Mrs. Hare did not reply. She was musing upon
other things, in that quiescent happy mood, which
a small portion of spirits will impart to one weak
in body; and Barbara softly closed the door, and stole
out again to the portico. She stood a moment
to rally her courage, and again the hat was waved
impatiently.
Barbara Hare commenced her walk towards it in dread
unutterable, an undefined sense of evil filling her
sinking heart; mingling with which, came, with a rush
of terror, a fear of that other undefinable evil—the
evil Mrs. Hare had declared was foreboded by her dream.
THE MOONLIGHT INTERVIEW.
Cold and still looked the old house in the moonbeams.
Never was the moon brighter; it lighted the far-stretching
garden, it illuminated even the weathercock aloft,
it shone upon the portico, and upon one who appeared
in it. Stealing to the portico from the house
had come Barbara Hare, her eyes strained in dread
affright on the grove of trees at the foot of the
garden. What was it that had stepped out of that
groove of trees, and mysteriously beckoned to her
as she stood at the window, turning her heart to sickness
as she gazed? Was it a human being, one to bring
more evil to the house, where so much evil had already
fallen? Was it a supernatural visitant, or was
it but a delusion of her own eyesight? Not the
latter, certainly, for the figure was now emerging
again, motioning to her as before; and with a white
face and shaking limbs, Barbara clutched her shawl
around her and went down that path in the moonlight.
The beckoning form retreated within the dark recess
as she neared it, and Barbara halted.
“Who and what are you?” she asked, under
her breath. “What do you want?”
“Barbara,” was the whispered, eager answer,
“don’t you recognize me?”
Too surely she did—the voice at any rate—and
a cry escaped her, telling more of sorrow than of
joy, though betraying both. She penetrated the
trees, and burst into tears as one in the dress of
a farm laborer caught her in his arms. In spite
of his smock-frock and his straw-wisped hat, and his
false whiskers, black as Erebus, she knew him for
her brother.
“Oh, Richard! Where have you come from?
What brings you here?”
“Did you know me, Barbara?” was his rejoinder.
“How was it likely—in this disguise?
A thought crossed my mind that it might be some one
from you, and even that made me sick with terror.
How could you run such a risk as to come here?”
she added, wringing her hands. “If you
are discovered, it is certain death; death—upon—you
know!”
“Upon the gibbet,” returned Richard Hare.
“I do know it, Barbara.”
“Then why risk it? Should mamma see you
it will kill her outright.”
“I can’t live on as I am living,”
he answered, gloomily. “I have been working
in London ever since—”
“In London!” interrupted Barbara.
