t it fears creates!
--Hannah More.

Dark doubt and fear, o'er other spirits lower,
But touch not his, who every waking hour,
Has one fixed hope and always feels its power.
--Crabbe.

Upon the very same night, that the three robbers were surprised and
captured by the presence of mind of Capitola at Hurricane Hall, Black
Donald, disguised as a negro, was lurking in the woods around the
mansion, waiting for the coming of his three men with their prize.

But as hour after hour passed and they came not, the desperado began
heartily to curse their sloth--for to no other cause was he enabled to
attribute the delay, as he knew the house, the destined scene of the
outrage, to be deserted by all for the night, except by the three
helpless females.

As night waned and morning began to dawn in the east, the chief grew
seriously uneasy at the prolonged absence of his agents--a circumstance
that he could only account for upon the absurd hypothesis that those
stupid brutes had suffered themselves to be overtaken by sleep in their
ambuscade.

While he was cursing their inefficiency, and regretting that he had not
himself made one of the party, he wandered in his restlessness to
another part of the woods, and the opposite side of the house.

He had not been long here before his attention was arrested by the
tramping of approaching horsemen. He withdrew into the shade of the
thicket and listened while the travelers went by.

The party proved to consist of Old Hurricane, Herbert Greyson and the
Sheriff's officers, on their way from the town to Hurricane Hall to take
the captured burglars into custody. And Black Donald, by listening
attentively, gathered enough from their conversation to know that his
men had been discovered and captured by the heroism of Capitola.

"That girl again!" muttered Black Donald, to himself. "She is doomed to
be my destruction, or I hers! Our fates are evidently connected! Poor
Steve! Poor Dick! Poor Hal! Little did I think that your devotion to
your captain would carry you into the very jaws of death--pshaw! hang
it! Let boys and women whine! I must act!"

And with this resolution Black Donald dogged the path of the horsemen
until he had reached that part of the woods skirting the road opposite
the park gate. Here he hid himself in the bushes to watch events. Soon
from his hiding place he saw the wagon approac