MAIDEN NO MORE It was late mid-summer, and just such an evening as had seen the attempted capture of Jessica Leveret years before.

She sat at a window, looking out upon the garden and the river.

The room was at the top of the house.

It had been to her a kind of play-room when she had visited Governor Nicholls years before.

To every woman memory is a kind of religion; and to Jessica as much as to any, perhaps more than to most, for she had imagination.