“And who did you see at the rocks, and what men were they that made you prisoners?”

“Men—­if I said men, I was ’nation out, I guess.  Did I say men?”

“I understood you so.”

“’Twan’t men at all.  Nothing better than women, and no small women neither.  Didn’t see a man in the neighborhood, but Chub, and he ain’t no man neither.”

“What is he?”

“Why, for that matter, he’s neither one thing nor another—­nothing, no how.  A pesky little creature!  What they call a hobbe-de-hoy will suit for his name sooner than any other that I know on.  For he ain’t a man and he ain’t a boy; but jest a short, half-grown up chunk of a fellow, with bunchy shoulders, and a big head, with a mouth like an oven, and long lap ears like saddle flaps.”

In this manner the pedler informed Ralph of all those previous particulars with which he had not till then been made acquainted.  This having been done, and the dialogue having fairly reached its termination—­and the youth exhibiting some strong symptoms of weariness—­Bunce took his departure for the present, not, however, without again proffering his services.  These Ralph did not scruple to accept—­giving him, at the same time, sundry little commissions, and among them a message of thanks and respectful consideration to Miss Munro.

She, in the meanwhile, had, upon fainting in the court-room, been borne off in a state of utter insensibility, to the former residence of Munro, to which place, as the pedler has already informed us, the wife of the landlord had that very morning returned, resuming, precisely as before, all the previous order of her domestic arrangements.  The reason for this return may be readily assigned.  The escape of the pedler and of Lucy from their place of temporary confinement had completely upset all the prior arrangements of the outlaws.  They now conceived it no longer safe as a retreat; and failing as they did to overtake the fugitives, it was determined that, in the disguises which had been originally suggested for their adoption, they should now venture into the village, as many of them as were willing, to obtain that degree of information which would enable them to judge what further plans to adopt.

As Rivers had conjectured, Chub Williams, so far from taking for the village, had plunged deeper into the woods, flying to former and well known haunts, and regarding the face of man as that of a natural enemy.  The pedler had seen none but women, or those so disguised as such as to seem none other than what they claimed to be—­while Lucy had been permitted to see none but her uncle and aunt, and one or two persons she had never met before.

Under these circumstances, Rivers individually felt no apprehensions that his wild refuge would be searched; but Munro, something older, less sanguine, and somewhat more timid than his colleague, determined no longer to risk it; and having, as we have seen, effectually checked the utterance of that evidence which, in the unconscious excitation of his niece, must have involved him more deeply in the meshes of the law, besides indicating his immediate and near neighborhood, he made his way, unobserved, from the village, having first provided for her safety, and as he had determined to keep out of the way himself, having brought his family back to their old place of abode.