“I had not been above a minute in concealment when footsteps were heard approaching rapidly from the bridge. Two men came on at speed, and one had outstripped the other. ‘Stop!’ cried the hindmost, ‘what a devil of a hurry you are in! I can’t keep up with you.’
“‘I want to be in at the death,’ returned the well-known voice of my villain servant; ‘I would not miss it for a ten-pound note. He thought to give me the slip—put me on a wrong scent, and sent me with a letter. He asked me a question about bridling a horse, and that betrayed his secret. I knew there was something in the wind—doubled back upon the house after he thought me clear away—saw him go off through the back lane in a canter, and—’ Two shots were heard in quick succession. ‘He’s down, by ———,’ he exclaimed, with savage exultation. ‘Run Murtaugh! they’ll be into the house in no time. I know where the money is. Run—the devil’s luck to you! and off both ruffians started.
“The rest you know. Speedily a glare of red light was seen, and a burning house—my own—guided my flight, for I took the opposite direction. I know not whether I was pursued—but, if I was the villains were unsuccessful. At midnight I reached this place of refuge, and here, for a time at least, I am safe.”
“What boundless treachery!” exclaimed my father, as the parson ended the narrative of his escape. “We may set an open enemy at defiance, but who can guard against secret villany? By Heaven! a dark suspicion at this moment flashes across my mind. Have you noticed the servant who waits at table?”
“I have—and as a disciple of Lavater I denounce him; he never looks you fairly in the face.”
“And yet the only vulnerable point in the garrison is at that fellow’s mercy. When I closed up every aperture besides, Hackett remonstrated so strongly, and pleaded the inconvenience it would cause should I build up the window of his pantry, that I consented to leave it open, merely adding a second shutter for security. It is but small—a man however could creep through it—but to-morrow the mason shall brick it up.”
“It may be fancy,” said my mother, “but Hackett’s manner appears lately to have undergone a change. There is at times a freedom in his language that borders upon insolence; but hush! here comes the nurse.”
The door opened as she spoke, and I was added to the company. My mother placed me on her knee,—the parson proposed my health, Father Dominie added a supplication, that “God would make me a better man than my father, and, above all things, keep me out of convents,”—and the latter responded an amen. Every glass was emptied to the bottom—the host rang for more wine and the priest replenished his tumbler. It was a moment of hilarity, joyous and brief. Suddenly Cæsar gave the alarm—not as before, in under growls, but in the “full-mouthed diapason” of a bark audible a mile oft. The greyhound and the terrier sprang up and answered,—I cried, frightened by the “loud alarum,”—the nursemaid caught me from my mother, and hurried from the room,—while my father, exclaiming “a true challenge, by Heaven!”’ leaped from his chair, and placed himself before the wicket that looked upon the lawn.
A minute—an anxious minute, elapsed.
“I hear.” said the Doctor, “the footsteps of a mob, as they tread upon the frozen gravel.”