"You are becoming an old woman yourself, Wat, and should be under guardianship. All these scruples are late; and, indeed, even were they not, they would be still useless. We have determined on the thing, and the sooner we set about it the better. The night wanes, and I have much to see to before daylight. To-morrow I must sleep—sleep—" and for a moment Rivers seemed to muse upon the word sleep, which he thrice repeated; then suddenly proceeding, as if no pause had taken place, he abruptly placed his hand upon the shoulder of Munro, and asked—
"You will bear the lantern; this is all you need perform. I am resolute for the rest."
"What will you use—dirk?"
"Yes—it is silent in its office, and not less sure. Are all asleep, think you—your wife?"
"Quite so—sound when I entered the chamber."
"Well, the sooner to business the better. Is there water in that pitcher? I am strangely thirsty to-night; brandy were not amiss at such a time."
And speaking this to himself, as it were, Rivers approached the side-table, where stood the commodities he sought. In this approach the maiden had a more perfect view of the malignities of his savage face; and as he left the table, and again commenced a brief conversation in an under-tone with Munro, no longer doubting the dreadful object which they had in view, she seized the opportunity with as much speed as was consistent with caution and her trembling nerves, to leave the place of espionage, and seek her chamber.
But to what purpose had she heard all this, if she suffered the fearful deed to proceed to execution? The thought was momentary, but carried to her heart, in that moment, the fullest conviction of her duty.
She rushed hurriedly again into the passage—and, though apprehending momentarily that her knees would sink from under her, took her way up the narrow flight of steps leading into the second story, and to the youth's chamber. As she reached the door, a feminine scruple came over her. A young girl seeking the apartment of a man at midnight—she shrunk back with a new feeling. But the dread necessity drove her on, and with cautious hand undoing the latch securing the door by thrusting her hand through an interstice between the logs—wondering at the same time at the incautious manner in which, at such a period and place, the youth had provided for his sleeping hours—she stood tremblingly within the chamber.
Wrapped in unconscious slumbers, Ralph Colleton lay dreaming upon his rude couch of a thousand strange influences and associations. His roving fancies had gone to and fro, between his uncle and his bewitching cousin, until his heart grew softened and satisfied, not less with the native pleasures which they revived in his memory, than of the sweet oblivion which they brought of the many painful and perilous prospects with which he had more recently become familiar. He had no thought of the present, and the pictures of the past were all rich and ravishing. To his wandering sense at that moment there came a sweet vision of beauty and love—of an affection warmly cherished—green as the summer leaves—fresh as its flowers—flinging odors about his spirit, and re-awakening in its fullest extent the partially slumbering passion—reviving many a hope, and provoking with many a delicious anticipation. The form of the one, lovely beyond comparison, flitted before him, while her name, murmured with words of passion by his parted lips, carried with its utterance a sweet promise of a pure faith, and an unforgetting affection. Never once, since the hour of his departure from home, had he, in his waking moments, permitted that name to find a place upon his lips, and now syllabled into sound by them in his unconscious dreams, it fell with a stunning influence upon an auditor, whose heart grew colder in due proportion with the unconscious but warm tenderness of epithet with which his tongue coupled its utterance.