I paused to think for a moment.
"No, I will not," I said finally. "A brace of pistols would avail nothing against that mob, should they choose to resist us, and our going unarmed will have a great moral effect upon them as showing them that we are not afraid."
"You have weighed fully the extent of the risk you are about to run, I hope, sir," protested Long.
"Fully," I answered. "'T is not yet too late for you to turn back, you know. I have no right to ask you to endanger your life to carry out this plan of mine. Perhaps it would be wiser for you not to go."
"And if I stay, you"—
"Will go alone," I said.
He caught my hand and wrung it heartily.
"You are a brave man, Mr. Stewart," he exclaimed. "If I have shown any hesitation, 't was on your account, not on my own. I am ready to go with you," and as he spoke, he drew a brace of pistols from beneath his coat and laid them on the table by the fireplace.
"Wait one moment," I said, and hurrying to my aunt's room, I wrote a short note telling her of the trouble I had discovered and where Long and I were going, so that, if we did not return, she would know what had happened. Folding and sealing it, I wrote on the outside, "To be delivered at once to Mrs. Stewart," left it on the table, knowing that no one would enter the room till morning, and hurried back to rejoin Long. We were off without further words, and were soon well on our way.
It was a clear, cool, summer night, with the breeze just stirring in the trees and keeping up a faint, unceasing whispering among the leaves. The moon had risen some hours before, and sailed upward through a cloudless sky. Even under the trees it was not wholly dark, for the moon's light filtered through here and there, making a quaint patchwork on the ground, and filling the air with a peculiar iridescence which transformed the ragged trunks of the sycamores into fantastic hobgoblins. All about us rose the croaking of the frogs, dominating all the other noises of the night, and uniting in one mighty chorus in the marshes along the river. An owl was hooting from a distant tree, and the hum of innumerable insects sounded on every side. Here and there a glittering, dew-spangled cobweb stretched across our path, a barrier of silver, and required more than ordinary resolution to be brushed aside. As we turned nearer to the river, the ground grew softer and the underbrush more thick, and I knew that we had reached the swamp.