He had passed some moments in these reflections--fitful, varied, and broken as those of a disconnected dream--when turning his eyes again towards the gate where the sentinels had been posted, he saw one of them bring his musket to the charge as if to prevent the ingress of some one seeking admittance. Struck by the circumstance, Ronayne hastened below, and as he advanced he saw the same sentinel pick up a piece of paper, the superscription of which he was endeavoring to examine. Before he had time to do this, however, the officer had come up, and the sentinel promptly handed it to him. "Good God! what does this mean?" It was the handwriting of his wife. Ronayne looked forward upon the common, and saw at about a hundred yards before him, and retiring rapidly, the horseman whom he had just before remarked. There was no necessity for asking any questions. The whole thing explained itself. "What can she have to say to me?" he mused to himself, as he broke the bark string with which the note was tied; his competitor of yesterday, too, the bearer! Hastily he unfolded it. It contained these few words, hastily written in pencil on a leaf torn from her memorandum book--"Go not to the council!" He examined the paper closely--he could find no more. The feelings of Ronayne, on reading these few words, traced by his wife's well-remembered hand, may be comprehended. All the stubbornness of his indifference was shaken; and sinking every consideration of self he found a strange, wild pleasure in the knowledge that she was free from personal restraint, and had power to command the services of those whom she willed to do her bidding. What the meaning of the caution was, in regard to the council, he could not divine, neither wherefore it had been couched in such laconic terms; but it was evident that, as the new wife of Wau-nan-gee, she had obtained information of some danger of which they in the garrison knew not, and that the recollection of those she had left behind was not so weakened as to prevent her from imparting to those most interested what she had learned. Feeling the necessity of communicating instantly with Elmsley on the subject, yet scarcely knowing how, without exposing Maria, to account to him for the manner in which he had received the singular warning, he sought his friend, who had now finally disposed of his men at their several posts, and told him that, without feeling himself at liberty to reveal to him the medium through which the suspicion had been awakened in his breast, he had every reason to believe that some treachery was intended at the council called by Headley, and that he had come to consult with him accordingly.