Harper pressed his finger on his lip, to remind Frances of her promise, and, taking his pistols and hat, so that no vestige of his visit remained, he retired deliberately to a far corner of the hut, where, lifting several articles of dress, he entered a recess in the rock, and, letting them fall again, was hid from view. Frances noticed, by the strong firelight, as he entered, that it was a natural cavity, and contained nothing but a few more articles of domestic use.
The surprise of Henry and the peddler, on entering and finding Frances in possession of the hut, may be easily imagined. Without waiting for explanations or questions, the warm-hearted girl flew into the arms of her brother, and gave a vent to her emotions in tears. But the peddler seemed struck with very different feelings. His first look was at the fire, which had been recently supplied with fuel; he then drew open a small drawer of the table, and looked a little alarmed at finding it empty.
“Are you alone, Miss Fanny?” he asked, in a quick voice. “You did not come here alone?”
“As you see me, Mr. Birch,” said Frances, raising herself from her brother’s arms, and turning an expressive glance towards the secret cavern, that the quick eye of the peddler instantly understood.
“But why and wherefore are you here?” exclaimed her astonished brother; “and how knew you of this place at all?”
Frances entered at once into a brief detail of what had occurred at the house since their departure, and the motives which induced her to seek them.
“But,” said Birch, “why follow us here, when we were left on the opposite hill?”
Frances related the glimpse that she had caught of the hut and peddler, in her passage through the Highlands, as well as her view of him on that day, and her immediate conjecture that the fugitives would seek the shelter of this habitation for the night. Birch examined her features as, with open ingenuousness, she related the simple incidents that had made her mistress of his secret; and, as she ended, he sprang upon his feet, and, striking the window with the stick in his hand, demolished it at a blow.
“’Tis but little luxury or comfort that I know,” he said, “but even that little cannot be enjoyed in safety! Miss Wharton,” he added, advancing before Frances, and speaking with the bitter melancholy that was common to him, “I am hunted through these hills like a beast of the forest; but whenever, tired with my toils, I can reach this spot, poor and dreary as it is, I can spend my solitary nights in safety. Will you aid to make the life of a wretch still more miserable?”
“Never!” cried Frances, with fervor; “your secret is safe with me.”