“Yes,” said the lawyer, “he has a home, and won’t be beholden to any man for a roof to shelter his family.”

The pride of the woman was still unbent.  Though her cheek was blanched and her lips were bitten blue, still she stood erect and her head turned queenly as ever.  The glance she threw to the man who called her wife was enough to have pierced him.  Turning to Mark, she said,—­

“If you will come to-morrow,—­or Monday, rather,—­you can have possession of the house and property.  My own things can be easily removed, and it will be a simple matter to make ready for new comers.”

“I could keep them out of it a year, if I chose,” said Mr. Clamp.

“But I do not choose,” said she, with superb haughtiness.

“Wal, good mornin’,” said Mr. Alford.

As they left the house, Mrs. Clamp sat down in the silent room.  Without, the wind whistled through the naked trees and whirled up spiral columns of leaves; the river below was cased in ice; the passers-by looked pinched with cold, and cast hurried glances over their shoulders at the ill-fated house and the adjacent burying-ground.  Within, the commotion, the chill, the hurry, the fright, were even more intense.  What now remained to be done?  Her son, vanquished in love by a blacksmith’s protege, had fled, and left her to meet her fate alone.  The will had been discovered, and, as if by a special interposition of Providence, the victim of her son’s passions had been the instrument of vengeance.  The lawyer who had worked upon her fears had proved unable to protect her.  The estate was out of her hands; the property with which she had hoped to escape from the hated town and join her son was seized; she was a ruined, disgraced woman.  She had faced the battery of curious eyes, as she walked with the husband she despised to the Sunday services; but what screen had she now that her pride was humbled?  The fearful struggle in the mind of the lonely woman in the chill and silent room, who shall describe it?  She denied admission to the servants and her husband, and through the long evening still sat by the darkening window, far into the dim and gusty night.

Squire Clamp went to bed moody, if not enraged; but when, on waking, he found his wife still absent, he became alarmed.  Early in the morning he tracked her through a light snow, that had sifted down during the night, to the river-bank, at the bend where the current keeps the ice from closing over.  An hour after, some neighbors, hastily summoned, made a search at the dam.  One of them, crossing the flume by Mr. Hardwick’s shop, broke the newly-formed ice and there found the drifting body of Mrs. Clamp.  Her right hand, stretched out stiff, was thrust against the floats of the water-wheel, as if, even in death, she remembered her hate against the family whose fortune had risen upon her overthrow!

CHAPTER XVIII.