e. I rested the bowl on the broad bench beside the door, while
Hiram went backward and forward with the supplies.

"Now," said he as I finished at last, still keeping my eye upon the
road, "you go in and take a turn lyin' down: I'll watch the road. I'm
a-goin' to see this thing out."

But I was not ready to sleep yet; so, yielding to my injunction, he
went in, and I seated myself, wrapped in a buffalo robe from the
wagon. The night was damp and chill.

"Hedn't you better set at the window?" said the kind-hearted landlady,
bustling out. Hiram had evidently told her the story.

"Oh no, thank you;" for I was impatient of walls and tongues, and
wanted to be alone with my anxiety.

What madness was this in Bessie? She could not, oh she could not, have
thrown her life away! What grief and disquiet must have driven her
into this refuge! Poor little soul, scorched and racked by distrust
and doubt! if she could not trust me, whom should she trust?

The household noises ceased one by one; the clump of willows by the
river grew darker and darker; the stars came out and shone with that
magnetic brilliancy that fixes our gaze upon them, leading one to
speculate on their influence, and--

A hand on my shoulder: Hiram with a lantern turned full upon my face.
"'Most one o'clock," he said, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Come to take
my turn. Have you seen nothing?"

"Nothing," I said, staggering to my feet, which felt like
lead--"nothing."

I did not confess it, but to this hour I cannot tell whether I had
been nodding for one minute or ten. I kept my own counsel as I turned
over the watch to Hiram, but a suspicion shot through me that perhaps
that wagon had gone by, after all, in the moment that I had been off
guard.

Hiram kept the watch faithfully till five that morning, when I too was
stirring. One or two teams had passed, but no Shaker wagon rattling
through the night. We breakfasted in the little room that overlooked
the road. Outside, at the pump, a lounging hostler, who had been
bribed to keep a sharp lookout for a Shaker wagon, whistled and waited
too.

"Tell you what," said Hiram, bolting a goodly rouleau of ham and eggs,
"I've got an idee. You and me might shilly-shally here on this road
all day, and what surety shall we hev' that they hevn't gone by the
other road. Old gal said there was two?"

"Yes, but the folks here say that the other is a wild mountain-road,
and not much used."

"Well, you see they comes d