Tryphena hesitated to send the mad woman into the room in which Serlizer was sleeping, not knowing the nature of their relations at the Select Encampment.  Matilda, however, evidenced no intention of retiring, or feeling of drowsiness.  She talked, with the brightness and cheerfulness of other days, and in a gentle, pleasant voice, but on strange wild themes that terrified the two young women.  Monty looked at the fire and then at Tryphosa, saying:  “I hain’t a goin’ to light no more fires no more.”  “Why?” asked Tryphosa, and the answer came, which revealed a genuine working of the intellect:  “’Cos Sylvy says hit’s wicked.”  His mother turned, and said:  “Monty, you must not mind what Sylvanus says or anybody else; you must mind what he says.”

The boy looked his mother full in the face, and replied in a very decided tone, “Hi’m blowed hif I do!”

In the forepart of the house, only the ladies were up.  The doctor and the colonel, the captain and the Squire, slept the sleep of tired men with good consciences, and the wounded dominie was enjoying a beautiful succession of rose-coloured dreams, culminating in a service, at which a tall soldierly man in appropriate costume gave away into his hand that of a very elegant and accomplished lady, saying, as he did so, “Can I do less for the heroic saver of her uncle’s life?” Mr. Terry’s appearance, on entering to salute his daughter, exacted no remark.  The lawyer looked somewhat bucolic, but highly respectable.  But poor little Mr. Bangs was buried in clothing, and tripped on his overflowing trowser legs, as he vainly strove to put his right hand outside of its coatsleeve, for the purpose of shaking hands with the company.  Mrs. Carmichael took pity on him, and turned back his cuffs, and, his hands being thus of use to him, he employed them to do the same with the skirts of his trousers.  The usually polite veteran took Coristine to a corner of the room, and, between violent coughs of suppressed laughter, said:  “Och, Misther Coristine, it’s the dumb aguey I’ll be havin’ iv his clawthes is not droied soon.  It’s Bangs by name he is and bangs by natur’.  Shure, this bangs Banagher, an’ Banagher bangs the world.”  The young ladies had not yet entered the apartment, and the three night-watchers were busy relating to the three matrons the terrible events of the night.  The lawyer was sitting with his back to the door, conversing with Mrs. Carruthers, when Miss Carmichael came tripping in, followed by Miss Du Plessis and Miss Halbert.  The lawyer’s hair was brown, and so was her uncle’s.  The coat was the Squire’s, and the white collar above it.  So she slipped softly up to the back of the chair, took the brown head between her hands, and administered a salute on the forehead, with the words:  “Why, Uncle John!—­,” then suddenly turned and fled, amid the laughter of the veteran and his daughter, and the amused blushes and smiles of her mother.  The other young ladies came forward and joined in the conversation, but Miss Carmichael did