She waved her hand toward the women.

At that moment Luther Bosler perceived the dog Albion come out of the woods and begin to scratch and whine around the little stable.

"Is that your dog?" the woman spoke, also looking toward the stable as if with some new interest. "Go bring him away, instantly!"

Luther, not Lloyd, started to do so. He found his own dog, Fritz, returned, and Fritz followed him obediently; but the English pointer was not tractable, and ran back into the chestnut and chinquapin brush, whither Luther followed, calling his name.

66

Hannah," spoke Nelly Harbaugh to the woman, the harness is a bit broke, and we stopped to mend it. Won't you tell our fortunes?"

66

Idle request upon the Sabbath-day!" Hannah Ritner replied. "I have told one fortune for you to-day already. Is not your lover yonder?"

She pointed to where Atzerodt's horse was tied in the secluded path.

Lloyd Quantrell, looking there, saw Atzerodt standing up and looking intently toward the stable.

"Give me your hand!” the seer commanded, taking Nelly's in her own palm, and gazing with great candor and beauty of expression into her eyes.

Lloyd thought he had never seen together three more beautiful women than these.

Hannah Ritner then slowly spoke these lines, with such deep, distinct, and eloquent diction that Lloyd hoped she would speak

more:

"Ebbes dunkel und weiss marrick ich,

Mit dunkla sall's b'marricka dich!

Gaed der roth-fogel uf 'n reis',

Dann waersht net dunkel or net weiss !"

Nelly Harbaugh muttered something Lloyd believed to be the protecting "Words," and dropped her fine blue eyes.

The fortune-teller, turning her own eyes to Lloyd, exclaimed: "It is not my wont to tell on poor girls secrets that may smirch them in a man's eyes. Here is her fortune as I gave it, put in English words."

Still holding Nelly Harbaugh's hand, Hannah Ritner recited to

Lloyd and little Katy as follows, studying Katy meanwhile, and only once looking at the hand:

"Something dark and white I mark,

It shall mark thee with the dark!
When the red-bird takes his flight,

Thou shalt not be dark or white!"

"Look out for the red-bird, Nelly," Lloyd exclaimed; "the dove is my warning."

Hannah Ritner caught the word and repeated it:

"Die Dowb: that was the bird of the Holy Spirit which descended on the baptizers, cooing as it flew from heaven, 'This is my beloved Son!' My well-beloved son!" she turned to Lloyd, with something very tender, yet sorrowful, in her great eyes, "you may be baptized with fire. Seek even in the fire for that immortal dove which bravely swept the Deluge with his tired pinions, and returned to the little ark of love at last. Why do you seek this simple maiden's eyes as if their luster was the window of that ark to you? -She trembles while I ask.-Fear not, my little peasant-maid! I'll tell your lover's fortune, and, if I tell it true, never need you fear to come to Hannah Ritner and ask her counsel.-Lloyd, give me your hand!"

She took Lloyd's hand, and little Katy, full of faith and yearning, took his other hand almost in stealth, and looked in Hannah Ritner's eyes with simple pleading.

At that moment, Lloyd Quantrell, cool and undisturbed, saw the stable-door unclose, and a negro emerge, carrying an old man on his back, and, looking backward agonizingly, the negro stole down the embowered lane.

Lloyd looked again in Hannah Ritner's eyes. He could not see them, for they were bent upon his hand, and, to his astonishment, some tears fell from somewhere on his palm.

"Why do you weep?" he asked; "I am nothing to you."

"This is a large, strong hand," answered Hannah Ritner, with deep feeling. "I see the marks of conflicts upon it, but not of toil. Oh, find some task to do, my son, and bless your Maker for sweet, constant occupation!"

"Tell my fortune!" spoke Lloyd. "I am not afraid to hear it. You will not hurt this little girl's feelings, I know; for she is dear to me, Mother Hannah!"

At this familiar salutation, tears fell from Hannah Ritner's eyes again, and she was unable to proceed for some time.

Throwing an arm around each, she drew both Lloyd and Katy to her breast, and, looking down on them, the silent tears fell from her splendid eyes all the more, and not like the tears of anguish, but of great commiseration.

Lloyd thought she was like the Virgin he had seen a picture of at the Catholic school, whose everlasting cause of love and woe was the successive ages of mankind, and their many sorrows, ever to recur. Little Katy, also tearful and tender, reached up her lips and kissed the prophetess's mouth, saying:

Fergeb uns unser shoolda! You must be good, I know." "God bless you, my child, for those sweet words!" said Hannah Ritner, quieted and strong again.

Looking now at Lloyd with deep interest, she repeated what he could not understand, in her beautiful intonation, thus:

"All's games's unna die Sunn Ich sae,
Fer deina Flindt fleegt in die Höh;

Und wann aw dodt sheest allum ort,

Dann singst die Darddle-Daub doch fort!"

"Come, Mother Ritner!" Lloyd pleasantly entreated, yet feeling something remarkable to be in this person, and a slight sense of superstition in himself, "you will not leave my fate such a Dutch riddle as that? Tell my coming luck in English, too!"

The strange, stately woman tapped her forehead as if seeking to recollect or to compose, or, at least, to translate something.

'I have spent so much of my time, my children, among these mountain poor, teaching them in Dutch, that my English verse comes slowly back to me, and I am growing old, too, and memory and wit are weaker."

With the same slight German accent she then made the translation of Lloyd's fortune, not readily, yet with eloquence, like profound conviction :

"All the game beneath the sun

Shall rise up before thy gun;
When thou killest everything,

Still the turtle-dove will sing!"

"Thank God for that, Katy!" Lloyd exclaimed.

tle dove be heard, whatever happens to us.-And now, Mother Rit

ner, dear little Katy is waiting to have her fate told before she goes to church; for Luther, I reckon, has mended the harness by this time."

"I must be quick," Hannah Ritner said; "for I am strangely nervous this morning. It seems to me I hear the baying of dogs. Katy, let me see your hand! Why, my darling, the lines in it are almost like my own. I can tell your fortune easily."

As she repeated the following lines, Katy listened with deepening awe and final trembling, so that Lloyd kissed her to his heart, at the end:

"In dara hond sae Ich en Ring

Ferleera, sollsht du's, schoenes ding!"

Katy heard with prayerful wonder and fear. The seer spoke to her with deep and solemn tones the next couplet, as follows:

"Doch bawdst du fer's im krickly noof,

Dan sollsht du's finna bei 'ma Buch!"*

As she spoke, Hannah Ritner accidentally laid her hand upon the Bible.

Now for the English, Mother Hannah!" Lloyd exclaimed seeing that Katy Bosler looked pale and frightened.

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What noises are those?" Hannah Ritner whispered. "Surely it is the blood-hound's bark I hear! Who is at my stable?" She strode through the kitchen and shouted:

Lloyd, Katy, and Nelly following, they beheld come out of the small chestnuts behind the stable, first the dog Albion, very animated and frolicsome, and he threw himself into the attitude of pointing game a few steps from the stable-door.

Next there bounded from the same thicket three dogs apparently fighting, and one of these was engaged in a clinched struggle with another, which bayed deep and loud; and the third dog, a great blood-hound, rushed upon the stouter of these dogs and bit him terribly, while Albion also barked as he "pointed," and so the air was full of fierce, savage noises.

Luther Bosler, going to the relief of the injured dog, which was

* These predictions are all translated into Pennsylvania Dutch by Thomas C. Zimmerman, of Reading, Pa.

now seen to be his own Fritz, was himself set upon by the two hounds, and they seemed to be on the point of tearing him to pieces, when out of the thicket rushed the two men already related to have crossed the mountain during the thunderstorm, and both of these shouted loudly to the blood-hounds and pulled them separate ways.

"It's the Logan boys," exclaimed Nelly Harbaugh; “husht se g'sana? There must be runaway slaves hiding about Hannah Ritner's house."

"Go in there at your peril, hyenas!" shouted Hannah Ritner, throwing herself between the stable and the pursuers. “This land is mine, and I will defend it with my life!"

She had drawn upon her head a large leghorn hat, and as she spread her arms across the stable-door and put her back against it and threw her fine white throat and strongly pointed chin up, the long elf-hair fell so wildly and so dead black down from her pallid face that both the men halted a moment irresolutely.

Lloyd Quantrell's ill-starred dog, however, dashed at Hannah and barked his ill-tempered and short, snappish dislike. Lloyd himself knocked the dog over with a stone, and it retired yelping a little distance, and again, with one fore-leg extended and the other lifted crookedly as if lame, raised its muzzle toward the stable, put its tail out straight, and cast its eyes trancefully sidewise like a somnambulist.

The long hounds bounded against the stable as if resolved to throw it down.

"Infernal dog!" thought Lloyd; "but a pointer's a hound, too, bred on a spaniel.-Open that door, Hannah!" Lloyd raised his voice. "If their niggers are not there, I'll fill both these loafers' hounds with shot."

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They shall not go in!" Hannah Ritner cried.

"Interfere with us at your peril, young man!" the taller of the ruffians said, but without any temper. "We've suspected this place a good while, and now we've got a warrant to search it. The dogs trailed right yer."

He produced his warrant, and, as he walked to Hannah Ritner and presented it, his companion slipped in at the rotten stable-side.

Hannah moved a little way to examine the warrant, and the stable-door, pushed open from within, showed nothing there but a lady's horse, all saddled, and nibbling at his fodder.

The two slave-catchers hastily examined the inside of the stable;