“Yes, pirate!—Agnes!” said the woman, approaching him slowly, holding the torch above her head; then stooping, fixing her eyes intently upon him, and thus creeping toward him, as a lioness preparing for a couch and spring. She paused before him, and still glaring on his face, said very slowly: “So, pirate! we meet again, at last! We meet upon the spot of that outrage which first separated me from home and country, friends and kindred, holiness and heaven! We meet upon this spot that you would again desecrate with crime! We meet in an hour of retribution! For this have I lived! For now that at last I see my mortal foe, never will I lose sight of you again until I have put you in the hands of justice! Never will I cease to pursue you, until I hunt you to the scaffold! Never can I die, until I see you dead before me by the death of a felon!” While she spoke with such slow tones of settled hatred and determined vengeance he held his hand in his bosom. As she ceased speaking: “False prophetess! You die now!” he thundered, leveling the pistol he held at her head. She sprang forward, seized his arm, turning the weapon aside. They struggled violently for a moment, and then the pistol was discharged, and Lionel Hardcastle fell, shot through the chest. Frozen with horror Garnet Seabright drew near, and stooped over the fallen man. Agnes also bent over her prostrate foe for a moment, then turning to Garnet, and throwing her wild hair back, she said: “I did not kill him, madam, though if I had ’twould have been but just.” The eyes of the dying man flared open once, and fixed upon the face of Garnet. Raising himself upon his elbow, he said, in low and broken tones: “Forgive me, Garnet—and—believe this!—whatever were the hidden sins of my youth—neither piracy nor bloodshed were among them! I was a—prisoner among them! Ship—wreck—plank—waves—picked up—oh, God, forgive me!” His head fell back—he rolled over in a mortal struggle, and then grew still in death. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE BEEHIVE. A cottage where domestic love And truth breathe simple kindness to the heart, Where white-armed children twine the neck of age, Where hospitable cares light up the hearth, Cheering the lonely traveler on his way. _—Gilman._ “The Beehive” was the name that had been given by Elsie to her first backwoods home, and afterward transferred by her to the substantial home of hewn rock that had replaced the log cabin. It is late in the afternoon of a blustering March day that I shall again introduce you into the household of Dr. Hardcastle. And it is a large and interesting family for which the doctor is now responsible.