GIPSY HUNTS NEW GAME.
"And by the watch-fire's gleaming light,
Close by his side was seen
A huntress maid in beauty bright
With airy robes of green."—Scott.
t was early afternoon of that same day on which the events related in the last chapter occurred. Squire Erliston, in after-dinner mood, sat in his arm-chair; Louis lay idly on a lounge at a little distance, and Gipsy sat by the window, yawningly turning over a volume of prints. Mrs. Oranmore, swathed in shawls, lounged on her sofa, her prayerbook in her hand, taking a succession of short naps.
It was the squire's custom to go to sleep after dinner; but now, in his evident excitement, he seemed quite to forget it altogether.
"Yes, sir," he was saying to Louis, "the scoundrel actually entered the sheriff's house through the window, and carried off more than a hundred dollars, right under their very noses. It's monstrous!—it's outrageous! He deserves to be drawn and quartered for his villainy! And he will be, too, if he's taken. The country 'll soon be overrun with just such rascals, if the scoundrel isn't made an example of."
"Of whom are you speaking, papa?" inquired Lizzie, suddenly walking up.
"Of one of Drummond's negroes—a perfect ruffian; Big Tom, they call him. He's fled to the woods, and only makes his appearance at night. He stabbed young Drummond himself; and since then, he's committed all sorts of depredations. Simms, the sheriff, came down yesterday with constables to arrest them; and during the night, the scoundrel actually had the audacity to enter the sheriff's window, and decamped with a hundred dollars before they could take him. He met one of the constables in the yard as he was going out. The constable cried 'murder,' and seized him; but Big Tom—who is a regular giant—just lifted him up and hurled him over the wall, where he fell upon a heap of stones, breaking his collar-bone, two of his legs, 'and the rest of his ribs,' as Solomon says. The constable's not expected to live; and Big Tom got off to his den in safety with his booty."
"Why do they not scour the woods in a body?" inquired Louis.