Suddenly Hero lifted his head, sniffed the air, and rose, and almost simultaneously Regina heard the sound of footsteps on the gravel outside, and the low utterances of a voice which she recognized as Hannah’s.

“I never told you before, because I was afraid that in the end you would cheat me out of my share of the profit.  But I have watched and waited, and bided my time as long as I intend to, and I am too old to work as I have done.”

“It seems to me a queer thing you have hid it so long, so many years, when you might have turned it into gold.  The old General ought to pay well for the paper.  Let’s see it.”

The response was in a man’s voice, harsh and discordant, and, leaning slightly forward, Regina saw the old servant from the parsonage standing immediately beneath the window, fanning herself with her white apron, and earnestly conversing in subdued tones with a middle-aged man, whose flushed and rather bloated face still retained traces of having once been, though in a coarse style, handsome.  In length of limb, and compact muscular development he appeared an athlete, a very son of Anak; but habitual dissipation had set its brutalizing stamp upon his countenance, and the expression of the inflamed eyes and sensuous mouth was sinister and forbidding, as if a career of vice had left the stain of irremediable ruin on his swarthy face.

As he concluded his remark and stretched out his hand, Hannah laughed scornfully.

“Do you take me for a fool?  Who else would travel around with a match and a loaded fuse in the same pocket?  I haven’t it with me; it is too valuable to be carried about.  The care of that scrap of paper has tormented me all these years, worse than the tomb devils did the swine that ran down into the sea to cool off; and if I have changed its hiding-place once, I have twenty times.  If the old General doesn’t pay well for it, I shall gnaw off my fingers, on account of the sin it has cost me.  I was an honest woman and could have faced the world until that night—­so many years ago; and since then I have carried a load on my soul that makes me—­even Hannah Hinton, who never flinched before man or woman or beast—­a coward, a quaking coward!  Sin stabs courage, lets it ooze out, as a knife does blood.  Don’t bully me, Peleg!  I won’t bear it.  Jeer me if you dare.”

“Never fear, Aunt Hannah.  I have no mind to do theatre on a small scale, and show you Satan reproving sin.  After all, what is your bit of petit larceny, your thin slice of theft, in comparison with my black work?  But really I don’t in the least begrudge my sins, if only I might have my revenge,—­if I could only get Minnie in my power.”

“Bah! don’t sicken me with any more of the Minnie dose!  I hate the name as I do small-pox or cholera.  A pretty life you have led, dancing after her, as an outright fool might after the pewter-bells on a baby’s rattle!”