Page:Lady Barbarity; a romance (IA ladybarbarityrom00snai).pdf/33

 *less person to his doom, the reality is nothing like so happy as the dream.

The Captain set back the wooden shutter, and held the light up high enough for me to peer within. There the rebel was, with gyves upon his wrists; whilst a rope was passed through the manger-ring, and also through his manacles. Thus he was secured strictly in his prison, but his fetters had length enough to permit him to stretch his miserable body on the straw that was mercifully provided. He had availed himself of this, and now lay in a huddle in it, fast asleep. At the first glance I took him to be precisely what he was, a young and handsome lad, moulded slightly with an almost girlish tenderness of figure, his countenance of a most smooth and fair complexion, without a hair upon it, while to read the kind expression of his mien, he was, I'm sure, as gentle as a cherubim.

When the Captain laid the keen light fully on him, he was smiling gently in his sleep, and, I doubt not, he was dreaming of his mother or his lady.

"Why, Captain!" I exclaimed, with an indignant heat that made my companion laugh, "call you this a dangerous rebel? Why, this is but a child, and a pretty child withal. 'Tis monstrous, Captain, to thus maltreat a boy. And surely, sir, you may release the poor lad of these horrid manacles?"

My voice thus incautiously employed aroused the sleeper so immediately that I believe he almost