“So be it!” muttered the second villain.

They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the dagger toward his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath his head.  Their two faces, grim, wrinkled and ghastly with guilt and fear, bent over their victim, looking horrible enough to be mistaken for fiends should he suddenly awake.  Nay, had the villains glanced aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as reflected there.  But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother’s breast.

“I must take away the bundle,” whispered one.

“If he stirs, I’ll strike,” muttered the other.

But at this moment a dog scenting along the ground came in beneath the maple trees and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men and then at the quiet sleeper.  He then lapped out of the fountain.

“Pshaw!” said one villain.  “We can do nothing now.  The dog’s master must be close behind.”

“Let’s take a drink and be off,” said the other.

The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom and drew forth a pocket-pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single discharge.  It was a flask of liquor with a block-tin tumbler screwed upon the mouth.  Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot with so many jests and such laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness that they might be said to have gone on their way rejoicing.  In a few hours they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the recording angel had written down the crime of murder against their souls in letters as durable as eternity.  As for David Swan, he still slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung over him nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was withdrawn.  He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first.  An hour’s repose had snatched from his elastic frame the weariness with which many hours of toil had burdened it.  Now he stirred, now moved his lips without a sound, now talked in an inward tone to the noonday spectres of his dream.  But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David’s slumber; and there was the stagecoach.  He started up with all his ideas about him.

“Halloo, driver!  Take a passenger?” shouted he.

“Room on top!” answered the driver.

Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily toward Boston without so much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude.  He knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters, nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur, nor that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood, all in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep.  Sleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.  Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while viewless and unexpected events thrust themselves continually athwart our path, there should still be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even partially available?