“Melted—­burnt up!  I thought it was tin:  it must have been lead!  Either the curse of God, or the work of the devil!”

She fell back like one smitten with a stunning blow, and sobs shook her powerful frame.

Very near the ground the tree had contained a hollow, hidden by the rank lush creepers, and in this cavity she had deposited a small can, cylindrical in form, and similar in appearance to those generally used for hermetically sealed mushrooms.  Upon it several spadefuls of earth had been thrown, to secure it from detection, should prying eyes discover the existence of the hollow.

All that remained was a shapeless lump of molten metal.

Along the east a broad band of yellow was rapidly mounting into the sky, and in the blended light of moon and day the churchyard presented a melancholy scene of devastation.

The spire and belfry had fallen upon and in front of the church, and the long building stood like a dismasted vessel among the billowy graves, that swelled as a restless sea around its grey weather-beaten sides.  Here and there ancient headstones had been blown down on the mounds they guarded; and one venerable willow in the centre of a cluster of graves had been torn from the earth, and its network of roots lifted until they rested against a stone cross.

Awed by the solemn influence of the time and place, and painfully reminded of her own peril on the previous night, Regina stepped down from the base of the monument, and approached the figure crouching over the blasted smoking roots.  There was no rustle of grass or leaf as she limped across the dewy turf, but warned by that mysterious magnetic instinct which so often announces some noiseless, invisible human presence, Hannah lifted and turned her head.  With a scream of superstitious terror she sprang to her feet.

Very ghostly the girl certainly appeared, in her snowy mull muslin dress and white shawl, as she leaned forward on the cane, and looked steadily at the old woman.  Her long black hair, loosened and disordered by tossing about all night, hung over her shoulders and gave a weird, almost supernatural, aspect to the blanched and sorrowful young face, which in that strange chill light seemed wellnigh as rigid and pallid as a corpse.

“Hannah Hinton!”

“God have mercy!  Who are you?”

Hannah seized the spade and brandished it, with hands that shook from terror.

“You wicked woman, do you want to kill me?  Put down that spade.”

Regina advanced, but the old woman retreated, still waving the spade.

“Hannah, are you afraid of me?”

“Good Lord!  Is it you, Regina?”

“Your sin makes you a coward.  Did you really think me a ghost?”

“It is true, I am afraid of everything now, even of my own shadow, and once I was so brave.  But what are you doing here?  I thought you were crippled?  What are you tracking me for?”