"
"That man," murmured Levin. "Oh, no, it is too horrible."
"Do not hate me. Be a little kind, if you do, for I have watched you
here hours, almost hoping you never might wake up, so beautiful and pure
you looked asleep."
"And you--that's the way you look, Huldy. How kin you look so an' be his
daughter."
"I am not his child, thank God! He is my stepfather."
"What is your name, then, besides Huldy?"
The girl blushed deeply and hesitated. Her fine gray eyes were turned
upon her beautiful bare feet, white as the river that flashed beneath
the window.
"Hulda Bruinton," she said, swallowing a sigh.
"Bruinton--where did I hear that name?" Levin asked; "some tale has been
told me, I reckon, about him?"
"Yes, everybody knows it," Hulda said, in a voice of pain; "he was
hanged for murder at Georgetown when I was a little child."
Levin could not speak for astonishment.
"I might as well tell you," she said, "for others will, if I conceal it.
I can hardly remember my father. My mother soon married Joe and
neglected me, and Aunt Patty, my grandmother, brought me up. She was
kind to me, but, oh, how cruel she can be to others!"
"You talk as if you kin read, Huldy," said Levin, wishing to change so
harsh a topic; "kin you?"
"Yes, I can read and write as well as if I had been to school. Some one
taught me the letters around the tavern--some of the negro-dealers: I
think it was Colonel McLane; and I had a gift for it, I think, because I
began to read very soon, and then Aunt Patty made me read books to
her--oh, such dreadful books!"
"What wair they, Huldy?"
"The lives of pirates and the trials of murderers--about Murrell's band
and the poisonings of Lucretia Chapman, the execution of Thistlewood,
and Captain Kidd's voyages; the last I read her was the story of Burke
and Hare, who smothered people to death in the Canongate of Edinburgh
last year to sell their bodies to the doctors.
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