Hetty to look up reproachfully.

"These are high words to come from Thomas Hutter's darter, as Thomas
Hutter lies dying before her eyes," retorted Hurry.

"God be praised for that!--whatever reproach it may bring on my poor
mother, I am not Thomas Hutter's daughter."

"Not Thomas Hutter's darter!--Don't disown the old fellow in his last
moments, Judith, for that's a sin the Lord will never overlook. If
you're not Thomas Hutter's darter, whose darter be you?"

This question rebuked the rebellious spirit of Judith, for, in getting
rid of a parent whom she felt it was a relief to find she might own
she had never loved, she overlooked the important circumstance that no
substitute was ready to supply his place.

"I cannot tell you, Harry, who my father was," she answered more mildly;
"I hope he was an honest man, at least."

"Which is more than you think was the case with old Hutter? Well,
Judith, I'll not deny that hard stories were in circulation consarning
Floating Tom, but who is there that doesn't get a scratch, when an inimy
holds the rake? There's them that say hard things of me, and even you,
beauty as you be, don't always escape."

This was said with a view to set up a species of community of character
between the parties, and as the politicians are wont to express it, with
ulterior intentions. What might have been the consequences with one of
Judith's known spirit, as well as her assured antipathy to the speaker,
it is not easy to say, for, just then, Hutter gave unequivocal signs
that his last moment was nigh. Judith and Hetty had stood by the dying
bed of their mother, and neither needed a monitor to warn them of the
crisis, and every sign of resentment vanished from the face of the
first. Hutter opened his eyes, and even tried to feel about him with his
hands, a sign that sight was failing. A minute later, his breathing
grew ghastly; a pause totally without respiration followed; and, then,
succeeded the last, long drawn sigh, on which the spirit is supposed
to quit the body. This sudden termination of the life of one who had
hitherto filled so important a place in the narrow scene on which he had
been an actor, put an end to all discussion.

The day passed by without further interruption, the Hurons, though
possessed of a canoe, appearing so far satisfied with their success as
to have relinquished all immediate designs on the castle. It would not
have been a safe undertaking, indeed, to approach it unde