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Several weeks after the occurrence of the last scenes which
have been depicted, Esther Ludlow was walking in the neighborhood
of her new home. Her destiny seemed still perverse.
Now that the great cause, to which her soul had been devoted,
had triumphed over every obstacle, and had already established
itself upon foundations never to be shaken; now that she could
have gone exultingly forth, like Miriam, with timbrel and song
of triumph, was she yet oppressed with a deep sense of her own
personal disappointment? A change had come over her destiny
during the interval which had elapsed. Maudsley was still
away, and nothing concerning his fate had reached her for a
long time. But although an ocean rolled between them, their
hearts were no longer separated by an unfathomable gulf of suspicion
and mutual distrust.

Maudsley had left New England, believing that Esther's affections
had been alienated from him, doubting, indeed, whether
there had ever been the faintest response upon her part to his
deep and absorbing passion. He had, however, previously to
his departure, allowed himself, as we have seen, to send a solemn
warning to her, touching the character of the man who appeared
to have exercised over her some mysterious and unnatural fascination.
He would have been incapable, moved by jealousy
alone, to have traduced the character of one, concerning whom
he knew little, while he suspected much; but even had Esther
been nothing to him, he would still have felt it his imperious
duty to warn her of her danger, such reliance did he place

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upon his presentiments, his dim reminiscences, and the fragmentary
knowledge which he had acquired through Cakebread's
treachery. Neither did he hesitate, although a delicate sense
of honor would at first seem to have forbidden it, to make
full use of all the information conveyed to him by that crafty
knave. The reader will judge in the sequel, whether the nature
of the circumstances did not more than justify him in such a
course.

The very first letter received by him after his departure from
New England was from Walter Ludlow. His own answer paved
the way in the most natural manner possible, for a full and free
explanation on the part both of the brother and sister. The
clear sunlight of truth dissolved all the misty phantoms which
had disturbed his reason, and he bitterly acknowledged and
deplored the wilful and blind impetuosity by which he had both
suffered and inflicted so much distress.

But Esther was happy, when she reflected that her lover now
sympathized fully, deeply with her own feelings; and his letters,
which reached her at long intervals, breathed at once the most
passionate devotion to herself, and the most ardent affection for
the great cause which, in accordance with the enthusiastic temperament
of that age of religion, his impressionable spirit had
felt itself suddenly called upon, as was St. Paul's, by a supernatural
voice, to reverence, and with all his heart to serve. Still
his absence was protracted, and although Esther was aware that
matters of deep import had occupied him, and required his
presence in different parts of Europe, yet she felt sick at heart,
when she reflected upon the many dangers that might still lie in
his pathway.

Reflecting intensely and sadly upon these matters, Esther
lingered that morning in the leafless grove which extended westerly
from her new abode. A presentiment of coming evil, for
which she could not account, and which she could not shake

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off, weighed upon her spirit, as the coming thunder-storm oppresses
and surcharges the yet cloudless atmosphere.

The radiant autumn was no more. Bleak December, with
its long nights of stormy darkness, and its short hours of pale
and broken sunshine, sat upon its gloomy throne. The day was
chill, the landscape brown and dreary. Suddenly Esther heard
a step in the forest; she looked up, and for the first time in
many months saw the form of Sir Christopher Gardiner. The
warning images which had thronged her brain for the past hours,
now seemed to have had their meaning. They seemed suddenly
to have been compressed and concentrated into one threatening
phantom, and that phantom wore the form of the hated and
mysterious knight. She had thought him absent, never to
return; she had almost deemed him dead, at least she had
schooled herself into the conviction that his dark countenance
was never again to be bent upon her own, that his stealthy step
was never again to cross her path; when lo! at the very instant
when her soul was most gloomy, when her heart hung like lead
in her bosom, at that very instant Sir Christopher Gardiner stood
before her. 'T was strange, she had certainly seen him, gliding
beneath the leafless branches of an oak. That spare, Arab-like
figure, those dark and frowning features, could not be mistaken;
and yet, as she looked again, he was not there. Could he have
passed her by without observing or without recognising her?
Had he gone forward to the house which stood at no great
distance from the spot? Was the apparition but a creation of
her boding and disordered fancy? Had the earth suddenly gaped
and swallowed him? It was a mystery, but every thing connected
with the knight was a mystery. All that she knew was,
that she had seen him within ten yards of the spot where she
stood, and that now he had disappeared.

While she was thus ruminating upon the strangeness of the
circumstance, she felt herself suddenly seized from behind,

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with determined although gentle force. She would have cried
aloud, but even as in the motionless tortures of a night-mare,
her tongue clove to the roof her mouth. She would have
struggled, but her limbs refused to obey her will. A sensation
as if, after all, she was but suffering the short-lived agony of a
waking dream, overpowered her. In an instant afterwards her face
was muffled in a cloak, her arms were bound, and thus pinioned,
blinded, and deprived of all power of motion or utterance, she
found herself rapidly borne away she knew not whither. Within
five minutes afterwards, she felt herself gently deposited upon a
seat, and after a brief delay, she learned by the rocking motion
and the noise of dashing waves, that she had been placed in a
boat, and was now upon the water. Whither, wherefore, or in
whose company, she knew not. Not a whisper reached her ear,
not a ray of light pierced the thick veil by which her vision was
carefully shrouded. Gardiner's dark image rose again to affright
her soul, and she entertained not a doubt that he was the author
of this fearful misfortune, which had now befallen her, and seemed
to threaten her destruction. Whether the knight, still brooding
angrily over her absolute and peremptory rejection of his addresses,
had returned after so long an absence to wreak that
vengeance upon her which he had so darkly and obscurely
threatened at their last and decisive interview; whether she had
fallen suddenly into the hands of some prowling party of savages;
whether she was now floating in a canoe, to be borne away into
fearful captivity in the remote wilderness; whether she was to
be placed on board some outward bound vessel, of which she
knew there were one or two to set sail immediately from the
colony, to be borne beyond the ocean, she knew not; and she
lay shuddering, praying and anxiously expecting her doom with
horror as intense as could pervade, without absolutely overmastering
and destroying, a solitary woman's reason.

An eternity of anguish seemed to have passed over her,

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although she could not form with the slightest accuracy an opinion
as to the actual length of time which had elapsed since her first
capture, when the sails of the boat seemed to be flapping heavily,
and then to be furled around the masts. Directly afterwards
the light keel seemed to touch a pebbly shore, and she was then
again lifted from her position, and borne rapidly away.

After a few moments, a door seemed to open, and she was
carried within a building. She was then placed with great gentleness
upon a cushioned seat, and directly afterwards, the cords
which bound her were loosened, and the cloak by which she
was muffled was removed. For a moment she dared not to open
her eyes, and she sat collecting all the energy which was left
her, before she should venture upon the new scene of horror
which doubtless was impending. At last she looked wildly and
fearfully round. She found herself in a strange apartment, spacious
but uncouth in its appearance, evidently the abode of
civilized men rather than of savages, but resembling in its equipments
nothing which she had ever before seen. She deemed
herself alone, and was uttering a devout thanksgiving for even
this momentary respite, when a stealthy step struck her ear,
and then she found herself in the company of Sir Christopher
Gardiner.

“We meet again, Esther Ludlow,” said he, in a gentle and
melancholy tone, “we meet again, never to separate.”

Esther, as pale as ashes, looked in his face without power of
reply.

“Since we were last together,” resumed the knight, “I have
dwelt amid savage scenes, and with men more savage than the
deserts where they dwell. I intended to beat down, to annihilate
the passion which had taken possession of my soul. The
idleness to which the wilderness has doomed me has, I suppose,
rendered the feeling uncontrollable.”

“Spare me a repetition of these odious professions,” said

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Esther, looking at the knight with a pale and impassible
visage.

“I have but very few words to speak, Esther,” he continued,
“and those will soon be spoken. I intended, both for your sake
and my own, to conquer a fatal passion. I have not been used
to hear words of contempt and repugnance from woman's lips,
and yet I endured your disdain without resentment.”

“Till this moment,” interrupted Esther, her blood mounting
with indignation at the calm and measured language of her persecutor,
“till this moment I hardly knew what disdain and
hatred were. Heaven forgive me that I want words to express
my loathing for you now!”

“I have already told you,” he continued, “that such language
from your gentle sex is new to my ear. I never knelt so long
in abject adoration to living creature as I have done at your feet,
and I have received nothing but reproaches. I resign all hope
of your love —”

“Then release me, restore me, if you are not in truth a very
demon,” said Esther.

“Pardon me,” continued the knight, “I fear that my habits
of life, and the philosophy in which I have been schooled,
have rendered my character incomprehensible to a person as
single-hearted and pure-minded as yourself. You are now within
my power.”

“If you are a man,” exclaimed Esther, “you are incapable of
abusing that power.”

“If I were not a man,” coolly resumed the knight, “perhaps
I should be. You are, I repeat it, absolutely in my power. I
am a man bound by no ties, recognising no laws, obeying the
will of no living creature but my own, respecting nothing, fearing
nothing, loving nothing, but yourself.”

“May God in his wrath blast such blasphemous love!” said
Esther, with ungovernable scorn.

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“Your hatred keeps pace with my hourly increasing passion,”
resumed the knight; “fate is proverbially perverse to lovers.
Let me then waste words no longer. You are, at this moment,
the mistress of your destiny. Let me remind you that, upon
one subject in times gone by, there was sympathy between us.
To be the creator of an empire in the desert, was a great
thought, which created the same lofty emotion in your bosom as
in my own.”

“You know better even than myself,” replied Esther, “that
pretence of sympathy between us is a mockery, but most of all,
upon the subject to which you allude. I have learned to despise
your hypocrisy and falsehood in all things, in nothing more than
this.”

“We, perhaps, have contemplated the same object from different
points of view,” continued Gardiner, “but let that pass.
Let me now inform you, that before a few months are over, this
whole wilderness of New England will call me undisputed
master. The whole rich province of Massachusetts is, at this
moment, a manor, belonging to me alone, and transmissible to
my descendants forever. All the efforts of these besotted
Puritans are silently inuring to my benefit, and this infant
empire, with all its inappreciable future of wealth and grandeur,
belongs to me alone.”

“These are the ravings of a madman,” said Esther, looking
with mingled fear and wonder at the dark countenance of her
companion.

“Believe it not, beautiful Esther,” he continued, with a little
more excitement of manner, but in the same deliberate accents.
“I am no enthusiastic visionary. My kingdom is of this world.
My schemes are positive, solid, material, not the delusive raptures
of a dreamer. I repeat that, at this moment, the choice
is in your own hands.”

“You can offer me nothing but misery, perdition, infamy,”

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said Esther, who seemed to feel the icy hand of death upon her
heart, as she contemplated her forlorn position.

“I have received letters within these three hours,” continued
Gardiner. “Had not the incorrigible and mischievous recklessness
of one of my agents, thrown many obstacles in my way,
my plot would not have been so long in ripening. Know,
however, that the boasted patent of your colony is not worth
the parchment upon which it is written, that thousands of men
and millions of money are to be instantly placed at my disposal,
and that ere six months have past, I shall be proclaimed hereditary
Lord Proprietor and Palatine of Massachusetts, and Governor-General
and Admiral of all New England.”

“Is the blessed charter indeed revoked?” murmured Esther,
feeling, in spite of her own fearful position, a pang of regret at
the downfall of the great cause.

“Aye, the charter is worthless and already annulled!”
exclaimed Gardiner, scrupling not to hazard a falsehood, which
he, however, believed would shortly become a truth, “and it is
now for you to decide. Forget the disdain and the hatred with
which you have repaid my passion, and condescend to partake
the power, to share the councils, and to direct the destiny of
one who adores you, as man never worshipped before.”

“Never, never!” cried Esther, shutting her eyes and holding
up both her hands, as if to hide some dreadful vision.

“Be not too hasty,” quietly resumed the knight, “the wife of
the Lord Palatine of the Massachusetts, will hold no mean position,
and have no little amount of human happiness within her
high control. Wild though her domains, at this instant, may be,
an empire which stretches across a continent, and plants its feet
upon two oceans, is worthy to occupy an ambitious soul. Of
this wide territory you shall be mistress.”

“Your words are vain and idle,” replied Esther, with cold
and icy contempt, “now that I understand your trifling and

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vulgar ambition, your sordid schemes, I loathe you more than
ever. I never will be your wife.”

“Then live to be my hand-maid, my bond-woman, my slave!”
cried the knight in ungovernable passion, “refuse to be the
sharer, the controller of my destiny, and since it likes thee
better, be the plaything and the solace of my lighter hours.
You are at this moment irrevocably within my power. I accept
not your decision now, but accord you six hours of deliberation.
Escape is impossible, and I leave you to deliberate at your
leisure.”

Uttering these concluding words in a gentler tone, the knight
subduing his emotion by a powerful effort, arose, saluted Esther
respectfully, and then left the apartment. His prisoner heard him
fasten the door securely behind him, and then, exhausted with
the agitating events and emotions of the last few hours, she
sank back almost insensible.

How long she remained in this condition she could not tell.
A keen sensation of her fearful position suddenly aroused her
from her trance. She found herself still alone, and collecting
all her strength, she moved rapidly about the apartment, examining
the doors and windows, to see if there were no possibility
of escape. Alas! every thing had been too securely fastened, and
the efforts of a weak, solitary woman, were utterly hopeless.
The house where she was a prisoner, and which was no other
than the deserted palace of Merry-Mount, was surrounded, as
she saw, by an expanse of hill and dale in one direction, by the
boundless forest in another, and by the sea upon the third. But
although she saw no means of making her way homeward,
utterly ignorant as she was of the place of her imprisonment,
yet a death in the forest would have been welcomed with rapture
in preference to the doom which seemed impending over her.

But she at last felt convinced that escape from the room where
she was a prisoner, was utterly hopeless. Exhausted and

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despairing, she again fell into a half insensible state. It seemed to
her that her reason was slowly yielding to the fearful excitement
of that day, and an irresistible and benumbing lethargy seemed
taking possession of her senses.

In this apathetic and bewildered state she remained for hours.
She was at last again aroused to a consciousness of her situation
by a movement upon the outside of the door. In another
moment, Sir Christopher Gardiner stood again in her presence.

She shuddered convulsively as he approached, but had no
strength to utter a syllable, when he inquired in the most courteous
and honied accents, if she were not inelined at last to
relent in her determination. Gardiner, vexed at her silence,
paced up and down the room, his brain whirling with a thousand
conflicting passions, but ever and anon paused in his disturbed
and impetuous career, to satiate his eyes with a long, ardent
gaze at his victim's beauty.

Suddenly he threw himself with apparent frenzy at her
feet.

“Why will you compel to crime,” he exclaimed in passionate
accents, “one who would willingly live your slave forever?
Maddened by your beauty beyond control of every law, divine
or human, even thus abjectly do I implore you to recall your
fatal decision.”

Tears of wild passion flowed like burning lava down the
knight's dusky cheek, he wrung his hands in frantic supplication,
he kissed her feet, her garments, he raised his eyes towards
her face, as if he lay in devout prostration before an enshrined
divinity.

“Not to me, kneel not to me,” murmured Esther faintly,
finding a voice at last, “not to me, but to thy God. Pray to the
Omnipotent, to crush in his mercy, the demon to whom thou
hast devoted thyself, soul and body.”

An indescribable sneer succeeded the softer expression upon

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Gardiner's swarthy features. He sprang to his feet, and extended
his arms towards Esther. At that instant a shrill and peculiar
whistle was heard without.

“Confusion!” muttered the knight, springing to the door.
“What means Skettwarroes by this sudden signal? —”

Thrusting his pistols hastily into his belt, and drawing his
rapier, he threw open the door, and advanced cautiously a few
steps outside. Quick as light did Esther, recovering all her
energy, follow his footsteps through the doorway before he had
time in his surprise to draw the bolts. She was ready to brave
every unknown danger, rather than remain an instant longer in
the hated presence of her persecutor. Gardiner had already
strained his eyes in every direction, but had seen no trace of
the suspected enemy. The shadows of a winter's afternoon,
however, had already gathered over the boundless forest, by which
the house was inclosed on three sides, so that it was difficult
precisely to ascertain from whence the danger was to be anticipated.

He had answered the signal of the faithful Skettwarroes, who
occupied the look-out upon the watch tower, and with whom he
exchanged a few unintelligible words, when suddenly he observed
that Esther had already reached and unfastened the small
door which opened through the palisade. He sprang forward
like lightning, dashed through the gate in her pursuit, and seized
her in his arms just as she was on the point of plunging into
the forest.

“By your leave, lady mine,” said he, “I cannot relinquish
my prize so readily, though 't was a pretty sortie, I confess.”

Esther screamed and struggled with all her spirit and strength.
The hope of escape, which had been so nearly accomplished,
yielding thus suddenly to despair, seemed to produce a frenzy
in her soul, and to endow her frame for an instant with preternatural
strength.

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“Exhaust thyself not,” said the knight, “with these idle
struggles. Indeed, thou must back to thy cage again, my pretty
bird of paradise. Nay, nay, be wise, there is none to help
thee, beautiful Esther.”

“'T is false, cowardly ruffian!” suddenly exclaimed a voice,
hoarse with passion, but whose well known accents fell like
music upon Esther's ear. At the same time an elastic form
bounded like a tiger from the thicket, seized Gardiner by the
throat, and hurled him to the ground. Esther uttered a feeble
exclamation, and then sank insensible into the arms of Henry
Maudsley.

The knight, although taken by surprise, was upon his feet
again in an instant. He strode forward to punish the intruder,
who, occupied at that instant with the fainting Esther, seemed
hardly capable of defending himself. Suddenly, upon perceiving
the features of the supposed stranger, the knight paused, with
his sword uplifted in his hand, and stood motionless as if
changed to stone, with features grown suddenly rigid in their
passionate convulsions, and with eyes gleaming with strange and
unnatural fire.

In the mean time, while Maudsley stood, with the senseless
form of Esther in his arms, frantically imploring her to look up
for a single moment, and while the knight stood spell-bound and
immovable before him, several figures emerged from the forest,
and silently ascended the slightly elevated, but upon one side,
somewhat precipitous platform or ledge, upon which the groap
was accidentally stationed.

Before the knight could recover his self-possession, he saw
himself surrounded by six or seven well armed soldiers, who had
been sent by the magistrates to arrest him.

They stood in a circle around him, looking towards Maudsley
for further orders. An unarmed person in Puritan hat
and cloak, who had accompanied the party apparently in the

[figure description] Page 213.[end figure description]

character of guide, seemed desirous of concealing himself from
observation.

Gardiner at last seemed to awake from his trance, and to look
around upon the grim figures, who, arrayed in steel cap and
corslet, and armed with matchlock and rapier, had gathered
in such formidable numbers about him, with an expression of
contempt.

“Little do I regard the malice of these crop-eared blood-hounds,”
he muttered, grasping his rapier convulsively in his
hand; “the living move me not, no, nor the dead!”

“No!” continued he in a hollow voice, with features expressive
of a profound horror, but with an attitude of desperate
determination — “no, though the grave gives up its dead;
though hell itself hurl back its victims to affright me, even then
and thus do I defy thee, Harry Maudsley!”

The knight would have sprung forward, but at a nod of
Maudsley, three men-at-arms laid hold of Gardiner, who submitted
patiently to be held for a moment, while Maudsley
spoke.

“Be assured,” said he, “that 't is no preternatural apparition
who addresses you, but a man in flesh and blood, as real as your
own. There will be ample leisure hereafter to explain why and
how my recovery from the wound received at your hands was
kept a secret from you —”

“Verily, Sir Christopher,” cried a shrill voice suddenly interrupting
Maudsley at this point, “verily, I made a grave as you
desired upon the solitary beach, but the tenant, look you, was
wanting, so I even buried the secret within it, and closed my
mouth and the grave at the same moment.”

“Perfidious liar!” exclaimed the knight, starting as if a
serpent had stung him, and glaring furiously at the malicious,
mocking countenance of Peter Cakebread, who had hitherto
eluded his observation.

[figure description] Page 214.[end figure description]

“Nay, nay, most worthy chevalier,” continued the mischievous
Cakebread, with a leer and a chuckle, “thou didst procure
me once an ignominious and most painful chastisement. I have
made thee wait a long time for payment, but I was even determined
to leave no stone unturned, to return the obligation in
one way or another. Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith
the Lord! a text which I learned from my new masters, although
I do not yet correctly apply my learning, perhaps.”

“If then,” cried Gardiner, turning furiously towards Maudsley,
“you have, in truth, escaped the death to which I supposed
you long since a victim, you can now, at least, have neither right
nor inclination to defer an instant longer, the conclusion of our
quarrel, which, if it had not been deadly before, would have
been aggravated by to-day's events. Order these armed attendants
of yours to retire.”

“No, Sir Knight,” said Maudsley, who had gently deposited
upon the ground, and wrapped in his cloak, the partially recovered
form of Esther, and who had now advanced close towards
his former antagonist — “No, even if a mighty change, such as
you could neither understand nor dream of, had not changed the
whole complexion of my life, and made me more cautious, at
least, of shedding blood in private quarrel, still would I scorn to
lift my sword against such a thing as you are proved to be.”

“Insolent reptile!” exclaimed Gardiner, fiercely.

“All taunts are idle,” continued Maudsley. “I met you
once as a knightly gentleman, in honorable combat. I stand
here now commissioned to arrest you as a malefactor.”

“What means this insolence?” exclaimed the knight, in
husky tones, and with a strange pallor upon his swarthy cheek.

“Your own guilty soul tells you my meaning plainly enough,”
exclaimed Maudsley, yielding at last to his long suppressed
rage. “Know then that I have not in vain concealed my existence
from you; know that I have not in vain employed the long,

[figure description] Page 215.[end figure description]

weary, perplexed months of my absence. I have unravelled the
whole web of your villany, and have returned to brand and
chastise you, as you deserve.”

“The boy raves,” said Gardiner, with a hollow laugh.

“Aye, blaspheme not, struggle not, deny thyself not,” continued
Maudsley. As surely as thou knowest me to be Henry
Maudsley, so surely do I know thee to be Sir Fulk de Gorges,
expelled and branded brother of the knights Hospitaller of St.
John of Malta, husband of Lady Clara Hoveden, husband of
Edith Maudsley, and murderer of her father and herself. Are
you answered now?”

The knight's dark eye seemed to emit sparks of fire as he
glared at Maudsley, but he was still silent.

“Aye, aye,” cried the shrill voice of Cakebread, “and know,
moreover, that all your papers are at this moment in the hands
of the magistrates. A divine hand hath directed my humble
researches, and the magic rod hath revealed to me the golden
treasures of Shawmut. The officers have paid a visit, under my
guidance, to your hermitage upon the bay. They have secured
the person of the fair Magdalen Groves, commonly called your
cousin, Master Jaspar, and have burned your house to the
ground. All your plotting with the savages, particularly your
foul connection with the great conspiracy revealed this summer
by Sagamore John, and of which you are now known to be the
instigator, all, all is discovered. Aha, aha, Sir Knight! whose
back will catch the bastinado now? tell me that, tell me
that.”

The malicious creature, who at that moment looked like a
very imp of hell, uttered a mocking laugh as he concluded,
which, more than all which had been said, seemed to madden
the knight's brain to frenzy, and to endow him with a giant's
strength. His game was up, his plots baffled, his person revealed,
his crimes divulged, the avenger panting for his prey. There was

[figure description] Page 216.[end figure description]

no safety but in flight. Exerting his great muscular agility, he
threw off his three captors by a sudden and dexterous movement,
discharged a pistol unsuccessfully at Maudsley, stretched the
grinning Cakebread, desperately wounded, at his feet, with the
other, and then, with the suppleness of a tiger, threw himself
with one prodigious bound over the precipitous rock upon which
they stood, and plunged into the almost impenetrable thickets
below.

By this movement, sudden, bewildering, apparently impossible,
and which had hardly occupied a second, Maudsley, to his
astonishment and rage, beheld the felon, whom he had toiled so
long to convict and to apprehend, again escape him. Half a
dozen shots were fired in quick succession; but evidently in
vain, and then the whole party, excepting Maudsley, dashed off
in hot pursuit.

However ardently he desired the capture of the knight,
a legion of demons at that moment could not have moved him
from the rock. The beautiful Esther, who had remained as
it were in a kind of bewildered trance, suddenly revived, as
he hung despairingly over her. Their eyes met.

“Dearest, dearest Mandsley, my preserver, my saviour!” she
murmured, extending her arms gently towards him. Maudsley
could not speak, but their lips clung to each other in a first and
long embrace.

There sat the lovers, upon that rock in the wilderness, and
for an instant they forgot every thing but their deep love, and
their boundless joy at this meeting.

It was with a joyful although superstitious feeling, that
Maudsley suddenly threw the fated chain around Esther's neck,
which he had taken from the ground, where it had fallen during
her last struggle with Gardiner near the palisade. He reminded
her that he had sworn to return from the uttermost parts of the
earth, should that talisman inform him that danger threatened

[figure description] Page 217.[end figure description]

her, and he now urged her to accept it as a pledge that
their hearts were no longer entangled in mysteries, but at
last were united. They could have remained for hours
together upon that lonely spot, but their interview was interrupted
after but a few moments' duration. Half the party, who
had been in pursuit of Gardiner, returned breathless and unsuccessful.
It had been agreed that the others should continue the
search all night. The adventurer, however, possessed such an
intimate knowledge of the country in that neighborhood,
beside being upon such intimate terms with many of the
wandering savages, that it seemed probable the pursuit would
be a protracted one, although Maudsley convinced Esther
that his eventual apprehension must be certain. He bitterly
regretted his want of adroitness in thus allowing the object,
for which he had spent so many weary months of labor, to
slip from his grasp, when he had already clutched it; but he
swore to rest neither day nor night, till the malefactor was
apprehended and brought to justice.

In the mean time, those of the party who had returned to
Merry-Mount, prepared to execute that part of the order of the
court in relation to Thomas Morton, which had hitherto
remained unfulfilled. The magistrates, as will be recollected,
had decreed that the luckless Lord of Merry-Mount should be
set in the stocks, that he should be afterwards imprisoned until
sent to England, that his property should be confiscated, and
his house be burned to the ground, “in order that the habitation
of the wicked should no more be seen in Israel.” Morton was
now in prison, hourly awaiting his transportation to England,
and every other part of the sentence had been executed, excepting
the ordained destruction of the Merry-Mount palace. This
had, for a variety of reasons, been deferred, and the party who
were that day charged, by the magistrates, with the apprehension

[figure description] Page 218.[end figure description]

of Gardiner, had likewise received orders to proceed afterwards
to Morton's domain, and to destroy his house.

They had already burned Gardiner's house to the ground,
after having searched there unsuccessfully for its tenant, before
proceeding to Merry-Mount. As has already been intimated,
they had there captured the unfortunate Jaspar, and had, moreover,
taken possession of a large collection of papers, including,
as it afterwards appeared, a voluminous correspondence between
the knight and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in which their various
intrigues and machinations were set forth, even to the minutest
details.

The party had then proceeded to Merry-Mount, where their
adventures with Sir Christopher have been already narrated.

By Maudsley's orders, they now proceeded to set fire to the
palace, as well as to all the log huts and hovels which were
scattered about Morton's domain. The buildings had previously
been ransacked, by order of the magistrates, and every thing of
importance removed. After the flames had fairly enveloped all
the buildings, Maudsley carefully conveyed Esther to the
pinnace, which was moored near the shore, and accompanied
by the men-at-arms, embarked for the village of Boston. A
gentle breeze was blowing, and the little vessel danced swiftly
along the waves. Esther and Maudsley sat gazing at the
burning palace, which, built of light and inflammable materials,
was already a sheet of fire, and presented the appearance of an
extensive conflagration. The twilight was already approaching,
the air was chill and mirky, the red flames glared wildly and
fitfully athwart the lowering heavens, and were reflected with
sullen radiance from the darkening waves. Suddenly, as they
turned for a moment in another direction, they saw the large
hull of an outward bound ship, which was passing very near
them. A solitary person, his figure darkly painted against the

[figure description] Page 219.[end figure description]

twilight, stood upon the quarter-deck, and seemed to be gazing
sadly and earnestly at the distant flames. The vessel was the
ship Whale, just starting upon her wintry voyage to England —
the solitary spectator of the conflagration was the captive Lord
of Merry-Mount.

p285-463

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