Aram gazed after him, but with vacant eyes; and remained for several minutes rooted to the spot, as if the very life had left him.
“The Sabbath night!” said he, at length, moving slowly on; “and I must spin forth my existence in trouble and fear till then—till then! what remedy can I then invent? It is clear that I can have no dependance on his word, if won; and I have not even aught wherewith to buy it. But courage, courage, my heart; and work thou, my busy brain! Ye have never failed me yet!”
CHAPTER III.
FRESH ALARM IN THE VILLAGE.—LESTER’S VISIT TO ARAM.—A TRAIT
OF DELICATE KINDNESS IN THE STUDENT.—MADELINE.—HER PRONENESS
TO CONFIDE.—THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN LESTER AND ARAM.
—THE PERSONS BY WHOM IT IS INTERRUPTED.
Not my own fears, nor the prophetic soul
Of the wide world, dreaming on things to come,
Can yet the lease of my true love controul.
—Shakspeare: Sonnets.
Commend me to their love, and I am proud, say,
That my occasions have found time to use them
Toward a supply of money; let the request
Be fifty talents.
—Timon Of Athens.
The next morning the whole village was alive and bustling with terror and consternation. Another, and a yet more daring robbery, had been committed in the neighbourhood, and the police of the county town had been summoned, and were now busy in search of the offenders. Aram had been early disturbed by the officious anxiety of some of his neighbours; and it wanted yet some hours of noon, when Lester himself came to seek and consult with the Student.
Aram was alone in his large and gloomy chamber, surrounded, as usual, by his books, but not as usual engaged in their contents. With his face leaning on his hand, and his eyes gazing on a dull fire, that crept heavily upward through the damp fuel, he sate by his hearth, listless, but wrapt in thought.
“Well, my friend,” said Lester, displacing the books from one of the chairs, and drawing the seat near the Student’s—“you have ere this heard the news, and indeed in a county so quiet as ours, these outrages appear the more fearful, from their being so unlooked for. We must set a guard in the village, Aram, and you must leave this defenceless hermitage and come down to us; not for your own sake,—but consider you will be an additional safeguard to Madeline. You will lock up the house, dismiss your poor old governante to her friends in the village, and walk back with me at once to the hall.”
Aram turned uneasily in his chair.
“I feel your kindness,” said he after a pause, “but I cannot accept it—Madeline,” he stopped short at that name, and added in an altered voice; “no, I will be one of the watch, Lester; I will look to her—to your—safety; but I cannot sleep under another roof. I am superstitious, Lester—superstitious. I have made a vow, a foolish one perhaps, but I dare not break it. And my vow binds me, save on indispensable and urgent necessity, not to pass a night any where but in my own home.”