There came a blinding flash, followed by a deafening thunder-bolt, as the foreman rose and pronounced the word, "Guilty."
Smothered screams at this moment issued from various parts of the assembly. The building was struck and on fire. Terrible confusion ensued. Frantic cries and shrieks mingled with the bellowings of the storm without, rendering the scene awful beyond description. All rushed pell-mell for the street. The crackling flames burst through the broad windows on the side of the judges' platform, rolling a dense volume of smoke and stifling heat into the interior of the building. In the wild excitement and terror, the prisoners were forgotten. They stood in the box where they had received sentence. The flames were rapidly approaching them. Sumpter turned a glance full of hatred and vengeance on Hardin. "You swore revenge on Sheldon," said he, "and I helped you accomplish your iniquitous designs. You refused a paltry sum when I asked it, and then I swore revenge on you, and this is the way I finish it."
Hardin drew a revolver from his breast; "And this is the way I finish mine," he said; and, taking aim, lodged a ball in the heart of Sumpter. Then, springing quick as lightning over the box, he rushed among the crowd and gained the street. The intense darkness favored his flight, and, hurrying on, he gained the levees, secreted himself in the hold of a boat, and had the good fortune to find himself floating down the river in the morning.
CHAPTER XIX.
"Go forth, thou spirit proud and high,
Upon thy soaring way;
Plume all thy pinions for the sky,
And sing a glorious lay."
As the young sapling of the forest bends and sways in the fury of the blast, and, when it is passed, rises and shakes the weight of rain-drops from its pliant boughs, and stands stronger, higher, more beautiful than before, so Annie Evalyn, when the passion-storm had spent its fury, rose a purer, loftier being, with a heart firm and free, and a soul elevated and sublime in its aspirations. There might be traces to tell the tempest had been a wild one; a paleness on the brow; the lips thinned and slightly compressed; the eyelids sometimes drooping their long lashes over the dark, liquid eyes, and a tear stealing silently over the marble cheek; or a slight shudder for a moment convulsing the slender frame, as if memory painted a picture the soul shrank from contemplating. Yet these light tokens of what had been, heightened the sublime beauty of what was now. Annie was no longer a child in the world's lore of experience. Sorrow and suffering are swift teachers. They unfold and perfect the powers with astonishing rapidity. Annie Evalyn was a woman; with a quick eye and ready judgment to detect and discern the workings of that great mystery, the human heart, yet simple and child-like in her manners, as of old.
"Bless it, but this is an agreeable surprise!" exclaimed Aunt Patty, as Annie entered the little, rock-built cottage, on a clear, cool evening in early autumn, with a bright smile beaming on her lovely features; "why, I didn't once think of your comin' to-night, hinney, bein' as you were here last Saturday. But it does my old heart good to know you remember your poor, ignorant aunty, when you are among your little scholars and so many kind friends at the Parsonage."