"Are you ready, James?" "Yes,--only one word. It is a long account we have to settle, and it must be final." "It shall be. Mine is a heavy score. Years ago I swore to wipe it out, and now the time has come." Mrs. Clark's knock interrupted them. There was an angry exclamation, and the door was opened. To her intense surprise, no light came from within. She could not understand how they could settle their accounts in the darkness; but they gave her no time for reflection; an angry voice, in answer to her inquiries, bade her go on to the kitchen, and she hastened off. There she found a single candle burning dimly; by its light she picked up her bundle, and, leaving the door open to see her way, returned to the front of the house. Though not a nervous woman, she felt an undefined fear at the mysterious darkness and silence; and as she passed the brothers standing in the doorway, she was struck with fresh terror at the livid pallor of those two stern faces that looked out from the black shadow. When she was going out, she heard the door of the parlor bolted within, and she rejoined her friends, right glad to be away from the sad house. So those two men were left alone, locked into the dark room together, in the horrible companionship of their inextinguishable hatred and their own bad hearts. It will forever remain unknown what passed between them through the long hours of that awful night, when the wind howled madly around the lightless house, and the clouds gathered blacker and thicker, shrouding it in impenetrable gloom. Three days passed before any living creature approached the spot,--three days of cold unparalleled in the annals of that country,--cold so severe that it compelled even the hardy farmers to keep as much as possible by the fireside. On the fourth day, Isaac Welles began to think they had been quite long enough alone, and he started with a friend to visit the Blount brothers. Arrived at the farm-house, they saw the sleigh standing before the door, but no sign of any one stirring. The shutters of the windows were closed, and no smoke came out of the chimney. They knocked at the door. No answer. Surprised at the silence, they at length tried to open it. It was not locked, but some heavy substance barred the way. With difficulty they forced it open wide enough to go in. To this day those men shudder and turn pale, as they recall the awful scene that awaited them within that house, which was, in fact, a tomb. The obstacle which opposed their entrance was the dead body of John Blount. He lay stretched on the floor,--his face mutilated by cuts and disfigured with gore, his clothes disordered and bloody, and one hand nearly severed from the arm by a deep gash at the wrist; yet it was evident that none of these wounds were mortal. After that terrible conflict, he had probably crawled to the door and fallen there, faint with loss of blood; the silent, cruel cold had completed the work of death.