w his huge frame into an arm-chair. "Come, habeas corpus,
habeas corpus. Now, if we had Alphonse here," he continued, "he
could repeat the whole writ in Latin. Habeas corpus, habeas corpus,"
muttered the puzzled savage, fumbling in his brains for the context,
"habeas corpus, habeas corpus;--" then, relinquishing the vain
search, and addressing himself to the woman, at the same time
elevating his voice, he vociferated: "Hillo, come, lady sheriff,
bring up the body of your prisoner, I say;" when, as if in obedience
to the call of a magician, a door opened, and from an inner room,
with face flushed, brow dark and fretted with indignation, lips
pouting, breast heaving, and her eyes overflowing with tears, in
bounded his sister, Seraphine Duchatel, exclaiming: "And is this
the creature that has stood between me and Claude? and brought
here, too, to flout me to my face! I'll not endure it;" and she
burst into a fresh torrent of tears.

"Who has stood between you, girl?" enquired the brother, half
teasingly, half tenderly: "if there be a stump between here and
Mainville that hinders you from driving your carriage thither, tell
me, and we'll pull it up as quickly as Doctor Lanctot would pull
you a tooth out."

"You have done well, indeed," continued the angry girl, weeping,
and not minding his clumsy badinage, "you have done well indeed,
to bring her here to answer me, to scorn me, to defy me, to parade
herself before me, to stand in my presence as proud as any
peacock,--only not half so beautiful."

"Fine feathers make fine birds, Phin," drily retorted her brother.

"She is not fine, and if she be, she shall be plucked of her finery;"
exclaimed the sister: "I'll tear her eyes out; what business has
she to look at _me_, and speak so insolently? I'll have her face
flayed; her hair shall be plucked up by the roots;" and she stamped
with her little foot.

"We'll have her scalped, girl!" condoled her brother.

"Yes, this is the way you always think to manage me; by laughing
at me," cried the spoiled child, in renewed agony of tears.

"Why, what is the matter?" demanded the Seigneur, wondering, and
startled by these threatening allusions: "What is the meaning of
all this, Samson?"

"Oh," answered the latter, striving to perpetrate a pun, "Only that
we have brought Phin a handmaiden, and she finds her handsomer than
is agreeable;--but there is many a servant comelier than the
mistress."

"Let me behold this Paragon," sai