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"It is very, indeed," said Mrs. Rodman.

"Your uncle did leave one child, Mrs. Rodman -- and she married young, and was unfortunate."

"Unfortunate?"

"Yes; her husband was gay and wild, and dissipated, and at last, having been cast off by his father, who re- moved away, he left her and died afar off. She lost her children, her property, her home, her health and life. She came here in her last sickness -- and here she died!"

"Is it so, indeed; why, what an interest you have awakened in my mind about her and the family!"

"I am myself," said he, "a distant relation of the family, a great uncle on her mother's side!"

"Well, now, Mr. Warren, that is the most surprising of all."

"It is really quite a genealogical fact, Mrs. Rodman," said her husband.

"Truly so," said she.

The tea-sitting now broke up. Mr. Warren seemed weary. The fact was, he had exerted himself more than he usually did, but he had reached a point beyond which he felt that he could not safely go in his communications. He compelled himself, therefore, to silence on the mat- ters of family history, and passed to other subjects while his visitors remained.

Before dark they were on their return.

Ere he slept that night the old man carefully opened the drawer of his bureau and took out the small, covered trunk and opened it, and looked among its various relics and curious things for the secret-box, the keeping of which began to trouble him. In vain he took away this and that object. It could not be seen! He will find it in another corner, under the shells. It is not there! He has overlooked it -- but he fails to discern it even now! Surely it is there, and he again removes and displaces every one of the choice articles contained there; but he finds it not! It may have been carelessly left out in the drawer, or put elsewhere in the bureau. And he goes carefully on, and on, and on with the search -- and the hour grows late for him, the old man, to burn his candle -- so thought George, and so Eliza, as they saw its light beneath the door -- and then they wondered what light work he pursued so long and steadily, for they heard the moving now and then of objects he displaced, and of drawers moved to and fro in his search. And then there was a long silence, yet the light burned on.

"I will go to him, I think," said George.

"Do go," said Eliza.

And George tapped at his door -- "Grandfather, are you abed and comfortable, eh?"

No answer, and then another gentle tap and question, but still all was silent. George opens the door a little way, and there stands the old man, wildly and painfully staring into the little trunk, out of which he has removed every one of its precious things, that he may be sure he has not made in his search an oversight.

"Grandfather!" exclaimed George.

"Why, grandfather," says Eliza, "what is to pay!"

The old man slowly and solemnly turned towards them and exclaimed -- "THE SILVER BOX! -- IT IS GONE!" and sunk into their arms. They laid him on his bed, and long it seemed to them that he would faint away and die. With camphor they revived him, and he sat up, leaning on the shoulder of George. Presently he was calmer, and he began to tell them distinctly what he had lost, when all at once he started from the bed, his hand pointing to the window, towards which his flashing eye was fixed, and exclaimed in a sharp, quick, angry voice, "HAG!"

George and Eliza, turning quickly to look in the direction, saw distinctly the vanishing face of the gipsie Poll, who had been gloating her ugly soul in the old man's anguish as she gazed on him from without.

"To the devil with you!" shouted George at her, as he quickly lifted the window, and saw her leap over the wall and vanish from sight and pursuit. "Infernal witch! What do you hang round here for?" But she was gone, the exultation of a fiend marking her countenance.

CHAPTER XXIV.
WHAT happened to the Cabin. Remarks upon Cabins are useless, for they fulfil their day, never behind, never ahead of it. They are a standing Prophecy of Shelter and Refuge to Society. They show us, that if we cannot live in a Palace, we can in a Hut. Ho, the Cabin!

A week's carnival of drunkenness at Tuckers'. Noisy, boisterous company of wicked, lewd, and desperate creatures. Then there came a quiet of a few days, for the occupants were exhausted, their whisky gone, their food diminished, and they scattered themselves abroad for more.

This house of Tuckers' had often been complained of at town-meetings, and before the selectmen of the town, as a nuisance. The difficulty of keeping John and Polly long at the poor-house, and the necessity that they should have a place at intervals where they could retreat, induced the authorities to spare it. But the proprietors of real estate around it grew more and more resolved to have the house abated as a nuisance, or to pull it down, if by that means or any other they could force the old couple away. "We are losing," said they, "all our fences, all our wood, all our fruit in the orchards around, all the nuts on the trees, all the wild grapes, and so forth; and besides this, there is the general disgrace of such a house resting on the town." It was not long before a band of men was formed determined to raze the house to its foundation.