on't speak loud."

"How thief?"

"You would steal my wife from me."

"How your wife?"

"Why, Bertha;--she promised to marry me six long years ago, and she
would have married me, if _you_ had not come and stolen her heart."

"Why, you yourself gave her to me!"

"Ah! I owed you a debt I had to pay. 'Tis paid now. I thought you
gone, and the marriage knocked on the head; but now, you've come back,
and won't go again!"

"But, Daniel"--

"Don't Daniel _me_, I say, and don't speak loud; at least, _she_
sha'n't see you taken off. Lie quiet for her sake, and show your
love for her that way."

"And so you'll give me up, old friend, whose life _I_ saved?"

"Saved!--you saved it once, and I saved yours. You took away my hope
when you robbed me of my wife;--now I give you a like return."

"And you yourself, Daniel, who harbored me yesterday"--

"That's nothing to you.--Lie still till some one passes."

For the strong sailor had tipped the officer on to the mattress.
There he lay,--not from want of courage, but because he did not know
what to do.

The sailor felt for his pipe, but he remembered that all the tobacco
was smoked up; so he set the pipe down again and bit his nails.

He had not waited a quarter of an hour when a voice said,--"This way,
Herr Burgomaster!--this way!"

The sailor and his prisoner both started to their feet; and the
burgomaster, coming to the open window, lost the last faint hopes he
had had that this said French officer might not, after all, be the
French officer at whose escape he, the respected burgomaster and
butcher, had assisted.

"Mr. Burgomaster, here is a French prisoner,--and I hand him to you
as the fit personage to place him in the hands of the commander."

Thus spoke Daniel, and, as he spoke, Bertha appeared at the door of
her room, and with her Doome, who hearing this little speech, all her
liking for the sailor vanished on the instant. She was ready to
utterly exterminate him, and more than ready to cry, which she did,
straightway.

As this is only a little comedy, and by no means tragical, we pass
over the next scene, and simply state, that Bertha, before all those
neighbors, forgot everybody but her husband,--if he may be called so,
--and the church had said so; that Daniel felt great remorse at what
he had done; that he told Doome again that he wished the shark had
finished him; that Doome didn't or wouldn't hear, for her idol was
broken,--and so was Doome's heart,