Ah, well did the unhappy Alice realize how easily now he could follow his intent—how fully in his power was that unsuspicious man who had already suffered so much from his hands. Appetite and sleep forsook her; if she slept it was but to dream of a boat gliding down a river, of a strong man raising a weak one in his grasp and hurling him, wounded and helpless, into the waters, where he would sink, sink, till the waves bubbled over his floating hair, and all was gone. Many a night she started from her sleep with terrified shrieks, which alarmed her father.
"'Tain't right for a young girl to be having the nightmare so, Pallas. Suthin' or another is wrong about her—hain't no nerves lately. I do hope she ain't goin' to be one of the screechin', faintin' kind of women folks. I detest sech. Her health can't be good. Do try and find out what's the matter with her; she'll tell you quicker 'an she will me. Fix her up some kind of tea."
"De chile ain't well, masser; dat's berry plain. She's getting thin every day, and she don't eat 'nuff to keep a bird alive. But it's her mind, masser—'pend on it, it's her mind. Dese young gentleum make mischief. Wish I had masser Moore under my thumb—I'd give him a scoldin' would las' him all his life."
"Cuss Philip Moore, and all others of his class," muttered the raftsman, moodily.
Both Mr. Wilde and Pallas began to lose their high opinion of the young man, as they witnessed the silent suffering of their darling. His going down the river without his expected company had cheated Philip out of the revelation he had desired to make; and Alice, with that excessive delicacy of some timid young girls, had not even confided her secret to her good old nurse.
Much better it would have been for her peace of mind, had she told all to her friends—her love and her fears. Then, if they had seen good reason for her apprehensions, they might have chased the matter down, at whatever trouble, and put her out of suspense. But she did not do it. She shut the growing terror in her heart where it fed upon her life day by day.
There was no regular communication between Wilde's mill and the lower country, and in the winter what little there had been was cut off. The lovely, lingering Indian-summer days, in the midst of which the two voyagers had set out, were over, and ice closed the river the very day after the return of Ben.
A sudden agony of hope and fear convulsed the heart of Alice, when her father entered the house one day, and announced Ben's arrival.
"Did he not bring me a letter? was there no letter for you, father?"
It would be so natural that he should write, at least to her father, some message of good wishes and announcement of his safe journey—if she could see his own handwriting, she would be satisfied that all was well.