Holt turned to address his visitor, but he had disappeared. It was like
the passing of a troubled dream, vague and indistinct, but fraught with
horrible conceptions. A cloud seemed to gather on his spirit, teeming
with some terrible but unknown doom. Its nature even imagination failed
to conjecture. His first impulse was to visit his daughter. He found the
careful nurse by her bedside. As he entered the room, Agnes raised one
finger to her lips, in token of silence. The anxious father bent over
his child. Her sleep was heavy, and her countenance flushed. A tremor
passed over her features. A groan succeeded. Suddenly she started up.
With a look of anguish he could never forget, she cried--
"Help! O my father!" She clung around his neck. In vain he endeavoured
to soothe her. She sobbed aloud, as if her heart were breaking. But she
never told that dream, though her haggard looks, when morning rose on
her anxious and pallid countenance, showed the disturbance it had
created.
Days and weeks passed by. The intrusion of the bold outlaw was nigh
forgotten. The father's apprehensions had in some degree subsided, but
Constance did not resume her wonted serenity.
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