Learmont at Home.—Dark Reflections.—The Summons.—The Confederates.—Suspicions. In the small room which he had fitted up specially for himself, sat the Squire Learmont, in an attitude of deep thought. His lips occasionally moved as if he were repeating to himself the subject of his meditations. The colour went and came upon his agitated face, according to the uneven tenor of his thoughts. For more than an hour he thus sat, and then suddenly rising as if with a violent determination to shake off completely “the thick coming fancies” that disturbed his brain, he went to the window and looked out upon the court yard of his mansion. The uneasy thoughts of Learmont were not, however, to be thus laid aside. In a few moments he again threw himself into the chair from which he had risen, and commenced in a low, anxious, trembling tone, muttering half aloud, the subject of his gloomy thoughts:— “Was ever a man,” he said, “so circumstanced as I? With all the will to act, yet so hemmed in by strange circumstances as to be powerless—completely powerless. In truth, the wily Jacob Gray has had a triumph. Can the smith have played me false, and warned him of his danger; yet, no—I cannot think so. Britton hates him, and would gladly take his life. He could not, with such consummate art, act the passion he exhibited at that lonely hovel, wherein I thought I had entrapped this Gray. There is yet another supposition. Does the boy live? Ay, is there a young heir to Learmont’s broad acres and princely revenues? That is a grave doubt; but let me doubt ever so strangely, I dare not act. Jacob Gray—Jacob Gray, the arch-fiend himself could not have woven a better web of protection around a human life than you have cast around yours! I dare not kill you. No! Jacob Gray, you are very safe.” Learmont clenched his hands and ground his teeth together, in impotent rage, as he felt the full conviction upon his mind that he dared not, for his own life’s sake, interfere with Jacob Gray. “There is no plan but one,” he said, after a long pause. “I must try to purchase from him, by some large and tempting offer, both the boy and the confession—then, should he be attracted by such a bait, he shall die for the disquiet he has given me. If I slaughter him here in my own house, he shall die. I shall know no peace till that man is a corpse.” A small timepiece in the room now struck the hour of twelve. “Twelve o’clock,” muttered Learmont. “’Tis the hour the smith said he would be here; but punctuality is not one of his virtues. He knows I must wait for him? Curses on him—curses!” A servant slowly opened the door at this moment, and said, in a timid voice, for the household had had several specimens of Learmont’s wild passions and violence,— “An it please your worship, here is Master Gray.” “Show him here,” said Learmont, quickly, and the man was out of the room as expeditiously as if he had been pulled from behind with a sudden jerk.