again. It rests with you, Miss Naomi, to keep me here, and to persuade me to save Ambrose by showing myself, and owning to my name.” What do you mean?" I heard Naomi ask, sternly. He lowered his voice; but I could still hear him. "Promise you will marry me," he said, “and I will go before the magistrate to-morrow, and show him that I am a living man." "In that case you will lose me again, and none of you will find me till Ambrose is hanged." "Are you villain enough, John Jago, to mean what you say?" asked the girl, raising her voice. "If you attempt to give the alarm," he answered, "as true as God's above us, you will feel my hand on your throat! It's my turn, now, miss; and I am not to be trifled with. Will you have me for your husband, yes or no ?" "No!" she answered, loudly and firmly. I threw open the door, and seized him as he lifted his hand on her. He had not suffered from the nervous derangement which had weakened me, and he was the stronger man of the two. Naomi saved my life. She struck up his pistol as he pulled it out of his pocket with his free hand and presented it at my head. The bullet was fired into the air. I tripped up his heels at the same moment. The report of the pistol had alarmed the house. We two together kept him on the ground until help arrived, CHAPTER XII. THE END O F I T. JOHN JAGO was brought before the magistrate, and John Jago was identified the next day. The lives of Ambrose and Silas were, of course, no longer in peril, so far as human justice was concerned. But there were legal delays to be encountered, and legal formalities to be observed, before the brothers could be released from prison in the characters of innocent men. During the interval which thus elapsed, certain events happened which may be briefly mentioned here before I close my narrative. Mr. Meadowcroft the elder, broken by the suffering which he had gone through, died suddenly of a rheumatic affection of the heart. A codicil attached to his will abundantly justified what Naomi had told me of Miss Meadowcroft's influence over her father, and of the end she had in view in exercising it. A life-income only was left to Mr. Meadowcroft's sons. The freehold of the farm was bequeathed to his daughter, with the testator's recommendation added, that she should marry his "best and dearest friend, Mr. John Jago." Armed with the power of the will, the heiress of Morwick sent an insolent message to Naomi, requesting her no longer to consider herself one of the inmates at the farm. Miss Meadowcroft, it should be here added, positively refused to believe that John Jago had ever asked Naomi to be his wife, or had ever threatened her, as I had heard him threaten her, if she refused. She accused me, as she accused Naomi, of trying meanly to injure John Jago in her estimation, out of hatred towards "that much-injured man;" and she sent to me, as she had sent to Naomi, a formal notice to leave the house. We two banished ones met the same day in the hall, with our travelling bags in our hands. "We are turned out together, friend Lefrank," said Naomi, with her quaintly comical smile. "You will go back to England, I guess; and I must make my own living in my own country. Women can get employment in the States if they have a friend to speak for them. Where shall I find somebody who can give me a place ?" I saw my way to saying the right word at the right moment. "I have got a place to offer you," I replied, "if you see no objection to accepting it." She suspected nothing, so far. "That's lucky, sir," was all she said. "Is it in a telegraph-office or in a dry-goods store?" I astonished my little American friend by taking her then and there in my arms, and giving her my first kiss. "The office is by my fireside," I said. "The salary is anything in reason you like to ask me |