"You are not to censure my sister for loving her own closest associates best. She is several years our junior, you will remember, and was scarcely of an age to be our companion six years ago."
Opportunity had the grace to color a little, for she had only used Patt as a cloak to make her assaults on me, and she knew as well as I did that my sister was good seven years younger than herself. This feeling, however, was but momentary, and she next turned to the real object of this visit.
"What am I to tell mother, Hugh? You will let Sen off, I know?"
I reflected, for the first time, on the hardships of the case; but felt a strong reluctance to allow incendiaries to escape.
"The facts must be known, soon, all over the town," I remarked.
"No fear of that; they are pretty much known already. News does fly fast at Ravensnest, all must admit."
"Ay, if it would only fly true. But your brother can hardly remain here, after such an occurrence."
"Lord! How you talk! If the law will only let him alone, who'd trouble him for this? You haven't been home long enough to learn that folks don't think half as much of setting fire to a house, in anti-rent times, as they'd think of a trespass under the old-fashioned law. Anti-rent alters the whole spirit."
How true was this! And we have lads among us, who have passed from their tenth to their eighteenth and twentieth years, in a condition of society that is almost hopelessly abandoned to the most corrupting influence of all the temptations that beset human beings. It is not surprising that men begin to regard arson as a venial offence, when the moral feeling of the community is thus unhinged, and boys are suffered to grow into manhood in the midst of notions so fatal to everything that is just and safe.
"But the law itself will not be quite as complaisant as the 'folks.' It will scarcely allow incendiaries to escape; and your brother would be compelled to flee the land."