The clearing, itself, was under good cultivation, the spring crops giving fine promise of an abundant harvest. A short distance from the house flowed a beautiful brook, whose murmurs occasionally reached the ears of the inmates; while the thickening foliage of the surrounding groves, as they might be termed, gave shelter to various birds, amongst which might now be heard, at early morn and throughout the day, the clear, round notes of the robin.
“The robin!”—what on earth has, we should like to know, bewitched ornithologists to designate the great, coarse, tuneless bird, that visits us in the earliest dawn of spring, in this far off America, “the robin?” Neither in throat nor plumage is it even a thirty-first cousin of the sweet, timid, little, brown bunch of melody that haunts the hawthorn hedges of Ireland and the sister island, when they are in bloom, or seeks a crumb at the open casement, when winter ruffles all its russet plumes, and sets his chill, white seal on all its stores; We have been often struck with the great dissimilarity between these two namesakes of the feathered kingdom; for never on these transatlantic shores have we heard what might be termed a domestic bird sing a song so sweet as that poured beneath our window in the soft blue haze of an Irish summer evening, by the genuine robin-red-breast, as he sang the daylight down the west, through a sky flushed and flecked with azure, crimson and gold, to such extreme intensity, that the poet or painter might, at the moment, half indulge in the idea, that the sun had fallen into curious ruins upon the verge of the horizon. Oh! the silver thread of such a song, as it flashed and scintillated from that trembling throat! Never shall we forget it, or the land in which it first wound itself around our heart.
But this, we know, is inclined to be sentimental; and as we now have to do with stern realities, we shall resume the chain of our story by saying, that after her first day’s residence with the Wilsons, and finding that the uncle of Martha had no intelligence for her on his return home on the evening or night succeeding the one of her arrival, she expressed her great anxiety to Martha, who now devoted every moment she could spare from her other duties, to the pleasing task of rendering her solitude as agreeable as possible.
On the morning of the second day after her arrival she ventured to ask Wilson if he had any idea of when she was to be relieved from her embarrassing position. In reply to her interrogatory he assured her, that he was quite unable to give her any information on the subject, but was led to believe that she should not be long a prisoner, as he termed it. All he could say in relation to the matter was, that some person, with whose name even he was unacquainted, had secured, through a third party, his services as her host, and engaged the apartment she occupied, and attendance, etc. In addition to this, he observed, carelessly, that he was responsible for her safety until the arrival of those who had delegated to him the right to watch over her and shield her from observation until the proper moment arrived.
To all this Kate made no reply; the thought having just struck her, that Nicholas had perhaps learned of some intended design upon her by Lauder, and that he took this method of transporting her to some point unknown to that person, until he himself could offer her his full and unembarrassed protection. Yet she wondered why it was that he had left her in such dreadful uncertainty, and did not write her explicitly upon the subject Again, she was perplexed at the idea that he was in no position to learn anything of the plots or plans of her rejected suitor, if he entertained any; so that, upon the whole, she was in no very comfortable state of mind when she rejoined Martha whom she had left in her chamber, and whom she now induced to make up a bed upon a sofa and consent to sleep in her apartment during her stay.
Martha, on her part, moved by this token of friendship, and while sitting up late on the very night of the conversation with Wilson, became mysteriously nervous and, through various vague hints and insinuations, so far alarmed Kate at last, that the poor girl implored her new acquaintance to tell her frankly if she knew anything that bore upon her ease, or the reasons for her being so singularly circumstanced.
To this solicitation Martha made no direct reply; but rising cautiously, she stepped lightly towards the chamber door, and opening it softly put out her head into the passage and listened for a few moments. Then gently closing the door, she again noiselessly retraced her steps, and drawing her seat close beside that of Kate, began thus, in a low, trembling voice, in which fear and agitation were distinctly traceable:
“Oh! Miss McCarthy, horrible as the disclosure is, I believe that, instead of a smuggler, which my aunt and I long supposed him to be, my uncle is a robber, or leagued with robbers! This, for the first-time, came to our knowledge last night, after his return from wherever he had been. We had been always accustomed to his bringing here, during the night, mysterious packages; but as he informed us that they were goods for merchants who, as he asserted, resided at some distance, we took him at his word, and when he removed the goods again were, of course, under the firm impression that he carried them to their owners. However, as I have observed, on returning last night, when my aunt and I were assisting him to remove a heavy case from his wagon, while carrying it into the stable to place it under the hay beneath which he invariably concealed such things, my aunt and I perceived that, this time, it was a large trunk that he had brought, and that the lock had given way, disclosing gleams within it, as though it contained some bright objects. He did not notice the circumstance of the fastening having failed, and we did not call his attention to the fact; but permitted him to shake the hay over it as usual. Subsequently, however, my aunt and I referred to the matter, when she, taking advantage of my uncle’s sound slumbers, he having retired to rest before her, went out again and, re-lighting the stable lantern, removed the covering from the lid of the great trunk, and raising it, perceived that it contained many valuable articles of silver and dress; but all evidently old, and huddled together in a manner the most confused. This almost paralysed the poor woman, and as I subsequently inspected the package, on her retiring for the night, I arrived at the conclusion which she had, as she informed me, herself previously adopted; namely, that the goods were stolen, and that Smith was in some way mixed up with the robbery.”
Now, indeed, Kate felt her situation alarming in the truest sense of the term, and sat looking at her companion in speechless horror and amazement. Mystery upon mystery it was; but as the dangers that appeared to surround her, though gloomy, were indistinct, she once more had recourse to her panacea of the token, and seeking her couch with a fervent prayer on her lip, was soon, like her young friend on the sofa, lost in uneasy slumbers.