Another night went by, and the next morning Jack and his companions expressed their wish to set off again to ascertain how their friends at Bellevue were getting on; but Mr Pemberton would not allow them to go. The risk, he said, was far too great for the advantage to be obtained. They could render no assistance, and would run a great chance of falling into the hands of the rebels and being put to death. In the course of the day, he hoped that Major Malcolm, with some troops, or at all events a body of militia, would appear, and that their first task would be to attack the rebels besieging Bellevue and relieve their friends. In that case, it would not be safe to leave Walton without a garrison, as the fugitives, if they found it unguarded as they made their way to the mountains, would to a certainty in revenge destroy it. "We must wait patiently till the evening, and then Quashie shall go and bring us word what they are about," he added. He spoke with more confidence perhaps than he felt, yet on one point he had made up his mind, that he would not allow his son to run the risk of losing his life. The day drew drearily on. The feelings of the ruined inmates of the mansion can better be imagined than described. Their friends slaughtered, their crops and houses destroyed, and their slaves (the most valuable part of their possessions) in revolt, and, if not killed, possibly never again to be reclaimed--what the future had in store for them no one could say. The more confident asserted that the rebellion would quickly be quelled, but others thought that the slaves, joined by the maroons and other free coloured and black people, might overrun the country, and compel all the whites who might escape slaughter to quit it for ever. Mr Pemberton laughed at such a notion. "Depend on it, as soon as the troops and militia can be collected, the slaves will fly from them as chaff before the wind, or will, if they resist, to a man be cut to pieces," he observed. "It will be a bad look-out for us, I confess, for we shall become bankrupt; but our estates will remain, and we must procure fresh labourers from other countries, Irish or Germans, who would stand the climate almost as well as blacks, and do twice as much work." Though the worthy planter talked and went about trying to keep up the spirits of others, he felt his own sinking when darkness came on, and no troops appeared. Quashie was sent for, and Mrs Pemberton secured the note, done up, as proposed, in his woolly head. She had written it at her husband's dictation, in a small, delicate hand, so that it occupied little more space than a quill.