'Is that all?' exclaimed Pollie, her head raised, her face aglow with excitement, while her large bright eyes sparkled with an expression much more akin to pleasurable expectation than fear. 'Why, I thought some one was dead—that some terrible, irrevocable accident had happened. And what time will they arrive? I suppose they won't send in their cards?'

'My darling, do not talk so lightly,' said her mother, whose set, grave expression showed in how different a light she regarded the news. 'These men have blood upon their hands. More will be shed yet, I fear, and whose it may be we know not.'

'We must not be too serious over it either, Mrs. Devereux,' said Atherstone. 'With the preparations we have been able to make and a superior force well armed, the only fear in Herne's mind, I suspect, is that one of their telegraphs may get wind of our plan, and warn them away. About midnight is the time they were likely to be about, if his scouts spoke truly.'

'Why, it will be something like the midnight attack in Wild Sports of the West,' said Pollie, 'that I used to devour when I was a tiny girl. Don't you remember, Harold, when the daughter of the house comes in with an apron full of cartridges? Oh! I shall be so disappointed if they don't come after all.'

The young men felt much inclined to laugh at the genuine desire for fight, the keen enjoyment of a probable mêlée, which Pollie had evidently inherited with her Milesian blood. But one look at the white face and drawn lips of Mrs. Devereux checked them. 'The names,' she said, 'have you heard the names?'

'One of them is called——' said Bertram, anxious to exhibit his knowledge of the affair.

'Called Mossthorne—William Mossthorne,' interposed Harold, with a meaning look at Devereux. 'The other is a stranger. They are not sure whether he is the man they fancy or not. We shall know if he comes one way or the other.'

Mrs. Devereux looked relieved. Her face had a far-off, dreamy expression, as if she were recalling the old days of sudden misery, of woe unutterable, of hopeless agony, from which she had been so long recovering. But for the bright-eyed girl, that now with eager face and fearless brow brought back her father's very face to her, she told herself that she never would have cared to live. And now, after all these years, the old accursed work was to recommence, with, perhaps, loss of valuable life, with enmity and bloodshed certainly. At their very gates too; beneath their hitherto inviolate roof-tree. When was it all to end?

However, she felt it incumbent on her as the chatelaine to put a brave face upon the matter. There was not the slightest chance of victory on the part of the outlaws, outnumbered and outmatched as they would be. She therefore exerted herself during the remainder of the meal to appear resolute and steadfast. She even gave advice which her long experience of colonial manners and customs enabled her to offer.

'Bertram, above all things, you mustn't be rash,' she said. 'Remember that these are not men to hold cheaply. They are cunning and artful, besides being brave with the desperation of despair. Don't think because you have been a soldier, that these bush brigands are to be despised. My poor husband paid dearly for that mistake.'