R XVII. -- National Calamity--Sarah in Love and Sorrow.

The astonishment of the Prophet's wife on discovering that the
Tobacco-box had been removed from the place of its concealment was too
natural to excite any suspicion of deceit or falsehood on her part, and
he himself, although his disappointment was dreadful on finding that it
had disappeared, at once perceived that she had been perfectly ignorant
of its removal. With his usual distrust and want of confidence, however,
he resolved to test her truth a little further, lest by any possibility
she might have deceived him.

"Now, Nelly," said he sternly, "mark me--is this the way you produce
the box? You acknowledge that you had it--that you hid it even--an'
now, when I tell you I want it, an' that it may be a matther of life an'
death to me--you purtend its gone, an' that you know nothing about it--I
say again, mark me well--produce the box!"

"Here," she replied, chafed and indignant as well at its disappearance
as at the obstinacy of his suspicions--"here's my throat--dash your
knife into it, if you like--but as for the box, I tell you, that
although I did put it in there, you know as much about it now as I do."

"Well," said he, "for wanst I believe you--but mark me still--this box
munt be gotten, an' it's to you I'll look for it. That's all--you know
me."

"Ay," she replied, "I know you."

"Eh--what do you mane by that?" he asked--"what do you know? come now; I
say, what do you know?"

"That you're a hardened and a bad man:--oh! you needn't brandish your
knife--nor your eyes needn't blaze up that way, like your daughter's,"
she added, "except that you're hard an' dark, and widout one spark o'
common feelin', I know nothin' particularly wicked about you--but, at
the same time, I suspect enough."

"What do you suspect, you hardened vagabond?"

"It doesn't matther what I suspect," she answered; "only I think you'd
have bad heart for anything--so go about your business, for I want to
have nothing more either to do or say to you--an' I wish to glory I had
been always of that way o' thinkin', _a chiernah!_--many a scalded heart
I'd a missed that I got by you."

She then walked into the cabin, and the Prophet slowly followed her with
his fixed, doubtful and suspicious eye, after which he flung the knife
on the threshold, and took his way, in a dark and disappointed mood,
towards Glendhu.

It is impossible for us here to detail the subject matter of his
refl