at me, cap.; Bessy Stone's not the woman to
be frit by black looks. Warn't you, Jeremiah
Flint, once the actuary chap of the Boston Argus
Life and Fire Company?"

"Yes, I was," said Flint.

"Of course!" sneered the German, maliciously.

"We'll prove that," returned Mrs. Stone.
"'Tis long years agone, but can you remember
going to a village, nigh Lexington, to see a
farm-house and barns belonging to a farmer that
had been burnt out, and the comp'ny suspected
'twar done a purpose, and were shy to pay the
policy thing?"

"Stay a moment," said Flint, pondering;
"the farmer's name was Burke, and the village
was Brentsville, Mass."

"All right!" screamed the audacious virago,
positively wrenching the revolver from between
Dave's murderous fingers; "one good turn
deserves as good, and as sure as my name's
Bessy Stone, and was Bessy Burke, the man
that saved my old dad from being ruined, root
and branch, shan't be shot dog fashion and
you, Stone, if you're a man, you'll say so too."

The old farmer, who had evidently the
highest reverence for his wife's judgment, rose
from his seat, picked up the rifle that had lain
beside him, and composedly sounded the barrel
with the tough ramrod.

"The bit of lead's in its place!" he said, in
his phlegmatic way, and stood still, but ready
for action. A violent quarrel ensued; oaths,
threats, and hard words were freely bandied
to and fro; but four of the least villanous-
looking of the gang took the side of mercy, and
Mrs. Stone's dictum obviously carried great
weight with it. Her bitter tongue and the masculine
energy of her character, coupled with the
respect habitually paid to females in America, had
made her a potentate in the association: while
her husband, though slow of wit, was known to
be a brave man and a first-rate judge of a horse.
The end of the matter was, that our lives were
spared, but that it was decided that we should
be kept prisoners until the evacuation of the
island. We were accordingly placed in a sort of
underground magazine, where forage was stored,
and within a few inches of the pit in which the
horses were concealed, and to which access was
obtained by a drawbridge of stout planking.

Our bonds were slackened, but not removed,
and we were made to give our parole not to
attempt to escape until the horse-thieves should
quit the island. Mrs. Stone, to whose capricious
gratitude we owed our lives, was not unkind to
us in her rugged way; and she and her daughters
supplied us with food and blankets, and
sometimes deigned to descend and converse with us,
besides lending us one or two well-thumbed
books, which constituted the family library. In
the course of these conversations the apparent
enigma of the connexion between the Stones,
who seemed decent folks, and the utter villains
who composed the gang, was solved. Old
Stone had been a hard-working farmer in
Illinois, illiterate, but respectable and honest
in deed and thought. Unluckily, he had invested
his hard-earned savings and the price of his own
farm in the purchase of a tempting bargain of
landed property, with a fatal flaw in the title.
The knavish vendor had fled, and the honest
dupe, assailed by a lawsuit, had been stripped
of all, and had found himself a beggar.
Unhappily, Mrs. Stone was a woman of strong will,
and a warped and one-sided judgment. She
passionately declared that as the law had robbed
them of their earnings, the law was their enemy,
and a mere device for oppression. Anger blinded
her; she was ashamed to live poor where she had
been well to do, and in the cities of the South
the exiled family soon picked up associates
whose whole life was one war with society.

It was impossible to make Mrs. Stone comprehend
that she was really a transgressor in sharing
the perils and profits of wholesale plunder. She
had got to regard all judges, governors, lawyers,
and men of reputed honesty, as rogues, in league
to pillage the simple; and she considered the
work in which the horse-thieves were engaged
as reprisals and warfare. Her husband, long
used to obey the shrewd and violent woman
who had attained such dominion over him, only
saw through his wife's eyes. I believe the
couple had some vague idea of buying land
in Oregon or California, and setting up "on
the square," when they should be rich enough
—a hope which has lured on, many a
half-reluctant criminal. The daughters, on the other
hand, less prejudiced and better taught, since
they had picked up some instruction in a
tolerable school in Chicago, saw nothing but misery
and degradation in the companionship to which
they were condemned. They passed their lives
in sighing over the old days and the innocence
of their life in Illinois, and never willingly
exchanged a word with the outlaws.

"I'll tell you what, Mr. Barham," said the
general to me one day, "I'd like to give a
lift out of the mire to them Stones. They've
saved the lives of us both, for gospel truth,
and my heart aches to think of their beln'
caught one day, the old man hung, the
woman locked up for life, and the daughters
driven out to come to want, or worse. I'm not
rich, no more, I suspect, air you; but land's not
dear up in Oregon, nor yet in Californey, and
between us we might buy 'em a farm, and let
'em live honest, and repent when grace was
borne in upon 'em. A farm would be jest
heaven to 'em, and three thousand dollars
would buy and stock it in a small way."

I willingly agreed, and we quietly settled
with Mary Stone, who was wild with joy at
the idea, that a certain sum should be lodged,
two months hence, in the Bolivar bank, in her
name. She agreed that it was best to
communicate this to her mother after the migration of
the band. This was soon to occur. We had
been prisoners for a fortnight, when one morning
we were informed that a general flitting was at
hand, and our release imminent.

With much snorting and trampling, the horses
were led up from the cache, and embarked on