so saying, the fair and hospitable dame took our hero by the hand; and the touch was light, and the force was gentleness, and though robin read in her eyes what he did not hear in her words, yet the slender-waisted woman in the scarlet petticoat proved stronger than the athletic country youth. she had drawn his half-willing footsteps nearly to the threshold, when the opening of a door in the neighborhood startled the major's housekeeper, and, leaving the major's kinsman, she vanished speedily into her own domicile. a heavy yawn preceded the appearance of a man, who, like the moonshine of pyramus and thisbe, carried a lantern, needlessly aiding his sister luminary in the heavens. as he walked sleepily up the street, he turned his broad, dull face on robin, and displayed a long staff, spiked at the end.