"Stay a moment," I said, holding her hand. "I have got something in trust for you here. These papers were found upon your table at Beavors by Nat Turner, and he gave them to me. Believe me, dear Bessy, when I tell you, that although I knew they contained a clue to all the painful mystery, which, within the last week or so, has made our intercourse one of doubt and anxiety instead of joy and hope, I have not read one word." "Oh, you might have read them," she said; "but never mind; you shall read them to-morrow, and then tell me what I am to do. You are the lord of my fate, and I will obey you as--as my----" "Husband," I added, hope springing up anew. "I must have one kiss before we part, after such scenes. If to-morrow I find I am wrong in taking it, I will give it back again." She gave it readily, murmuring,-- "Oh, Richard, if such are your bargains, I know already how you will decide." Then, freeing herself from my arms, she ran away, and left me. At the end of little more than an hour, Zed and Julia, Bessy's maid, made their appearance, with a quantity of goods and chattels, sufficient to half-fill the cart in which they came. Soon after their arrival, I, too, went to bed, and only feared that, in the unwonted softness of my couch, I might oversleep myself on the the following morning. CHAPTER XLI. What it was that woke me, I know not. It certainly was not the lark, for there is no such heavenly benison of dawn on this side of the Atlantic. It might, indeed, be a crowd of those large birds of the swallow tribe which they call here the bee-martins, who had congregated round the windows, daring each other to wanton, purposeless flights. But I think it was something within, rather than without--some of those strange, silent operations, amidst which the mind still lives and acts when apparently dead in sleep--some of the heart's sentinels calling the watches of the night. I was to rise to meet Bessy in the early morning, and I did not lie awake to count the hours; I was too weary for that. I slept, and slept soundly, the allotted time; and then I woke, as if a voice had said, "Arise!" The day was yet unconfirmed; the hues of the east were still russet, rather than red; but, as I dressed myself, the rose and the gold must have grown stronger in the sky, for many a magic hue poured varying through the pathways amongst the trunks of the old trees, and, streaming across the turf that covered the little rise on which the house stood, seemed to spread a many-coloured carpet before the windows. I took some pains in my toilet, but I was in the parlour and at the window some time before five o'clock struck. I amused myself with gazing forth, and the quiet, pleasant scene, with the sun at length, "_perfundens omnia luce_," sank into, and refreshed the spirit.