It was a week since they had lost trace of him there—and old Cumbo had just brought the news to Sophie that day—hence Sophie’s dilating eyes and starting nerves at every sound. At last, though but eight o’clock, she could bear it no longer—so wrought up had her nerves become that as the lamp flickered against the walls, the old figures in the landscape paper, Fox’s Martyrs, seemed to dance and jibber in their flames. The rattling branches against the windows seemed the breaking, crushing crossbar of the burglar, while the glancing of the moonbeams between them seemed like the gliding about of spirits from another world. Sophie arose with a cautious tread, as though stealing from enemies, and opened the door of the great hall from the centre of which the staircase ascended. She held her lamp in one hand, her knitting in the other, and her heart was beating and her eyes half starting as she opened the door and prepared to bound up the stairs to her own, and little Hagar’s room. Somehow all her vague imaginary terrors gave way, while she held little Hagar in her arms, as though there was safety in the presence of infant innocence. She opened the door, and there before her, joining her, stood the gigantic negro, with wild, haggard face, and bloodshot eyes! With a piercing scream, Sophie dropped her candle, which was extinguished in the fall, and fled back into the parlor. He followed her. She had sunk, paralysed with extreme terror, into a chair. The negro stood before her again, and extending one talon-like hand, exclaimed— “I am not going to hurt you, Miss Sophie—give me some victuals—I am starving!” But Sophie only gazed at him with a startled and stony eye—her senses petrified. “Give me some food, Miss Churchill, I die—” _Sophie_ was dying, or seemed to be—her head had fallen back against the chair—her chin had dropped, and her stony eyes, started from her chalky face, were riveted upon her fearful visitor. _His_ eyes were hollow and fiery, and his giant frame was trembling in every limb. He dropped on the floor before her, and said— “Miss Sophie, Miss Sophie, look at me. I won’t hurt you—how could I hurt you when I can scarcely stand! Give me some victuals—I have not tasted food for four days. Give me some, Miss Sophie!—Oh don’t be scared at _me_—not at _me_—who used to ride you on my shoulder when you were a baby—how could _I_ hurt you?” Just then the door opened, and Sophie, with a scream of joy, bounded from her chair, sprang over the prostrate negro, and flew into the arms of old Cumbo and fainted.