"Ben told you this?" cried Alice, her eyes flashing fire and her white lips quivering. "And you believed the infamous lie, father? No! no! Ben has murdered him, father—he has murdered my Philip, and has invented this lie to prevent our expecting him. O Philip!"—her excitement overpowered her and she fainted in her father's arms.
Now that the tension of suspense had given way, and she deemed herself certain of the fate of her lover, she yielded for a time to the long-smothered agony within her, going from one fainting-fit to another all through that wretched night.
The next day, when composed enough to talk, she told her father all—Ben's offer of marriage, his threats, the circumstantial evidence which fixed the guilt of the assault in the woods upon him, and her belief now that Philip had been made away with. The raftsman himself was startled; and to quiet and encourage his child, he promised to set off, by to-morrow, upon the ice, and skate down to Center City, that her fears might be dispelled or confirmed. But that very night the weather, which had been growing warm for a week, melted into rain, and the ice became too rotten to trust. There was nothing to do but to wait.
"'Tain't by no means certain he's done sech a horrible thing. And if you'll pick up courage to think so, and make yerself as easy as you can, I'll start the very first day it's possible. Likely in March the spring 'll open. You may go 'long with me, too, if you wish, so as to learn the news as soon as I do. I'll say nothing of my suspicions to young Perkins, but try to treat him the same as ever, till I know he desarves different."
[CHAPTER VIII.]
AWAY FROM HOME.
A quaint party were to be seen passing through some of the streets of Center City one April day of the following spring. A tall and vigorous man, with a keen, intelligent face, clad in a calico shirt, a blue-woolen hunter's frock and buckskin breeches, strode on as if anxious to reach his destination; or, rather, as if used to making good time over endless prairies and through unsurveyed forests. By his side walked a young girl whose dress, though of the best materials, was antique as our grandmothers'; a broad-brimmed hat shaded a face the loveliest ever beheld in that city; her little slippers with their silver buckles peeped out from beneath her short frock. Those who were fortunate enough to see her as she passed did not know which to admire most—the exquisite, unstudied grace of her manners, which was as peculiar as her beauty, or the seraphic innocence of her expression. She kept pace with her companion, looking gravely forward with those great blue eyes, only occasionally giving the crowd a fawn-like, startled look, when it pressed too near. A few paces behind trudged an ancient colored couple, the man short, and white-eyed, rolling smiles as he passed, evidently supposing all the attention of the lookers-on to be concentrated on his flaming vest, his flowered coat, and bran-new boots; the woman a perfect black Juno, really superb in her air and physique, wearing her neatly-folded yellow turban as if it were a golden crown. She seldom took her eyes off the young mistress whom she followed, except occasionally to frown at some impudent fellow who stared too hard.