"What made you bring her here?" said Harper fiercely to Jael, adding epithets of abuse with which I shall not soil my pages. Jael looked alarmed, and declared that she had never guessed that the girl was following her up the secret staircase. "And now that she has discovered your hiding-place, what is to be done?" cried the woman. "Dead men tell no tales," muttered Harper, in a tone which made the blood of Emmie appear to freeze in her veins. "No, no; you must not harm her,--you cannot touch her," said Mrs. Jessel. "Such a deed could never be hidden; you would only ruin us all. Her father and brothers would search till they found her, if they had to pull down every brick in the house with their nails!" Harper looked perplexed and undecided. "Make her promise secrecy, and let her go free," said Jael. "And trust my safety to a woman's power of holding her tongue! Not I; I will take a surer way,--if I swing for it!" cried Harper, starting from his seat. "You have listened to your wife's advice before now, and found it good," said she whom we have called Mrs. Jessel, interposing herself between her husband and Emmie. A rapid conversation then passed between the Harpers, held in a tone so low that Emmie could not distinguish a word, though she had a fearful consciousness that on the result of that conversation her own life must depend. The terrified girl could not collect her thoughts, even for prayer, unless the voiceless cry of "Mercy, mercy!" which was bursting from her heart, was an appeal for help from above. At length her fate was decided. Harper approached the crouching form of Emmie, and thus addressed her, still grasping the knife in his hand. "Will you take the most solemn oath that tongue can frame never to give hint, by word or sign, of what you have seen this night? Will you swear silence deep as the grave?" "Anything--everything--I will never betray you!" gasped Emmie, grasping with the eagerness of a drowning wretch at the hope of safety thus held out. Harper made the shuddering girl repeat after him, word for word, an oath of his own framing, accompanied by fearful imprecations invoked on her own soul should she ever break that oath, even in the smallest point. If the wretched Emmie so much as hesitated before pronouncing words which seemed to her not only horrible but almost blasphemous, the cold steel was shaken before her eyes, as a menace of instant death. When the oath had been taken by the poor maiden, Harper gruffly bade her rise. Emmie could not have done so without the help of Jael.