Her sobs were her only response. He grew impatient at her refusal to answer his interrogations, and then suspicions of foul play entered his imagination.
"There has been some wrong done you," he cried, appealing to his daughter.
"Speak, and tell me who has dared to injure you," he cried vehemently. "Was it your husband?"
His brow grew threatening and black, as he put the question.
There was no reply, but his daughter clung to his neck with a more convulsive grasp, as though she feared to lose her parent also.
He glanced from Smith to Fred, and from the latter to myself, as though debating whether we were the guilty party.
"Tell me," he cried, lifting her head from his shoulder, and seeking to get a glimpse of her face, "who has wronged you?"
There was no response. He placed her gently upon the blankets, and then with a face that was livid with rage, grasped his musket which had fallen to the ground.
"Which of you has dared to do this?" he asked, and the ominous click of the lock of the gun proved that he was in earnest, and that all of his worst passions were aroused.
No one answered. I looked towards Smith, expecting to hear him explain every thing; but, to my surprise, he was silent; evidently too much astonished at the unexpected turn which the affair had assumed, to speak.
My look was misconstrued by the indignant convict, for before I could speak, the long gun was levelled at the breast of Smith, and in another moment all his hopes and fears would have been at an end, had not his child started up and rushed towards him.
"Not him!" she shouted, wildly. "O God, not him!"
He dropped the muzzle of his gun, but his fierce eyes still glared from Fred to me.
He indicated us with a motion of the hand that held the gun, and looked in his child's face for confirmation.
"Neither, father--so help me Heaven, neither. Without the aid of these friends I should have perished."
He dropped the muzzle of the gun, and each of us felt thankful as he did so, for we had witnessed the accuracy of his aim the day before, and while the muzzle of the musket was pointed towards us, one of our lives was not worth insuring.
"You are tired and distressed," the convict said, addressing his daughter with a degree of tenderness that I thought wonderful after his late outbreak.