The day seemed to pass wearily for Bride. Abner was not in the garden. The Duke himself had sent him to the town to try and get speech of his turbulent grandson, and to persuade him, if it were possible, to comport himself with due humility, and without a needless show of defiance before the magistrates that day. None knew better than the Duke how much harm Saul might do to his own cause by an assumption of defiance and impenitence before the arbiters of his fate; and none knew better than he how little chance the young man stood if he were once committed for trial at the County Assizes. Although the spirit of reform was stirring all classes of the community, the feeling against revolution was growing stronger in England with each small outbreak--stronger, that is, in the eyes of the governing powers--and signal examples were made of many obscure persons who had been concerned in turbulent risings and riots. Once before the criminal judges of the land, accused of arson, riot, and such-like misdemeanours, a short shrift and a long halter were almost sure to be his fate. All lay in the Duke’s power to avert a committal, and Abner had been despatched with all speed to seek and use his influence with the impracticable young man, that he might not tie a rope round his own neck by some such speeches as he had made before Captain O’Shaughnessy. The day seemed interminably long to Bride. She went down to the fishing-village, and spoke earnestly with many of the men (now returned home in that state of sheepish shame and satisfaction that betrayed the fact of their having been engaged in some lawless but by no means profitless undertaking) of the wickedness of such attacks on other people’s property, and this spoiling of other people’s goods. They listened to her grave gentle remonstrances in silence, half ashamed of their conduct so long as her eye was upon them, never daring in her presence to attempt the style of argument freely indulged in alone. There was not one of those wild rough men who would have laid a finger on this slight gentle girl, not though she was clad in gold and jewels, or would have spoken a rough word or used an oath in her presence. She and her mother had been and still were an embodiment to them of something transcendently pure and holy: it was the one elevating and sanctifying element in their lives; and many a man or woman, when the hand of death seemed about to clutch them, had sent in haste to know whether one of the ladies from the castle would come, feeling that in such a presence as that even the king of terrors would be robbed of half his power to hurt. The day drew at last to its close, and Bride stationed herself at a window to watch for the return of her father. She saw him at last riding slowly up the ascent, with the servants behind him; and giving him time to alight and reach the hall, she met him there with an eager question on her lips. “Oh, papa, what have you to tell me?”