"The time was," thought the gipsy, as he climbed the hills once more, after leaving Colonel Manners at the house of Sir William Ryder,--"the time was when these limbs would have undertaken double the toil that they have undergone this day, as a matter of sport. But now they are weary and faint, like those of some sickly dweller in cities--of some slave of effeminate and enfeebling luxury. Age is upon me: the breaker of the strong sinew--the softener of the hard muscle--the destroyer of vigour, activity, and power has laid upon me that heavy hand, which shall press me down into the grave. But it matters not--it matters not. I have outlived my time; I have changed, and the things around me have changed also; but we have not changed in the same way. They have sprung up, new and young, while I have grown weary and old; and, in the midst of the world, I am like a withered leaf of the last year among the green fresh foliage of the spring. It is time that I should fall from the bough, and give place to brighter things."

As he thus thought, whether from corporal weariness, or from the listlessness of the dark melancholy which oppressed him, he turned from the high-road into the first plantation that he met with; and without such care for personal comfort as even a gipsy usually takes, cast himself down under the trees, and sought to refresh himself by sleep. Gloomy ideas, however, still pursued him long; and, with the superstitious imaginations of his tribe heightening the universal propensity to superstition in our nature, he fancied that the melancholy which disappointment, and anxiety, and difficulty, and failure, had produced, was but some supernatural warning of his approaching fate. The bravest, the wisest, the best, as well as the most hardened and the most skeptical, have felt such presentiments, and have believed them; and very often, also, either by the desponding inactivity of such belief, or by rash struggles to prove that they did not believe, have brought about the fulfilment of that which originally was but a dream.

Sleep, however, came at length; and it was daylight the next morning ere the gipsy awoke. He rose refreshed; and his dark visions, perhaps, would have vanished, if he would have let them: but there is nothing to which one so fondly clings as superstition; and to have cast from him as untrue a presentiment in which he had once put faith, Pharold would have held as treason to the creed of his people. He rose, then; and, pursuing the paths through the plantations and the woods, avoiding all public ways, and never venturing farther from the covert than to follow the faintly-marked track through some small solitary meadow, he mounted the remaining hills, and bent his steps towards the thick wood in which he had left his companions, revolving, as he went, what might be the probable fate of those to whom he had so perseveringly clung, when he, himself, should be no more.

He found the other gipsies all on foot, and busied about the various little cares of a fresh day, with the light and careless glee of a people to whom the sorrows of the past week are as a half-forgotten tradition. The old were talking and laughing at the entrances of their tents, the young were sporting together by the stream, and the middle-aged were employed in mending this or that which had gone wrong about their carts and baggage, and whistling as lightly at their work as if there were no such thing as grief in all the world.

"And thus will it be," thought Pharold, as he approached--"thus will it be with them all, ere I am a week beneath the earth. But it matters not, it matters not. So be it. Why should I wish tears shed or hearts bruised for such a thing as I am?"

He believed that he did not wish it; yet where is the man so steeled by nature or philosophy as to look forward to the grave, and not to hope that some kind bosom will sigh, some gentle eye give a tear to his memory when he is gone? and though Pharold believed that he did not wish it, he deceived himself. At the door of his own tent sat she on whom, in this his latter day, he had bestowed the better part of all his feelings; whom he loved, at once, with the tenderness of a father and the tenderness of a husband,--a union of feelings that never yet produced aught but sorrow, for it never can be returned in the fulness of its own intensity.

She was looking lovelier, too, than ever he had seen her; and though, heaven knows, her beauty owed but little to richness of dress, yet there was a something of taste and elegance in her attire, rude as it was in quality, that pleased the eye of one who had acquired a knowledge of what constitutes beauty in other times and circumstances. She had twined a bright red handkerchief through the profuse masses of her jetty black hair, and had brought a single fold partly across her broad clear forehead. Her full round arms were bare up to the shoulders; and, as if in sport, she had cast her red mantle round her, like the plaid of a Scottish shepherd, contrasting strongly, but finely, with the drapery of a blue gown beneath. Her head was bent like the beautiful head of Hagar, by Correggio; and her dark eyes, their long lashes resting on her sunny cheek, were cast down, well pleased, upon one of the children of the tribe, who, leaning on her knees, was playing with the silver ring that circled one of the taper fingers of her small brown hand.

Lena did not hear the approach of any one till Pharold was within fifty paces; but the moment his well-known step met her ear, she started up and ran to meet him, with smiles that were, perhaps, the brighter because she felt that she had something to atone for, weighty enough to be concealed, and yet not to oppress her very heavily. Pharold pressed her to his bosom; and whatever he might try to believe, he felt--felt to his heart's inmost core--that there was at least one person on the earth that he should wish to remember him, after the stream of time had washed away his memory from the hearts of others.

He gave but one moment to tenderness, however; and the next, turning to the rest of the gipsies, he inquired, "What news of the boy?" The old woman was instantly called from one of the tents, and came willingly enough to make her report to Pharold, though she grumbled audibly all the way at being hurried, and at such tasks being put upon her at her years.

"Well, Pharold, I have done your bidding," she said, in a tone both cajoling and self-important--"I have done your bidding, and have seen the lad. Poor fellow, his is a hard case, indeed; and such a fine, handsome boy, too, and so happy a one as he used to be--"

"But what said he, woman?" interrupted Pharold, sternly. "Keep your praises of him till he be here to hear them, and thank you for them; for, doubtless, he is the only person who will do so. Tell me what he said of his situation."

"What he said!" replied the beldam; "why, what should he say, but that if he be not got out to-morrow night--that is, this night that is coming,--he will be sent away to the county jail, and hanged for the murder of that fellow that is dying or dead up at the house? That's what he said."

"But did he say how he was to be delivered?" asked Pharold. "That is the question."

"Yes, to be sure he did," answered the old woman. "Do you think I went there for nothing? He may be delivered easy enough, if folks like to try. You know the windows of that there strong room, Pharold, well enough, and I know them too, for I was in there for half a day or more, when old Dick Hodges swore to my nimming his cocks and hens. He lies in the churchyard now, the old blackguard, for that was in the old lord's time. But, as I was saying, you know the windows well enough. When they had you up at the house, and wanted to make a gentleman of you, but found they had got hold of the wrong stuff--"

Pharold's brow grew as dark as a thundercloud. "On, woman, on with your story," he cried, "and turn not aside to babble of the past. What have you or I to do with the past? You were the same then that you are now, only that the vices and follies of youth have given place to the vices and follies of age."

"Well, well, I'm sure I'm telling my story as quickly as it can be told," replied Mother Gray; "but as I was saying, you know the windows well enough, and know that any one that is at all strong could knock off two or three of the bars, and let the boy out in a minute. Any one could do it."

"Oh, but he said that nobody but Pharold must come," cried Lena, eagerly, forgetting for the moment all caution, and then reddening, like the morning sky, as soon as she had spoken.

"Ha!" cried Pharold, turning his keen dark eyes full upon her, "said he so? and how know you that he did say so, Lena? Ha!"

The poor girl turned redder and redder, and looked as if she would have sunk into the ground, while Pharold still gazed sternly upon her, as if waiting an answer; but the ready cunning of the old woman came to her aid with a lie. "How does she know that he said so?" cried the beldam: "how should she know it but by my telling her?"

Lena heard the falsehood more willingly than she would have spoken it, though by her silence she made it her own, as much as if her lips had given it utterance.

"'Tis well, 'tis well," said Pharold, with a bitter smile curling his lip,--"'tis well. So he said that none but Pharold should come? Now tell me, woman, if your tongue be not so inured to falsehood that it cannot speak truth,"--Lena burst into tears, and crept back to her tent, while Pharold went on,--"tell me why this boy said that none but Pharold must come, when any one else could remove the bars as well?"

"Because he said that any one else who did not know the park might make some mistake," replied the old woman, "and so ruin both himself and poor Will."

Pharold mused for a moment or two and then asked, "Was all quiet when you went?"

"As quiet as a dead sheep," answered the old woman, with a grin.

"And no one stirring in the house or in the park?" demanded Pharold.

"In the park all was dark and solitary," she replied: "I saw nothing but some fine fat deer, and an owl that came skimming along before us in the long walk; and on the outside of the house all was quiet enough too: but there were two rooms above where there were lights; and I waited awhile to see if they would be put out: but they were so long, that I made up my mind, as all the rest was still, to creep on; and I got close under the boy's window and called his name, and he told me that the lights were in the room where the man is dying."

Pharold mused again; but the man whom we have heard called by the name of Brown, a powerful gipsy of about forty years of age, took a step forward, and laid his hand kindly upon Pharold's arm. "I will tell you what, Pharold," he said, "this seems to me a doubtful sort of business. I do not think the boy would do any thing willingly to trap one of us: but he may have been taken in somehow; and it does seem as if there was something strange about it; so I'll tell you what, I'll go, and the old woman shall show me the way."

"No, Brown, no," said Pharold; "I would put upon no man what I was afraid to do myself,--if I could be afraid to do any thing. If there be no treachery, there is nothing to fear: and if there be treachery, I should be base, indeed, if I let any of my people fall into what was meant for myself. No, no, I will go: no man can avoid his hour, Brown. We all know that when fate has fixed what is to happen, we may turn which way we will, but we shall not escape it. I will go; and if there be treachery, let it light upon the heads of those that devised it. It is my fate--I will go."

"No, no, Pharold," said the other; "let me go. To me they can do nothing. Me they cannot charge with any crime, even unjustly; for I was not in the park at all when the man was shot. You and all the others were, though you went there to prevent it; and so, if they catch you, they may send you to prison: but if they catch me, they can do nothing with me. They can but say I came to speak with the poor boy through the bars."

Pharold, however, persisted. It had ever been his habit among his fellows to take upon himself the execution of any thing difficult or dangerous, and he regarded it almost as a privilege, which he clung to the more, in the present instance, from a superstitious conviction that fate was leading him on, and that it was useless to struggle against its influence. "There yet remains the whole day before us," he said, when he had silenced opposition, "and but little remains to be done. Call all the people round me, Brown, for I am going to speak with them,--perhaps it may be for the last time."

The gipsies who already surrounded him saw well that a presentiment of approaching death weighed upon the mind of him who had been so long their leader, and it is but doing them justice to acknowledge, that most of them grieved sincerely to observe that such was the case. None, however, offered comfort or consolation; for their belief in their own superstitious traditions was far too strong for any one to dream even that such a presentiment might prove fallacious. The rest of the tribe were soon called together; and, stretching themselves out in various groups around, with the clear forest stream bubbling and murmuring through the midst, and the bright sun streaming through the oaks and beeches upon the bank on which they lay, they waited in silence for what Pharold had to say. The tone he assumed was simple and calm, perhaps less marked and emphatic than that which he generally affected. "My friends," he began, "I am going this night upon a matter more dangerous than any that I have ever yet attempted,--at least so, for many reasons, I am led to think; in it I may probably be taken by men who hate and persecute us; and if I be so taken, do not deceive yourselves--I shall never return among you alive. I feel it, I know it; and, therefore, if by the first light of to-morrow's sun I have not returned, look upon me as among the dead, take up your tents, and go as far as you may. When you are so far from this place that they cannot follow you to persecute you, seek out what has become of the clay that I leave behind. Lay me in the earth, in some green wood, but where the summer sun may shine upon me, and the winter snow may fall: turn my face to the eastward, and put one hand upon my heart, and let not the earth that covers me be more than four palms deep.^[7] When you have done all this, forget me; but forget not what I am going to say. Remember, ever before all things, that you are a nation apart, and mingle not with the strangers among whom you dwell. Let them follow their way, and you follow your way. Give obedience to their laws, but maintain your own liberties: bend to their power, but preserve the customs of your fathers. Shut, them out, too, as far as may be, from among you: let them not learn either your history, or your language, or your knowledge; for if they do they will make these the means of softening and enslaving, under the pretence of civilizing and improving you. Forget not that you have been, and that you shall yet be, a great people; nor ever think that there are too few of you left for the time of your greatness to come. Look at this acorn: it fell from a great tree, that has been cut down; and though now it be smaller than the egg of a wren, it shall be as great as the mightiest of the forest. So is it, and so shall it be, with you. None of you can ever gain so much as I could have gained by abandoning my people; but I would not do it. I refused wealth, and ease, and honour, and I chose poverty, and wandering, and persecution, because I was born of the gipsy race, and would not belie the blood of my fathers, by mingling with the persecutors of our people--because I would not be chosen from among them for a plaything and an experiment. I learned their knowledge, though they learned not ours, and I returned to mine own as true in heart as when I left them. Thus let it be with you all; and if, after I am gone, the name of Pharold is ever mentioned, let it be as an example of how true our people should be to the ways of their fathers."

He paused, and there followed among those who surrounded him the low murmur of people who draw their breath deep after a long and eager attention, but no one spoke; and in a few minutes Pharold proceeded:--"If I return no more, there will be some one wanting to lead and direct you all aright. My choice falls upon you, Brown, as the calmest, and the wisest, and the bravest, with years sufficient to ensure experience, and yet with vigour unimpaired by age. Do you consent, my brothers, that he shall be your Ria?"

The choice was one which all anticipated, and with which all were pleased, except, perhaps, two or three, who, feeling that they ought to be satisfied though they were not, and that they must submit whether they liked it or not, yielded with the rest, or, perhaps, gave more clamorous approval. "I have now," continued Pharold, turning towards Lena, who, since the people had been called round him, had remained near in silent tears while he had been speaking,--"I have now spoken to you of all things save one. I leave among you my wife, then a widow; and as Heaven knows I have dealt justly with you all, so, I beseech you, deal justly and kindly by her. Be unto her as brethren and sisters. I supplied unto her the place of parents that are dead; you supply unto her, I beseech you, my place when I am dead also. Let her share with the rest in what you gain, until she shall choose out some one to be to her a support and a husband. Let her choice depend upon herself, but oh, let her choice be good; let it not fix upon a fair form or a smooth tongue, but upon a strong mind and a noble heart."

He spoke firmly, but, perhaps, somewhat bitterly; and Lena, though she raised her eyes for a moment with a look of imploring deprecation, said nothing, but wept on in silence. "And now," continued Pharold, "I will have done, my friends, with but one more injunction, which is, keep together. Let not the people of the land separate you, but be ye true among yourselves."

Thus saying, he rose from the bank on which he had been leaning, and the rest sprang upon their feet also. His scanty auditory then dispersed to their several occupations again, though some lingered for a few minutes, gazing upon him as on one they might never see more after that day was over; and Pharold, after speaking a few words in a gentler tone to Lena, laid his hand upon the arm of the man Brown, and walked with him slowly down the course of the stream.

Their conversation was long: many were the sage and prudent maxims that Pharold gave to him whom he had pointed out as his successor, many the wild and singular cautions which he suggested. It was, in fact, his lesson of political economy and good government; but, as it would not suit any other world but the little world for which it was intended, it were useless to repeat it here. He did not, until the end, refer again to himself in any way; but, after having spent nearly two hours in giving instructions respecting the rule and protection of the tribe, he added, "I need not tell you, Brown, that I feel the flame going out--not that it is weaker, not that it is less bright--the broadest blaze of the fire is often the last, but it is near its end; and if it be not to-morrow or the next day, in the manner that I apprehend, or in the way my enemies seek to make it, yet death will come soon, in his own time, and by his own path. Look there!" and he spread out before his comrade his broad palm, traversed with the many lines and marks which are usually to be found there. The other gipsy gazed on it for a moment, gravely, but made no reply; and Pharold went on:--"Nevertheless, as I have heard the ignorant and the conceited declare, that people often do things themselves to bring about a fate that is foretold them, I will neglect nothing that can turn aside mine. If, then, by dawn to-morrow, I have not returned to you, send instantly a trusty messenger to the small village of ----, where I have sent several times before, to the House of Mr. Harley--many of the people know it--bid them tell him for me, that I am in prison, on a false accusation which he knows of, and that if he would save me, he must come over to Dimden soon. See that it be done rightly, Brown; for were anything to happen to me without his knowledge, he would say that I had used him unkindly, or had not confidence in his honour."

"I will do it myself, Pharold," replied the gipsy: "I will take one of those that have been over, to be sure of the place, and will see the man myself, if it be possible."

"Oh, he will see you," answered Pharold; "he has learned bitter lessons in life, and knows that a better heart may beat under a gipsy's bosom than under the robes of peers and princes. Now, then, I have said all, Brown: and fare you well, my friend. You at least will not forget me."

"Never!" answered the other; and they parted. During the rest of the day a degree of gloom naturally hung over the party of gipsies; and wherever Pharold turned, there were eyes looking at him, with some degree of superstitious awe, as one in whom approaching fate was already visible. Evening, however, came at length, and night began to fall; and, ere the first twinkling star could claim full possession of the sky, a thin whitish autumn mist rose up from the valleys, and came drifting with the wind through the trees, and down the course of the little stream by which the gipsies' tents were pitched. Pharold remarked it with satisfaction, exclaiming, "May it last, may it last. With such a mist as that, and a dark autumn night, he were a keen man, indeed, that could take me in Dimden Park."

As far as the continuance of the mist went, he was gratified to his wish; for it not only remained, but increased in density to that degree, that even round the gipsies' fires the dark faces lighted by the red glare appeared dim and phantom-like to those who sat on the other side of the blaze. Pharold himself remained from sunset till nearly midnight in his tent; and Lena had not appeared at all from the time he had spoken to the tribe in the morning. At length Pharold came forth; and the gipsies, who were still congregated round the fires, thinking that he was about to join them for a time ere he went, made room for him among them; but he glided on past them all, merely saying, in a low voice as he came near the spot where Brown was placed, "I go! do not forget!"

He then walked rapidly on, threaded the most intricate mazes of the wood, traversed the common above the park, leaped the park wall, near the spot where Dickon and his party had entered on the ill-starred deer-stealing expedition, and paused for a moment to look around him, and consider his further proceedings. The mist, which lay heavy on the common and the lawns, was still more dense and dark amid the covered walks and narrow paths of Dimden Park; but the obscurity proved of but little inconvenience to one so much accustomed to wander in the night as Pharold. Long habit of the kind seems, indeed, to give another sense, and to enable persons who are possessed of it to distinguish, as it were instinctively, obstacles in their way which the eye could not have detected.

Thus he walked on, through the thick trees and among the narrow paths of the park, without ever either taking a wrong direction, or running against any of the massy trunks round which the small footway turned. Ever and anon, however, he stopped, to listen, but all was still: there was not a voice, a footstep, a rustle, a sound of any kind to be heard, till he entered one of the principal alleys leading towards the house, when a distant clock struck a quarter to twelve, and, as if roused by the sound, the owl poured forth her long melancholy cry, and flitted slowly across Pharold's steps, stirring slightly the foggy air with the scarcely heard wave of her light wings.

Pharold marked its voice, and felt it flap past him; and, in that mood when the heart connects every external thing with its internal gloom, he muttered, "Hoot no more, bird of ill omen! I am prepared and ready!"

The end of the alley which he had chosen opened upon the side of the lawn, at the distance of perhaps a hundred yards from the house. But the fog was too thick for even the bare outline of the mansion to be visible; and the only thing that indicated its proximity was the appearance of two or three rays of light, pouring from the apertures in some window-shutters, and streaming through the white mist, till they lost themselves in the night. Pharold paused and gazed; and emotions as mingled, but less painful, affected his bosom, as those which had been experienced by Lord Dewry when he had last looked towards the same building. All was silent around; he felt himself secure in the obscurity; he was in no haste to go on; and as he stood and gazed towards the dwelling where two years of the happiest part of life had been spent, his mind naturally reverted to the past. He called up those boyish days, the pleasures he had then enjoyed, his friendship with one noble-minded youth, and the injuries he had since received from the other companion of his boyhood. He thought of what he had been, and of what he might have been; of the promises held out to him by those who would have kept them; of the prospects that were open before him, if he had chosen to follow them; he thought of the life of honour, and respect, and fortune, which might have been his; and he compared it with the life of wandering, and persecution, and anxiety, which he had led from the day he quitted that mansion to the hour that he stood there again, in the sear and yellow leaf of years, in the close of man's too brief existence. It was a melancholy retrospect, and he could not but feel it as melancholy; but there was a proud, stern satisfaction mingled with it all, enhanced even by the magnitude of the sacrifice he had made. He felt a deep gladness in knowing, now that life lay behind him as a past journey, that he had adhered to his persecuted people, in spite of every temptation that could have led him to abandon them; that voluntarily and perseveringly he had made their fate his fate, in preference to a more splendid destiny than hope herself could have led him to expect. He felt proud, too, and justly, that those feelings and principles which had won him the strong affection of the noble and good in another class, and among another people, had never been forgotten amid dangers, and perils, and sorrows, and temptations; and that he could lay his hand upon his heart, as he gazed up towards the mansion, and say, I have been as noble in poverty and wandering as if I had never quitted the shelter of those once lordly walls.

He stood and gazed for near ten minutes; and then ending his revery, as all deep contemplations end, with a sigh, he turned slightly from the path he had been pursuing, skirted round the edge of the wood, and, without crossing the open space, approached through the trees that part of the building called the justice-room, which lay, as we have seen, contiguous to the chamber in which the boy was confined. Since he had been there, however, the river had encroached so much upon the bank, that no one less active and expert than himself would have found space to pass between the walls of the high old chapel-like projection, so called, and the edge of the bank above the water. He accomplished it, however, though with some difficulty; and then, turning the angle of the building, approached the window of the strong room. Raising himself on a ledge of ornamental stonework, which ran along the basement, he put his hand through the bars to feel whether the inner window was closed or not, and finding that it was shut, he knocked gently on the glass with his knuckles. The moment after, it was opened, and the voice of the youth demanded, "Who is there?"

"It is I, William," said Pharold; "are your limbs free?"

"They are free of cords," answered the lad in a voice that trembled with agitation, and, perhaps, with remorse--"they are free of cords, but I cannot get out."

"I will open the way for you, then," answered Pharold; "but when I have picked out the mortar from these bars, you use your strength to force them out from within."

The boy made no answer, but listened to hear if those who lay in wait had taken the alarm; and a hope did cross his mind that they might have neglected their watch on that dark and chilly night, and that Pharold might give him the means of escape, without the consummation of the treachery to which he had yielded. The hope increased, as Pharold, with a small crow bar, gradually loosened the iron from its socket in the stone, and yet no one appeared; and as soon as it was practicable, the boy, using his whole strength from within, forced out the lower end of the bar. The space, however, was not yet large enough to give a passage to his shoulders, and the gipsy instantly applied himself again to loosen the neighbouring bar. "Oh make haste, make haste," cried the youth, with almost frantic eagerness--"make haste, Pharold, make haste!"

"Hush!" cried Pharold, sternly, and turned hastily to listen; but at the same instant two men sprang upon him. The gipsy struggled to cast them off, but his foot slipped, and they both fell with him to the ground. Ere he could rise, two more were added to the assailants; and finding resistance vain, Pharold instantly abandoned the attempt, suffered his arms to be pinioned with a burning heart, and followed whither they led him.

Several lights and several figures appeared at the small backdoor to which they conducted their prisoner; and more than one lantern was raised to his face, and more than one inquisitive countenance stared into his, as he was taken through some long stone passages towards the very room from which he had been endeavouring to liberate his treacherous young companion. The four men who had seized him hurried him on, keeping close together, as if afraid that, notwithstanding all their efforts, he might still escape. At the door of the strong room they paused; and one, producing a key, proceeded to apply it to the lock, and to undraw the heavy bolts and bars. Pharold spoke not a word; but the moment the door was open, and the light, from some lanterns behind, flashed in through the aperture, his eyes sought the unhappy youth, whose face was covered with tears.

Pharold had only time to ask himself, "Is he guilty, or is he innocent?" when, springing past him and those that conducted him, the lad made straight towards the door. One of those behind instantly stopped him, exclaiming, "Holla, my lad, where are you going so fast?"

The one who had opened the door, however, turned round almost at the same time, crying, "Let him go, let him go; now we have got this one, we do not care for the other. Let him be off as fast as he will."

The gipsy's doubts were cleared up in a moment. He saw himself betrayed by one of his own people, whom he was in the very act of rescuing; he saw himself delivered up by one for whom he had been risking so much; he saw his most generous feelings made use of as snares to take him; and he believed that she whom he loved more than anything on earth was a party to the infamous treachery by which he had been entrapped. Oh, how he hated the whole human race!

So deep, so powerful was the agony that he suffered, that, without a word, without a movement, he stood upon the spot to which his captors thrust him forward, his dark eyes bent upon the ground, his pinioned hands clasped together, as if they had been riveted with iron, his limbs as motionless as if they had been stone. The people round gazed at him, but he saw them not; they taunted and they sneered, but his ear was dull. He felt not at that moment the insolent gaze, the brutal jest, the loss of liberty, the very hands that wrung his muscles. He felt alone that he was betrayed, that his love and his confidence had been cheated and dispised. All the rest was nothing. That, that was the iron that entered into his soul! Ere he had been there a minute, the keeper Harvey, who had not been among those that took him, pushed through the gaping crowd, to assure himself that the report which had reached him was true. But there was something in the gipsy that the man felt and feared, with feelings full of hate, indeed, but nearly akin to awe; and when he saw him stand there like a statue, in the stern bitterness of utter despair, a faint conception of his sensations thrilled even through the coarse mind of the keeper; and after a hasty glance, without proffering a word, he made the rest retire, and following them himself, locked and barred the door.

At about three o'clock in the morning, those who watched in the gipsy encampment were roused by a hasty step, and in a moment after the boy William, all panting and wild, stood by the fire. "What news? what news?" cried one of the men, eagerly; "where is Pharold?"

"Bad news!" answered the youth, gazing round him with a look of bewildered consciousness: "they have caught Pharold as he was helping me out of the prison."

"Brown," cried one of the men, approaching a neighbouring tent--"Brown, here is bad news; they have caught Pharold, and here is Will come back."

Brown instantly started from the hut and came out to the fire: but he was not the only one; for Lena's sleepless ear had caught the tidings, and she too rushed out, with many others that the noise had awakened. Wild apprehension and distress were in her eyes; but she spoke not, while Brown proceeded rapidly to question the lad on what had occurred. The trembling tone in which he answered might proceed from fatigue and agitation at his escape, the varying colour on his cheek might be the flash of the newly stirred up blaze; but there was a rambling and inconsistent character about the story that he told concerning his own escape and the capture of Pharold that raised doubt in many. "You rushed past the people," said Brown, after many other questions, "and got out even after they had taken Pharold. Did no one try to stop you?"

"Yes," answered the lad; "one man did; but I got away from him, too, and ran as hard as I could. But why do you look at me so, Lena?" he added, unable to bear any longer the keen, fierce glance which she had never withdrawn from his face for one moment from the time she had first come forth.

"Why do I look at you so?" said the girl, stepping forward boldly towards him, and casting back the jetty hair from her forehead while she spoke, with a burning cheek and flashing eye, and almost frantic vehemence of tone--"why do I look at you so? Because, base traitor, you have betrayed him that came to save you--and you know it well!--because you have cheated me into persuading him to go;--and oh, if such a foolish thing as love for me had any hand in what you have done--and I say boldly before them all that I believe it had--may that love stay by you to curse you to your latest day! For think not you will prosper in your villany--I hate you! I abhor you! I spit upon you! and I call God and the heavens to witness, that if there were not another man in all the earth I would die sooner than be your wife! Cast him out from among us, Brown, cast him out! Dickon was but a child in villany to him; Dickon was wilful and violent, but he was not base and false; Dickon might be a rebel, but he was never a traitor. Cast him out, Brown, cast him out; for the blood of my husband is upon him; and I will not dwell in the same tents with him. He cannot deny it; his face speaks it; his tale is not even like truth. Oh, my heart misgave me when he used so many vows and protestations last night that he would not have Pharold put in danger for the world. Truth is more simple; and he is a traitor, and the seller of his friend's blood!"

She spoke with all the energy of passion and indignation: her eyes flashed, her arms waved, her very form seemed to increase in size with the wild vehemence of her feelings; and the unhappy youth in the meantime stood before her, with bent head and averted glance, like a convicted criminal before his judge.

"You are guilty, William," said Brown, gazing on him with pity, mingling a drop or two of milder feeling with the sternness of his abhorrence for a crime almost unknown among them,--"you are guilty."

The youth made no answer; and after a pause the other went on:--"You must go out from among us, for we cannot shelter a traitor. And yet I grieve for you, William, that anything should have tempted you to commit such a crime. But still you must go out from among us; for if we be not all faithful to each other, in whom can we trust? Yet I would not cast you alone upon the world, so that one fault might bring on a hundred; and therefore I will send you down to the north country, where, on the side of Cheviot, you will find more of our people, among whom I have a brother: seek him out, and tell him I sent you to him."

"I will not go there," answered the youth, doggedly--"I will not go there, to have this story thrown in my teeth every hour; I will rather go and seek out Dickon, and rove with him."

"No, no, Billy, my chick," cried the old woman Gray--"no, no, go down to the Yetholmers, as Brown says--a merry set they are, and a free, and I will go with you, my lad. I dare say Dickon has gone thither already; and, do you hear, Bill, I dare say among the bold young lads thereabouts we may be able to get up as fresh a band as this is; and I have got a good penny under my cloak, and I will be a mother to you, my boy. Then who knows when you are a smart young fellow, with a goodly band of your own, whether this young minx here, who has flown at you like a wild cat, about that Pharold, who is no great loss any how--perhaps she may be sorry enough that she was not more civil."

"I shall be sorry," said Lena, in a less violent, but not less determined, tone than she had before used--"I shall be sorry if ever I hear the name of such a base and cowardly thing as he is upon this earth again."

"Well, well, scornful mistress Lena, you may rue," replied the beldam. "What say you, Will, will you take me with you?"

The youth at first had shown no very strong liking for the old woman's company; but the hopes of better fortunes which she had held out to him, the boldness with which she had taken his part, the stern and reproachful looks of all around, and the feeling that he was parting for ever from all those with whom his life had hitherto been spent, made him willing to cling to any fragment of familiar things which would remain with him to soften the breaking of all accustomed ties. His conscience, too, reproached him bitterly with what he had done; and the company of any one would have been preferable to solitude with his own heart. Willingly, therefore, he caught at her proposal; and drawing himself up, prepared to steel himself against the contempt of his comrades, while the old woman went to make her brief preparations: but he saw nothing around but the stern, cold looks of persons who, in hatred and scorn, were waiting to see his departure. It was more than he could bear; and, calling to the old woman to follow him down the stream, he turned sullenly away, and walked slowly on without a word of adieu to any one.

"Brown," said Lena, laying her hand upon the gipsy's arm--"Brown, I know what I am going to ask is in vain, for Pharold, when he went, felt the shadow of death upon him, and I am a widow; but did he not tell you any way to rescue him, if he should be taken? He spoke with you long, and he said to me, too, that there was some way that might deliver him, though he spoke not clearly. Oh, if it be so, and he have told you how, lose no time, spare no exertion; for though, God knows, I was deceived by that base villain's artful speeches, and believed that my husband was safe, yet I feel--although I know my innocence of thought, or word, or deed--I feel as if I were guilty of his death."

"No, no, Lena, no, no. We all know that you are not," answered Brown, in a kindly tone; "but go you to your tent, poor girl, and trust to me to do every thing to rescue Pharold that can be done. First, I will try the only means that he himself pointed out. I will follow his directions to the letter. Then, if that should fail, I will try what strength of arm can do; for I will not let him be lost if I can save him. He was a good man, and a wonderful man, Lena. We shall never see his like among us."

Lena burst into tears: they were the first that she had shed, but they were too bitter for any restraint; and turning to her tent, she gave way to them in solitude. In the mean time Brown turned to call one of the younger gipsies, who, on more than one occasion, had been Pharold's messenger, to inquire after Edward de Vaux; but ere the young man had joined him, Mother Gray, as she was called, tottered up, with a bundle on her arm, to bid him adieu.

"Fare ye well, Brown," she said; "fare ye well. I hope you may make a better head of the people than Pharold has been: a pretty mess he has got us all into here. I hope you may do better; but I doubt it, for you were great cronies, and would never listen to what I advised. So I am going to people who know how to manage matters better."

"Get ye gone, then, old mischief-maker," answered Brown; "get ye gone, and the sooner your back is turned upon us the better. I have seen nothing prosper yet with which you had any thing to do; and I dare prophesy that those people will never know peace or happiness where you are suffered to meddle. So get you gone, and Heaven send you a better heart and judgment. And now," he continued, speaking to the young man who had come up, "tell me, Arral, have you not been for Pharold to a house on the other side of the hill--the house of one Harley?"

"To be sure," answered the young man, "I have been four times."

"Then come with me thither, now," answered Brown, "and lead me by the shortest way, for I would be there, if possible, before day-break."

"That is not possible, Brown," answered the other; "for it wants less than an hour of the light, and go as you will it will take two hours and a half."

"We must do our best," answered Brown, "and can do no more. Go on. Keep together, my lads," he continued, turning to the rest of the gipsies,--"keep together till I come back, which will be before the sun is more than half-way up. But have everything ready to go in case of need."

Thus saying, he followed his guide; and pursuing very nearly the path by which Pharold had returned, he arrived in about two hours and a half at the same house to which Colonel Manners had been conducted. By this time, however, the sun had been long above the horizon; and when, after walking through the little shrubbery, they approached the door of the dwelling, a carriage and four smoking horses, with two servants in Mrs. Falkland's livery, were seen standing before the house. The gipsies, however, made their way boldly on, and rang the bell. This intimation was instantly answered by the servant, and, while they were still speaking to him, a shrill cry--evidently from a woman's lips--rang through the passage. Ere the servant could ask their business, a door on the right was thrown open, and the fine head of Sir William Ryder appeared, exclaiming, "Henry, Henry! Bring water! She has fainted!"

A few moments of bustle and confusion succeeded, during which the gipsies were allowed to remain with the door open, and without any of those suspicious precautions which the very fact of their race would have excited against them in any other dwelling. At length the servant returned; and Brown's first question was, "Is the gentleman who was hurt worse?"

"No, much better!" answered the servant, "and you may tell Mr. Pharold--"

"I can tell him nothing," interrupted Brown, "for that is what I have come here to say--that his enemies have caught him; and that, if Mr. Harley would save him, he must bestir himself speedily."

"Indeed!" said the servant, "indeed! that will not be good news to my master's ear; but I must break in upon him to tell it nevertheless. Wait a minute, my friends, and I will go and see what he says."

The servant then entered the room where his master was, and from which proceeded the sounds of eager voices speaking. A moment or two after the door again opened, and the gipsies were joined by the person they sought. Their story was soon told, and easily understood; and the brow of their auditor knit into more than one deep wrinkle, as they spoke.

"I will bestir myself," he said, in answer to Brown; "I will bestir myself, and that instantly too. So rest satisfied in regard to your friend's fate; for, be assured, that I can break the net in which they have entangled him as easily as I could a spider's web; and I will do it, too, with less remorse than I would the toils of the hunter-insect. I will not lose a moment. Henry, have horses to the carriage, and let me know when it is here."