As the little group proceeded through the valley, the officers first,
Aram and Lester side by side, Walter, with his hand on his pistol and his
eye on the prisoner, a little behind, Lester endeavored to cheer the
prisoner's spirits and his own by insisting on the madness of the charge
and the certainty of instant acquittal from the magistrate to whom they
were bound, and who was esteemed the one both most acute and most just in
the county. Aram interrupted him somewhat abruptly,

"My friend, enough of this presently. But Madeline, what knows she as
yet?"

"Nothing; of course, we kept--"

"Exactly, exactly; you have done wisely. Why need she learn anything as
yet? Say an arrest for debt, a mistake, an absence but of a day or so at
most,--you understand?"

"Yes. Will you not see her, Eugene, before you go, and say this
yourself?"

"I!--O God!--I! to whom this day was--No, no; save me, I implore you,
from the agony of such a contrast,--an interview so mournful and
unavailing. No, we must not meet! But whither go we now? Not, not,
surely, through all the idle gossips of the village,--the crowd already
excited to gape and stare and speculate on the--"

"No," interrupted Lester; "the carriages await us at the farther end of
the valley. I thought of that,--for the rash boy behind seems to have
changed his nature. I loved--Heaven knows how I loved my brother! But