“By no means, unless you would have them on us like wolves. Friends,” and he turned to the mob, which had been increased by some twenty or more, “friends, that man is gone; he is not here; he has left my house. You can search it if you like.”
“Where’s Miss De Vere?” a coarse voice cried. “We know her to be Union. She never tried to cover that as you, hoary old villain, did. She was out and out. Let her come and say the Yankee is gone and we will believe her.”
“My niece, I regret to say, is not just now in either. She is gone with Lois to take some nicknacks to a sick neighbor.”
“That’s so, boys. I met her myself as I came down the mountain,” called out a young man of the company, who seemed to be superior to his associates.
“Gone with Lois, hey? Then whose woolly pate is that?” responded a drunken brute, who, rising in his stirrups, fired a shot toward the garret window from which Lois in an unguarded moment had thrust her head.
Others had seen her, too, and as this gave the lie to the story that Lois was gone, the maddened crowd pressed against the house, declaring their intention to search it and hang any runaway they might find secreted here. It never occurred to them that the runaway could have been with Maude in Lois’s clothes; but the young man who met the two lone women saw the ruse at once, and influenced by Maude’s beauty and the remembrance of the sweet “Good evening, Mark,” with which she had greeted him as he passed, he made his way to Charlie’s side and whispered,
“If you know where your sister has gone, and can warn her, do so at once. Tell her if she is tolerably safe to stay there and not return here to-night.”
Charlie needed no second bidding, and stealing from the rear of the house he was soon speeding up the mountain path in the direction of the cave. Meanwhile the search in Paul Haverill’s house went on. Closets were thrown open; beds were torn to pieces; cellars were ransacked, and old Lois was dragged from the ash-house, where she had taken refuge, while, worse than all, Tom Carleton’s boots were found in the chamber where he had dressed so hurriedly, and the sight of these maddened the excited crowd, which, failing of finding their victim, began to clamor for Paul Haverill’s blood. But Paul kept them at bay. In the rear of the house was a small, dark room, to which there was but one entrance, and that a steep narrow stairway. Here Paul Haverill took refuge, and standing at the head of the stairs threatened to shoot the first man who should attempt to come up. They had not yet reached that state when they counted their lives as nothing, and so amid yells and oaths, and riding up and down the road, and drinking the fine grape wines with which the cellar was stocked, the hours of the short summer night wore on until just as the dawn was breaking in the east, the marauders put the finishing touch to their night’s debauch by setting fire to the house, and then starting in a body up the mountain side in the direction of the cave.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
IN THE CAVE.
