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Lawrence, reading his captor's mind, thought, "By that time, he doth expect to ha' me lodged in some jail!"

Little Mary was placed beside her sleeping brother in the trundle bed, which had been pulled out from beneath her parents' four-poster; and Sally was left alone in the kitchen with a pile of blankets to be placed upon the settle. So slumber enveloped the Todd farmhouse, and all was quiet.

The next morning, Sally was up bright and early and, to her mistress's unexpressed pleasure, she had breakfast almost ready and warming upon the trivet—a small iron platform which, upon short legs, could be shoved near the fire—when that lady came down to the kitchen. All the praise Sally received, however, was an ungracious sniff and the remark, "Humph, I see ye can work an ye wish!"

But somehow, Sally, this morning, could not be cast down. It was too wonderful a day, with the dewy cobwebs sparkling upon the green grass just outside the kitchen door, and the birds singing their matin songs in the old orchard on the slope of the mountain side. Even the dark, gloomy swamp across the country lane, with its underbrush and its threat of snakes and beaver and other marsh life, did not seem quite so menacing as it usually did to the girl. It was as if the remembrance of the young Englishman's merry smile, his kind glance, had given her, somehow, hope. "Cheer-up! Cheer-