"It is extraordinary! It is very extraordinary!" declared Peram, clearing his throat and strutting over the floor.
"Where is your wife?"
"On board the ship Despair."
"Bring her home. Why do you not send and bring her home? The trouble is over, and we have put down the rebellion."
"I will."
After the arrival of the commission and soldiers from England, the hanging went on at a brisk pace, and Mrs. Price had lived like one stupefied on board the Despair, not daring to go ashore. She seldom spoke, and never save when addressed. She acted so strangely, that her daughter feared she was losing her mind. All day long she would sit with her sad eyes on the floor, and she had not smiled since she came aboard.
When the messenger came from the shore, with the command from Hugh Price for her to come to the home he had provided, she started like a guilty person detected in crime. Turning her great, sad eyes on the man who had been their protector in their hour of peril, she asked:
"Shall I go?"
"The place of a good wife is with her husband," he answered.
Then Rebecca, appealing to him, asked: