"Why?" inquired Captain Pendleton.
"Because it will enable me to humor the delusion of my poor Sybil."
"How?"
"By persuading her that the storm makes it necessary for us to stop at the house of an acquaintance," hastily explained Lyon Berners, as he put Beatrix into the seat next Sybil.
Then he took the third seat and Mr. Fortescue, as the custodian of Sybil, took the fourth.
Captain Pendleton mounted the box beside the coachman, who had received his directions where to drive, but who could scarcely see his way, for weeping.
The storm came down in fury. The lightning glared, the thunder rolled; the rain swept the mountain sides like a flood.
"We shall never be able to reach Black Hall to-night, my darling. We must stop at some house," said Lyon Berners, artfully.
"Yes? that's bad," answered his wife, who with an evident effort roused herself to reply, and then sank back into her seat, in an attitude of weariness, and began slowly to pick at the fringe of her parasol, in an absent-minded, quiet manner.
The county prison was at the lower end of the village, at the junction of the Black river and Bird creek. It was a plain, rude structure, built of the iron-gray stone dug from the quarries of the Black mountain. It did not look like a prison. But for the grated windows it might have been taken for a commodious country house. And but for its well-cultivated grounds and stone fence, it might have been taken for a store-house. It comprised within its four walls the home of the warden and his family, as well as the lodgings for the turnkeys, and the cells of the prisoners.