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CHAPTER XVIII.

MISTRESS CAMPBELL'S TRIAL.

"Perchance Elijah thought his fate was sealed— That God had sent premonitory warning; And that the croaking ravens but revealed  His death to-morrow morning."

When poor Mistress Campbell, dizzy with want of sleep, and worn and weary with her anxious and long-protracted watch, was summoned from her grandchild's sick-bed, in the chill gray of the early morning, to encounter the stern messengers of the law, her first instinctive thought was the fear that Alice might be disturbed.

Of her own impending danger she took not the slightest heed—indeed, she scarcely realized it; for, conscious of her own entire innocence of the crime imputed to her, and ignorant that she had any enemies or ill-wishers, she never doubted that the whole