“Now,” said he as I finished at last, still keeping my eye upon the road, “you go in and take a turn lyin’ down:  I’ll watch the road.  I’m a-goin’ to see this thing out.”

But I was not ready to sleep yet; so, yielding to my injunction, he went in, and I seated myself, wrapped in a buffalo robe from the wagon.  The night was damp and chill.

“Hedn’t you better set at the window?” said the kind-hearted landlady, bustling out.  Hiram had evidently told her the story.

“Oh no, thank you;” for I was impatient of walls and tongues, and wanted to be alone with my anxiety.

What madness was this in Bessie?  She could not, oh she could not, have thrown her life away!  What grief and disquiet must have driven her into this refuge!  Poor little soul, scorched and racked by distrust and doubt! if she could not trust me, whom should she trust?

The household noises ceased one by one; the clump of willows by the river grew darker and darker; the stars came out and shone with that magnetic brilliancy that fixes our gaze upon them, leading one to speculate on their influence, and—­

A hand on my shoulder:  Hiram with a lantern turned full upon my face.  “’Most one o’clock,” he said, rubbing his eyes sleepily.  “Come to take my turn.  Have you seen nothing?”

“Nothing,” I said, staggering to my feet, which felt like lead—­“nothing.”

I did not confess it, but to this hour I cannot tell whether I had been nodding for one minute or ten.  I kept my own counsel as I turned over the watch to Hiram, but a suspicion shot through me that perhaps that wagon had gone by, after all, in the moment that I had been off guard.

Hiram kept the watch faithfully till five that morning, when I too was stirring.  One or two teams had passed, but no Shaker wagon rattling through the night.  We breakfasted in the little room that overlooked the road.  Outside, at the pump, a lounging hostler, who had been bribed to keep a sharp lookout for a Shaker wagon, whistled and waited too.

“Tell you what,” said Hiram, bolting a goodly rouleau of ham and eggs, “I’ve got an idee.  You and me might shilly-shally here on this road all day, and what surety shall we hev’ that they hevn’t gone by the other road.  Old gal said there was two?”

“Yes, but the folks here say that the other is a wild mountain-road, and not much used.”

“Well, you see they comes down by the boat a piece, or they may cut across the river at Greenbush.  They have queer ways.  Now, mebbe they have come over that mountain-road in the night, while you and me was a-watchin’ this like ferrits.  In that case she’s safe and sound at Shaker Village, not knowin’ anything of your coming; and Elder Nebson and that other is laughin’ in their sleeves at us.”

“Perhaps so.”