“I feel additionally grateful to you, Mr. Woodburn, for your delicate and generous course under the circumstances in which, as you seem to be aware, I am placed. But as I now perceive my companion approaching in the road, you will excuse my departure.”
“Certainly,” said Woodburn; “and you will forgive what has been said by one who is so truly the prey of conflicting emotions?”
“O, yes, sir,” she answered, looking up with a witching smile, as she bowed her adieu; “that is, I will when you do any thing worthy of my forgiveness.”
Woodburn stood mutely gazing after his lovely visitor till her small and graceful figure, floating on in its devious course through the diversified grounds in almost fairy lightness, receded from his enraptured sight; when he turned away with a sigh to commune with himself, try to analyze his feelings, weigh consequences, give Reason her rightful sway, and follow her dictates. After a long and deep struggle with his feelings, he appeared to come to some determination, and, resolutely bringing down a foot on the ground, he exclaimed,—
“No, never! I will not give way to feelings which can only end in disappointment and mortification. Begone, enticing vision, begone! I will harbor you no longer.” And under the impulse of his freshly-formed resolution, he abruptly left the spot, and hastened through the enclosure to take his way homeward. As he was about to pass out into the road, his attention was attracted by the barking of a small dog, that, having followed the ladies, and tarried behind on their return, seemed to be intent on dragging out something from under a broad, flat stone, lying in one corner of the graveyard. Feeling some inclination to know what discoveries the dog was making in a spot so unpromising of any game that would be likely to attract him, Woodbury walked to the spot; when he perceived the animal to be eagerly tugging away at some object, which presented the appearance of the corners of some old leather-bound book, buried beneath the stone. His curiosity being now excited, he stood by and patiently waited to see the result. In a few minutes the dog succeeded in dragging out the object in question, which proved to be an old record-book, or rather the remains of one, for a part of it had been converted by the mice into a nest, and the rest was mutilated and falling to pieces. Leaving the dog to pursue his object, which was now sufficiently explained, Woodburn gathered up the remains of the book and stepped aside to examine them. On beating off the dirt and opening the unmutilated parts, he soon, and to his great surprise, discovered it to be a volume of the town records; the very volume, the loss of which, as he believed, had caused his defeat in his lawsuit with Peters. And hurriedly running over the leaves, his eye, the next moment, fell on the record of his own deed, with the dates precisely as he had contended, and standing in a connection which would have proved the priority of his title, furnished him a complete defence, and saved him from ruin!
The previous suspicions of Woodburn, respecting the disappearance of these records through the agency of Peters, were now confirmed in the mind of the former, as certainly as if he had witnessed the act; and this aggravating discovery, coming as it did too late to be of any benefit to him, and at a moment, too, when his feelings, notwithstanding his recent declarations to Miss Haviland, and his subsequent resolves, were sore from the insidious workings of jealousy, and the revolting thought of the pretensions of his hated foe to her hand—this discovery, we say, wrought up his mind, already embittered to the last degree of endurance, to a state little short of absolute frenzy. And clinching the fragments of the book, which contained the proof of the black transaction, in one hand, and flourishing the heavy oak cane he had with him in the other, he rushed out of the enclosure, and, with a disturbed air and hurrying step, took his way towards his desolate home, resolved, that in case he found, as he feared, that all chance of legal redress had passed by, he would, at least, unsparingly make use of the means, now in his power, in trumpeting the villainy of Peters to the world.
In this state of exasperation, after proceeding a short distance he unexpectedly and unfortunately encountered the very object of his pent indignation, the haughty and hated Peters, who, on horseback, was coming up a cross-road on his way to the Tory Tavern, where, as the reader has been already apprised, his tools and partisans were anxiously awaiting his arrival.
“Ha! here? Then he shall be the first to hear it,” muttered Woodburn, as with a flashing eye he suddenly turned and sternly confronted the other in his path.
“What now, sir?” said Peters, reigning up with a look of surprise not unmingled with uneasiness.
“I will tell you what, now, sir,” replied Woodburn, in a voice quivering with suppressed passion; “your frauds are exposed! Here are the remains of those very records you or your tools purloined to enable you to accomplish your unhallowed triumph over me, and now just found buried in yonder graveyard!”