He did so at his own self-sacrifice!  We have seen how the poor girl was silenced.  The result was, that Ralph Colleton was again in his dungeon—­hope shut out from its walls, and a fearful death and ignominy written upon them.  When the officers attending him had retired—­when he heard the bolt shot, and saw that the eyes of curiosity were excluded—­the firm spirit fled which had supported him.  There was a passing weakness of heart which overcame its energies and resolve, and he sunk down upon the single chair allotted to his prison.  He buried his face in his hands, and the warm tears gushed freely through his fingers.  While thus weeping, like a very child, he heard the approach of footsteps without.  In a moment he recovered all his manliness and calm.  The traces of his weakness were sedulously brushed from his cheeks, and the handkerchief employed for the purpose studiously put out of sight.  He was not ashamed of the pang, but he was not willing that other eyes should behold it.  Such was the nature of his pride—­the pride of strength, moral strength, and superiority over those weaknesses, which, however natural they may be, are nevertheless not often held becoming in the man.

It was the pedler, Bunce, who made his appearance—­choosing, with a feature of higher characteristic than would usually have been allotted him, rather to cheer the prison hours of the unfortunate, than to pursue his own individual advantages; which, at such a time, might not have been inconsiderable.  The worthy pedler was dreadfully disappointed in the result of his late adventure.  He had not given himself any trouble to inquire into the nature of those proofs which Lucy Munro had assured him were in her possession; but satisfied as much by his own hope as by her assurance, that all would be as he wished it, he had been elevated to a pitch of almost indecorous joy which strongly contrasted with his present depression.  He had little now to say in the way of consolation, and that little was coupled with so much that was unjust to the maiden, as to call forth, at length, the rebuke of Colleton.

“Forbear on this subject, my good sir—­she did what she could, and what she might have said would not have served me much.  It was well she said no more.  Her willingness—­her adventuring so much in my behalf—­should alone be sufficient to protect her from everything like blame.  But tell me, Bunce, what has become of her—­where is she gone, and who is now attending her?”

“Why, they took her back to the old tavern.  A great big woman took her there, and looked after her.  I did go and had a sight on her, and there, to be sure, was Munro’s wife, though her I did see, I’ll be sworn, in among the rocks where they shut us up.”

“And was Munro there?”

“Where—­in the rocks?”

“No—­in the tavern?—­You say his wife had come back—­did he trust himself there?”

“I rather guess not—­seeing as how he’d stand a close chance of ’quaintance with the rope.  No, neither him, nor Rivers, nor any of the regulators—­thank the powers—­ain’t to be seen nowhere.  They’re all off—­up into the nation, I guess, or off, down in Alabam by this time, clear enough.”