concern. "Be they foes or friends, they must not be suffered to enter
upon that river. Why, the breaking ice has already nearly reached the
bend, and unless it stops there, that path across the stream, within
five minutes, will be as traceless as the ocean! Run down to the bank,
and hail them!" he continued, turning to those around him. "I fear
they would not listen to me. Will no one go to warn them against an
attempt which must prove their destruction?" he added, reproachfully
glancing around him.

"Shall we interfere unasked?" said one, who was smarting under a sense
of former injuries; "ay, and interfere, too, to save such a man as
Peters, that he may go on robbing us of our farms?"

"And save such a man as Sheriff Patterson, also, that he may hang the
innocent and pious Herriot?" said another, bitterly.

"And save them all, that they may keep up the court which will soon
hang or rob the whole of us?" added a third, in the same spirit.

"O, wrong--wickedly wrong! and, if no one will go, I must," cried
Woodburn, turning hastily from the spot, and making his way down the
hill towards the river with all the speed he was master of.

A few seconds sufficed to bring him to the edge of the stream, when,
in a voice that rose above the roar of the wind and waters around, he
called on Peters, who was already urging his reluctant and snorting
horses down the opposite bank into the water, warned him of the
situation of the ice, and begged him, as he valued the lives of his
friends, to desist from his perilous attempt.