That evening, visitor after visitor called, and the parlor was full of talk and music and laughter. Amidst her company, Muriel felt a lonely longing for the face of Harrington. He sometimes dropped in late, for a little while, and this evening, as ten o’clock approached and the guests began to depart, she half-hoped he would come. But he did not, and tired with her last night’s vigil, as with the fatigues of the day, she went to rest as soon as the last visitor had said good night.

The next day came bright and beautiful, and Harrington not appearing as he commonly did, Muriel went out to take her early morning walk alone. While she was out, he arrived and at once went up to the chamber where Roux was confined.

It was not more than six o’clock, but Roux was up and dressed. He sat in a chair, and Tugmutton, squatted on a stool by his side, was reading aloud to him from Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Tugmutton’s reading was a treat to hear. It was, when the text was at all serious, what is called at the theatres, spouting, and spouting of the most grandiloquent order, at that. Accompanied, also, by much and varied action of his big paw, and interspersed not only with explanations and comments of his own, but whenever he came to anything that particularly pleased him, with chirrups and guffaws of goblin laughter, and bobbings and waggings of his big head and blobber cheeks over the page, the effect was, to say the least of it, peculiar. On the present occasion, the fat Puck happened to have arrived at a chapter highly congenial to his special views on the Slavery Question—to wit: that wherein George Harris and his fellow runaways fight the hunters of men; and Roux was at some trouble to detach the sense of the narrative from the luxurious overgrowth of dissertation, interpolation, exclamation, cachinnation, and general outward limbs and flourishes wherewith Tugmutton was embellishing it. Having got to the point where Phineas topples the slave-hunter down the rocks, the delighted squab leaned back and gave vent to an uproarious guffaw, and in the midst of this, while Roux, with a faint and curious smile on his simple, dark face, was listening, Harrington’s knock was heard at the entrance.

Tugmutton instantly grew sober, and sat staring with his great white eyes at the door, as Roux crossed to open it.

“Good morning, Mr. Roux,” said Harrington, entering, and shaking hands with him. “How are you?”

“Firs’rate, thank ye, Mr. Harrington,” replied the smiling Roux, bowing humbly, and shutting the door again.

The intuitive Tugmutton, instantly gathering from Harrington’s slightly distraught air, that something was the matter, remained perfectly motionless, squatting on his low stool with the book in his hands, and staring open-mouthed at him, with a look of preternatural curiosity on his fat face.

“Sit down, Roux,” said Harrington, dropping into a chair without noticing the boy, and gazing absently around the room.

Roux resumed his chair, and with his hand fumbling over his mouth as was usual with him, rolled his eyes timidly about the room.

“Roux, I’ve got news to tell you,” faltered Harrington, smiling. “Good news. What would be the best news you could hear?”

Roux smiled faintly, and still fumbling around his mouth with his hand, while his eyes continued to wander, he appeared to hesitate.

“Well, Mr. Harrington,” he said, after a pause, “I ruther feel oncertain as to what to say. It would be the most uncommonest best news, if I heerd that my brother Ant’ny was to git away. But I’m afeard that’s not likely, Mr. Harrington.”

Roux’s eyes kept wandering, and Harrington looking hard at the opposite wall, smiled furtively. The next instant both he and Roux were startled by a sudden screech of eldritch mirth, and by the apparition of Tugmutton pitching forward on his hands, and slapping over in a somerset as quick as light, coming up clean on his feet with a sober-staring face, and a low “Hoo!” They both stared at him, Harrington with a stir in his blood, for he had not seen the squab, and he was completely startled by his appearance in this astonishing gymnastic.

“Hi!” exclaimed Tugmutton, standing legs dispread, just as he had landed from his flip-flap, and pointing at Harrington with his thumb, while a jovial grin slowly spread over his fat visage. “Hi! That nigger has arroven! My gosh! Mr. Harrington, I smell a rat as if I was nothin’ but nose! Hooraw! Three cheers! Likewise a horse larf! O sing you niggers, sing!” and chanting this line in a shrill voice, Tugmutton stopped to fly into a furious double-shuffle and breakdown, with his shock head bobbing like mad.

“Hallo, you, Tug, now,” quavered Roux, looking frightened. “Just you ricollect where you are now, Tug, in this nice house. What’s the matter with you, and what you goin’ off in that way for now? I don’t see what you mean by sech actions, noways.”

Tugmutton stopped in his dance at the sound of Roux’s voice, and with his short arms akimbo on his ribs, and his short, broad legs dispread, glared up at him with a look of supreme indignation.

“My gosh, father!” he exclaimed, “if you ain’t stupid now! Why jus’ you look at them liniments of Mr. Harrington!” and he pointed with his thumb at Harrington’s face, which was wrinkled into an amused smile. “Now, what’s there father, jus’ as plain as print?”

Tugmutton ended with a snort, and ineffably disgusted at Roux’s unintelligence, dumped down on his stool, and looked at Harrington. Roux meanwhile gazed at the young man with a timid and imploring expression.

“Charles is right, Mr. Roux,” said Harrington, cheerfully, while Tugmutton relapsed into a jovial grin of satisfaction, showing all his ivories, and wagging his bushy head delightedly.

“But now, Mr. Roux,” continued Harrington, “I want you to keep cool. The good news is that your brother is free. Don’t let it overcome you. Be cool.”

“I will, Mr. Harrington,” stammered Roux, terribly agitated, “I will be cool. I won’t let it overcome me.”

“That’s right—don’t,” replied Harrington, with an affectation of phlegm. “By the way, how is your wife? How does she bear the letter I sent her?”

“Oh, she’s pretty well, Mr. Harrington, and she says she thinks I’ll be safe here,” said Roux, trembling all over.

Harrington led him on to talk of other subjects, diverting his mind as much as possible from the matter in hand, and in a few minutes got him tranquil again.

“Now, Mr. Roux,” he said, “Antony is free as I told you, and I want you to prepare yourself to see him soon.”

“Yes, Mr. Harrington, I will,” said Roux with a wondering face. “Did Miss Ames buy him, Mr. Harrington?”

“Oh no,” returned Harrington, “how could she when it was only a day or two since she knew of him? Antony ran away. I have him at my house.”

Roux sprang to his feet, wild with joy.

“Let me go to see him, Mr. Harrington,” he cried.

“No,” said Harrington, rising and gently pressing Roux into his chair again. “You are not safe out of this room. I will bring him here to stay with you. Keep cool, Roux, and be patient. You must expect to see Antony very thin, for he has been sick. But he will soon recover. Now I must go, and to-night when it is dark, I will bring him here. Good bye. Keep up a good heart. He will soon be with you.”

“Oh, I knew it from the very fust,” complacently remarked Tugmutton, taking his leg on his knee, and lolling back a little with the most indifferent air in the world, “I ain’t astonished. My gosh! no, you can’t astonish me. I’m above it.”

“That’s because you have a great mind, Charles,” said Harrington, jestingly. “Now just use your talents in cheering up your father—that’s a good boy.”

“I’ll do it, Mr. Harrington,” replied the cheerful youth, jumping up to let Harrington out, with his pear-face shining gleefully. “I’ll cheer him up so that nobody’ll ever know him again. Good bye, Mr. Harrington. Call again.”

Nodding pleasantly, Harrington departed, while Tugmutton waved his big paw with a lofty air, like a king dismissing his prime-minister after a cabinet council, and closed the door after him.

In the passage below, Harrington met Mrs. Eastman, and mentioned that he intended to bring Antony there that evening after dark.

“Of course,” he added, “there is no danger of the servants mentioning that there are colored men in the house. It would not do to have it gossiped about.”

“No, indeed,” returned Mrs. Eastman, smiling. “They have all, except little Bridget, been with us for years, and are like part of the family. Not the least danger of them. You know, John, we have had fugitives here several times before.

“Yes, I know that,” he replied, laughing.

After a minute’s further conversation, he departed, and went home to breakfast, without having asked for Emily, or seen Muriel. To tell the truth, a feeling of trepidation—a sense of some gathering mystery which made his heart tremble—had grown upon Harrington since he had left Emily the day before, and he shrank in spirit from meeting her or Muriel. He felt darkly that something of import, closely affecting him, remained undisclosed in the mutual relations of himself and his friends. The words of Wentworth—“because it has been played upon”—rang in his memory like a bell. Undoubtedly, Harrington would have unriddled the mystery almost as quickly as Muriel had done, but the blundering avowal of Wentworth that he was Muriel’s betrothed, stood in the way of his sight, and baffled him.

Restless; ill at ease; unwilling to think upon the subject, which yet persisted in invading his mind; and in that state of nervous incertitude, in which mysterious agitations and sudden tinglings of the blood incessantly visit the frame, it was a positive relief to Harrington to get away from himself, among the cheerful, familiar faces around the Captain’s table. The family were assembled in the dining-room, which opened off the kitchen. A pleasant, old-fashioned room, looking on the street, and furnished with plain, old-fashioned, homely furniture. Curtains of white dimity to the windows; a semi-circular stand, holding rows of flower-pots, at one of them, from which the smell of geraniums and roses was shed throughout the apartment; the floor covered with a woven rag-carpet of soberly gay colors; a bureau, spread with white linen at one side, with the miniature model of a ship full-rigged, upon it; straight-backed mahogany chairs, with horsehair seats; two rocking chairs, with white tidies on their backs; a looking-glass between the windows, and on the opposite wall, on either side of the mantel, two portraits, fearfully bad, of the Captain and his wife. The Captain, however, regarded these works of art with complacent satisfaction, and held them as chief among his household treasures. The wandering country artist who had executed them, had represented the Captain as a dark-eyed, rosy-cheeked, staring, marine Adonis, preternaturally blooming in complexion, attired in an indigo blue coat with brass buttons, a buff waistcoat, and a frilled shirt-front, and grasping a spy-glass in one hand and a quadrant in the other. To match this artistic triumph, Mrs. Fisher appeared with sky-blue eyes, lily-white complexion, pink cheeks and lips, an azure dress with a huge broach, and a gold chain and pencil-case, on which the artist had spent his finest genius and his brightest chrome. To trace a resemblance between the portrait, and the kind, quiet, pale-eyed, colorless little woman in a gauze cap, who sat at the head of the breakfast-table, would have been more difficult than to establish a similar likeness between the other portrait and the Captain. But the Captain was happy in the belief that the portraits were gems of truth and art, and as he himself was accustomed to observe on various occasions, putting it as a profoundly philosophical conclusion, “What’s the odds, so as you’re happy!”

A chorus of greetings welcomed Harrington, as he came in and took his seat at the breakfast table.

“We began to think you warn’t comin’, John,” remarked Mrs. Fisher, pouring out his coffee.

“I hurried home as quick as I could, Hannah,” replied the young man. “Well, Sophy, you look as bright as gold this morning. The jewellers would put you in a box of pink cotton.”

Sophronia, a plump and pretty little miss, with blue eyes, a charming little snub nose, and a dimple in her chin, smiled coquettishly at this compliment, and glanced at the smiling face of the speaker.

“My!” she exclaimed, saucily, “how smart you are, John! I wish I could say such pretty things to you.”

“Well, try,” jested Harrington. “Compliment me on this beard which you admire so much.”

“Beard indeed!” said Sophy, tossing her head, with a playful pout of her ripe cherry lips, “I don’t admire it at all. The girls ought to set their faces against it.”

“Maybe they do, Sophy,” returned Harrington, with sly significance.

Sophy was caught, and tossed her head, coloring and smiling, while the Captain, with his mouth full of bread and butter, burst into a roar of laughter, in which Mrs. Fisher, John H., and Joel James joined, the latter beating the table with the haft of his knife.

“That’s all very well for you to say,” said Sophy, with another fling of her head, and pout of her lip.

“And that’s all very well for the girls to do,” bantered Harrington, whereat the merriment burst forth again.

“Gracious! There’s no use in me talking. You’re as smart as a steel trap, John,” she answered.

Joel James, a bluff and burly rosy-cheeked boy, with his father’s features and his mother’s blue eyes, interrupted this play of repartee, to say, with his mouth full of breakfast, that his kite wouldn’t fly nohow.

“She pitches about like as if she was crazy, John,” he grumbled, munching between the words.

“That’s because she hasn’t bob enough. We’ll fix that,” returned Harrington, as much interested in the boy’s grievance as if it was an affair of State.

“And I can’t make my peg-top spin, John,” complained John H., looking dolefully at Harrington with his soft black eyes and chubby countenance.

“Can’t? Well, after breakfast I’ll show you how,” said Harrington, good-naturedly. “The kite shall fly and the top shall spin, as sure as the world goes round. By the way, Eldad, how’s our friend out yonder? I haven’t seen him this morning.”

The Captain glanced out at the open window looking into the yard, before replying.

“He’s up, eating his breakfast,”, he answered. “I’ve locked your door, and the garden gate too, and here’s the keys,” he added, pointing to them by the side of his plate.

“Poor forsaken critter!” murmured Hannah compassionately. “It just made my heart ache to see him when I went up there yesterday. He looked so awful lean and sick.”

“He looks a great deal better this mornin’,” remarked the Captain. “The sleep’s done him a heap of good. It’s astonishin’ how much those colored folks can bear. You wunt know that chap in about a week, he’ll have fatted up so. I’ve dressed him out, John, in some of my old clothes, and made him look quite decent.”

“That’s right, Eldad,” said Harrington. “I’ll make it up to you.”

The Captain laid down his knife, and with his head all askew, looked at Harrington.

“You’ll make it up to me, John?” he remarked, blandly, with a great disposition to swear. “By the spoon of horn, I’d like to catch you at it! The best suit of clothes I’ve got in the house wouldn’t be too good for a man that’s gone through what he has—leastways, if they was fit for him, which they ain’t; and I’m not goin’ to be paid for my Christian duty, young man.”

“I ask your pardon, Eldad,” returned Harrington. “I spoke hastily, and didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“Of course you didn’t,” grumbled the Captain, mollified. “It’s only just your plaguy openhandedness that wunt let nobody go to expense but yourself.”

“By the way, Eldad,” hurriedly replied the young man, steering off the conversation from the approaching commendations, “I’m going to take him off to-night. He’ll be safer there.”

“All right. So he will,” rejoined the Captain, curtly. “That is, if he’s safe anywhere in Massachusetts now. It’s ebb-tide with us this year with a vengeance. If the people haven’t had enough of conservative legislation to sicken ’em this term of the General Court, they never will have. The doin’s of the Legislature have been shameful. Half a dozen righteous measures that passed the Senate, those black sheep in the House have defeated.

“Yes,” returned Harrington. “The Personal Liberty Bill is lost—the bill to protect the property of married women is lost, too—the bill”—

“Anyhow, we’ve got the Maine Law,” interrupted the Captain, triumphantly.

“And that’s tyranny, pure and simple,” said Harrington. “Sorry to differ, Eldad. I respect the temperance people, and I would go for a law that would shut up every dram-shop in Massachusetts; but this Maine Law is a downright violation of the doctrines of civil liberty, and I can’t sacrifice liberty to temperance or anything else.”

Whereupon there was discussion, in which the Captain got the worst of it; and rising, at last, with his head all awry, and his features atwist, took his pipe from the mantel-piece, preparatory to a smoke in the yard. Harrington rose also.

“Why, John,” said Mrs. Fisher, “you’ve made no breakfast at all.”

“Oh yes, Hannah,” he returned, cheerily. “Plenty. Now, Joel and John, the kite and the top.”

The boys scrambled off to fetch the playthings, while Harrington went to his own apartments. The kite and the top put in order, Captain Fisher volunteered to mount guard over Antony if Harrington wanted to go out; and availing himself of this offer, the young man posted off to the fencing-school, and after an hour’s vigorous exercise, returned. Wentworth had called in his absence, and had left word that he was going out of town for the day, but wanted to see Harrington for something special to-morrow. Disturbed at this message—he knew not why—and feeling his strange trepidation stronger than ever, Harrington, who, like Goethe, always sought relief from cares and troubles in intense application to his books, immured himself for a long day’s study, dreading to see Wentworth, dreading to see Emily, dreading, above all, to see Muriel, and yet he knew not why.