"He dreamed that his hand would keep off intruders?" smiled Marie.

"Yes," responded Antonia innocently, "and all manner of evil fortune. I
have to look at it once a month as long as I live, and carry it with me
everywhere. If it should be lost or destroyed trouble and ruin would
fall not only on me but on every one who loved me."

The woman of larger knowledge did not argue against this credulity.
Antonia was of the provinces, bred out of their darkest hours of
superstition and savage danger. But it was easy to see how Jonas
Bronck's hand must hold his widow from second marriage. What lover could
she ask to share her monthly gaze upon it, and thus half realize the
continued fleshly existence of Jonas Bronck? The rite was in its nature
a secret one. Shame, gratitude, the former usages of her life, and a
thousand other influences, were yet in the grip of that rigid hand. And
if she lost or destroyed it, nameless and weird calamity, foreseen by a
dying man, must light upon the very lover who undertook to separate her
from her ghastly company.

"The crafty old Hollandais!" thought Marie. "He was cunning in his
knowledge of Antonia. But he hath made up this fist at a younger
Hollandais who will scarce stop for dead hands."

The Dutch gentlewoman snuffed both waxlights. Her lips were drawn in
grieved lines. Marie glanced up at one of the portraits on the wall, and
said:--

"The agonies which men inflict on the beings they love best, must work
perpetual astonishment in heaven. Look at the Sieur Claude de la Tour, a