The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter Part 9

"Master Bart," said Miss Haviland, who had become somewhat acquainted with the other, while supplying her room with fuel, previous to his ejection from the house, to which she was knowing, "your appearance, at this time, to say the least of it, causes me much surprise."

"I returns the compliment, miss," replied Bart; "so that makes us even, and no questions on ither side, don't it?"

"Perhaps not, sir," returned the former, with seriousness: "at all events, you should be able to give a good reason for your appearance here, under such circ.u.mstances: please explain your object."

"And if I don't, you will sing out for the squire, you said? Well, I can get down, and off, before he can get here, I reckon," responded Bart, in a tone of roguish defiance.

"I did not say I would call Esquire Brush; but, unless you explain----"

"Yes, yes, jest as lieves as not, and will, if you'll keep shut til I can run up garret and back."

"Your purpose there, sir?"

"An honest one--only to get my gun up there, which the squire didn't have put out for me, when he dismissed me with his high-heeled shoes, to-day, and which I da.r.s.ent name then, fear he'd have that thrown down, like my 'tother duds, and break it--only that--and if you'll say nothing, and let me whip in, and up to get it, I'll lay it up against you, as a great oblige, to be paid for, by a good turn to you some time, miss."

"If that is all, go--and I may wish to speak with you when you come back."

So saying, she gently let down the sash, and, withdrawing a little from her window, stood awaiting the result; when she soon heard the other, with the light and stealthy movements of a cat, enter the house, and ascend into the garret, through a small side-door, opening from the pa.s.sage we have named. Scarcely a minute had elapsed before she again heard his footsteps stealing back by her door to the window, through which he had so noiselessly entered; when, once more raising the sash of her own, she found him already standing on the top of the ladder where she last saw him, he having effected his ingress and egress with such celerity, that but for the light fusil he now held in his hand, she would have believed herself mistaken in supposing he had entered at all.

"Well, miss, I am waiting for your say so," he said, in a low tone, peering warily around him.

"Have you been to the Court House to-night?" hesitatingly asked the other.

"Well, now," replied Bart, hesitating in his turn, "without more token for knowing what you're up to, I'll say, may be so and may be no so."

"You need not fear me, Bart," replied Sabrey, conjecturing the cause of his hesitation; "I am no enemy of those who have suffered there to-night. But do you know Mr. Woodburn?

"Harry, who got you out of that river sc.r.a.pe? Yes, lived in his town last summer."

"He is among the wounded and prisoners in jail, it is said?"

"Dreadful true, miss."

"Could you get this small letter to him to-night?" she timidly asked.

"Yes, through the grate; glad to do it, glad of it, twice over,"

replied Bart, reaching out, and grasping the proffered billet.

"Why, why do you say that?" asked Sabrey, with an air of mingled doubt and curiosity.

"Cause, in the first place, you'll now keep my secret of being here; and nextly, glad to find there's one among the court folks that feels decent about this b.l.o.o.d.y business. But I must be off. Yes, I'll get it to him," said Bart, beginning to descend.

"Say, Barty. Is there any hope that Mr. Woodburn will survive his wounds?"

"Survive? Live, do you mean? O, yes; though the lunge which that--But no matter. It was well meant for the heart, and the fellow wan't at all to blame that it didn't reach it, instead of the inner part of the arm."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Miss Haviland, in a tone of joyful surprise; which the next instant, however, gave way to one of embarra.s.sment. "Why, I heard--have written, indeed, under the belief that--and perhaps----Barty, I think, on the whole, I will not send that billet now."

As Bart heard these last words of the fair speaker, so inconsistent with all which both her words and manner had just expressed, he looked up with a stare of surprise to her face, now sufficiently revealed, by the glancing light standing near her in the room, to betray its varying expressions. But, as he ran his keen gray eyes over her hesitating and slightly confused countenance, he soon seemed to read the secret cause of her sudden change of purpose, arising from that curious and beautiful trait in woman's heart, which, by some gush of awakened sympathy, often unfolds all the lurking secrets of the breast, but which, when the cause of that sympathy is removed, closes up the avenue, and conceals them from view, in the cold reserve of shrinking delicacy--the colder and more impenetrable in proportion as the disclosure has been complete.

"O, yes, I will carry it," said Bart, pretending to misunderstand the other, while he pocketed the billet and began to glide down the ladder.

"No," commenced Miss Haviland; "no, Bart, I said----"

"Yes, yes, I will have it there in a jiffy," interrupted Bart, hastening his descent, and the next instant dodging away in the dark beneath the foot of the ladder.

"Well, let it go," said the foiled and somewhat mortified maiden to herself, after the disappearance of her strange visitor. "If what I expressed, when I thought him dying, was right and proper, it cannot be very wrong now."

As soon as she had thus reconciled herself to the unexpected turn which this matter had taken, Miss Haviland now began to reflect more on Bart's motives in coming, at such an hour of the night, for his gun; when it, for the first time, occurred to her mind, that he had been induced to take this step in consequence of some particular call for arms having reference to the events of the evening. Fearing she might have done wrong in suffering him to take away the gun, if it was to be used for hostile purposes, and anxious to know whether her conjectures relative to a rising of the people were well founded, she proceeded to an end window of her room, which overlooked a range of buildings known to her to be mostly occupied by the opposers of royal authority; and removing the curtains and raising the sash, she leaned out and listened for any unusual sounds which might reach her from without. And it was not long before she became well convinced that her apprehensions were not groundless. Some extraordinary movement was evidently going on in the village. The low hum of suppressed voices, mingled with various sounds of busy preparation, came up, on the dense night air, from almost every direction around her. Here, was heard the small hammer, the grating file, with the occasional clicking of the firelock, undergoing repairs by the use of the instruments just named.

There, could be distinguished the pecking of flints, the rattling of ramrods, and the regularly repeated rapping of bullet-moulds to disengage the freshly-cast b.a.l.l.s. In other places could be perceived the nasty movements of men about the stables, evidently engaged in leading out and saddling horses, and making other preparations for mounting; and then followed the sounds of the quick, short gallop of their steeds, starting off, on express, in various directions, under the sharply applied lashes of excited riders, and distinctly revealing their different routes out of the village, by the streams of fire that flew from their rapidly striking hoofs on the gravelly and frozen ground. All, indeed, seemed to be in silent commotion through the town. Bart's object in coming for his gun, at such an hour of the night, was now sufficiently explained; for the quick and discerning mind of Miss Haviland at once told her that the country was indeed rising in arms to avenge the atrocities just committed by the party among whom were all her relatives and friends; and she shuddered at the thought of tomorrow, feeling, as she did, a secret and boding consciousness that their downfall, brought about by their arrogance and crimes, was now at hand.

CHAPTER VII.

"A shout as of waters--a long-uttered cry: Hark! hark! how it leaps from the earth to the sky!

From the sky to the earth, from the earth to the sea It is grandly reechoed, _We are free, we are free!_"

Every thing, the next morning, seemed as quiet and peaceful in the village, as if nothing unusual had occurred there. The commotion of the preceding night appeared to have wholly subsided. With such secrecy and caution, indeed, had the revolutionists managed, that no knowledge of their movements had yet reached the ears of any of their opponents. And so guarded was their conduct, through the whole morning, that the court party leaders, although their spies had early been out, prowling round the whole village, were yet kept in entire ignorance of all that had transpired among the former during the night. Being consequently deceived by the false appearance which every thing within the reach of their observation had been made to wear, and feeling thus relieved of their last night's guilty fears of a popular outbreak, these cruel and dastardly minions of royalty now counted on their triumph as complete, and, soon giving way to noisy exultation, they began openly to boast of the sanguinary measure by which their supposed victory had been achieved. And, about nine o'clock in the forenoon, the judges and officers of court, with a select number of their most devoted adherents, all in high spirits, and wholly unsuspicious of the storm that was silently gathering around them, formed a procession at the house of Brush, and, attended by a strong armed escort, marched ostentatiously through the street to the Court House, and entered the courtroom to commence the session.

After the judges had been ushered to their seats, and while they were waiting for the crowd to enter and settle in their places, Chandler, who had kept aloof till the procession had begun to form, was seen to run his wary and watchful eye several times over the a.s.sembly, to ascertain whether there were any discoverable indications there pointing to any different state of things from the one so confidently a.s.sumed by his confederates, when he soon appeared to have noted some circ.u.mstance which caused him suddenly to exchange the bland smile he had been wearing for a look of thoughtfulness and concern.

"Do you notice anything unusual in the crowd this morning, Judge Sabin?" he said to his colleague, in an anxious whisper as he closed his scrutiny.

"No, your honor," replied the other, "unless it be the cheering sight of encountering none but friendly faces, instead of the hostile ones, which a man would have been led to expect to meet here, after so much clamor about popular disaffection.

"Ay," responded the former, with a dubious shake of the head--"ay, but that is the very circ.u.mstance that puzzles me. Had a portion of the a.s.sembly been made up of our opponents, quietly mingling with the rest, as I had rather hoped, I should have construed it into a token of submission; or, had a committee been here to present a pet.i.tion, or a remonstrance or two, I should have been prepared for that, and could have managed, by a little encouragement, and a good deal of delay, to give every troublesome thing the go-by, till the storm had blown over.

But this entire absence of the disaffected looks a little suspicious, don't it?"

"Why, no," answered the stiff and stolid Sabin; "I can see nothing suspicious about it. Indeed, it goes to show me that the rebellion is crushed; for, as I presume, the honest but well-meaning part of the rebels are ashamed, and their leaders afraid to show their faces here to-day, after last night's lesson."

"I hope it may be as you suppose; but I have my doubts in the matter,"

returned Chandler, with another dissenting shake of the head, as he turned away to renew his observations on the company before him.

On resuming his scrutiny, the uneasy judge soon perceived that the a.s.sembly, during his conversation with his colleague, had received an accession of several individuals, whom he recognized as belonging to the party whose absence had awakened his suspicions. But the presence of these persons, after he had carefully noted their appearance, instead of tending to allay only went to confirm, his apprehensions; for, as he closely scanned the bearing and countenance of each, and marked the a.s.sured and determined look and covert smile which spoke of antic.i.p.ated triumph, attended with an occasional expectant glance through the windows, he there read, with the instinctive sagacity sometimes seen in men of his cast of character, enough to convince him, with what he had previously observed, that a movement of a dangerous magnitude was somewhere in progress, and soon to be developed against the court party. And he instantly resolved to lose no time before tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his sails and preparing to meet the coming storm. And the next moment, to the surprise of his colleague and the officers of the court, he was on his feet, requesting silence that he might address the a.s.sembly. He then proceeded to remark on the unfortunate occurrences of the previous night, with a show of much feeling and regret, and concluded by expressing his disapprobation of the course taken in the affair by the sheriff and his abettors, in a manner that would have given the highest offence to all implicated, had they not believed that the speech was secretly designed only as a game on their opponents, whom he might think it expedient to quiet and delude a little longer. They, therefore, winked knowingly to each other, and remained silent; while the speaker sat down with the mental exclamation,--

"There, let it come now! That speech will do to be quoted. I can refer them to it as the public expression of my views before I knew what was coming."

Having thus placed himself in a position, as he believed, where he could easily turn himself to meet any contingency,--where, in case the apprehended overthrow of the court party took place, he could easily and safely leap the next hour to a favorable, if not a high stand among the new dispensers of place and power, or where, should the present authorities be able to sustain themselves, he could as easily explain away his objectionable doings, and retain his standing among them. Having done this, he then turned his attention to the official duties of his place, and ordered the crier to give the usual notice, that the court was now open for business. This being formally done, the court docket was called over, and the causes there entered variously disposed of for the time being, by the judges, till they came to that of Woodburn versus Peters; which was a pet.i.tion for a new trial for the recovery of the pet.i.tioner's alleged farm, that had been decided, at the preceding term, to be the property of Peters, on the ground and in the manner mentioned in a former chapter.

"Who answers for this Woodburn?" said Sabin, with a contemptuous air.

Significant glances were exchanged among the tory lawyers and officers about the bar at the question, and a malicious smile stole over the features of Peters, who had found a seat among them.

"I move the court," said Stearns, the attorney of Peters, "for a judgment in favor of my client for his costs, and also for a writ of possession of his land, of which he has been so unjustly kept out by this vexatious proceeding. And, as the pet.i.tioner has not entered his appearance according to rule, whereby he tacitly admits that his cause cannot be sustained, I will not permit myself to doubt that the court will so order, even at this early hour--they certainly have the power to do so."

"They have also the power to postpone the hearing, even to the last day of the term, before rendering judgment," bluntly interposed Knights, a large, plain-looking pract.i.tioner at the bar, who had taken no active part either for or against the court party.