"No: but if you can't learn to stop talking, I shall set you down as a fool! For a man of action, you use more of an unnecessary tongue than any living man I ever met. For God's sake, sink the lawyer when you're out of court! It will be high time to brush up for a speech when you are in the dock, and pleading with the halter dangling in your eyes. Oh, don't glare upon me! He who flings about his arrows by the handful mustn't be angry if some of them are flung back."
"Are you ready?"
"Ay, ready!—She's opening her eyes. We can leave her now.—What's the course?"
"We can determine in the open air. He will probably go west, and will take one or other of the two traces at the fork, and his hoofs will soon tell us which. Our horses are refreshed by this, and are in readiness. You have pistols: see to the flints and priming. There must be no scruples now. The matter has gone quite too far for quiet, and though the affair was all mine at first, it is now as perfectly yours."
As Rivers spoke, Munro drew forth his pistols and looked carefully at the priming. The sharp click of the springing steel, as the pan was thrown open, now fully aroused Lucy to that consciousness which had been only partial in the greater part of this dialogue. Springing to her feet with an eagerness and energy that was quite astonishing after her late prostration, she rushed forward to her uncle, and looked appealingly into his face, though she did not speak, while her hand grasped tenaciously his arm.
"What means the girl?" exclaimed Munro, now apprehensive of some mental derangement. She spoke, with a deep emphasis, but a single sentence:—
"It is written—thou shalt do no murder!"
The solemn tone—the sudden, the almost fierce action—the peculiar abruptness of the apostrophe—the whitely-robed, the almost spiritual elevation of figure—all so dramatic—combined necessarily to startle and surprise; and, for a few moments, no answer was returned to the unlooked-for speech. But the effect could not be permanent upon minds made familiar with the thousand forms of human and strong energies. Munro, after a brief pause, replied—
"Who speaks of murder, girl? Why this wild, this uncalled-for exhortation?"
"Not wild, not uncalled-for, uncle, but most necessary. Wherefore would you pursue the youth, arms in your hands, hatred in your heart, and horrible threatenings upon your lips? Why put yourself into the hands of this fierce monster, as the sharp instrument to do his vengeance and gratify his savage malignity against the young and the gentle? If you would do no murder, not so he. He will do it—he will make you do it, but he will have it done. Approach me not—approach me not—let me perish, rather! O God—my uncle, let him come not near me, if you would not see me die upon the spot!" she exclaimed, in the most terrified manner, and with a shuddering horror, as Rivers, toward the conclusion of her speech, had approached her with the, view to an answer. To her uncle she again addressed herself, with an energy which gave additional emphasis to her language:—