speed, and their prisoner enquired of them whither
they were carrying her.

"Never mind that, my pretty passenger pigeon,"
replied the elder with a ghoul-like grin; "you will
not require to find your way back this year." And
the foaming, exhausted animals, relieved from the
trying gallop, dropped into a feeble trot or lazy canter,
whilst Amanda gazed wistfully around to discover
some glimpse of dawn. No certain sign of it, how-
ever, could she perceive on the circle of the horizon,
though all around there showed the whitened eaves
of the roof of gloomy clouds. Her companions, too,
casting jealous glances at each other in the obscurity,
had become more mutually taciturn; and the wind,
that during the previous part of their flight had risen,
as if to be in keeping with the current violence, had
now fallen to a calm; and, proceeding thus, she con-
tinued to tell the terrors of her situation, as they alter-
nately glided through the gloom of the clearing, or
plunged into the denser darkness of the forest; till at
last she was startled by something leaping against her
feet, followed by the pleased but stifled barking of a
huge hound close by her, and at the same instant she
saw a woman bearing a lighted candle in her hand,
emerge from a hovel on the road side. The next
moment the party were halted before it, and the
woman, holding up her light, shed its beams upon the
face and form of Amanda, whose arrival she seemed
to have been expecting; and after having fixed her
eyes searchingly upon her, turned them with a
familiar and significant look on the still seated ruffian.
The light illuminated her own countenance as much
as that of Amanda, who, repelled by her manners

[[84]]

p083 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p084w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p085

v?