The woman seemed desirous, yet reluctant, to speak, and answered, in a low, mysterious tone.
"Well, you must n't tell nobody. Prue, she got drunk agin,—and they had her down cellar,—and thar they left her all day,—and I hearn 'em saying that the flies had got to her,—and she's dead!"
Dinah held up her hands, and, turning, saw close by her side the spirit-like form of Evangeline, her large, mystic eyes dilated with horror, and every drop of blood driven from her lips and cheeks.
"Lor bless us! Miss Eva's gwine to faint away! What got us all, to let her har such talk? Her pa'll be rail mad."
"I shan't faint, Dinah," said the child, firmly; "and why should n't I hear it? It an't so much for me to hear it, as for poor Prue to suffer it."
"Lor sakes! it is n't for sweet, delicate young ladies, like you,—these yer stories is n't; it's enough to kill 'em!"
Eva sighed again, and walked up stairs with a slow and melancholy step.
Miss Ophelia anxiously inquired the woman's story. Dinah gave a very garrulous version of it, to which Tom added the particulars which he had drawn from her that morning.
"An abominable business,—perfectly horrible!" she exclaimed, as she entered the room where St. Clare lay reading his paper.
"Pray, what iniquity has turned up now?" said he.
"What now? why, those folks have whipped Prue to death!" said Miss Ophelia, going on, with great strength of detail, into the story, and enlarging on its most shocking particulars.
