"Not enough," said Mr. Prevost, in a dull, gloomy tone. "The slightest change, and it is gone. The house I care not for; the barns, the crops, are nothing! They can be replaced, or I could do without them; but there are things within that house, my lord, I cannot do without."
"Do you not think we can reach it?" asked Lord H----. "If we were to push our horses into the stream there, we might follow its course up--it seems broad and shallow--and the trees recede from the banks--are there any deep spots in its course?"
"None, massa," replied the negro.
"Let us try, at all events," exclaimed Lord H----, turning his horse's head. "We can come back again if we find the heat and smoke too much for us."
"My daughter!" said Mr. Prevost, in a tone of deep, strong feeling, "my daughter! Lord H----."
The young nobleman was silent. The stories he had heard that day, and many he had heard before, of persons getting entangled in burning forests, and never being able to escape--which, while in the first enthusiasm of the moment he thought only of himself and of Mr. Prevost, had seemed to him but visions, wild chimeras--assumed a terrible reality as soon as the name of Edith was mentioned, and he would have shuddered to see the proposal adopted which he had made only the moment before. He was silent then, and Mr. Prevost was the first who spoke.
"I must go," he said, with gloomy earnestness, after some brief consideration. "I must go, let what will betide."
He remained for two or three minutes profoundly silent. Then, turning suddenly to Lord H----, he said: "My lord, I am going to entrust to you the dearest thing I have on earth, my daughter--to place her under the safeguard of your honor--to rely for her protection and defence upon your chivalry. As an English nobleman of high name and fame, I do trust you without a doubt. I must make my way through that fire by some means--I must save some papers--two pictures which I value more than my own life. I will take my good friend Chaudo here with me. I must leave you to conduct Edith to a place of safety."
"Oh, my father!" cried Edith, but he went on, without heeding her:
"If you follow that road," he continued, "you will come at the distance of some seven miles, to a good-sized farmhouse on the left of the road. The men are most likely out watching the progress of the fire, but you will find the women within, and good and friendly they are, though homely and uneducated. I have no time to stop for further directions. Edith, my child, God bless you! Do not cloud our parting with a doubt of heaven's protection. Should anything occur--and be it as He wills--you and Walter will find with the lawyers at Albany all papers referring to this small farm, and to the little we have in England. God bless you, my child! God bless you!" and thus saying, he turned and rode fast down the hill, beckoning to the negro to follow him.