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206 turn them from kindness to savagery. And Ann is in that respect but little better than they, I fear."

"She is a most extraordinary woman!"

"You may well say that. The more extraordinary, the more one knows of her. She can be as tender as a woman ought to be, as I have proved many a time, when I have besought her kindness for the poor and sick in her neighborhood or in ours. But she can also be as fierce as the fiercest man, as you, sir, have, I believe, already proved."

"Ay, that have I. And truly I think her fierceness is more to be depended on than her kindness. She hates me for having, as she considers, humbled her in the fight t'other day. And I am much inclined to think she would never have suffered me to go forth from the farmhouse alive, had you not most happily come to my rescue."

As he uttered these last words, in a tone which betrayed the depth of his feeling, he was conscious of a tremor which ran through Joan's arms and communicated a thrill to his own frame.

"You now see, sir," said she, quickly, "that