"Am I so fond of trifling, that my officer asks me such a question?" was the stern response.
"Then I am your officer still—you will go with me, or I shall remain."
"Neither, Dillon. The time is past for such an arrangement. You are discharged from my service, and from your oath. The club has no further existence. Go—be a happy, a better man, in another part of the world. You have some of the weaknesses of your better nature still in you. You had no mother to change them into scorn, and strife, and bitterness. Go—you may be a better man, and have something, therefore, for which to live. I have not—my heart can know no change. It is no longer under the guidance of reason. It is quite ungovernable now. There was a time when—but why prate of this?—it is too late to think of, and only maddens me the more. Besides, it makes not anything with you, and would detain you without a purpose. Linger no longer, Dillon—speed to the west, and, at some future day, perhaps you shall see me when you least expect, and perhaps least desire it."
The manner of the outlaw was firm and commanding, and Dillon no longer had any reason to doubt his desires, and no motive to disobey his wishes. The parting was brief, though the subordinate was truly affected. He would have lingered still, but Rivers waved him off with a farewell, whose emphasis was effectual, and, in a few moments, the latter sat once more alone.
His mood was that of one disappointed in all things, and, consequently, displeased and discontented with all things—querulously so. In addition to this temper, which was common to him, his spirit, at this time, labored under a heavy feeling of despondency, and its gloomy sullenness was perhaps something lighter to himself while Dillon remained with him. We have seen the manner in which he had hurried that personage off. He had scarcely been gone, however, when the inconsistent and variable temper of the outlaw found utterance in the following soliloquy:—
"Ay, thus it is—they all desert me; and this is human feeling. They all fly the darkness, and this is human courage. They love themselves only, or you only while you need no love; and this is human sympathy. I need all of these, yet I get none; and when I most need, and most desire, and most seek to obtain, I am the least provided. These are the fruits which I have sown, however; should I shrink to gather them?
"Yet, there is one—but one of all—whom no reproach of mine could drive away, or make indifferent to my fate. But I will see her no more. Strange madness! The creature, who, of all the world, most loves me, and is most deserving of my love, I banish from my soul as from my sight. And this is another fruit of my education—another curse that came with a mother—this wilful love of the perilous and the passionate—this scorn of the gentle and the soft—this fondness for the fierce contradiction—this indifference to the thing easily won—this thirst after the forbidden. Poor Ellen—so gentle, so resigned, and so fond of her destroyer; but I will not see her again. I must not; she must not stand in the way of my anxiety to conquer that pride which had ventured to hate or to despise me. I shall see Munro, and he shall lose no time in this matter. Yet, what can he be after—he should have been here before this; it now wants but little to the morning, and—ah! I have not slept. Shall I ever sleep again!"
Thus, striding to and fro in his apartment, the outlaw soliloquized at intervals. Throwing himself at length upon a rude couch that stood in the corner, he had disposed himself as it were for slumber, when the noise, as of a falling rock, attracted his attention, and without pausing, he cautiously took his way to the entrance, with a view to ascertain the cause. He was not easily surprised, and the knowledge of surrounding danger made him doubly observant, and more than ever watchful.
Let us now return to the party which had pursued the fugitives, and which, after the death of the landlord, had, as we have already narrated, adopting the design suggested by his dying words, immediately set forth in search of the notorious outlaw, eager for the reward put upon his head. Having already some general idea of the whereabouts of the fugitive, and the directions given by Munro having been of the most specific character, they found little difficulty, after a moderate ride of some four or five miles, in striking upon the path directly leading to the Wolf's Neck.
At this time, fortunately for their object, they were encountered suddenly by—our old acquaintance, Chub Williams, whom, but little before, we have seen separating from the individual in whose pursuit they were now engaged. The deformed quietly rode along with the party, but without seeming to recognise their existence—singing all the while a strange woodland melody of the time and region—probably the production of some village wit:—