My stars! how she will laugh at us, to-morrow morning!”

It is indescribable what an image of Zenobia — at the breakfast-table, full of warm and mirthful life — this surmise of Silas Foster’s brought before my mind. The terrible phantasm of her death was thrown by it into the remotest and dimmest background, where it seemed to grow as improbable as a myth.

“Yes, Silas, it may be as you say,” cried I. The drift of the stream had again borne us a little below the stump, when I felt — yes, felt, for it was as if the iron hook had smote my breast — felt Hollingsworth’s pole strike some object at the bottom of the river!

He started up, and almost overset the boat.

“Hold on!”