University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

The landlord lost no time in freeing the captive.
A few minutes sufficed to find and fit the keys;
and penetrating at once to the cell of Ralph Colleton,
he soon made the youth acquainted with as
much of the circumstances of his agency in the escape
as might be thought necessary for the satisfaction
of his immediate curiosity. He wondered
at the part taken by Munro in the affair, but hesitated
not to accept his assistance. Though scrupulous,
and rigidly so, not to violate the laws, and

having a conscientious regard to all human and
social obligations, he saw no immorality in flying
from a sentence, however agreeable to law, in all
respects so greatly at variance with justice. A
second intimation was not wanting to his decision,
and without waiting until the landlord should unlock
the chain which secured him, he was about to
dart forward into the passage, when the restraining
check which it gave to his forward movement,
warned him of the difficulty. Fortunately, the obstruction
was small; the master key, not only of the
cells, but of the several locks to the fetters of the
prison, was among the bunch of which the jailer
had been dispossessed, and when found, it performed
its office. The youth was again free, and a few
moments only had elapsed, after the departure of
Munro from the house of the pedler, when both
Ralph and his deliverer were upon the high road,
and bending their unrestrained course towards the
Indian nation.

“And now, young man,” said the landlord,
“you are free. I have performed my promise to
one, whose desire in this jumps full with my own.
I should have been troubled enough had you
perished for the death of Forrester, though, to
speak the truth, I should not have risked myself, as
I have done to-night, but for my promise to her.”

“Who—of whom do you speak? To whom do
I owe all this, if it comes not of your own head?”

“And you do not conjecture? Have you not a
thought on the subject? Was it likely, think you,
that the young woman, who did not fear to go to a
stranger's chamber at midnight, in order to save
him from his enemy, would forget him altogether
when a greater danger was before him?”

“And to Miss Munro again do I owe my life?

Noble girl! how shall I requite—how acknowledge
my deep responsibility to her?”

“You cannot!—I have not looked on either of
you for nothing; and my observation has taught
me all your feelings and hers. You cannot reward
her as she deserves to be rewarded—as, indeed,
she only can be rewarded by you, Mr. Colleton.
Better, therefore, that you seek to make no acknowledgments.”

“What mean you? Your words have a signification
beyond my comprehension. I know that I
am unable to requite services such as hers, and
such an endeavour I surely should not attempt;
but that I feel gratitude for her interposition may
not well be questioned—the deepest gratitude—for
in this deed, with your aid, she relieves me, not
merely from death, but the worse agony of that
dreadful form of death. My acknowledgments for
this service were nothing, I am well aware; but
these she shall have, and what else I can, without
disrespect, offer.”

“There is, indeed, one thing, Mr. Colleton—now
that I reflect, which it may be in your power to
do, and which may relieve you of some of the responsibilities
which her interposition here and elsewhere
imposes on you.”

The landlord paused for a moment, and looked
hesitatingly in Ralph's countenance. The youth
saw and understood the expression, and replied
readily.

“Doubt not, Mr. Munro, that I shall do all
things consistent with propriety, in my power to
do, that may take the shape and character of requital
for this service. Any thing for Miss Munro
—for yourself or others—not incompatible with
the character of the gentleman. Speak, sir—if
you can suggest a labour of any description, not

under this head, which would be grateful to yourself
or her—fear not to speak, and rely upon my
gratitude to serve you both.”

“I thank you, Mr. Colleton—your frankness relieves
me of some heavy thoughts, and I shall open
my mind freely to you on the subject which now
troubles it. I need not tell you what my course
of life has been. I need not tell you what it is
now. Bad enough, Mr. Colleton—bad enough, as
you must know by this time. Life, sir, is uncertain
with all persons, but far more uncertain with
him whose life is such as mine. I know not the
hour, sir, when I may be knocked on the head. I
have no confidence in the people whom I go with—
I have nothing to hope from the sympathies of
society, or the protection of the laws; and I have
now arrived at that time of life, when my own experience
is hourly repeating in my ears the words
of Scripture—“the wages of sin is death.” Mine has
been a life of sin, Mr. Colleton, and I must look
for its wages. These thoughts have been troubling
me much of late, and I feel them particularly heavy
now. But, don't think, sir, that fear for myself
makes up my suffering. I fear for that poor girl,
who has no protector, and may be doomed to the
control of one who would make a hell on earth
for all under his influence. He has made a hell of
it for me.”

“Who is he—whom do you mean?”

“You should know him well enough by this time,
for he has sought your life often enough already—
GuyRivers. Well, as I say—I know not how long
I shall be able to take care of and provide for that poor
girl, whose wish has prompted me this night to
what I have undertaken. She was my brother's
child, Mr. Colleton, and a noble creature she is.
If I live, sir, she will have to become the wife of

Rivers—and though I love her as my own—as I
have never loved my own—yet she must abide
the sacrifice from which, while I live, there is no
escape. But something tells me, sir, I have not
long to live. I have a notion which makes me
gloomy, and which has troubled me ever since you
have been in prison. One dream comes to me
every night—whenever I sleep—and I wake all
over perspiration, and with a terror I'm ashamed
of. In this dream I see my brother always, and
always with the same expression. He looks at
me long and mournfully, and his finger is uplifted,
as if in warning. I hear no word from his lips,
but they are in motion as if he spoke, and
then he walks slowly away. Thus, for several
nights has my mind been haunted, and I'm sure it
is not for nothing. It warns me that the time is
not very far distant when I shall receive the wages
of a life like mine—the wages of sin—the death
perhaps—who knows—the death of the felon.”

“These are fearful fancies, indeed, Mr. Munro;
and, whether we think on them or not, will have
their influence over the strongest minded of us all:
but the thoughts which they occasion to your
mind, while they must be painful enough, may
be the most useful, if they awaken regret of
the past, and incite to amendment in the future.
Without regarding them as the presentiments of
death, or of any fearful change, I look upon them
only as the result of your own calm reflections
upon the unprofitable nature of vice; its extreme
unproductiveness in the end, however enticing in
the beginning; and the painful privations of human
sympathy and society which are the inevitable
consequences of its indulgence. These fancies are
the sleepless thoughts, the fruit of an active memory,
which, at such a time, unrestrained by the judgment,

mingles up the counsels and the warnings of
your brother and the past, with all the images and
circumstances of the present time. But—go on
with your suggestion. Let me do what I can for
the good of those in whom you are interested.”

“You are right—whatever may be my apprehensions,
life is uncertain enough, and needs no
dreams to make it more so. Still, I cannot rid myself
of this impression, which sticks to me like a
shadow. Night after night I have seen him—just
as I saw him a year before he died. But his looks
were full of meaning, and when his lips opened,
though I heard not a word, they seemed to me to
say—the hour is at hand. I am sure they spoke
the truth, and I must prepare for it. If I live, Mr.
Colleton, Lucy must marry Rivers—there's no
hope for her escape. If I die, there's no reason for
the marriage, for I can then bid him defiance. She
is willing to marry him now merely on my account.
If I perish before the marriage takes place, it will
not take place, and she will then need a protector—”

“Say no more,” exclaimed the youth, as the landlord
paused for an instant—“say no more. It will
be as little as I can say, when I assure you, that all
that my family can do for her happiness, all that I
can do—shall be done. Be at ease on this matter,
and believe me that I promise you nothing which
my heart would not strenuously insist upon my performing.
She shall be a sister to me.”

As he spoke, the landlord warmly pressed his
hand, leaning forward from his saddle as he did so;
but without a single accompanying word. The
dialogue was continued, at intervals, in a desultory
form, and without sustaining, for any length of
time, any single topic. Munro seemed heavy with
gloomy thoughts, and the sky now becoming lightened
with the glories of the ascending moon, seemed

to have no manner of influence over his sullen temperament.
Not so with the youth. He grew
elastic and buoyant as they proceeded—and his
spirit rose, bright and gentle, as if in accordance
with the pure lights which now disposed themselves,
like an atmosphere of sublimated silver, throughout
the forest. The thin clouds floating away from the
parent orb no longer obscuring her progress, became
tributaries, and were clothed in their most
dazzling draperies—clustering around her pathway,
and contributing, not a little, to the loveliness of
that serene star from which they received so
much. But the contemplations of the youth were
not long permitted to run on in the gladness of his
newly found liberty. On a sudden, the action of
his companion became animated—he drew up his
steed for an instant, then applying the rowel, exclaimed
in a deep, but suppressed tone—

“We are pursued—ride, now, for your life, Mr.
Colleton; it is three miles to the river, and our
horses will serve us well. They are chosen—give
them the spur—and follow close after me.”

Let us return to the village. The situation of
the jailer, Brooks, and of his companions, as the
landlord left them, will be readily remembered by
the reader. It was not until the fugitives were
fairly on the road, that the former, who had been
pretty well stunned by the severe blow given him
by Munro, recovered from his stupor; and he
then laboured under the difficulty of freeing himself
from the bag about his head and shoulders,
and his incarceration in the dwelling of the pedler.
The blow had come nigh to sobering him, and
his efforts, accordingly, were not without success.
He looked round in astonishment upon the condition
of all things around him, ignorant of the individual
who had wrested from him his charge, besides

subjecting his scull to the extravagant test
which it had been so little able to resist or he to
repel; and, almost ready to believe, from the
equally prostrate condition of the pedler and his
brother, that, in reality, the assailant by which he
himself was overthrown was no other than the
potent bottle-god of his brother's familiar worship.
Such certainly would have been his impression
but for the sack in which he had been enveloped,
and the absence of his keys. The blow,
which he had not ceased to feel, might have been
got by a drunken man in a thousand ways, and
was no argument to show the presence of an
enemy; but the sack, and the keys—they brought
instant conviction, and a rapidly increasing sobriety,
which, as it duly provoked his capacity for
reflection, was only so much more unpleasant than
his drunkenness. But no time was to be lost, and
the first movement, having essayed, though ineffectually,
to kick his stupid guest and snoring brother-in-law
into similar consciousness with himself,
was to rush headlong to the jail, where he soon
realized all the apprehensions which assailed him
when discovering the loss of his keys. The
prisoner was gone, and the riotous search which
he soon commenced about the village collected a
crowd, whose clamours, not less than his own, had
occasioned the uproar which concluded the conference
between Miss Colleton and Guy Rivers, as
narrated in a previous chapter.

The mob, approaching the residence of Colonel
Colleton, as a place which might probably have
been resorted to by the fugitive, brought the noise
more imperiously to the ears of Rivers, and compelled
his departure. He sallied forth, and in a
little while ascertained the cause of the disorder.
By this time the dwelling of Colonel Colleton had

undergone the closest scrutiny. It was evident
to the crowd, that, so far from harbouring the youth,
they were not conscious of the escape; but of this
Rivers was not so certain. He was satisfied in
his own mind that the stern refusal of Edith to accept
his overtures for the rescue, arose only from
the belief that they could do without him. More
than ever irritated by this idea, the outlaw was
bold enough, relying upon his disguise, to come forward,
and while all was indecisive in the multitude,
to lay plans for a pursuit. He did not scruple
to instruct the jailer as to what course should be
taken for the recovery of the fugitive; and by
his strong good sense and confidence of expression,
he infused new hope into that heretofore much bewildered
person. Nobody knew who he was, but
as the village was full of strangers, who had never
been seen there before, this fact occasioned neither
surprise nor inquiry. His advice was taken, and a
file of the Georgia Guard, which were on station in
the village, now making their appearance, he suggested
the course which they should pursue, and in
few words gave the reasons which induced the
choice. Familiar himself with all the various routes
of the surrounding country, he did not doubt that
the fugitive, under whatever guidance, for as yet
he knew nothing of Munro's agency in the business,
would take the most direct course to the Indian
nation. All this was done, on his part, with
an excited spirit, the result of that malignant mood
which now began to apprehend the chance of being
deprived of all its victims. Had this not been the
case—had he not been present, the probability is,
that in the variety of counsel, there would have
been a far greater delay in the pursuit; but such
must always be the influence of a strong and leading
mind in a time of trial and popular excitement.
Such a mind concentrates and makes effective the
power which otherwise would have been wasted
in air. His superiority of character was immediately
manifest—his suggestions were adopted
without dissent; and in a few moments, the two
troopers, accompanied by the jailer, were in pursuit
upon the very road taken by the fugitives.

Rivers, in the meanwhile, though excessively
anxious about the result of the pursuit, was yet
too sensible of his own risk to remain much longer
in the village. Annoyed not a little by the apprehended
loss of that revenge which he had described
as so delicious in contemplation to his mind, he
could not venture to linger where he was, at a time
of such general excitement and activity. With a
prudent caution, therefore, more the result of an
obvious necessity than of any accustomed habit of
his life, he withdrew himself as soon as possible
from the crowd, at the moment when Pippin—who
never lost a good opportunity—had mounted upon
a stump in order to address them. Breaking
away just as the lawyer was swelling with some
old truism, and perhaps no truth, about the rights
of man and so forth, he mounted his horse, which
he had concealed in the neighbourhood, and rode
off to the solitude and the shelter of his den. There
was one thing that troubled his mind along with its
other troubles, and that was to find out who were
the active parties in the escape of Colleton. In all
this time, he had not for a moment suspected
Munro of connexion with the affair—he had too
much overrated his own influence over the landlord
to permit of a thought in his mind detrimental to
his conscious superiority. He had no clue, the
guidance of which might bring him to the trail; for
the jailer, conscious of his own irregularity, was
cautious enough in suppressing every thing like

a detail of the particular circumstances attending
the escape; contenting himself, simply, with representing
himself as having been knocked down by
some persons unknown, and rifled of the keys
while lying insensible. Rivers could only think of
the pedler, and yet such was his habitual contempt
for that person, that he dismissed the thought the moment
it came into his mind. Troubled thus in spirit,
and filled with a thousand conflicting notions, he
had almost reached the rocks, when he was surprised
to perceive, on a sudden, close at his elbow,
the dwarfish figure of our old friend Chub Williams.
Without exhibiting the slightest show of
apprehension, the urchin resolutely continued his
course along with the outlaw, unmoved by his presence,
and with a degree of cavalier indifference
which he had never ventured to manifest to that
dangerous personage before.

“Why, how now, Chub—do you not see me?”
was the first inquiry of Rivers.

“Can the owl see?—Chub is an owl—he can't
see in the moonlight.”

“Well, but, Chub—why do you call yourself an
owl? You don't want to see me, boy, do you?”

“Chub wants to see nobody but his mother—
there's Miss Lucy now—why don't you let me see
her? she talks jest like Chub's mother.”

“Why, you dog, didn't you help to steal her
away? Have you forgotten how you pulled away
the stones? I should have you whipped for it, sir
—do you know that I can whip—don't the hickories
grow here?”

“Yes, so Chub's mother said—but you can't
whip Chub. Chub laughs—he laughs at all your
whips. That for your hickories. Ha! ha! ha!
Chub don't mind the hickories—you can't catch
Chub, to whip him with your hickories. Try now,

if you can. Try—” and as he spoke he darted
along with a rickety, waddling motion, half earnest
in his flight, yet seemingly, partly with the desire to
provoke pursuit. Something irritated with what
was so unusual in the habit of the boy, and what
he conceived only so much impertinence, the outlaw
turned the horse's head down the hill after him,
but, as he soon perceived, without any chance of
overtaking him in so broken a region. The urchin
all the while, as if encouraged by the evident hopelessness
of the chase on the part of the pursuer,
screeched out volley after volley of defiance and
laughter—breaking out at intervals into speeches
which he thought most likely to annoy and irritate.

“Ha, ha, ha! Chub don't mind your hickories—
Chub's fingers are long—he will pull away all the
stones of your house, and then you will have to
live in the tree top.”

But on a sudden his tune was changed, as Rivers,
half-irritated by the pertinacity of the dwarf,
pulled out a pistol, and directed it at his head. In
a moment, the old influence was predominant, and
in undisguised terror he cried out—

“Now don't—don't, Mr. Guy—don't you shoot
Chub—Chub won't laugh again—he won't pull
away the stones—he won't.”

The outlaw now laughed himself at the terror
which he had inspired, and beckoning the boy near
him, he proceeded, if possible, to persuade him
into a feeling of amity. There was a strange
temper in him with reference to this outcast. His
deformity—his desolate condition—his deficient
intellect, inspired, in the breast of the fierce man, a
feeling of sympathy, which he had not entertained
for the whole world of humanity beside. Such is
the contradictory character of the misled and the
erring spirit. Warped to enjoy crime—to love the

deformities of all moral things—to seek after and
to surrender itself up to all manner of perversions,
yet, in the long tissue, returning, at some few moments,
to the original temper of that first nature not
yet utterly departed, and few and feeble though the
fibres be which still bind the heart to her worship,
still strong enough at times to remind it of the
true, however it may be insufficient to restrain it
in its wanderings after the false. But the language
and effort of the outlaw, though singularly kind,
failed to have any of the desired effect upon the
dwarf. With an unscrupulous refusal to enter the
outlaw's dwelling-place in the rocks, he bounded
away into a hollow of the hills, and in a moment
was out of sight of his companion. Fatigued with
his recent exertions, and somewhat more sullen
than usual, Rivers entered the gloomy abode, into
which it is not our present design to follow him.