school-room, a place accessible only by means of a small trap-door
without staircase or ladder; and here he meant to have kept them while
it suited his purposes, but for the untimely intrusion of the weaver's
beam.

Miss Bangle had sat through all, as we have said, thinking the letters
safe, yet vowing vengeance against her confederate for not allowing
her to secure them by a satisfactory conflagration; and it was not
until she heard her own name whispered through the crowd, that she was
awakened to her true situation. The sagacity of the low creatures whom
she had despised showed them at once that the letters must be hers,
since her character had been pretty shrewdly guessed, and the
handwriting wore a more practised air than is usual among females in
the country. This was first taken for granted, and then spoken of as
an acknowledged fact.

The assembly moved like the heavings of a troubled sea. Everybody felt
that this was everybody's business. "Put her out!" was heard from more
than one rough voice near the door, and this was responded to by loud
and angry murmurs from within.

Mr. Englehart, not waiting to inquire into the merits of the case in
this scene of confusion, hastened to get his family out as quietly and
as quickly as possible, but groans and hisses followed his niece as
she hung half-fainting on his arm, quailing completely beneath the
instinctive indignation of the rustic public. As she passed out, a
yell resounded among the rude boys about the door, and she was lifted
into a sleigh, insensible from terror. She disappeared from that
evening, and no one knew the time of her final departure for "the
east."