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Then to prowl andwarily to exa on the bare boards--a dirty newspaper, an old shoe with buckle , a broken pewter spoon--all the sordid trifles that accent desolation Once or twice I thought to h soht filtering through the crusted panes wasto me

The house was divided by a hallway; there were two rooms on either side, all bare and empty save for scraps here and there, and in one room the collapsed and dusty carcass of a rat On the walls there was nothing except a nail driven into the clay, which was cru of ashed brick Fro s above me as I moved It was the very abo soht chance on to kindle hope with--solected trifle to dae void--it was this instinct that ledI found, save, on one foul -pane, naain: "Lyn," and "Cherry-Maid," repeated a score of ti who had written it, and what it ht mean, and as "Lyn" As for "Cherry-Maid," the nay held on the Kennyetto before the battle of Oriskany, where the first split ca-sorceress, Catrine Montour, had failed to pledge the Oneidas to the war-post, the Cherry-Maid had taken part Indeed, sohter of the Huron witch; but Jack Mount, who saw the rite, swore that the Cherry-Maid was but a beautiful child, painted frohter as Carolyn Carolyn? Lyn! By heaven, the Cherry-Maid was Carolyn Montour, one days she had scrawled her name--here her title And Walter Butler had been present at that frantic debauch where the False Faces cringed to their prophetess, Magdalen Brant Perhaps it was there that thisanimal whelped by the Toad-Woman--this slim, lawless, depraved child, who had led the False Faces in their gruesome rites and sacrifice!

I stared at the diamond scrawl; and before , the clattering rows of wooden masks, the white blankets of the sachems, the tawny, naked form of the Cherry-Maid, seated between saers on her hips, her heavy hair veiling a laughing face, over which the infernal fire shadow played