You could not feel your danger! You did not know your risk!
Great God, Eloise"----

Mr. St. George silenced himself abruptly.

"Well," he continued, after a few paces, "I convinced the wretches of my
identity. It is quite like life in the Romagna, an hour with the
brigands of the Marches, is it not? It is pleasant to play the hero for
five minutes. But you! They know Marlboro' can be hurt through you.
Truth runs in subtle channels here. Come, hasten! By God! if I had such
people as Marlboro's, I _would_ sell them, and that with a
tan-toasting!--or I'd send them all to the North, that's so fond of
them! Come, hasten!"--and, half dragging her on his arm, he strode
forward, wordless and fierce, till they reached the house.

I do not know what thoughts whirled through Eloise's dreamless brain
during the rest of that night, nor with what half-trembling resolutions
she arose, nor how much pride she had drowned in a vaster flood. But
when she descended, she found the house ablaze with fearful rumors that
had risen like marsh-lights everywhere out of the ground. All was not
right at Blue Bluffs, they said; some escaping slave--perhaps the
compunctious Vane himself, who knew?--had dared to breathe of great
disturbance and of retaliatory examples during the week before, which,
seen in the light of last night's broken bridge and gunshots, struck up
fresh terror. At noon Marlboro' came, but only for a brief stay. There
had been trouble with the creatures on his place, he said,
contemptuously, owing to some conspiracy among them, suspicions and
punishments. He could not account for such a state of affairs, unless
through incendiary emissaries. If further punishments were found
necessary, they should be just within the letter of the law, he vowed in
an angry aside to Mr. Humphreys,--the thing must now be settled once for
all. He would be here again on the next day, no new occurrence detaining
him at home, he said, as calmly as if that covered nothing; and with his
fair hair shining in the sun, and the handsome Vandyck-face laughing
over the shoulder, he rode off in gay heart and knightly guise,
accompanied by Evan Murray and Earl St. George Erne.

They were all standing on the piazza that night, looking for Mr. St.
George's return ere going to bed. A sudden toll, and then a sharp, quick
ringing, broken by other tolls, burst the air close above them.

It was the alarm-bell, and Ned the saturnine, rebellious in reason and
loyal in