But no such prospect of escape was before him.  He could command none of the sympathies that had worked for his rival.  He had no friends left.  Munro was slain, Dillon gone, and even the miserable idiot had turned his fangs upon the hand that fed him.  Warned, too, by the easy escape of Colleton, Brooks attended no more whiskey-parties, nor took his brother-in-law Tongs again into his friendly counsels.  More—­he doubly ironed his prisoner, whose wiles and resources he had more reason to fear than those which his former captive could command.  To cut off more fully every hope which the outlaw might entertain of escape from his bonds and durance, a detachment of the Georgia guard, marching into the village that very day, was put in requisition, by the orders of the judge, for the better security of the prisoner, and of public order.

CHAPTER XLI.

QUIET PASSAGES AND NEW RELATIONS.

We have already reported the return of Lucy Munro to the village-inn of Chestatee.  Here, to her own and the surprise of all other parties, her aunt was quietly reinstated in her old authority—­a more perfect one now—­as housekeeper of that ample mansion.  The reasons which determined her liege upon her restoration to the household have been already reported to the reader.  His prescience as to his own approaching fate was perhaps not the least urgent among them.  He fortunately left her in possession, and we know how the law estimates this advantage.  Of her trials and sorrows, when she was made aware of her widowhood, we will say nothing.  Sensitive natures will easily conjecture their extent and intensity.  It is enough for the relief of such natures, if we say that the widow Munro was not wholly inconsolable.  As a good economist, a sensible woman, with an eye properly regardful of the future, we are bound to suppose that she needed no lessons from Hamlet’s mother to make the cold baked funeral-meats answer a double purpose.

But what of her niece?  We are required to be something more full and explicit in speaking to her case.  The indisposition of Lucy was not materially diminished by the circumstances following the successful effort to persuade the landlord to the rescue of Ralph Colleton.  The feverish excitements natural to that event, and even the fruit of its fortunate issue, in the death of Munro, for whom she really had a grateful regard, were not greatly lessened, though certainly something relieved, by the capture of Rivers, and his identification with the outlawed Creighton.  She was now secure from him:  she had nothing further to apprehend from the prosecution of his fearful suit; and the death of her uncle, even if the situation of Rivers had left him free to urge it further, would, of itself, have relieved her from the only difficulty in the way of a resolute denial.