"Hold your peace, girl. This is a matter for wiser heads than yours!" answered her father, rather shortly; and Jennie subsided into silence, not, however, without receiving the reward in another beaming look of gratitude from the dark eyes of the man whom she was defending. Mr. Vinton tried another tack. Finding the farmer's sense of justice impregnable to threats, he put his hand in his pocket, and withdrew it filled with gold pieces. He held them toward the man with a significant look. "Put your gold back, sir," said the farmer, sturdily. "We are poor folks enough, but gold can't buy our honor!" and though he was but a poor tiller of the soil, his mien was princely as he thus defended his honor. Leon Vinton's brow grew black as night. He muttered some inaudible curses between his teeth. Only his sense of policy restrained him from knocking Mr. Thorn down. "What am I to do?" he said, with an air of great perplexity. "Here is my poor sister lying here needing the care of her friends, and the comforts and luxuries of her home. Yet you will not permit me to exercise my right to remove her." "Prove your right, sir," said the farmer, firmly; "that's all I want you to do." "And if I prove my right to remove her you will suffer me to do so?" asked Leon, after a moment's earnest thought. "Why, of course, sir. I'd have no right to detain her after that." "He cannot prove his right!" exclaimed Queenie, who had lain silent for some minutes. "Have you an errand boy?" asked Vinton, disregarding the interruption. Mr. Thorn went to the door, and called "Jotham," and the boy-of-all-work shambled in. "Do you know a cottage on the banks of the river, two miles from here, Jotham?" "Ya'as, sur," said the boy, broadly. Leon Vinton wrote these words on a slip of paper: "_Take the carriage and come here immediately._" He directed the note to Mrs. Bowers, and gave it to the boy, with instructions to deliver it at the cottage by the river. CHAPTER XV. The time passed slowly enough to the impatient Vinton while the boy-of-all-work was gone on his mission to Mrs. Bowers. He paced up and down impatiently, now and then casting surly looks of hatred and revenge upon the honest farmer who had dared to defy him and protect his trembling victim. Mrs. Thorn, seeing that Queenie was better and did not need her attention, busied herself in setting the neglected breakfast upon the table. She put on the smoking coffee, the hot corn-cakes, the fried bacon and eggs, the fresh butter and milk, and invited her visitors to partake of the homely fare. Leon Vinton declined the invitation by a surly nod, but Queenie, who had been watching her movements eagerly, readily signified her consent. "I am very hungry," she declared, "for owing to the wickedness of yonder man, I have not tasted food for several days." "Oh, my poor, demented little sister," exclaimed the hypocritical Vinton, "would to God your reason might be restored!"