Volume Ii Part 30 (1/2)

She had never seen that boy before; yet was there something in his features and expression that seemed familiar to her; that sort of vague resemblance to something well known and accustomed, which leads men to suppose that they must have dreamed of things which mysteriously enough they seem to remember on their first occurrence.

The boy raised his hand joyously, and cried aloud, without any fear of being heard, well knowing that all eyes and ears of the defenders of the place were turned to the side when the fight was raging, ”Be of good cheer; you are saved, Julia. Paullus is nigh at hand, but ere he come, _I_ will save you! Be of good courage, watch well these windows, but seem to be observing nothing.”

And with the words, he turned away, and was lost to her sight in an instant, among the thickly-set underwood. Ere long, however, she caught a glimpse of him again, mounted upon a beautiful white horse, and gallopping like the wind down the sandy road, which wound through the wooded knolls toward the bridge below.

Again she lost him; and again he glanced upon her sight, for a single second, as he spurred his fleet horse across the single arch of brick, and dashed into the woods on the hither side of the torrent.

Two weary hours pa.s.sed; and the sun was nigh to his setting, and she had seen, heard nothing more. Her heart, sickening with hope deferred, and all her frame trembling with terrible excitement, she had almost begun to doubt, whether the whole appearance of the boy might not have been a mere illusion of her feverish senses, a vain creation of her distempered fancy.

Still, fiercer than before, the battle raged without, and now there was no intermission of the uproar; to which was added the cras.h.i.+ng of the roofs beneath heavy stones, betokening that engines of some kind had been brought up from the host, or constructed on the spot.

At length, however, her close watch was rewarded. A slight stir among the evergreen bushes on the brink of the opposite cliff caught her quick eye, and in another moment the head of a man, not of the boy whom she had seen before, nor yet, as her hope suggested, of her own Paullus, but of an aquiline-nosed clean-shorn Roman soldier, with an intelligent expression and quick eye, was thrust forward.

Perceiving Julia at the window, he drew back for a second; and the boy appeared in his place, and then both showed themselves together, the soldier holding in his hand the bow and arrows of the hunter youth.

”He is a friend,” said the boy, ”do all that he commands you.”

But so fiercely was the battle raging now, that it was his signs, rather than his words, which she comprehended.

The next moment, a gesture of his hand warned her to withdraw from the embrasure; and scarcely had she done so before an arrow whistled from the bow and dropped into the room, having a piece of very slender twine attached to the end of it.

Perceiving the intention at a glance, the quick witted girl detached the string from the shaft without delay, and, throwing the latter out of the window lest it should betray the plan, drew in the twine, until she had some forty yards within the room, when it was checked from the other side, neither the soldier nor the youth showing themselves at all during the operation.

This done, however, the boy again stood forth, and pitched a leaden bullet, such as was used by the slingers of the day, into the window.

Perceiving that the ball was perforated, she secured it in an instant to the end of the clue, which she held in her hand, and, judging that the object of her friends was to establish a communication from their side, cast it back to them with a great effort, having first pa.s.sed the twine around the mullion, by aid of which Crispus had lowered down his messenger.

The soldier caught the bullet, and nodded his approbation with a smile, but again receded into the bushes, suffering the slack of the twine to fall down in an easy curve into the ravine: so that the double communication would scarce have been perceived, even by one looking for it, in the gathering twilight.

The boy's voice once more reached her ears, though his form was concealed among the shrubbery. ”Fear nothing, you are safe,” he said, ”But we can do no more until after midnight, when the moon shall give us light to rescue you. Be tranquil, and farewell.”-

Be tranquil!-tranquil, when life or death-honor or infamy-bliss or despair, hung on that feeble twine, scarce thicker than the spider's web!

hung on the chance of every flying second, each one of which was bringing nigher and more nigh, the hoofs of Catiline's atrocious band.

When voice of man can bid the waves be tranquil, while the north-wester is tossing their ruffian tops, and when the billows slumber at his bidding, then may the comforter a.s.say, with some chance of success, to still the throbbings of the human heart, convulsed by such hopes, such terrors, as then were all but maddening the innocent and tranquil heart of Julia.

Tranquil she could not be; but she was calm and self-possessed, and patient.

Hour after hour lagged away; and the night fell black as the pit of Acheron, and still by the glare of pale fires and torches, the lurid light of which she could perceive from her windows, reflected on the heavens, the savage combatants fought on, unwearied, and unsparing.

Once only she went again to that window, wherefrom hung all her hopes; so fearful was she, that Crispus might find her there, and suspect what was in process.

With trembling fingers she felt for the twine, fatal as the thread of destiny should any fell chance sever it; and in its place she found a stout cord, which had been quietly drawn around the mullion, still hanging in a deep double bight, invisible amid the gloom, from side to side of the chasm.

And now, for the first time, she comprehended clearly the means by which her unknown friends proposed to reach her. By hauling on one end of the rope, any light plank or ladder might be drawn over to the hither from the farther bank, and the gorge might so be securely bridged, and safely traversed.

Perceiving this, and fancying that she could distinguish the faint clink of a hammer among the trees beyond the forest knoll, she did indeed become almost tranquil.