those new-fangled hand electric torches
with him, which he meant to use when the proper moment arrived.

Hearing voices drawing near he thought it best to warn the darkies
who were advancing in time, for, otherwise, they threatened to walk
directly over him in the pitch darkness. When, however, he flashed
his light suddenly toward them, he must have given them the fright of
their lives, for they uttered howls, and fled precipitately, despite
his reassuring calls.

"I afterwards learned," said the deacon, smiling broadly at the
amusing recollection, "that the three men were those colored players
who constitute the band you young people always have at your barn
dances, Daddy Whitehead, the leader, and his able assistants, Mose
Coffin and Abe Skinner. They really believed they had met something
supernatural in the woods, when taking a shortcut home, after
attending a dance somewhere out in the country. And, really, I never
had the heart to undeceive the poor ignorant chaps. But I warrant
you they kept to the highway after that terrible experience with
ghosts."

Hugh laughed at the mental picture of those three aged musicians, one
with his fiddle, another carrying a 'cello, and the third an oboe,
"streaking" it through the dark woods madly, possessed of a deadly
fear lest their time had come, and that they were pursued by
something from the spirit world.

He was just about to make some remark when the words froze on his
lips. Mrs. Winslow had given vent to a cry. It thrilled Hugh
strangely, as though he feared some agonizing pain had suddenly
gripped the old lady.

Both he and the deacon were instantly on their feet. As they glued
their eyes on the figure across on the other side of the broad hearth
they saw that she was sitting there with a marvelous look on her
wrinkled face--a look that seemed to tell of sheer amazement,
exceeding great joy, incredulity, and many other like emotions that
Hugh could not stop to analyze.

CHAPTER XVII

A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY

"Joel, come to me quickly!" they heard her gasp, as though she were
almost suffocating; and both of them hastened to her side.

"What has happened, wife?" cried the alarmed deacon.

"Oh! tell me, am I awake, or dreaming, husband?" she went on to say
thickly. "See what the child is wearing about his dear chubby neck!
Surely we ought to know that tiny gold locket. It carries me far
back through the long, weary, waiting years to the day I clas