The outlaw looked steadily in the face of the wretched urchin, with a curious interest, as he half murmured to himself:—
"And that I should fall a victim to such a thing as this! The only creature, perhaps, whom I spared or pitied—so wretched, yet so ungrateful. But there is an instinct in it. It is surely in consequence of a law of nature. He hates in proportion as he fears. Yet he has had nothing but protection from me, and kindness. Nothing! I spared him, when—but—" as if suddenly recollecting himself, and speaking aloud and with recovered dignity:—
"I am your prisoner, gentlemen. Do with me as you please."
"Hurrah!" cried the urchin, as he beheld the troopers lifting and securing the outlaw upon the horse, while one of the party leaped up behind him—one of his hands managing the bridle, and the other grasping firmly the rope which secured the captive; "hurrah! Guy's in the rope! Guy's in the rope!"
Thus cried the urchin, following close behind the party, upon his mountain-tacky. That cry, from such a quarter, more sensibly than anything besides, mocked the outlaw with the fullest sense of his present impotence. With a bitter feeling of humiliation, his head dropped upon his breast, and he seemed to lose all regard to his progress. Daylight found him safely locked up in the jail of Chestatee, the occupant of the very cell from which Colleton had escaped.
But no such prospect of escape was before him. He could command none of the sympathies that had worked for his rival. He had no friends left. Munro was slain, Dillon gone, and even the miserable idiot had turned his fangs upon the hand that fed him. Warned, too, by the easy escape of Colleton, Brooks attended no more whiskey-parties, nor took his brother-in-law Tongs again into his friendly counsels. More—he doubly ironed his prisoner, whose wiles and resources he had more reason to fear than those which his former captive could command. To cut off more fully every hope which the outlaw might entertain of escape from his bonds and durance, a detachment of the Georgia guard, marching into the village that very day, was put in requisition, by the orders of the judge, for the better security of the prisoner, and of public order.
[CHAPTER XLI.]
QUIET PASSAGES AND NEW RELATIONS.
We have already reported the return of Lucy Munro to the village-inn of Chestatee. Here, to her own and the surprise of all other parties, her aunt was quietly reinstated in her old authority—a more perfect one now—as housekeeper of that ample mansion. The reasons which determined her liege upon her restoration to the household have been already reported to the reader. His prescience as to his own approaching fate was perhaps not the least urgent among them. He fortunately left her in possession, and we know how the law estimates this advantage. Of her trials and sorrows, when she was made aware of her widowhood, we will say nothing. Sensitive natures will easily conjecture their extent and intensity. It is enough for the relief of such natures, if we say that the widow Munro was not wholly inconsolable. As a good economist, a sensible woman, with an eye properly regardful of the future, we are bound to suppose that she needed no lessons from Hamlet's mother to make the cold baked funeral-meats answer a double purpose.