"About what, Tabby? Don't be a fool!"

"About this, then; as there never was no dreadful thing ever happened to us as didn't happen to happen on a dark, drizzly, dreary Hallow Eve!"

whimpered Miss Tabby.

"It is a fatality!" whispered Miss Libby.

"It is a fiddlestick!" snapped the old lady.

"Oh, mother, mother, you can't dispute it! Wasn't it on a Hallow Eve at night that Rosa Blondelle, sleeping calmly in her bed, was mysteriously murdered?" inquired Miss Tabby.

"Yes, yes," impatiently admitted the old lady.

"And wasn't it that same night in the storm that Sybil Berners fled away from her home, some said driven mad by horror, and some said by remorse?"

"Oh yes!" sighed the old lady; "and that was the worst thing as ever she did in her life, for her flight was taken as a proof of conscious guilt.

I was very sorry she fled."

"Yes, but she was persuaded by those as was wiser than we. And besides, what could she do but fly, when the evidence was so strong against her?

so strong that everybody believed her guilty? so strong that even when she came forrard and give herself up, it convicted her, and she was doomed to death! that beautiful, n.o.ble lady! and only spared until she could bring her babe into the world--her babe born in the condemned cell.

"I know it, I know it; but for all that, it was her first flight that prejudiced people's minds against her."

"And do you remember, mother, that awful night when the child was born in the prison? You and I and the prison doctor was with her in that stone cell! And oh, how we prayed that she might die! But she was strong, and could not die, nor could the babe. Both lived."

"Yes, thank Heaven! despite our short-sighted, sinful prayers, both lived," fervently exclaimed Mrs. Winterose.

"But that awful night of storm and flood, when the condemned mother gave birth to the child in the condemned cell, that awful night was also Hallow Eve, and do you mind how, when all was over, and, the baby was dressed and the mother was lying in stupor, how you had to leave us, and go away in the storm to tend my father's sick-bed?"

"Ah, child, don't I remember it all!"

"And now I'm going to tell you what happened after you left!"

"Why, Tabby, you never would tell us before," said Mrs. Winterose, taking off her spectacles and becoming very attentive.

"No, mother, because I was bound by an oath. It is true, the man I made the oath to released me from keeping of it! But still I never did feel free to tell all I knew until to-night."

"And why to-night, Tabby?"

"Because it is borne in upon my mind that something will happen on this very Hallow Eve to clear up the whole mystery, that I feel free to reveal my part of it!"

"But what makes you feel as if something was going to happen to reveal the secret, Tabby?" inquired her mother.

"Because I had a dream last night as foretold it! I dreamed as I was a walking in the haunted wing, in the wery room where Rosa Blondelle was murdered, and suddenly the sun shone full into the room, lighting it up like noon-day."

"And to dream of the sun shining into a room, is a sure sign of the revelation of secrets and the discovery of hidden things," said Miss Libby, mysteriously.

"Stuff and nonsense about dreams and visions!" sharply exclaimed Mrs.

Winterose; "but whatever has caused you to change your mind about Mrs.

Berners' reskee, I shall be very glad to hear the particulars, Tabby; so go on."

"Well, goodness knows there an't much after all, as I _have_ to tell, but you shall hear it! Well, soon after you left, mother, the prison doctor _he_ got up to go home; and he asked Mr. Berners, who had been waiting out in the lobby to hear from his wife, if _he_ would go along with him to bring back some medicine; and Mr. Berners and him they both went out in the storm, and oh, how it was a storming to be sure!"

"Yes, that it was!" a.s.sented Mrs. Winterose. "I thought as I should never a got through it myself!"

"Well, I sat there hour after hour, holding the new-born baby in my lap, watching the unconscious mother and waiting for Mr. Berners to come back with the medicine. Well, I might a waited!"

"Yes, for there was no getting back that night!" put in the old lady.

"No, for the storm got worse and worse! The rain poured, the wind howled, the waters rose! Oh, what a horrible night! It was as if the end of all things was come, and the world was about to be destroyed by water, instead of by fire!"

"I know what sort of a night it was, Tabby. I can never forget it! Tell me how Sybil Berners was reskeed?" said Mrs. Winterose, impatiently.

"I am a telling of you as fast as ever I can; which she never would a been reskeed neither, if it hadn't a been for that there blessed flood, which you don't even want me to tell about," complained Miss Tabby.

"Tell me about the reskee!" commanded Mrs. Winterose, peremptorily.

"Well, then, just as I had discovered as the waters had ris' almost up to the level of the windows, and was even oozing through the walls like dew, and rising higher every minute, and I was in deadly fear of our lives, and screeching as loud as I could screech, for some one to come and let us out, which n.o.body could hear us because of the hollering, and bawling, and running, and racing, and banging, and slamming of doors and windows, and all the rout and rumpus made by the people as were trying to save their own lives, suddenly the window was busted in. And before I had time to say my prayers, in jumped a big man followed by a little man."

"Lor!" exclaimed Mrs. Winterose and Miss Libby, in a breath.

"And the big man, in all his haste and hurry, he took _her_ up, Sybil, as tenderly, and wrapped her up as carefully as if he had a been her mother. He cussed some about the baby, which was a sort of surprise to him; but Raphael--"

"Raphael!" exclaimed Mrs. Winterose and Miss Libby, in a breath.

"Yes, Raphael! He was the little man I soon discovered. Raphael pleaded for the baby, and so the big man he let him save her; but he said how he must leave the 'ole 'oman' meaning me, to be drownded, though goodness, knows, for that matter, I wasn't so old as to be tired of life, being only just turned of thirty-three--"

"Oh, bother about your age, Tabby! tell us about the reskee!" snapped her mother.

"An't I a telling of you as fast as I can? But he did call me an ole 'oman, and me not thirty-four then, which I would say it if I was to die for it, and he would a left me to be drownded, but Raphael he pled for me like he did for the baby, and the waters was rising higher and higher, and the uproar in the prison was getting louder and louder, and the big man he swore at Raphael, and told him to fetch me on; but first he made me swear on the Bible never to tell how we was reskeed. Then he took us off on the boat which I tell you, mother, it was just awful to be a riding on the high floods over the tops of the houses. It had done raining, which was a good thing for my poor child, who was well wrapped up also. They rowed me up to the Quarries, and put me out high, and on a ledge of the mountain, and rowed away with my child, and that's the last I ever saw or heard of her or her baby until that letter come to Mr.

Berners, a telling of him how she was took off to foreign parts, and a releasing of me from my oath of silence."

"But you never told us, for all that."

"Because, as I said afore, I never felt free to do it until to-night, and to-night it is borne in upon my mind as some thing will happen to clear up that Hallow Eve mystery."

"It is a presentiment," said Miss Libby, solemnly.

"It is a fiddle!" snapped the old lady.

"You may call it a fiddle, mother, but I believe you know more about the fate of Mrs. Berners and her baby too, than you are willing to tell,"

said Miss Libby.

"May be I do, and maybe I don't," answered the old lady. Then suddenly breaking out angrily, she exclaimed, "I told you both before as I didn't want to talk of these here horrid ewents! And I don't! And here you draw me on to talk of them, whether or no! _And look at Gem there_," she added, lowering her voice, and directing her glance towards the girl at the spinning-wheel; "she knows nothing about these dreadful doings, and ought to know nothing about them. Yet there she stands, with her wheel still, and she a drinking down every word."

CHAPTER x.x.xI.