Mrs. Huxtable went to the dresser, and got a large dish, and then turned round to have a good look at us. "Poor leddy," she said gently, "I sim her’s turble weist and low. But look e zee, there be a plenty of bakken yanner, and us’ll cut a peg’s drort to-morrow, and Varmer Badcock ’ll zend we a ship, by rason ourn be all a’lambing." Then she turned to me. "Whai, Miss, you looks crule unkid tu. Do e love zider?" "No, Mrs. Huxtable. Not very much. I would rather have water." "Oh drat that wash, e shan’t have none of thiccy. Us has got a brown gearge of beer, and more nor a dizzen pans of mulk and crame." Her chattering warmth soon put us at our ease; and as soon as the parlour fire burnt up, she showed us with many apologies, and "hopping no offence" the room which was thenceforth to be ours. After tea, I put my dear mother to bed as soon as possible, and sat by the dying fire to muse upon our prospects. Not the strangeness of the place, the new ideas around me, not even my weariness after railroad, coach, and chaise, could keep my mind from its one subject. In fact, its colour had now become its form. To others indeed, all hope of ever detecting and bringing to justice the man, for whose death I lived, might seem to grow fainter and fainter. Expelled from that place, and banished from those recollections, where, and by which alone, I could well expect ever to wind up my clue, robbed of all means of moving indifferent persons and retaining strong ones; and, more than this, engrossed (as I must henceforth be) in keeping debt at bay, and shielding my mother from care--what prospect was there, nay what possibility, that I a weak unaided girl, led only by set will and fatalism, should ever overtake and grasp a man of craft, and power, and desperation? It mattered not: let other things be doubtful, unlikely, or impossible; let the hands of men be clenched against me, and the ears of heaven be stopped; let the earth be spread with thick darkness, as the waters are spread with earth, and the murderer set Sahara between us, or turn hermit on the Andes; happen what would, so God were still above us, and the world beneath our feet--I was as sure that I should send that man from the one to the throne of the other, as he was sure to be dragged away thence, to fire, and chains, and gnashing of teeth. CHAPTER XIII.