they began to pass through a large village; no lights burned in the
windows, but white fences gleamed through the darkness, and sharp gable
ends loomed up against the dull sky, one after another, and the horse's
hoofs flashed sparks from the paved street before the church, that
showed its white spire, spectre-like, directly in their path. Here, by
some evil chance, the child awoke, and, between cold and hunger and
fear, began one of those long and loud shrieks that no power can stop
this side of strangulation. In vain Hitty kissed, and coaxed, and
half-choked her boy, in hope to stop the uproar; still he screamed more
and more loudly. Abner turned round on his seat with an oath, snatched
the child from its mother's arms, and rolled it closely in the blanket.

"Hold on a minute, Ben!" said he to his companion; "this yelp must be
stopped"; and stepping over to the back of the wagon, he grasped his
wife tightly with one arm, and with the other dropped his child into the
street. "Now drive, Ben," said he, in the same hoarse whisper,--"drive
like the Devil!"--for, as her child fell, Hitty shrieked with such a cry
as only the heart of a mother could send out over a newly-murdered
infant. Shriek on shriek, fast and loud and long, broke the slumbers of
the village; nothing Abner could do, neither threat nor force, short of
absolute murder, would avail,--and there was too much real estate
remaining of the Hyde property for Abner Dimock to spare his wife yet.
Ben drove fiend-fashion; but before they passed the last house in the
village, lights were glancing and windows grating as they were opened.
Years after, I heard the story of such a midnight cry borne past
sleeping houses with the quick rattle of wheels; but no one who heard it
could give the right clue to its explanation, and it dried into a
legend.

Now Hitty Dimock became careless of good or evil, except one absorbing