University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII.

Before this long conference was ended, sleep had
overcome the limbs of Harry Vernon. The imagination
which had so long kept him wakeful in spite
of the day's fatigue, now busied itself only in his
dreams, which were all of a kind natural to the
young beginner on the weary paths of life. With a
heart as yet unfettered, and a fancy free as that of
the bird for the first time winging its way from the
forests to the ocean, he was conscious only of that
void and vacant region in his bosom, which is intended
to be filled by love. The germ was there
of the great empire over which the imperial master
was yet to rear his wand, but the especial divinity
had not bestowed a glance on the territory she was
destined to inhabit. Warm and waiting for the advent,
the heart of Harry Vernon did not yet repine
in inconclusive fancies, hoping and sighing, and surrendering
itself to imbecility. He suffered himself
but little time to brood over the vague desires which
he felt, but summoning to his side the thoughts which
attend on duty, he addressed himself with ardour to
the actual demands of existence, without yielding up
more mind than was necessary to such as were

eventual and prospective. It was only while he
slept that his fancy gave itself up to the desires of
his heart; and all the struggles before his pathway
were thrust from sight, and all his duties and dangers
forgotten, to give place to as lovely a vision as
youthful bard ever conceived and young imagination
ever desired. A maiden conjured up in realms of
faery rose before his dreaming eye—just such a form
as met and realized the ideal which his united taste
and reason might have been disposed to create at a
moment of particular inspiration. She was tall and
graceful; her skin pure as marble and smooth as
ivory; her eyes black and streaming with a melting
light; her lips soft as the leaf and richer than the
rose; her cheeks pale but radiant, almost transparent
with a light like that which glistened from her eyes;
and her forehead lofty, spiritually narrow, and
shaded by the voluminous masses of silk-like hair,
darker than that which shines on the shoulders of the
raven. She stood beside him—such was his dreaming
fancy—in a vision of his sleep. He had sunk
for shelter beneath the shadows of a group of mighty
oaks that surmounted the brow of a hill, and were
surrounded by a dense and untrodden forest. His
horse drank the while and cropped the herbage
upon the banks of a little stream that wandered
down the hillside, and lost itself in the deep groves of
a thicket which hid from sight the dark and gloomy
recesses of an inland swamp. The midday sun
shone above him in melting fervour, but the dense
foliage shielded him from the oppressive heat, and
but a few strange straggling gleams, trembling and
retreating as if conscious of intrusion, stole in at intervals
between the branches, as they slowly yielded
to the capricious wind. A dark shadow, as if from
an overhanging cloud, suddenly overspread the
scene the moment ere she entered upon it, but at her
approach the cloud disappeared, a glory like that
of the moon enveloped him with its soft, fleecy
edges, and his very soul seemed to melt within him
as the entrancing vision drew nigh to his side. Other
forms followed and crowded upon the scene—strange
events and mingling action disturbed its quiet, and
his eye toiled in the survey of a thousand features,
each changing at his glance and distracting his
attention. But the lovely form which had fixed his
eye and fastened upon his soul at first, was still to be
seen amidst the crowd—now here, now there, nigh
and then remote, but still present, hallowing the
scene to softness, modifying the strife, stilling the
clamour, and subduing the turbulence, until,—such
was the strange fancy,—the sudden obtrusion of
Horsey, and his fierce declamation, affrighted the
delicate and ethereal beauty from the spot; and he
started from his sleep with a harsher mood in his
bosom towards his self-appointed companion than
any which he had ever entertained before. It will
be seen how far the random actor was answerable
for the dispersion of his happy fancies.

Horsey was not without his visions also; but they
were of a very different character. When he first
fell asleep, his nose performed such vigorous airs
that Vernon was apprehensive lest they might
greatly interfere with his own desired rest. But
the mastery of this solemn member was disputed at
frequent periods by his tongue; which, as if never
needing rest, continued at intervals to pour forth
choice fragments from his favourite Shakspeare,
growling at one moment in all the emphatic terrors
of the tragic muse; at another softening down to
the most dulcet parts of love, the sweet significant
nothings with which every hero regales his “Amaryllis
in the shade.” These were long or short as
the occasion seemed to require them; and the

prompt and well-versed memory of the actor appeared
never to want the auxiliary help of a quotation.
Sometimes, the sentences would be broken,
sometimes complete; at first, they were usually
short, consisting of two or three consecutive words
of a single phrase; but Vernon, who listened to him
for awhile with smiling curiosity, observed, as the
night advanced, that he rose from fragments to entire
passages, and when he himself was sinking into
that sleep which yielded him a vision so entrancing,
he was conscious that the actor was gliding into the
dialogue in which he personated the love-sick Montague,
and wooed the fair Capulet beneath the window.
Something Vernon caught ere he himself
slept, of—
followed by an intense ebullition of the nostrils
which probably answered all the purposes of a
reply from Juliet; when he himself, surrendering
to the oppressive sleep, lost all farther apprehension
of the dialogue. But it was continued, nevertheless,
by the actor, though so large a portion of his audience
slept; and, perhaps, the interruptions from
his nose allowed for, he never went through the
part with more honest unction in his life. That
he might have done better, or at least toiled for
it, is unquestionable, if he could only have been
told that at this moment his audience was increased.

So it was. Saxon, the outlaw, and his adjunct
Yarbers, stood without the dwelling and beside the
chimney of the shed-room in which slept the travellers.
Their ears took in with readiness the earnest
and pleading devotions of the amorous Romeo, and

so greatly did the affair tend to the amusement of
the former, that he could with difficulty restrain
himself from taking the opposite part of the dialogue,
and thus stimulating the enthusiastic actor to
increased efforts. But the more timid Yarbers was
opposed to this, and, speaking in whispers, scarcely
audible to his immediate companion, dwelt earnestly
on the danger of discovery.

“Pshaw, John Yarbers, the man sleeps—soundly
too—no man sleeps more soundly than him who
dreams of what he loves.”

“But the other fellow—Vernon!”

“Ay,—you have need of caution there; but I
reckon he sleeps too. You must lift the trap cautiously
and listen, before you do any thing.”

This trap was simply a square hole in the floor,
made by sawing two of the flooring-boards across,
fastening them together by a cross-piece below, and
securing them with common hooks to the joist beneath.
While, therefore, their ends rested upon the
joists, they resisted any pressure from above, and
it was easy for one under the house, by undoing the
hooks, to raise the trap and make his way into it.
The fabric stood upon raised blocks, from three to
four feet from the ground, and, obeying the direction
of the outlaw, Yarbers fell upon his knees, and
soon disappeared beneath it. It was easy to undo
the hooks which secured the door, but the continued
declamation of Horsey, in spite of all the assurances
of Saxon that he slept, disturbed the nerves of the
intruder, and he once more returned to the entrance
to assure his companion that it was certainly Vernon
who snored and Horsey who spoke; and that
the speaking had none of the obstructions or hesitation
of a sleeping man, and came most certainly
from the throat of one as perfectly conscious as he

ever was in daylight. The impatient outlaw answered
him with an oath.

“Yarbers, you are but a dry bone after all.
Stand aside, and let me do it.”

“Stay, sir—don't you hear steps? Don't you
think he's walking?”

“Pshaw, man! It's your own heart. It thumps
hard enough to scare you, I doubt not. Where does
the portmanteau stand?”

“Right side of the chimney from the hall-door;
and the saddle-bags on the left.”

“But which is Vernon's?”

“Fegs! I don't know. I warn't home when they
come, and I s'pose they took 'em off the creatures
themselves and brought 'em in. There's no telling
which is which.”

“That's unfortunate. We must then examine
both,” said Saxon, as he crawled under the house
and made his way to the still unopened trap-door.
This he raised with sufficient care, though not
without some little noise,—the hard, heavy pine of
which the boards were made requiring that degree
of effort in raising them which had been otherwise
necessary to keep them in equilibrium and prevent
the edges from grazing against the surrounding
floor, to which they were made to correspond with
tolerable nicety. Once lifted, the intruder, still
grasping the door in his hands, raised himself and
stood up within the opening, his head and shoulders
being now within the apartment. The door he laid
down gently upon the floor beside the trap, so that
it might be drawn into its place on the first alarm.
To his confusion, however, while thus engaged, he
discovered that the conjecture of Yarbers was not
unfounded. Horsey was certainly out of bed, and
striding the floor of the apartment. His ruling passion
had grown utterly ungovernable in his sleep,

and the somnambulist was now fairly in the highest
realm of hallucination. His movements were, however,
slow enough at this period; and Saxon succeeded,
without noise or interruption, in stretching forth
his hand to the fire-place and securing the saddle-bags,
which were the first that came within his
reach. These he handed through the aperture to his
comrade below, who proceeded to examine them in
the moonlight without. His whispered words, as he
looked at the contents, declared his own wonder,
while they satisfied Saxon that he had fallen upon
the wrong chattels.

“Jackets and breeches all covered with gold and
spangles.”

“Stuff 'em back,” said Saxon, stooping down
and whispering; “stuff 'em back and hand me the
bags. They are the actor's baggage. We must
grope for the other's.”

While this was doing, and at the moment when
Saxon had received them in his hands, and was
about raising them through the hole in which he
stood, in order to replace them, the paroxysm came
upon Romeo stronger and less controllable than
ever. A rush of inspiration filled his veins, and to
the great annoyance of the outlaw, he heard him
growling and advancing. The play had made
rapid progress in the sleep of the actor. He had
reached the fifth act,—he had got his poison from the
apothecary—he had resolved upon his own death,
and was hurrying on to give County Paris his.

“Give me that mattock!” he cried in low, hoarse
accents to the supposed Balthazar beside him. His
voice then subsided into a throng of pressing whispers,
as if forced to speak, yet not desiring to be
heard. This brought him within a few paces of the
outlaw, who began seriously to feel the inconvenience
of his situation. A few strides more would bring

the actor upon his shoulders, and into the pit. To
withdraw and let down the door at that moment,
might be to arouse the sleeper, and defeat the object
which he had in view; and no possible effort which
he could make, short of rushing into the room itself,
would enable him—this he discovered —to reach the
opposite end of the fire-place where the valise of
Vernon had been placed. While he stood in a state
of incertitude, which prevented him from doing
any thing, the passion of the actor had taken a new
direction from the approach of Paris. He had gone
through the paroxysms which made him beat down
the walls of the monument; and here Saxon observed,
with some surprise, that he now spoke the
part of Paris as well as his own, to which, hitherto,
he had entirely confined himself. The inference
of the outlaw from this fact, was, that the pressure
of sleep was passing off, the influence of imagination
lessened, and that the actor's ear needed the absolute
reality of sound, to continue any longer in his self-deception.
This added somewhat to the apprehensions
of the intruder, who was not suffered very long
to speculate upon the matter. The language of Paris
was threatening—that of Romeo had assumed a tone
of mildness, which, in reality, only disguised the labouring
volcano in his bosom.
Still he approaches, and his arm rises as if balancing
the sword. “Live,” he says, in most soliciting
tones—
Here he availed himself of one of his own readings
of the thousand unimportant distinctions in such
matters, of which stage-struck citizens are so apt to
make a fuss. Pausing at the word “run,” which he
had spoken along with the whole passage in the
gentlest accents, he now made a tremendous transition,
and the final word, “away,” was thundered
forth in tones to waken up the dead. This was a
“point” upon which, in his waking moments, he was
very apt to pride himself. The answer of Paris,
which he also spoke, fell something short of this, but
was still loud; and he had scarcely given himself
time to finish it, before, reaching the acme of his
paroxysm in the part of Romeo, he gave the torrent
free vent, and leapt upon the shoulders of Saxon,
while he cried aloud,
The situation was awkward in the last degree, and
the struggles of Romeo were such as to convince
the outlaw that he was rapidly coming to his senses.
Exerting his whole strength, therefore, he seized the
half-prostrate actor by his shoulders, and flung him
from him as far as he might while in the place in
which he stood, not giving much heed whether the
poor fellow was brought up by flint or feathers.
Then, suddenly sinking down with equal promptness
and composure, he drew the trap into its place with
a degree of ease which added but little to the bustle
which the previous incident had occasioned. The
direction given to Horsey by the arms of Saxon,
carried him upon the couch of Vernon, whom the
struggling actor, now emerging into actual bodily
consciousness, grappled with as he was rising up in
alarm, and continued to contend with as if County
Paris still remained to be slain. But he met with no
better treatment at the hands of Vernon than from
those of Saxon, being tumbled, by a very unscrupulous
movement, backward upon the floor, where he
lay, for a moment, actually at a loss to determine
where he was and what was his condition. Vernon
had been as roughly awakened from a pleasant
dream as the actor, and, still in doubt as to whence
the annoyance arose, he was soon out of bed and
standing above Romeo, the moment he had flung him
from him. What might have been his farther act
had not Horsey spoken, though doubtful in character,
would have been certainly decisive. The tongue
of the latter, never for any length of time idle,
happily resumed its offices in time to prevent more
mischief.

“Why Harry, my dear boy, is that you? Why
what the devil's the matter?”

“Matter, Mr. Horsey. That's the very question
to be asked of you. How came you on my bed?”

“Your bed! Was that your bed, Harry? By
all that's sacred in stage lights, I took it for the tomb
of Juliet; and Paris—you were Paris, my dear
fellow.”

“Do you walk in your sleep, Mr. Horsey?” asked
Vernon, now beginning to conjecture the whole
affair.

“Egad, it may be. I don't know, but, certainly, I
have had a strangely exciting dream. It was our
first night at Benton, Harry. I was Romeo, and
that dear little Mary made her debut in Juliet, under
my instructions. If I ever play so well in reality, as
I fancied I played this night,—as I must have
played in my sleep,—I shall ask for nothing better.
But, (rising from the floor as he spoke,) my shin is
cursedly bruised,—the skin's off; I can hardly get

up. I had some notion that I had got into a hole,
but—”

The voice of Mrs. Yarbers at the chamber door,
demanding to know if any body was sick, and
asking the cause of the uproar, silenced the actor.
After satisfying her, he was very glad to slink back
into bed, as he found Vernon unwilling any longer to
listen to his description of the scene, and the detail of
points newly-made, which had broken in upon fancies
of his own no less dear and exciting, though,
possibly—it was his own reflection—not more real
and stable than those of his companion.

Saxon was no less annoyed, and, perhaps, with
more serious cause for annoyance, than those within.
He waited long without the house, and near his
place of secret ingress, in the hope of hearing those
sounds from the sleepers which should assure him of
an uninterrupted entrance. But he waited in vain.
Whether it was that the rough handling which Horsey
had received had utterly expelled the nightmare,
or whether he had become conscious of the unreasonableness
of making any more disturbance in the
house, and was willing to compensate for his excesses
at one moment by an unusual degree of forbearance
at another, he certainly did not snore again
that night. Vernon's was a well-bred nose, that
seldom violated the rules of decorum; and hopeless
of the plan, the progress of which had been so
forcibly interrupted in the first instance, the outlaw
concluded to defer to another opportunity his intended
purpose.

“We must do it on the road side; and it may be
necessary that we should even lay hands on him.
These papers being of value he would most probably
conceal about his person. It is barely possible that
they should be in the valise, and we should take no

such risks as this on the strength of a bare possibility.
We must keep your house in the reputation
of being an honest one, Yarbers, as well to serve our
purposes as to please your wife. Let her not know
that I have been here to-night. I will go farther
up, and be ready for our man at the fork.”

“She'll guess fast enough though I don't tell her.
She's mighty 'cute, and knows the bay of the beagle
is not for nothing in these parts.”

“So long as she can't see the beagle, and don't
know whose name's on the collar, she knows nothing.
But help me to my horse, while I ride. Jones
will be here by daylight, I suppose. You can send
him after me when he comes.”

“And Mabry?”

“If he blab, he must be silenced. If the mouth
won't be sugared it must be stopped. You will see
him to-morrow when he is a little cooled off from
the drubbing of this actor, and persuade him that
you have nothing to do in the business. This he
will be the more apt to believe when he finds his
enemy gone; and, perhaps, it might be just as well
that you should see him at an early hour on the subject.
Should nothing answer—should he grow
troublesome—I will send a decoy-beagle who will
get him into Cane Castle, where he'll leave all his
secrets before he comes forth.”

“There was one here for you to-day from Cane
Castle—Stillyards.”

“The Hunchback! well, what said he?”

“He came from Monna.”

“Ah! she's impatient—but she must wait. She
would fetter me, Yarbers, as Brown Bess fetters
you, but that my blood is quite as quick and impatient
as her own. Yet, she's a woman more to be
feared than Bess. She can't scold so well—nay, she

seldom scolds, but she thinks and broods over her
thoughts, which are sometimes fearful enough, and
one day she may seek to act them. She's secret,
Yarbers, and there she is unlike Bess, who would
blab every thing she knew to your hurt if you once
put her into a passion. Monna, if sometimes fearful
as the grave, is at all times as secret. It would be
twenty times our good, Yarbers, were your wife
half as secret. But you took her for better or
worse, and so must we. If you are satisfied with
your bargain,” speaking with a malicious smile,
“your friends have no reason to complain.”