmer Hopkins were disturbed
by visions of what he saw when the two two parts of that terrible
apparition were taken from the water.

There lay Hannah Lee, no longer beautiful and fresh as the morning, but
blackened, crisped, scorched and shrunken, with all her wealth of silken
hair burned to ashes, with all her clear loveliness of complexion gone
forever. And there lay Jason Fletcher, unburned,--so carefully had she
covered him as she fled,--but senseless, and to all appearance a corpse.

Thus Hannah Lee went through fire and water, even unto worse than death,
for the sake of him she loved. And verily she had her reward.

When the sun rose, there only remained a black and ugly pit to mark the
place where Deacon Fletcher's house had stood.

And of all its inmates, only Jason--carefully watched and tended at the
house of Peter Hopkins--was left to tell the tale of that night's
tragedy. And he, poor fellow, had no tale to tell, the delirium of fever
having been upon him all the night. It was very doubtful if he would
recover,--more than doubtful. Not one in a thousand could do so, with
such an exposure at the critical period of his sickness.

Even more tenderly, with even more anxiety, did all in the country round
minister to poor Hannah Lee. The story of her love, of her bravery, of
her heroic self-abnegation, spread throughout all those parts, and there
was no end to what was done for her by neighbors and friends. So widely
did her fame spread, that people from thirty, forty, and even fifty
miles away came to see her, or sent messages, or money, or delicacies to
comfort her.

What _could_ be done for them was done, and they both lived.

When Jason Fletcher arose from his sick bed, he arose another man than
the Jason Fletcher who was thrown down in the arbor by Farmer Hopkins.
He went sick, a dependent, simple, good-hearted, though impatient boy,
worn out by the constraints of twenty years, but capable of future
cultivation and improvement; he arose from his sickness a moody,
cross-grained, dogged and impatient man, whose only memories were tinged
red with wrong, and made bitter by thought of what he had endured. It
was little matter to him that all his father's broad acres were now his
own--the thought of the horrible death his parents had died onl