ebeg has never entered the fort
nor been even in the neighborhood since the night of that marriage?"
pursued his wife.

"I do not believe he has been seen since," remarked Captain Headley.

"I _know_ that he has not; but yet he is ever near, seemingly bent
on one purpose."

"Love?" interposed the Captain, smiling.

"Yes, love! but a fearful love--though the love of a smooth-faced
boy--a love that may bring down destruction upon us all."

"Ellen, you begin to fill me with alarm," remarked her husband,
gravely. "You are not a woman to be startled by trifles, and there
is that in your manner just now which fully satisfies me of the
importance of what you have to communicate."

CHAPTER II.

"You know my love for Mrs. Ronayne," continued Mrs. Headley, after
a pause of a few minutes. "Even as though she were my own daughter,
I regard her, and would do for her all that a fond mother could
for her child. Only yesterday afternoon, while Ronayne and the
Doctor were out with a party fishing on the old ground above
Hardscrabble, she expressed a wish to visit the tomb of her poor
mother, who, dying within a week after her marriage, had been buried
near the base of the summer-house on the grounds attached to their
cottage, and asked me to accompany her. Of course I consented; and
as you were busily engaged, you did not particularly notice my
absence. We crossed the river in the scow, and ascended leisurely
to the garden. It struck me as we walked that the figure of a man,
seemingly an Indian, floated rapidly past within the paling of the
garden, but I could not distinctly trace the outline, and therefore
assumed that I had been deceived, and so said nothing to my companion
on the subject.

"We had not been long in the garden when Mrs. Ronayne, leaving me
to saunter among and cull from the rich flowers which grew in wild
luxuriance around, begged me to wait for her a few minutes while
she ascended to the summer-house to commune in private with her
thoughts, and indulge the feelings which had been called up, at
this her first visit since the place had been abandoned, to the
once happy residence of her girlhood. At her entrance, I distinctly
heard her give a low shriek, but, taking it for granted that this
was in consequence of the effect upon her mind of a sudden recurrence
to old and well remembered scenes with which so much of the unpleasant
was associated, I paid no great attention to it. After this all
was still,