In the meantime, the sufferings of Lucy Munro were such as may well be understood from the character of her feelings, as we have heretofore beheld their expression.  In her own apartment—­her cell, we may style it, for she was in a sort of honorable bondage—­she brooded with deep melancholy over the narrative given by the pedler.  She had no reason to doubt its correctness, and, the more she meditated upon it, the more acute became her misery.  But a day intervened, and the trial of Ralph Colleton must take place; and, without her evidence, she was well aware there could be no hope of his escape from the doom of felony—­from the death of shame and physical agony.  The whole picture grew up before her excited fancy.  She beheld the assembled crowd—­she saw him borne to execution—­and her senses reeled beneath the terrible conjurations of her fancy.  She threw herself prostrate upon her couch, and strove not to think, but in vain.  Her mind, growing hourly more and more intensely excited, at length almost maddened, and she grew conscious herself—­the worst of all kinds of consciousness—­that her reason was no longer secure in its sovereignty.  It was with a strong effort of the still-firm will that she strove to meditate the best mode of rescuing the victim from the death suspended above him; and she succeeded, while deliberating on this object, in quieting the more subtle workings of her imagination.

Many were the thoughts which came into her brain in this examination.  At one time she thought it not impossible to convey a letter, in which her testimony should be carefully set down; but the difficulty of procuring a messenger, and the doubt that such a statement would prove of any avail, decided her to seek for other means.  An ordinary mind, and a moderate degree of interest in the fate of the individual, would have contented itself with some such step; but such a mind and such affections were not those of the high-souled and spirited Lucy.  She dreaded not personal danger; and to rescue the youth, whom she so much idolized, from the doom that threatened him, she would have willingly dared to encounter that doom itself, in its darkest forms.  She determined, therefore, to rely chiefly upon herself in all efforts which she should make for the purpose in view; and her object, therefore, was to effect a return to the village in time to appear at the trial.

Yet how should this be done?  She felt herself to be a captive; she knew the restraints upon her—­and did not doubt that all her motions were sedulously observed.  How then should she proceed?  An agent was necessary; and, while deliberating with herself upon the difficulty thus assailing her at the outset, her ears were drawn to the distinct utterance of sounds, as of persons engaged in conversation, from the adjoining section of the rock.

One of the voices appeared familiar, and at length she distinctly made out her own name in various parts of the dialogue.  She soon distinguished the nasal tones of the pedler, whose prison adjoined her own, separated only by a huge wall of earth and rock, the rude and jagged sides of which had been made complete, where naturally imperfect, for the purposes of a wall, by the free use of clay, which, plastered in huge masses into the crevices and every fissure, was no inconsiderable apology for the more perfect structures of civilization.