"Goodness, how cold it is! Good-by, old ring! Some of the witches riding about to-night may fish you up, and wear you to their sabbath."
She entered the silent house, and crept to her room, where she got quickly to bed, only to lie and toss with troubled thought, which would have ended in tears had she been of weaker mettle. She fell asleep at last: and from her mind, as from Pandora's box, slipped every thing but hope; so that she dreamed she was betrothed to Tom Putnam with the very ring she had dropped into Black-Clear Eddy.
[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
MRS. SMITHERS.
Peter Mixon's unlucky and disreputable head had been pretty severely battered by his accident; and for several days he remained, as his wife lucidly said, "unsensible." This delirium had passed away, but Dr. Sanford had little hope of the patient's recovery. Bathalina hung over her husband's bed in an agony of late and needless remorse, lamenting that her "sinful pride" had come to this; although the connection was by no means apparent. She sang "Death-bed Reflections" so constantly, that at last Will Sanford threatened her with instant death if he heard another syllable of that doleful hymn. She labored with Peter in regard to his spiritual condition, continually begging him to let her read aloud from the Scriptures.
"You told me you was a Methodist," she said reproachfully; "but either you lied, or you're fallen from grace. You'd better let me read a chapter: it may arouse your conscience."
"Read, then, if you want to," he said one day, too feeble to resist.
"Where shall I read?" she asked delightedly, giving her Bible a preparatory scrub with her apron.