“I hope not. He has great vigor of constitution; and old as he is, I think he will rub through it.”
“Young Conyers left for Kilkenny, then, immediately?” asked he.
“No; he came down here, to the village. He is now at the inn.”
“At the inn, here? I never knew that. I am sorry I was not aware of it, doctor; but since it is so, I will ask of you not to speak of having seen me here. He would naturally take it ill, as his brother officer, that I did not make him out, while, as you see, I was totally ignorant of his vicinity.”
“I will say nothing on the subject, Captain,” said the doctor. “And now one word of advice from you on a personal matter. This young gentleman has offered to be of service to my son—”
Conyers, hitherto spellbound while the interest attached to his father, now turned hastily from the spot and walked away, his mind not alone charged with a heavy care, but full of an eager anxiety as to wherefore Stapylton should have felt so deeply interested in Barrington's illness, and the causes that led to it,—Stapylton, the most selfish of men, and the very last in the world to busy himself in the sorrows or misfortunes of a stranger. Again, too, why had he desired the doctor to preserve his presence there as a secret? Conyers was exactly in the frame of mind to exaggerate a suspicion, or make a mere doubt a grave question. While be thus mused, Stapylton and the doctor passed him on their way towards the village, deep in converse, and, to all seeming, in closest confidence.
“Shall I follow him to the inn, and declare that I overheard a few words on the bridge which give me a claim to explanation? Shall I say, 'Captain Stapylton, you spoke of my father, just now, sufficiently aloud to be overheard by me as I passed, and in your tone there was that which entitles me to question you? Then if he should say, 'Go on; what is it you ask for?' shall I not be sorely puzzled to continue? Perhaps, too, he might remind me that the mode in which I obtained my information precludes even a reference to it. He is one of those fellows not to throw away such an advantage, and I must prepare myself for a quarrel. Oh, if I only had Hunter by me! What would I not give for the brave Colonel's counsel at such a moment as this?”
Of this sort were his thoughts as he strolled up and down for hours, wearing away the long “night watches,” till a faint grayish tinge above the horizon showed that morning was not very distant. The whole landscape was wrapped in that cold mysterious tint in which tower and hill-top and spire are scarcely distinguishable from each other, while out of the low-lying meadows already arose the bluish vapor that proclaims the coming day. The village itself, overshadowed by the mountain behind it, lay a black, unbroken mass.
Not a light twinkled from a window, save close to the river's bank, where a faint gleam stole forth and flickered on the water.
Who has not felt the strange interest that attaches to a solitary light seen thus in the tranquil depth of a silent night? How readily do we associate it with some incident of sorrow! The watcher beside the sick-bed rises to the mind, or the patient sufferer himself trying to cheat the dull hours by a book, or perhaps some poor son of toil arising to his daily round of labor, and seated at that solitary meal which no kind word enlivens, no companionship beguiles. And as I write, in what corner of earth are not such scenes passing,—such dark shadows moving over the battlefield of life?