He sprang up and again placed himself in position to fire. But what had become of the welcome sounds? Alas for his hoped-for revenge; they had died away entirely. The horse and his rider must have taken some other road. More low-breathed, bitter curses: yet perchance it was not the man for whose life he thirsted. He would wait and hope on.
But the night waned: one after another the moon and stars set and day began to break in the east; the birds waking in their nests overhead grew clamorous with joy, yet their notes seemed to contain a warning tone for him, bidding him begone ere the coming of the light hated by those whose deeds are evil. Chilled by the frosty air, and stiff and sore from long standing in a constrained position, he limped away, and disappeared in the deeper shadows of the woods.
Arthur's words of warning had taken their desired effect; and cowardly, as base, wicked, and cruel, the man made haste to flee from the scene of his intended crime, imagining at times that he even heard the bloodhounds already on his track.
CHAPTER TENTH.
"At last I know thee—and my soul,
From all thy arts set free,
Abjures the cold consummate art
Shrin'd as a soul in thee."
—SARA J. CLARK.
The rest of the winter passed quietly and happily with our friends at Ion and the Oaks, Mr. Travilla spending nearly half his time at the latter place, and in rides and walks with Elsie, whom he now and then coaxed to Ion for a call upon his mother.
Their courtship was serene and peaceful: disturbed by no feverish heat of passion, no doubts and fears, no lovers' quarrels, but full of a deep, intense happiness, the fruit of their long and intimate friendship, their full acquaintance with, and perfect confidence in each other, and their strong love. Enna sneeringly observed that "they were more like some staid old married couple than a pair of lovers."
Arthur made no confidant in regard to his late interview with Jackson; nothing more was heard or seen of the scoundrel, and gradually Elsie came to the conclusion that Mr. Travilla, who occasionally rallied her good-naturedly on the subject of her fright, had been correct in his judgment that it was either the work of imagination or of some practical joker.
Arthur, on his part, thought that fear of the terrors he had held up before him would cause Jackson—whom he knew to be an arrant coward—to refrain from adventuring himself again in the neighborhood.