Astounded and indignant at this unexpected behavior of her sister-in-law, Rachel burst into a fresh fit of weeping, and again had recourse to the handkerchief.

“I’ve stayed here long enough, if even my sister-in-law, as well as my own nephew, from whom I expect nothing better, makes me her laughing-stock.  Brother Timothy, I can no longer remain in your dwelling to be laughed at; I will go to the poor-house, and end my life as a pauper.  If I only receive Christian burial, when I leave the world, it will be all I hope or expect from my relatives, who will be glad enough to get rid of me.”

The second application of the handkerchief had so increased the effect, that Jack found it impossible to check his laughter, while the cooper, whose attention was now for the first time drawn to his sister’s face, burst out in a similar manner.

This more amazed Rachel than even Mrs. Crump’s merriment.

“Even you, Timothy, join in ridiculing your sister!” she exclaimed, in an ‘Et tu Brute,’ tone.

“We don’t mean to ridicule you, Rachel,” gasped Mrs. Crump, with difficulty, “but we can’t help laughing——­”

“At the prospect of my death,” uttered Rachel.  “Well, I’m a poor forlorn creetur, I know; I haven’t got a friend in the world.  Even my nearest relations make sport of me, and when I speak of dying they shout their joy to my face.”

“Yes,” gasped Jack, “that’s it exactly.  It isn’t your death we’re laughing at, but your face.”

“My face!” exclaimed the insulted spinster.  “One would think I was a fright, by the way you laugh at it.”

So you are,” said Jack, in a state of semi-strangulation.

“To be called a fright to my face!” shrieked Rachel, “by my own nephew!  This is too much.  Timothy, I leave your house forever.”

The excited maiden seized her hood, which was hanging from a nail, and hardly knowing what she did, was about to leave the house with no other protection, when she was arrested in her progress towards the door by the cooper, who stifled his laughter sufficiently to say:  “Before you go, Rachel, just look in the glass.”

Mechanically his sister did look, and her horrified eyes rested upon a face which streaked with inky spots and lines seaming it in every direction.

In her first confusion, Rachel did not understand the nature of her mishaps, but hastily jumped to the conclusion that she had been suddenly stricken by some terrible disease like the plague, whose ravages in London she had read of with the interest which one of her melancholy temperament might be expected to find in it.

Accordingly she began to wring her hands in an excess of terror, and exclaimed in tones of piercing anguish,—­

“It is the fatal plague spot!  I feel it; I know it!  I am marked for the tomb.  The sands of my life are fast running out!”

Jack broke into a fresh burst of merriment, so that an observer might, not without reason, have imagined him to be in imminent danger of suffocation.