CHAPTER.  XV.

As the boat, which contained the party, pulled by six of the best oars-men among the soldiers of the Garrison, and steered, as we have shown, by the dexterous Sambo, now glided past the spot, the recollections of the tradition connected with the bridge drew from several of the party expressions of sympathy and feigned terror, as their several humours dictated.  Remarking that Miss Montgomerie’s attention appeared to be deeply excited by what she heard, while she gazed earnestly upon the dwelling in the back ground, Gerald Grantham thought to interest her yet more, and amuse and startle the rest of the party, by detailing his extraordinary, and hitherto unrevealed adventure, on a recent occasion.  To this strange tale, as may naturally be supposed, some of his companions listened with an air of almost incredulity, nor indeed would they rest satisfied until Sambo, who kept his eyes turned steadily away from the shore, and to whom appeal was frequently made by his master, confirmed his statement in every particular; and with such marks of revived horror in his looks, as convinced them, Gerald was not playing upon their facility of belief.  The more incredulous his brother officers, the more animated had become the sailor in his description, and, on arriving at that part of his narrative which detailed the reappearance and reflection of the mysterious figure in the tipper room, upon the court below, every one became insensibly fixed in mute attention.  From the moment of his commencing, Miss Montgomerie had withdrawn her gaze from the land, and fixing it upon her lover, manifested all the interest he could desire.  Her feelings were evidently touched by what she heard, for she grew paler as Gerald proceeded, while her breathing was suspended, as if fearful to lose a single syllable he uttered.  At each more exciting crisis of the narrative, she betrayed a corresponding intensity of attention, until at length, when the officer described his mounting on the water butt, and obtaining a full view of all within the room, she looked as still and rigid as if she had been metamorphosed into a statue.  This eagerness of attention, shared as it was, although not to the same extent perhaps, by the rest of Gerald’s auditory, was only remarkable in Miss Montgomerie, in as much as she was one of too much mental preoccupation to feel or betray interest in any thing, and it might have been the risk encountered by her lover, and the share he had borne in the mysterious occurrence, that now caused her to lapse from her wonted inaccessibility to impressions of the sort.  As the climax of the narrative approached, her interest became deeper, and her absorption more profound.  An involuntary shudder passed over her form, and a slight contraction of the nerves of her face was perceptible, when Gerald described to his attentive and shocked auditory, the raising of the arm of the assassin; and her emotion at length assumed such a character of nervousness, that when he exultingly told of the rapid discharge of his own pistol, as having been the only means of averting the fate of the doomed, she could not refrain from rising suddenly in the boat, and putting her hand to her side, with the shrinking movement of one who had been suddenly wounded.