It readily yielded to his touch; he looked in—his pale, sorrowful-looking wife was before him.
What a contrast with the turmoils through which he had passed, with the wild uncertainty which made his bosom throb, was the sight of this grave, sad, innocent woman, alone in the stillness of dawn, with her Bible beside her!
It was so totally unlike what he had experienced since he had first known her, that he was softened, though confounded, at the sight. He wanted words; he felt as if he could have said something kind, but did not know how.
Ah! the scorched and fiery ground of the sinful man’s mind hath no resting-place for the angel’s foot. The good spirit halted on the threshold; nevertheless, Jasper wore a look unusual to him, and when it had passed away, it haunted Eleanor like a vision. Her memory of it was touched with something like compassion, and it was well that it was so.
The cry was raised, “The prisoner has escaped.”
The morning broke cold and chill, and the vapours hung about the hills, as the little force of Cape cavalry and its infantry supports were mustered, ere they started on the spoor of the convict, with orders also to reconnoitre the ground haunted by the enemy. It was May who had discovered the spoor.
Devoted to the Daveneys, and especially attached to Eleanor, he had built for himself a little pent-house, a lean-to, beneath the eastern window of her room. In this he, and Fitje, and Ellen, and Ormsby’s gallant hound—May’s friend and playmate—all slept at night. May was always ready to accompany the Commissioner in his rounds; he was at hand any moment during the twenty-four hours; he was as watchful as the hound. Although he had never enlightened Fitje on the subject of Eleanor’s miserable connection with Lyle, he had followed her through her whole history, and a vague sense of dread for her sake hung about him as soon as he learned that her tormentor had re-appeared in the shape of Lee the convict.
On the night in question, May, like a true bushman, was too much disconcerted by the commotion in the elements to sleep. He never could banish the idea, entertained by his race, that evil spirits were working mischief in the stormy air; and he had just turned round upon his mat, comforted by the streaks of daylight penetrating the shed, when his quick ear detected a foot-fall to which he was unaccustomed—
“By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes,” thought May, in words not unlike the text; and, creeping from the shed, he saw a tall, dark form between him and the white wall of the cottage.
Lyle’s ear, almost as keen as May’s, was disturbed by the bushman’s movement, stealthy as it was; the next instant the hound sprung out. The convict swung himself down the bank by the bough of one of the willows, and, lifting a stone, cast it with such sure aim at poor Marmion, that he fell lame on the spot. Still the beast managed to follow him up the ravine, and May tracked the steps from bush to bush till Marmion sank down whining piteously, and holding his bleeding limb up with an imploring look that May could not resist.