Something gurgled in her throat like a chuckle. With the energy of malevolence, she stammered: “There wasn't no records--there wasn't no family Bible! it's all a lie--you hear me! Your Atherly that you're so proud of was just a British bummer who was kicked outer his family in England and sent to buzz round in Americky. He honey-fogled me--Sally Magregor--out of a better family than his'n, in Kansas, and skyugled me away, but it was a straight out marriage, and I kin prove it. It was in the St. Louis papers, and I've got it stored away safe enough in my trunk! You hear me! I'm shoutin'! But he wasn't no old settler in Mizzouri--he wasn't descended from any settler, either! He was a new man outer England--fresh caught--and talked down his throat. And he fooled ME--the darter of an old family that was settled on the right bank of the Mizzouri afore Dan'l Boone came to Kentucky--with his new philanderings. Then he broke up, and went all to pieces when we struck Californy, and left ME--Sally Magregor, whose father had niggers of his own--to wash for Rough and Ready! THAT'S your Atherly! Take him! I don't want him--I've done with him! I was done with him long afore--afore”--a cough checked her utterance,--“afore”--She gasped again, but the words seemed to strangle in her throat. Intent only on her words and scarcely heeding her sufferings, Peter was bending over her eagerly, when the doctor rudely pulled him away and lifted her to a sitting posture. But she never spoke again. The strongest restoratives quickly administered only left her in a state of scarcely breathing unconsciousness. “Is she dying? Can't you bring her to,” said the anxious Peter, “if only for a moment, doctor?” “I'm thinkin',” said the visiting doctor, an old Scotch army surgeon, looking at the rich Mr. Atherly with cool, professional contempt, “that your mother willna do any more washing for me as in the old time, nor give up her life again to support her bairns. And it isna my eentention to bring her back to pain for the purposes of geeneral conversation!” Nor, indeed, did she ever come back to any purpose, but passed away with her unfinished sentence. And her limbs were scarcely decently composed by the attendants before Peter was rummaging the trunk in her room for the paper she had spoken of. It was in an old work-box--a now faded yellow clipping from a newspaper, lying amidst spoils of cotton thread, buttons, and beeswax, which he even then remembered to have seen upon his mother's lap when she superadded the sewing on of buttons to her washing of the miners' shirts. And his dark and hollow cheek glowed with gratified sentiment as he read the clipping.