Then Mrs. Otis understood that they were talking about the girl in her spare-chamber, and she interposed, standing in the doorway. "She was just about tuckered out, what with the cold and that awful tramp," said she. "She most ought to have rode over." Mrs. Otis's voice was soft and conciliatory. "We didn't know she was coming," replied the man in the sleigh, courteously, "or we should not have let her walk so far on such a day." "Be you her brother?" questioned Mrs. Otis. "Yes. I'm her brother Eugene." "And you drove over to see where she was?" "Yes; we've been very anxious." "Well, you can be easy about her for to-night," said Mrs. Otis. "She's tucked up nice and warm in my spare-chamber bed, and I give her a tumbler of my brandy cordial, and I guess she's sound asleep." "He wants to take her home to-night, mother," said Jim, and there was a curious appeal in his tone. Mrs. Otis, standing there on the door-step in the freezing moonlight, turned quickly upon the man in the sleigh, and all the soft conciliation was gone from her voice. "You ain't plannin' to take that girl way home to Ware Centre to-night?" said she. "Father sent me for her," replied Eugene Hautville. "Well, she ain't goin' a step!" "Her father will expect me to bring her," said Eugene, with his unfailing courtesy. "He has been very anxious. I had hard work to find where she was. My father won't be satisfied if I come home without her." "That girl ain't going out of this house to-night!" "I've got a bearskin here to wrap her up in. She is used to being out in all weathers," persisted Eugene, gently. "She can't go. Pull her out of a warm bed such a night as this! If you try to take that poor child out to-night I'll stand in my spare-chamber door, and you'll have to walk over me to do it--and my son won't see his mother hurt, I guess!" Jim Otis stepped closer to the sleigh and spoke to Eugene Hautville in a low voice. "Well," said Eugene, slowly, "maybe you're right, Otis. I don't know what father will say, but if she was as used up as you tell for, I don't know as 'tis safe. It is an awful night." "I guess it ain't safe, and she ain't going," maintained Mrs. Otis from the door-step. Then Eugene Hautville bent well out of his sleigh and asked a question in the other man's ear. "Yes, she did," replied Jim Otis. "The poor girl is crazy over it," said Eugene. He and Jim talked for a few moments, but Mrs. Otis, straining her ears on the door-step, could not hear. Suddenly Jim said, quite distinctly, "She wanted to know if I saw him give her the knife." There was a pause; then Eugene Hautville asked, in a voice with which he might have addressed a judge of his life and death, "Did you?" "No," said Jim Otis. Chapter XII