"Well, O'Reily, the officers are waiting on you; only prove to us that this is not another of your drunken reveries, and it shall turn out better for you than you now expect. Since it has been ascertained that this man Worley was not to be found among the slain, the Governor has issued his proclamation, offering two hundred pounds for his apprehension, dead or alive."
"Oh!" said O'Reily, as he was going out of the door, "but I'm afeard you'll find him rather in a state iv thribulation, I did some killen an im myself: Oh wasn't that a beauty iv a shelaleigh? Only to think of two hundred pounds; faix if I get it but I'll have it set in brass."
The officers in attendance, with Brian at their head, soon emerged from the Governor's stable amidst the shouts and cheers of the multitude. The unfortunate Roundhead commander was brought into courts suffering severely from thirst, and the effects of the contusion, produced by the violence of O'Reily's blow.
We will not detain the reader over revolting portions of the trial either now or hereafter; suffice it to say, therefore, in brief, that O'Reily received the interest of two hundred pounds ever afterwards for his capture of the Rebel Chief. Four of the ringleaders at the second, and final trial were condemned and speedily executed, and the others recommended to mercy. Thus was terminated this sanguinary conflict, the last convulsive throe of the Independent faction in the British dominions of North America.
As our tale is no farther directly connected with this ill-advised and hopeless insurrection, we proceed in the next chapter with the direct thread of our narrative, the principal personages of which were so directly concerned in the bloody affair just related, that we could not pass it over with any kind of regard to historical accuracy.
CHAPTER X.
During the whole of the day succeeding the insurrection, our hero lay in the most precarious and dangerous state; and the violent inflammatory action produced by several large sabre wounds so much unsettled his reason, that the surgeon was compelled still farther to deplete his already exhausted frame. Towards night his mind recovered its powers, but his strength was still gone, and he lay upon his couch in all the helplessness of infantile impotency; and toward evening, exhausted by the previous night of turmoil and strife, succeeded by a day of feverish restlessness, he at length fell asleep.
There was one never-wearying eye that watched the fitful slumbers of the invalid. Conscious, perhaps, that Bacon could never be more to her than a friend and protector, Wyanokee delighted in rendering him those quiet, but constant and indispensable services which his situation required. Not a change of his ever-varying countenance, as the workings of a diseased and excited imagination, were from time to time portrayed upon his pale and already attenuated features, escaped her, while her own beautiful and expressive countenance, vividly displayed, in rapid and corresponding changes, her sympathy with the sleeping sufferer. If any one approached the door, her keen glance immediately arrested the intruder, her finger upon her lip, and a frown upon her brow, in her powerful and national pantomimic token of silence. If the eye of the sleeper opened for an instant in bewildered amazement at the difference between the real scene before him, and the one from which in sleeping fancy he had just escaped, her wild and imaginative susceptibilities were instantly on the alert.
The mind of the aboriginal, even when partially cultivated, is overcome with superstitious reverence and awe, in the presence of one under the excitement of a diseased imagination. Such had been the state of feeling with Wyanokee during the whole of Bacon's mental hallucinations throughout the day, and now as she watched at his bed-side, during his uneasy slumbers, her keen perceptions were tremendously alive to each successive demonstration. There was one member of the family, however, who entered and departed from the room unchallenged—Virginia! At this moment she entered—her own tender sympathies wrought upon by all the late harassing events; although differing in their developments and cause in some respects, they were in no wise inferior in degree to those of her protegée. She moved with noiseless step and suppressed respiration until she stood over the couch of the wounded youth. Long and feelingly she gazed upon the sharp and pallid features; there was naught of passion in that gaze—it was pure and heavenly in its origin, as in its motive. Her moistened eye, with a movement almost peculiar to the sick room, or the funeral chamber, turned slowly upon her attendant. No melting and sympathizing tear softened the brilliant and penetrating eye which met her gaze; there was excitement, deep excitement, but not the mellowed emotion of regulated sympathy; in Wyanokee, the imagination controlled the heart—in Virginia, the heart subdued and softened the imagination.