interruption.  He started up suddenly, his ears still tingling with the soft tones of an unknown voice, which had whispered in them, “Cross the river by the Lower Ford,—­there is danger at the Upper.”  He stared around, but saw nothing all was silent around him, save the deep breathing of the sleepers at his side.  “Who spoke?” he demanded in a whisper, but received no reply.  “River,—­Upper and Lower Ford,—­danger?—­” he muttered:  “now I would have sworn some one spoke to me; and yet I must have dreamed it.  Strange things, dreams,—­thoughts in freedom, loosed from the chains of association,—­temporary mad-fits, undoubtedly:  marvellous impressions they produce on the organs of sense; see, hear, smell, taste, touch, more exquisitely without the organs than with them—­What’s the use of organs?  There’s the poser—­I think—­I—­” but here he ceased thinking altogether, his philosophy having served the purpose such philosophy usually does, and wrapped him a second time in the arms of Morpheus.  He opened his eyes almost immediately, as he thought; but his morning nap had lasted half an hour; the dawn was already purple and violet in the sky, his companions had left his side, and the hum of voices and the sound of footsteps in and around the Station, told him that his fellow-exiles were already preparing to resume their journey.

“A brave morrow to you, captain!” said the commander of the fortress, the thunder of whose footsteps, as he approached the house with uncommonly fierce strides, had perhaps broken his slumbers.  A frown was on his brow, and the grasp of his hand, in which every finger seemed doing the duty of a boa-constrictor, spoke of a spirit up in arms, and wrestling with passion.

“What is the matter?” asked Roland.

“Matter that consarns you and me more than any other two persons in the etarnal world!” said Bruce, with such energy of utterance as nothing-but rage could supply.  “Thar has been a black wolf in the pin-fold,—­alias, as they used to say at the court-house, Captain Ralph Stackpole; and the end of it is, war I never to tell another truth in my life, that your blooded brown horse has absquatulated!”

“Absquatulated!" echoed Forrester, amazed as much at the word as at the fierce visage of his friend,—­“what is that?  Is the horse hurt?”

“Stolen away, sir, by the etarnal Old Scratch!  Carried off by Roaring Ralph Stackpole, while I, like a brute, war sound a-sleeping!  And h’yar’s the knavery of the thing; sir! the unpronounceable rascality, sir!—­I loaned the brute one of my own critturs, just to be rid of him, and have him out of harm’s way; for I had a forewarning, the brute, that his mouth war a-watering after the Dew beasts in the pinfold, and after the brown horse in partickelar!  And so I loaned him a horse, and sent him off to Logan’s.  Well, sir, and what does the brute do but ride off, for a make-believe, to set us easy; for he knew, the brute, if he war in