The _ruse_ answered its purpose. The keen senses of the outlaw caught the sound. His vigilance, now doubly keen, awakened to its watch. We have seen, in previous pages, the effect that the rolling stone had upon the musing and vexed spirit of Guy Rivers, after the departure of Dillon. He came forth, as we have seen, to look about for the cause of alarm; and, as if satisfied that the disturbance was purely accidental, had retired once more to the recesses of his den.

Here, throwing himself upon his couch, he seemed disposed to sleep.

Sleep, indeed! He himself denied that he ever slept. His followers were all agreed that when he did sleep, it was only with half his faculties shut up. One eye, they contended, was always open!

Chub Williams, and one of the hunters had seen the figure of the outlaw as he emerged from the cavern. The former instantly identified him. The other was too remote to distinguish anything but a slight human outline, which he could only determine to be such, as he beheld its movements. He was too far to a.s.sault, the light was too imperfect to suffer him to shoot with any reasonable certainty of success, and the half of the reward sought by his pursuers, depended upon the outlaw being taken alive!

But, there was no disappointment among the hunters. Allowing the outlaw sufficient time to return to his retreats, Chub Williams slipped down his tree--the rest of the party slowly emerged from their several places of watch, and drew together for consultation.

In this matter, the idiot could give them little help. He could, and did, describe, in some particulars, such of the interior as he had been enabled to see on former occasions, but beyond this he could do nothing; and he was resolute not to hazard himself entering the dominion of a personage, so fearful as Guy Rivers, in such companionship as would surely compel the wolf to turn at bay. Alone, his confidence in his own stealth and secresy, would encourage him to penetrate; but, _now!_--he only grinned at the suggestion of the hunters saying shrewdly: "No!

thank you! I'll stay out here and keep Chub's company."

Accordingly, he remained without, closely gathered up into a lump, behind a tree, while the more determined Georgians penetrated with cautious pace into the dark avenue, known in the earlier days of the settlement as a retreat for the wolves when they infested that portion of the country, and hence distinguished by the appellation of the Wolf's Neck.

For some time they groped onward in great uncertainty as to their course; but a crevice in the wall, at one point, gave them a glimmer of the moonlight, which, falling obliquely upon the sides of the cavern, enabled them to discern the mouth of another gorge diverging from that in which they were. They entered, and followed this new route, until their farther progress was arrested by a solid wall which seemed to close them in, hollowly caved from all quarters, except the one narrow point from which they had entered it.

Here, then, they were at a stand; but, according to Chub's directions, there must be a mode of ingress to still another chamber from this; and they prepared to seek it in the only possible way; namely, by feeling along the wall for the opening which their eye had failed to detect.

They had to do this on hands and knees, so low was the rock along the edges of the cavern.

The search was finally successful. One of the party found the wall to give beneath his hands. There was an aperture, a mere pa.s.sage-way for wolf or bear, lying low in the wall, and only closed by a heavy curtain of woollen.

This was an important discovery. The opening led directly into the chamber of the outlaw. How easily it could be defended, the hunters perceived at a glance. The inmate of the cavern, if wakeful and courageous, standing above the gorge with a single hatchet, could brain every a.s.sailant on the first appearance of his head. How serious, then, the necessity of being able to know that the occupant of the chamber slept--that occupant being Guy Rivers. The pursuers well knew what they might expect at his hands, driven to his last fastness, with the spear of the hunter at his throat. Did he sleep, then--the man who never slept, according to the notion of his followers, or with one eye always open!

He did sleep, and never more soundly than now, when safety required that he should be most on the alert. But there is a limit to the endurance of the most iron natures, and the outlaw had overpa.s.sed his bounds of strength. He was exhausted by trying and prolonged excitements, and completely broken down by physical efforts which would have destroyed most other men outright. His subdued demeanor--his melancholy--were all due to this condition of absolute exhaustion. He slept, not a refreshing sleep, but one in which the excited spirit kept up its exercises, so as totally to neutralize what nature designed as compensation in his slumbers. His sleep was the drowse of incapacity, not the wholesome respite of elastic faculties. It was actual physical imbecility, rather than sleep; and, while the mere animal man, lay incapable, like a log, the diseased imagination was at work, conjuring up its spectres as wildly and as changingly, as the wizard of the magic-lanthorn evokes his monsters against the wall.

His limbs writhed while he slept. His tongue was busy in audible speech.

He had no secrets, in that mysterious hour, from night, and silence, and his dreary rocks. His dreams told him of no other auditors.

The hunter, who had found and raised the curtain that separated his chamber from the gloomy gorges of the crag, paused, and motioned his comrades back, while he listened. At first there was nothing but a deep and painful breathing. The outlaw breathed with effort, and the sigh became a groan, and he writhed upon the bed of moss which formed his usual couch in the cavern. Had the spectator been able to see, the lamp suspended from a ring in the roof of the cavern, though burning very dimly, would have shown him the big-beaded drops of sweat that now started from the brows of the sleeper. But he could hear; and now a word, a name, falls from the outlaw's lips--it is followed by murmured imprecations. The feverish frame, tortured by the restless and guilt-goading spirit, writhed as he delivered the curses in broken accents. These, finally, grew into perfect sentences.

"Dying like a dog, in her sight! Ay, she shall see it! I will hiss in her ears as she gazes--'It is _my_ work! this is _my_ revenge!' Ha! ha!

where her pride then?--her high birth and station?--wealth, family?

Dust, shame, agony, and death!"

Such were the murmured accents of the sleeping man, when they were distinguishable by the hunter, who, crouching, beneath the curtain, listened to his sleeping speech. But all was not exultation. The change from the voice of triumph to that of woe was instantaneous; and the curse and the cry, as of one in mortal agony, pain or terror, followed the exulting speech.

The Georgian, now apprehensive that the outlaw would awaken, crept forward, and, still upon his hands and knees, was now fairly within the vaulted chamber. He was closely followed by one of his companions.

Hitherto, they had proceeded with great caution, and with a stealth and silence that were almost perfect. But the third of the party to enter--who was Brooks, the jailer--more eager, or more unfortunate, less prudent certainly--not sufficiently stooping, as the other two had done, or rising too soon--contrived to strike with his head the pole which bore the curtain, and which, morticed in the sides of the cavern, ran completely across the awkward entrance. A ringing noise was the consequence, while Brooks himself was precipitated back into the pa.s.sage, with a smart cut over his brows.

The noise was not great, but quite sufficient to dissipate the slumbers of the outlaw, whose sleep was never sound. With that decision and fierce courage which marked his character, he sprang to his feet in an instant, grasped the dirk which he always carried in his bosom, and leaped forward, like a tiger, in the direction of the narrow entrance.

Familiar with all the sinuosities of his den, as well in daylight as in darkness, the chances might have favored him even with two powerful enemies within it. Certainly, had there been but one, he could have dealt with him, and kept out others. But the very precipitation of the jailer, while it occasioned the alarm, had the effect, in one particular, of neutralizing its evil consequences. The two who had already penetrated the apartment, had net yet risen from their knees--in the dim light of the lamp, they remained unseen--they were crouching, indeed, directly under the lamp, the rays of which lighted dimly the extremes, rather than the centre of the cell. They lay in the way of the outlaw, as he sprang, and, as he dashed forward from his couch toward the pa.s.sage-way, his feet were caught by the Georgian who had first entered, and so great was the impetus of his first awakening effort, that he was precipitated with a severe fall over the second of the party; and, half stunned, yet still striking furiously, the dirk of Rivers found a bloodless sheath in the earthen floor of the cell. In a moment, the two were upon him, and by the mere weight of their bodies alone, they kept him down.

"Surrender, Guy! we're too much for you, old fellow!"

There was a short struggle. Meanwhile, Brooks, the jailer, joined the party.

"We're _three_ on you, and there's more without."

The outlaw was fixed to the ground, beneath their united weight, as firmly as if the mountain itself was on him. As soon as he became conscious of the inutility of further struggle--and he could now move neither hand nor foot--he ceased all further effort; like a wise man economizing his strength for future occasions. Without difficulty the captors bound him fast, then dragged him through the narrow entrance, the long rocky gorges which they had traversed, until they all emerged into the serene light of heaven, at the entrance of the cavern.

Here the idiot boy encountered them, now coming forward boldly, and staring in the face of the captive with a confidence which he had never known before. He felt that his fangs were drawn; and his survey of the person his mother had taught him so to dread, was as curious as that which he would have taken of some foreign monster. As he continued this survey, Rivers, with a singular degree of calmness for such a time, and such circ.u.mstances, addressed him thus:--

"So, Chub, this is your work;--you have brought enemies to my home, boy!

Why have you done this? What have I done to you, but good? I gave bread to your mother and yourself!"

"Psho! Chub is to have his own bread, his own corn, and 'taters, too, and a whole jug of whiskey."

"Ah! you have sold yourself for these, then, to my enemies. You are a bad fellow, Chub--a worse fellow than I thought you. As an idiot, I fancied you might be honest and grateful."

"You're bad yourself, Mr. Guy. You cursed Chub, and you cursed Chub's mother; and your man burnt down Chub's house, and you wanted to shoot Chub on the tree."

"But I didn't shoot, Chub; and I kept the men from shooting you when you ran away from the cave."

"You can't shoot now," answered the idiot, with an exulting chuckle; "and they'll keep you in the ropes, Mr. Guy; they've got you on your back, Mr. Guy; and I'm going to laugh at you all the way as you go. Ho!

ho! ho! See if I don't laugh, till I scares away all your white owls from the roost."

The outlaw looked steadily in the face of the wretched urchin, with a curious interest, as he half murmured to himself:--

"And that I should fall a victim to such a thing as this! The only creature, perhaps, whom I spared or pitied--so wretched, yet so ungrateful. But there is an instinct in it. It is surely in consequence of a law of nature. He hates in proportion as he fears. Yet he has had nothing but protection from me, and kindness. Nothing! I spared him, when--but--" as if suddenly recollecting himself, and speaking aloud and with recovered dignity:--

"I am your prisoner, gentlemen. Do with me as you please."

"Hurrah!" cried the urchin, as he beheld the troopers lifting and securing the outlaw upon the horse, while one of the party leaped up behind him--one of his hands managing the bridle, and the other grasping firmly the rope which secured the captive; "hurrah! Guy's in the rope!

Guy's in the rope!"

Thus cried the urchin, following close behind the party, upon his mountain-tacky. That cry, from such a quarter, more sensibly than anything besides, mocked the outlaw with the fullest sense of his present impotence. With a bitter feeling of humiliation, his head dropped upon his breast, and he seemed to lose all regard to his progress. Daylight found him safely locked up in the jail of Chestatee, the occupant of the very cell from which Colleton had escaped.

But no such prospect of escape was before him. He could command none of the sympathies that had worked for his rival. He had no friends left.

Munro was slain, Dillon gone, and even the miserable idiot had turned his fangs upon the hand that fed him. Warned, too, by the easy escape of Colleton, Brooks attended no more whiskey-parties, nor took his brother-in-law Tongs again into his friendly counsels. More--he doubly ironed his prisoner, whose wiles and resources he had more reason to fear than those which his former captive could command. To cut off more fully every hope which the outlaw might entertain of escape from his bonds and durance, a detachment of the Georgia guard, marching into the village that very day, was put in requisition, by the orders of the judge, for the better security of the prisoner, and of public order.

CHAPTER XLI.

QUIET Pa.s.sAGES AND NEW RELATIONS.

We have already reported the return of Lucy Munro to the village-inn of Chestatee. Here, to her own and the surprise of all other parties, her aunt was quietly reinstated in her old authority--a more perfect one now--as housekeeper of that ample mansion. The reasons which determined her liege upon her restoration to the household have been already reported to the reader. His prescience as to his own approaching fate was perhaps not the least urgent among them. He fortunately left her in possession, and we know how the law estimates this advantage. Of her trials and sorrows, when she was made aware of her widowhood, we will say nothing. Sensitive natures will easily conjecture their extent and intensity. It is enough for the relief of such natures, if we say that the widow Munro was not wholly inconsolable. As a good economist, a sensible woman, with an eye properly regardful of the future, we are bound to suppose that she needed no lessons from Hamlet's mother to make the cold baked funeral-meats answer a double purpose.

But what of her niece? We are required to be something more full and explicit in speaking to her case. The indisposition of Lucy was not materially diminished by the circ.u.mstances following the successful effort to persuade the landlord to the rescue of Ralph Colleton. The feverish excitements natural to that event, and even the fruit of its fortunate issue, in the death of Munro, for whom she really had a grateful regard, were not greatly lessened, though certainly something relieved, by the capture of Rivers, and his identification with the outlawed Creighton. She was now secure from him: she had nothing further to apprehend from the prosecution of his fearful suit; and the death of her uncle, even if the situation of Rivers had left him free to urge it further, would, of itself, have relieved her from the only difficulty in the way of a resolute denial.

So far, then, she was at peace. But a silent sorrow had made its way into her bosom, gnawing there with the noiselessness and certainty of the imperceptible worm, generated by the sunlight, in the richness of the fresh leaf, and wound up within its folds. She had no word of sorrow in her speech--she had no tear of sorrow in her eye--but there was a vacant sadness in the vague and wan expression of her face, that needed neither tears nor words for its perfect development. She was the victim of a pa.s.sion which--as hers was a warm and impatient spirit--was doubly dangerous; and the greater pang of that pa.s.sion came with the consciousness, which now she could no longer doubt, that it was entirely unrequited. She had beheld the return of Ralph Colleton; she had heard from other lips than his of his release, and of the atoning particulars of her uncle's death, in which he furnished all that was necessary in the way of testimony to the youth's enlargement and security; and though she rejoiced, fervently and deeply, at the knowledge that so much had been done for him, and so much by herself, she yet found no relief from the deep sadness of soul which necessarily came with her hopelessness.

Busy tongues dwelt upon the loveliness of the Carolina maiden who had sought him in his prison--of her commanding stature, her elegance of form, her dignity of manner and expression, coupled with the warmth of a devoted love and a pa.s.sionate admiration of the youth who had also so undesiringly made the conquest of her own heart. She heard all this in silence, but not without thought. She thought of nothing besides. The forms and images of the two happy lovers were before her eyes at all moments; and her active fancy pictured their mutual loves in colors so rich and warm, that, in utter despondency at last, she would throw herself listlessly upon her couch, with sometimes an unholy hope that she might never again rise from it.

But she was not forgotten. The youth she had so much served, and so truly saved, was neither thoughtless nor ungrateful. Having just satisfied those most near and dear to him of his safety, and of the impunity which, after a few brief forms of law, the dying confession of the landlord would give him and having taken, in the warm embrace of a true love, the form of the no-longer-withheld Edith to his arms, he felt that his next duty was to her for whom his sense of grat.i.tude soon discovered that every form of acknowledgment must necessarily prove weak.

At an early hour, therefore--these several duties having been done--Ralph made his appearance at the village-inn, and the summons of the youth soon brought Lucy from her chamber.

She came freely and without hesitation, though her heart was tremulous with doubt and sorrow. She had nothing now to learn of her utter hopelessness, and her strength was gathered from her despair. Ralph was shocked at the surprising ravages which a few days of indisposition had made upon that fine and delicate richness of complexion and expression which had marked her countenance before. He had no notion that she was unhappy beyond the cure of time. On the contrary, with a modesty almost akin to dullness--having had no idea of his own influence over the maiden--he was disposed to regard the recent events--the death of Munro and the capture of Rivers--as they relieved her from a persecution which had been cruelly distressing, rather calculated to produce a degree of relief, to which she had not for a long time been accustomed; and which, though mingled up with events that prevented it from being considered matter for rejoicing, was yet not a matter for one in her situation very greatly to deplore.