"I have been looking for you everywhere," he said. "Louisa Thornton wishes to speak to you. They are all here, except Mr. Henry Thornton himself. He determined, like Doctor Blunt, to stay in his own house and stand it out, with some friends he has got there. Mrs. Thornton is frightened out of her wits, and gone to bed, but Lou said she would remain in the balcony till I brought you." I explained to him briefly, as we walked along, the anxiety of my mind in regard to Bessy Davenport, and the obstinate refusal of the landlady to let me pass upstairs in search of her.
"Oh, the old jade!" said Billy Byles, "she's a perfect Turk. They should call her the colonel instead of her husband, who is as meek as Moses, poor man! She would not let me pass either, though I coaxed and bullied, and did all sorts of things. But it is about Bessy Davenport that Louisa wants to speak to you. She says she is certainly not in the inn." My heart sank again; but I hurried on, and soon stood under the place where Miss Thornton was leaning over the balcony.
"I wanted to tell you, Sir Richard," said Miss Thornton, after a few words of ordinary courtesy, "that Bessy is certainly not here. Where did you leave her?" I explained to her all that had occurred, and the reasons I had for supposing she might have been brought into the town by Colonel Halliday and his party.
"Perhaps she may be in some of the other houses," said Miss Thornton, "for they are all full; and everybody, all over the place, seems to be searching for some one lost in the confusion of this terrible day. But I hope and trust that no harm has happened to her, as you left old Jenny with her." While we had been speaking, a little crowd had gathered round Mr. Byles and myself; for I must remark that nobody in the United States appears to comprehend that any other person can have private business with which he has nothing to do; and you must lock your door very tight, if you would not have others come and listen to what you have to say. One of the gentlemen who was standing by here joined in our conversation saying,--
"Colonel Halliday, I am sorry to tell you, did not bring in Miss Davenport. I saw him just as he came in about an hour ago. He had with him two negroes, whom he had captured, and three young ladies, whom he had brought from houses along the road--Miss Corwin and the two Miss Joneses; but I know Miss Davenport was not there, for I stopped and talked to them for a minute." Here at once was knocked away every frail prop and support on which I had built my hopes and expectations. Hope was indeed not destroyed; for hope is immortal, reaching to the grave and beyond the grave. Yet there was no resting-place for her footsteps; a light, pale and faint though not extinguished, flitted, wandering like an ignis fatuus, over a wild, an insecure ground, where there was no path to guide, no solid basis to support. Where was she? What had become of her? Who could tell? The glimmering light rested principally upon one point alone. No corpse had been found in the wood: no trace of the sanguinary acts which had left terrible witnesses behind them wherever they had been perpetrated. But a faint hope, though not so full of temporary distress, is, perhaps, more agitating, more engrossing than a painful certainty. Billy Byles and the gentleman who had just spoken continued to converse for some minutes, without my hearing or attending to anything that passed between them. I believe that Louisa Thornton spoke to me from the balcony above; but I fear I did not answer her. Standing with my eyes fixed on the ground, and my thoughts bitterly preoccupied, I saw, I heard nothing, and it was not till Mr. Byles touched my arm, saying,--"That is a good thought; let us try it," that I woke from this dreadful reverie.
"What is?" I asked; "I did not hear."
"Why," answered Billy Byles, "Captain Wilson proposes we should go down to the old block-house, erected in revolutionary times to defend the river, and where the prisoners are confined, and examine them as to what became of Miss Bessy. Those we took at Doctor Blunt's must be the same who passed over the ground where you left her; and the devils will tell at the first question, for they have all got a looseness of tongue which prevents them from having any concealments. That is the difference between an Irishman and a negro; the one, pretending to tell all, tells nothing, for fear he should hurt himself or his hundred-and-fiftieth cousin; the other tells everything, without caring whether he implicates his own life or that of a dozen more."
"Let us go," I cried, seizing upon the suggestion eagerly; for I was a drowning man, and a straw seemed some support. "Which is the way to this place?" Billy Byles hade Miss Thornton adieu in tones which implied that his suit had prospered, and then led me across the market-place towards the banks of the little river which flowed past the town. Here we came to a small stockaded house, which had served in former times to defend the stream, and before which two sentinels, with muskets on their shoulders, were sedately walking. Only another person was visible, who, though he attracted but little of my attention, seemed considerably to excite that of Billy Byles.
"Hang me," he said, "if I do not believe that is Colonel M----. What can he be doing there, down by the side of the river with a spade in his hand? Why, he has got a basket there too."
"Never mind," I answered; "we have something more important to think of." And advancing towards the block-house, not without turning his head several times, he demanded admission, which was immediately granted. We had no light but the moon; and the black faces of the handcuffed prisoners were not very easily distinguished, the one from the other.