If I had killed her now, throth it 'ud be a good joke, an' all in a fit of passion, bekase she didn't come home in time to let me meet him.

Well, I'll go back an' spake soft to her, for, afther all, she'll give me a hard life of it." She returned; and, having entered the hut, perceived that the ear and cheek of her step-mother were still bleeding.
"I'm sorry for what I did," she said, with the utmost frankness and good nature.

"Forgive me, mother; you know I'm a hasty devil--for a devil's limb I am, no doubt of it.

Forgive me, I say--do now--here, I'll get something to stop the blood." She sprang at the moment, with the agility of a wild cat, upon an old chest that stood in the corner of the hut, exhibiting as she did it, a leg and foot of surpassing symmetry and beauty.

By stretching herself up to her full length, she succeeded in pulling down several old cobwebs that had been for years in the corner of the wall; and in the act of doing so, disturbed some metallic substance, which fell first upon the chest, from which it tumbled off to the ground, where it made two or three narrowing circles, and then lay at rest.
"Murdher alive, mother!" she exclaimed, "what is this?
Hallo! a tobaccy-box--a fine round tobaccy-box of iron, bedad--an what's this on it!--let me see; two letthers.