the sleigh, that had not only attracted the notice of Elizabeth, but
which she had been much puzzled to interpret. His anxiety seemed the
strongest when he was en joining his old companion to secrecy; and
even when he had decided, and was rather passively suffering himself
to be conveyed to the village, the expression of his eyes by no means
indicated any great degree of self-satisfaction at the step. But the
lines of an uncommonly prepossessing countenance were gradually
becoming composed; and he now sat silent, and apparently musing. The
Judge gazed at him for some time with earnestness, and then smiling,
as if at his own forgetfulness, he said:

“I believe, my young friend, that terror has driven you from my
recollection; your face is very familiar, and yet, for the honor of a
score of bucks’ tails in my cap, I could not tell your name.”

“I came into the country but three weeks since,” returned the youth
coldly, “and I understand you have been absent twice that time.”

“It will be five to-morrow. Yet your face is one that I have seen;
though it would not be strange, such has been my affright, should I
see thee in thy winding-sheet walking by my bedside to-night. What
say’st thou, Bess? Am I compos mentis or not? Fit to charge a grand
jury, or, what is just now of more pressing necessity, able to do the
honors of Christmas eve in the hall of Templeton?”

“More able to do either, my dear father.” said a playful voice from
under the ample inclosures of the hood, “ than to kill deer with a
smooth-bore.” A short pause followed, and the same voice, but in a
different accent, continued. “We shall have good reasons for our
thanksgiving to night, on more accounts than one,”