The night grew older, the moon rode high in the heavens, and the stillness of the midnight hour was broken by the shrill whistle of a steamer that touched at the wharf a mile below, remained only long enough to throw out a plank and permit the landing of two passengers and their baggage, then went on its way majestically. * * * * * A newly married widower was bringing home a bride, no less a personage than Sam, the good-looking mulatto ne'er-do-well. As he had married from mercenary motives the first time, his second match was for love alone, and Maria's successor was a colored lady of as bright a type as himself, young and sprightly, and good-looking. She rejoiced in the patronymic of Pocahontas, which was shortened by general consent of herself and friends to "Poky." Sam made arrangements for getting his bride's baggage brought up in the morning, and tucking Poky's hand under his arm, set forth to tramp the distance that lay between the steamboat wharf and the humble cabin. * * * * * The girl who had lain in the darkness all night, racked by cruel pains, and praying for death, gave a quick start and held her breath in fear. She heard loud voices and footsteps in the outer room, and foreboded that Jewel had tracked her here. "Oh, Heaven! and I had thought to die alone and in peace, undisturbed by her jealous, mocking eyes!" she sighed to herself, despairingly. She flung herself desperately out of the bed down upon the floor, crawled under the white valance that hung all around the old-fashioned bed, and lay there holding her breath in terror, hoping that she would not be discovered. One hope alone was left her--to die before those angry eyes of her jealous half-sister shone upon her again. In the meantime Sam had lighted a candle, and his wife had helped herself to a chair, while she gazed around with a critical eye at the appointments of the room. It was well furnished indeed, for old Maria had been as thrifty as Sam was shiftless, and Poky said presently that "arter she had tidied up ter-morror it would be a very decent sort of a place." "So I told yer, my lub," replied Sam, affectionately, and he gave the brown beauty an energetic kiss. Then he said, persuasively, "Poky, 'sposen yer light a fire and let us have a cup of coffee before we go to bed." Poky assented good-naturedly, and very soon a fire was crackling in the little kitchen stove, and the odor of coffee and broiling ham pervaded the air. Then Poky took from the capacious basket she had brought on her arm a loaf of bread and a roll of butter, and proceeded to set the little table for her lord's repast. It was just as she had finished her thrifty preparations, and invited Sam to "draw up his cheer," that he gave a startled little cry, and looked over his shoulder apprehensively: "Sam!" "Poky!"