McKee and Elliot.
CHAPTER XV.
OLD CHARACTERS AND NEW.
It was toward night of a hot sultry day in the month of August, that Ella Barnwell was seated by the door of a cabin, within the walls of Bryan's Station, gazing forth, with what seemed a vacant stare, upon a group of individuals, who were standing near the center of the common before spoken of, engaged in a very animated conversation. Her features perhaps were no paler than when we saw her last; but there was a tender, melancholy expression on her sweet countenance, of deep abiding grief, and a look of mournfulness in her beautiful eyes, that touched involuntarily the hearts of all who met her gaze.
Since we last beheld her, days of anxious solicitude, and sleepless nights, had been apportioned Ella; for memory—all potent memory—had kept constantly before her mind's eye the images of those who were gone, and mourned as forever lost to the living; and her imagination had a thousand times traced them to the awful stake, seen their terrible tortures, heard their agonizing, dying groans; and her heart had bled for them in secret; and tears of anguish, at their untimely fate, had often dimmed her eyes. Even now, as she apparently gazed upon that group of individuals, whom she saw not, and whose voices, sounding in her ear, she heard not, her mind was occupied with the probable fate of her uncle and Algernon, the still all-absorbing theme of her soul.
While seated thus, Mrs. Younker approached Ella from behind, unperceived by the latter, and now stood gazing upon her with a sorrowful look. The countenance of the good dame had altered less, perhaps, than Ella's, owing to her strong masculine spirit; but still there was an expression of anxiety and sadness thereon, which, until of late, had never been visible—not even when on her march to what, as she then believed, was her final doom—the excitement whereof, and the many events that occurred on the route, having been sufficient to occupy her mind in a different manner from what it had been in brooding over the fate of her husband for months in secret, and in a place of comparative safety. At length a remark, in a loud voice, of one of the individuals of the group before alluded to, arrested the attention of both Mrs. Younker and Ella.
"I tell you," said the speaker, who was evidently much excited, "it was that infernal cut-throat Girty's doings, and no mistake. Heaven's curses on him for a villain!—and I don't think he'll more nor git his just dues, to suffer them hell fires of torment, hereafter, that he's kindled so often around his victims on arth."
At these words Ella started to her feet, and exclaiming wildly,
"Who are they—who are Girty's victims?" sprung swiftly towards the group, followed by Mrs. Younker.