But her emotion was too strong for control, and she sobbed: "It was the bravest thing I ever heard of. Oh! I have done you SUCH wrong! Forgive me. I—I—can't—" and she hastened up the dusky stairway, followed by her servant, who was profuse in German interjections.
"I am repaid a thousand-fold," was Merwyn's quiet comment. "My oath cannot blight my life now."
Sleep had been most effectually banished from his eyes, and as he stood in the unlighted apartment, motionless and silent, looking out upon the dusky street, but a few moments passed before a man and a woman approached cautiously, lifted the slain rioter, and bore him away.
In less than half an hour Mr. Vosburgh entered his house from the rear so silently that he was almost beside Merwyn before his approach was recognized.
"What, Merwyn!" he exclaimed, with a little chiding in his tone; "is this the way you rest? You certainly haven't stood here, 'like Patience on a monument,' since I left?"
"No, indeed. You are indebted to Miss Vosburgh that you have a home to come to, for I slept so soundly that the house might have been carried off bodily. The mob has been here."
"O papa!" cried Marian, clasping her arms about his neck, "thank
God you are back safe! Oh, it was all so sudden and terrible!"
"But how, how, Merwyn? What has happened?"
"Well, sir, Miss Vosburgh was a better sentinel than I, and heard the first approach of the ruffians. I was sleeping like old Rip himself. She wakened me. A shot or two appeared to create a panic, and they disappeared like a dream, as suddenly as they had come."
"Just listen to him, papa!" cried the girl, now reassured by her father's presence, and recovering from her nervous shock. "Why shouldn't he sleep after such a day as he has seen? It was his duty to sleep, wasn't it? The idea of two sentinels in a small garrison keeping awake, watching the same points!"