She examined everybody in the house, and everybody that went by the house, but without the smallest result.  She was out in the front yard waiting for a fresh victim, when she saw Hersey DEATHBURY coming up the road.  She signed to her to come in.

She came in.

Hersey DEATHBURY was an extraordinary woman.  A woman of genius, sir.  What if her make-up was limited?  What if, when she was born, nature was economizing, and gave her only one eye, and she was lame and hump-backed, and hadn’t got any eyebrows and wore a wig; what of that?  It’s to her credit, I say.  You saw her just as she was.  No airs there.  And in this lay the great charm of H. DEATHBURY’S character.  Looking at her closely, you would see a fixed and stony eye and a chronic scowl, and you would say:  “Disposition a little morose; some man has soured on her.”  Looking at her more closely, you would see under her right arm a common blackboard, such as is used in schools, and over her shoulder a canvas bag containing lumps of chalk, and you would say:  “A little eccentric; likes to write on the blackboard instead of talking.  Would make a nice wife.  Looks, on the whole, like a country schoolma’am, whom the boys have stoned out of town, with the fixtures of the school-house tied to her.”  But she has talents.  What is she, an authoress?  “Yes, she is.”  But, like other authoresses, she isn’t appreciated, and has returned to her legitimate occupation, the Wash-Tub; but still doth she itch for fame, and so, between times, she writes verbose essays on Female Suffrage, composed during the process known as “wringing.”  And when there’s a Woman’s Rights Convention in that locality, she sits on the platform, and applauds all the Red-Hot Resolutions with that trenchant female weapon, the umbrella, in one hand, and an antediluvian reticule the other.  In the words of the Hon. MICHAEL:  “She is not only a leading Reformer, sir, but a great Platformer.”  And Mrs. LADLE will tell you that, as a washer, she is superb.  She “does up things” in a manner simply celestial.

Mrs. LADLE told her first to shut the door.

“Have you seen ANN BRUMMET to-day?” she said.

HERSEY nodded.

“Where?” was the eager inquiry.

HERSEY DEATHBURY placed her blackboard against the wall, unslung her chalk, and wrote in very large letters:—­

“I C hur a-Goin on The rode 2 forneys Kragg.”

“Ah!” ejaculated Mrs. LADLE joyfully, “traced at last.”  And she ran to tell the Hon. MICHAEL all about it.

* * *

The Half-Way House at Forney’s Crag was a hoary-headed old vagabond of a house, that had passed the heyday of its youth long before that great encyclopaedia, the oldest inhabitant, emitted his first infantile squawk.  Each successive season caused it to lean a little more and the most casual observer must perceive that it couldn’t by any possibility become much leaner without pining entirely away.