At this moment a sound swelled upon the wind: Bertram and Mr. Williams were looking down from the battlements upon the park: and in a few seconds a herd of deer rushed past with the noise of thunder; and shortly after the heavy gallop of two bodies of horse, one in pursuit of the other, advanced in the direction of the castle. It was bright moonlight. About two hundred yards from the walls, some smart skirmishing took place: random discharges of pistols and carbines succeeded at intervals; the broad swords of the cavalry, and the cutlasses of sailors, could be distinguished gleaming in the moonlight: and it became evident that the party under Captain Nicholas had fallen in with Sir Charles Davenant somewhere in the neighbourhood, and were now retreating before him. The smugglers, it was pretty clear, had been taken at great disadvantage; for they were in extreme disorder when they first appeared--being wholly unfitted by the state of their equipments and horses for meeting a body of dragoons so superbly mounted and appointed. Their horses, though of the hardy mountain breed, wanted weight and bulk to oppose any sort of resistance to the momentum of the heavy dragoon horses--and were utterly untrained to any combined movement. It was obviously on this consideration that Edward Nicholas, whose voice was now heard continually giving words of command, had drawn his party to this point where the broken ground neutralized in a great measure the advantages of the dragoons. He was now upon ground every inch of which he knew; in which respect he had greatly the advantage of Sir Charles Davenant; and he availed himself of it so as to draw off his own party, and to distress the cavalry. From the point at which they had just been skirmishing, a long range of rocky and sylvan scenery commenced which traversed the park for miles; and upon this Captain Nicholas now began to wheel in tolerably good order, showing at times a bold front to his enemy. This movement drew them away from the castle: but the character of the retreat continued to be apparent for some time. At intervals the two parties were entangled in rocks and bushy coverts. On ground of this character, the dragoons were much distressed by their horses falling, and were thus checked and crippled in their movements; whilst the sure-footed mountaineers of the smugglers advanced with freedom. Suddenly the whole body, pursuers and pursued, would be swallowed up by a gloomy grove of pines; suddenly again all emerged with gleaming arms upon little island spots of lawny areas, where the moonlight fell bright and free. Whenever a favourable interspace of this character occurred, the dragoons endeavoured to form and use the advantage it presented for effecting a charge. But the address of Edward Nicholas, who was an excellent cavalry officer, and far more experienced in this kind of guerrilla warfare than his antagonist,--together with the short intervals during which the ground continued favourable for charges, and his minute knowledge of its local details,--uniformly defeated the efforts of the dragoons, and protected the retreat of his own party until they were gradually lost in the distance and the shades of those great sylvan recesses, which ran up far into the hilly tract upon which their movement had been continually directed.
Late in the evening the dragoons returned to the castle: they had suffered a good deal on the difficult ground to which they had allowed themselves to be attracted by Captain Nicholas; fifteen being reported as wounded severely, and several horses shot. They had however defeated the object of Captain Nicholas, which was (agreeably to the secret information) to possess himself of the horses in the depôt; with what ultimate view, they were still left to conjecture.
That this was simply some final effort of desperation, it was easy to judge from what followed. A little before midnight on this same evening Captain Nicholas appeared at the castle-gate, and surrendered himself prisoner to the soldiers on guard; at the same time desiring one of them to carry a note to Sir Morgan Walladmor. In this note he requested an interview with Sir Morgan for a few moments, which was immediately granted: Captain Nicholas was conducted to the library; and the guard, who attended him, directed to wait on the outside.
Edward Nicholas began by adverting rapidly to his own former connexion with Miss Walladmor. This had been broken up: he blamed nobody for that: it was but one part of the general misfortune which had clouded his life. Now however, on returning to Merionethshire after a long absence, and with the constant prospect of being soon consigned to a prison, he had been particularly anxious for an opportunity of meeting and speaking to Miss Walladmor: he had accordingly written to her repeatedly, but had received no answer. This silence on the part of Miss Walladmor, so little in harmony with her general goodness, happening to coincide with the visit of Sir Charles Davenant to Walladmor, had raised suspicions in his mind that it was to some influence of his that he must ascribe the continued neglect of his applications to Miss Walladmor. He feared that Sir Charles was renewing his pretensions to Miss Walladmor's hand. Hence he had taken his resolution, as he would frankly avow, to force his way into the castle--and supplicate Miss Walladmor to grant him an opportunity of speaking to her in private before it was too late for him to hope it. Such a plan obliged him, as his first step, to attack the dragoons. To do this with effect he wanted horses; and he had therefore arranged a plan for possessing himself of the horses at the depôt: in what way this plan had become known to Sir Charles Davenant, he could not guess. Having however been thus prematurely discovered, it was now finally defeated. Hence, as a man now careless of life, and without hope, he wished to surrender himself to government on the charges of high treason alleged against him. He had abundant means of escape, or of indefinitely delaying this surrender: but to what purpose? To stay here was of necessity to fall into the hands of government. To escape was to be self-banished from the neighbourhood of Miss Walladmor, and all chance of ever seeing her; without which fe had long ceased to be of any value to him.--He concluded by assuring Sir Morgan that to confine him in any other place than Walladmor Castle would be to expose him to certain rescue; and at the same time to cause needless bloodshed, if it was attempted to strengthen any of the weak prisons in the neighbourhood by a guard of soldiers.
Sir Morgan Walladmor could not but accept his surrender, as it was thus deliberately tendered. And, until the pleasure of government were known, he ordered the rooms of the Falcon Tower to be prepared with every accommodation for Captain Nicholas.--At the same time Sir Morgan's countenance testified the pity and concern which he felt for the prisoner: for to a man of his discerning sensibility it was evident that it was the last infirmity of love, and the mere craziness of a doating heart, that had driven him to surrender himself. If in no other way he could reach Miss Walladmor's neighbourhood, it seemed that he was determined to reach it in the character of prisoner. To every door that he passed on his road to the Falcon Tower he looked with a wild keenness of eye, in the hope that he might obtain some glimpse of her. And, fantastic as such comfort seemed, the unhappy prisoner felt a deep joy even in his solitary prison on feeling that for the first time in his life he was passing the night under the same roof with Miss Walladmor.
FOOTNOTE TO "CHAPTER XIX.":
[[1]] Troilus and Cressida.
[CHAPTER XX.]
The wheel is come full circle!--King Lear, Act. V.
At length the time is arrived when Edward Nicholas is to be tried for his life on the charge of high treason. Within a fortnight after his surrender, a Special Commission was sent down to try him; and the trial is to take place at the county town of Dolgelly.[[1]] At an early hour, Bertram, who had slept in Dolgelly, presented himself at the door of the court-house: early as it was, however, he found the entrance already thronged by a crowd unusually numerous for so unpopulous a neighbourhood. Amongst them were many women, grieving by anticipation that the