“Her thoughts wander!” whispered Katherine, with anxious tenderness, “some awful calamity has affected her intellect!”
“Yes, it must be; my sinful thoughts have wandered, and conjured sounds that it would have been dreadful to hear in truth, and within these walls,” said Alice, more composedly, smiling with a ghastly expression, as she gazed on the two beautiful, solicitous maidens who supported her yielding person. “But the moment of weakness is passed, and I am better; aid me to my room, and return, that you may not interrupt the reviving harmony between yourselves and Colonel Howard. I am now better—nay, I am quite restored.”
“Say not so, dear Miss Alice,” returned Cecilia; “your face denies what your kindness to us induces you to utter; ill, very ill, you are, nor shall even your own commands induce me to leave you.”
“Remain, then,” said Miss Dunscombe, bestowing a look of grateful affection on her lovely supporter; “and while our Katherine returns to the drawing-room, to give the gentlemen their coffee, you shall continue with me, as my gentle nurse.”
By this time they had gained the apartment, and Katherine, after assisting her cousin to place Alice on her bed, returned to do the honors of the drawing-room.
Colonel Howard ceased his examination of the prisoners, at her entrance, to inquire, with courtly solicitude, after the invalid; and, when his questions were answered, he again proceeded, as follows:
“This is what the lads would call plain sailing, Borroughcliffe: they are out of employment in Sunderland, and have acquaintances and relatives in Whitehaven, to whom they are going for assistance and labor. All very probable, and perfectly harmless.”
“Nothing more so, my respectable host,” returned the jocund soldier; “but it seemeth a grievous misfortune that a trio of such flesh and blood should need work wherewithal to exercise their thews and sinews, while so many of the vessels of his majesty's fleet navigate the ocean in quest of the enemies of old England.”
“There is truth in that; much truth in your remark,” cried the colonel. “What say you, my lads, will you fight the Frenchmen and the Don——ay! and even my own rebellious and infatuated countrymen? Nay, by heaven, it is not a trifle that shall prevent his majesty from possessing the services of three such heroes. Here are five guineas apiece for you the moment that you put foot on board the Alacrity cutter; and that can easily be done, as she lies at anchor this very night, only two short leagues to the south of this, in a small port, where she is riding out the gale as snugly as if she were in a corner of this room.”
One of the men affected to gaze at the money with longing eyes, while he asked, as if weighing the terms of the engagement: