"Not want you, my own darling!" said Marah Rocke, putting her arm around Clara's waist, and drawing her to her bosom, "not want you! You know I am just as much in love with you as Traverse himself can be! And I have longed for you, my sweet, longed for you as an unattainable blessing, ever since that day when Traverse first left us, and you came and laid your bright head on my bosom and wept with me!" "And now if we must cry a little when Traverse leaves us, we can go and take comfort in being miserable together, with a better understanding of our relations!" said Clara with an arch smile. "Where are you all? Where is everybody--that I am left wandering about the lonely house like a poor ghost in Hades?" said the doctor's cheerful voice in the passage without. "Here, father--here we are--a family party, wanting only you to complete it," answered his daughter, springing to meet him. The doctor came in smiling, pressed his daughter to his bosom, shook Traverse cordially by the hand, and kissed Marah Rocke's cheek. That was his way of congratulating himself and all others on the betrothal. The evening was passed in unalloyed happiness. Let them enjoy it! It was their last of comfort--that bright evening! Over that household was already gathering a cloud heavy and dark with calamity--calamity that must have overwhelmed the stability of any faith which was not as theirs was--stayed upon God. CHAPTER XXVIII. A PANIC IN THE OUTLAW'S DEN. Imagination frames events unknown, In wild, fantastic shapes of hideous ruin, And what it fears creates! --Hannah More. Dark doubt and fear, o'er other spirits lower, But touch not his, who every waking hour, Has one fixed hope and always feels its power. --Crabbe. Upon the very same night, that the three robbers were surprised and captured by the presence of mind of Capitola at Hurricane Hall, Black Donald, disguised as a negro, was lurking in the woods around the mansion, waiting for the coming of his three men with their prize. But as hour after hour passed and they came not, the desperado began heartily to curse their sloth--for to no other cause was he enabled to attribute the delay, as he knew the house, the destined scene of the outrage, to be deserted by all for the night, except by the three helpless females. As night waned and morning began to dawn in the east, the chief grew seriously uneasy at the prolonged absence of his agents--a circumstance that he could only account for upon the absurd hypothesis that those stupid brutes had suffered themselves to be overtaken by sleep in their ambuscade. While he was cursing their inefficiency, and regretting that he had not himself made one of the party, he wandered in his restlessness to another part of the woods, and the opposite side of the house.