That the neighborhood about was one of evil repute and danger, mattered
little to one who set small store by his life, and whose stalwart figure
and signs of personal prowess were not unknown in the quarter. The
unbroken solitude of the spot was its attraction to him, and truly none
ever ventured near it after nightfall.

There he was sitting one night, as usual, musing, as was his wont. It
was a period when men's minds were stirred by the expectation of some
great but unknown event; a long political stagnation--the dead sea of
hopeless apathy--was beginning to be ruffled by short and fitful blasts
that told of a coming hurricane. Vague rumors of a change--scattered
sentences of some convulsion, whence proceeding, or whither tending,
none could guess--were abroad. The long-sleeping terrors of a past time
of blood were once more remembered, and men talked of the guillotine
and the scaffold, as household themes. It was the summer of 1830--that
memorable year, whose deeds were to form but the prologue of the great
drama we are to-day the spectators at. Roland heard these things as he
who wanders along the shore at night may hear the brooding signs of a
gathering storm, but has no "venture on the sea." He thought of them
with a certain interest, too--but it was with that interest into which
no personal feeling enters; for how could great convulsions of states
affect _him_ How could the turn of fortune raise or depress him?

He sat, now pondering over his own destiny, now wondering whither the
course of events to come was tending, when he heard the plash of
oars, and the rushing sound of a boat moving through the water in the
direction of the stair. The oars, which at some moments were plied
vigorously, ceased to move at others; and, as well as Cashel could
mark, the course of the boat seemed once or twice to be changed. Roland
descended to the lowest step of the ladder, the better to see what this
might portend. That terrible river, on whose smiling eddies the noonday
sun dances so joyously, covers beneath the shadow of night crimes the
most awful and appalling.

As Cashel listened, he perceived that the rowing had ceased, and two
voices, whose accents sounded like altercation, could be heard.

The boat, drifting meanwhile downward on the fast current, was now
nearly opposite to where he sat, but only perceptible as a dark speck
upon the water. The night was calm, without a breath of wind, and on the
vapor-charged atmo