e that his courage and confidence would have been
far less than they appear at present, had not Pippin assured him that
the regulators were no longer to be feared; that the judge had arrived;
that the grand-jury had found bills against several of the offenders,
and were still engaged in their labors; that a detachment of the state
military had been ordered to the station; and that things looked as
civil as it was altogether possible for such warlike exhibition to
allow. It is surprising to think how fearlessly uncompromising was the
conduct of Bunce under this new condition of affairs.

But the pedler, in his own release from custody, was not forgetful of
his less-fortunate companion. He was a frequent visiter in the dungeon
of Ralph Colleton; bore all messages between the prisoner and his
counsel; and contributed, by his shrewd knowledge of human kind, not a
little to the material out of which his defence was to be made.

He suggested the suspicion, never before entertained by the youth, or
entertained for a moment only, that his present arrest was the result of
a scheme purposely laid with a reference to this end; and did not
scruple to charge upon Rivers the entire management of the matter.

Ralph could only narrate what he knew of the malignant hatred of the
outlaw to himself--another fact which none but Lucy Munro could
establish. Her evidence, however, would only prove Rivers to have
meditated one crime; it would not free him from the imputation of having
committed another. Still, so much was important, and casualties were to
be relied upon for the rest.

But what was the horror of all parties when it was known that neither
Lucy nor any of the landlord's family were to be found! The process of
subpoena was returned, and the general opinion was, that alarmed at the
approach of the military in such force, and confident that his agency in
the late transactions could not long remain concealed in the possession
of so many, though guilty like himself, Munro had fled to the west.

The mental agony of the youth, when thus informed, can not well he
conceived. He was, for a time, utterly prostrate, and gave himself up to
despair. The entreaties of the pedler, and the counsels and exhortings
of the lawyer, failed equally to enliven him; and they had almost come
to adopt his gloomy resignation, when, as he sat on his low bench, with
head drooping on his hand, a solitary glance of sunshine fell through
the barred window--t