The next morning Sophie Churchill made an effort to return home, but she was overruled. It was Saturday, Emily said, and she must stay to attend church the next day, Easter Sunday. She complied, and attended church with the family, without meeting with another adventure of any sort. On Easter Monday Sophie mounted on Emily’s horse, and carrying little Hagar on her lap, set out for her home at Heath Hall, attended by Master Gusty Wilde May as escort, who fancied his manhood greatly accelerated by the honor of his office. I told you that the house at the Heath was large and square. It faced the bay, and a wide hall ran from the central front entrance through to the back—from the middle of this hall, and facing the entrance, arose the wide staircase, whose balustrades turned off in a scroll on each side of the bottom steps. Under these stairs was a large closet where household utensils were kept. On each side of this wide hall were opposite doors—the left hand door letting into the parlor, the right hand door into the ruinous drawing-room. The dim old parlor, with the sleeping-room above it, and the kitchen near it, was the only habitable part of the house, and even these rooms leaked in rainy weather. One evening, about a week from the day of her arrival at home, Sophie Churchill sat alone before the smouldering fire in the wide arched fire-place; a lamp burned on the little old spiderlegged workstand; the moonlight streamed through the branches of the old poplar trees that swayed against the four gothic-arched and curtainless front windows. The room was nearly bare of furniture; no carpet was on the floor; and the once bright-colored landscape paper on the walls illustrating Fox’s Christian Martyrs was torn and faded. It was a weird scene enough. The figures of the Martyrs were large as life. Upon the wall opposite the fire-place, and beside the door leading into the hall, was the representation of a Christian suffering the baptism of fire; and as the ray of the lamp flickered upon it, the form of the martyr seemed to writhe and quiver—seemed to dip and rise from the flames, and the features of his tormentors to grin and leer. Sophie was there knitting, and her large brown eyes were somewhat larger, with a vague terror that had fallen upon her spirits as soon as she was left alone. And well might she feel this; except the infant and the beldam, there was not a soul within half a mile of her, and the forest behind was known to be the refuge of a runaway negro—a gigantic fellow, whose depredations in the neighborhood were violent and frequent.