Meanwhile, the victim of these investigations, exhausted by his last night’s watching, was lying in his crazy garret, in a calm deep sleep. His wife sat beside him, leaning her head on her hands, and gazing into her husband’s face, as his features smiled in slumber; while now and then, as her little boy would steal up to her for a kiss or a caress, she would drop a tear of mingled happiness and love upon his face. Sweet, noble woman! As she looked upon that calm, chiselled face, and thought of all her husband had suffered for her sake, how her heart swelled with emotions of tenderness toward him. His pale, high brow was partly shaded by the dark locks which curled around it. On every line of its broad surface could be seen the traces of care. Ellen stooped and kissed it. At that moment the door was suddenly opened, and a crowd of men broke rudely into the apartment. The noise awakened the sleeper, and he started half up and gazed around him, while the frightened little fellow ran and clung to his mother’s side, peeping tremblingly at the strangers. Ellen sprang to her feet equally alarmed, gazing with an ashy cheek on the intruders. “There he is—seize him, seize him,” said the magistrate. Three of the officers rushed forward, but Ellen instinctively interposed between them and her husband. One of the men attempted to thrust her aside. Quick as lightning the indignant husband felled the wretch to the floor. “He resists the law,” shouted the magistrate, “down with him—shoot him if he don’t instantly surrender.” “The law!—what authority have you produced for this insulting entrance on my privacy?” said Stanhope, placing himself before his wife and child, and frowning sternly on the intruders. “_I_ have authority,” said the magistrate, advancing, “you are my prisoner!” “Your prisoner!—for what?” said the astonished husband. “For the robbery of the mail, and the murder of a passenger.” One long piercing shriek rang through that apartment as the wife of his bosom fell fainting to the floor. The next moment, despite his entreaties, despite his struggles when he found his prayers unsuccessful, despite even the petitions of his little son which might have moved a heart of stone, he was torn from his senseless wife, and borne in triumph to the village jail. When, through the humane attentions of a poor neighbor, Ellen revived, it was only to learn that her husband had been rent from her to await—perhaps the scaffold.