body, and in less than a quarter of an hour arrived at that part of the Fairy Level which, from some tragic accident of ancient date, has obtained the appellation of Winding Sheet Field. Here they beheld the murdered man stretched on his back, with his faithful steed standing beside him, and looking, as it appeared to them, wistfully in his face. He was magnificently dressed, and lay wrapped in a splendid military cloak, which was drenched in blood. The hat had fallen off, and his long dark brown ringlets fell backwards and mingled, as it were, with the wet grass. The face was still beautiful, the repose of death having obliterated all traces of the stormy passions which had once probably

disfigured it. Pierre Ponce, hurriedly alighting,

threw himself on his knees beside the corpse of the man, who had evidently been to him more than a master. He grasped the cold stiff hand, and bending down, pressed his lips against the marble forehead, while tears warm from the heart, fell thick upon the face of the dead.

"Oh, Grand Dieu!" he exclaimed, heedless of the rabble that pressed around him, "I have lost de best friend in de vorld, de friend dat take me up in de strange land, dat never speak unkind to me, dat respect my misfortune, dat love me like von broder. Oh dat de ball pierce my breast for his; for me dere is no need to live. From day

to day, from troble to troble, I go on to de grave, and shall not, ven I fall, be missed by any but von grey-haired man on de banks of de Garonne, dat I must never see. But dis friend, so generous, so gentle, so full of life and all de hope dat make life sveet; oh, dat he should perish in dis manner by de hand of revenge!"

Here the honest Frenchman's utterance was choked by sobs. In an agony of grief he sunk upon the body, while awed by the sacred power of suffering and sorrow, the spectators stood around in silence. At length he rose, and wiping his eyes, said to the magistrate,

"Now, Sare, I shall leave de remains of my good master in your keeping, vile vid dese honest peoples, I scour de country in search of de assassin."

By the orders of Mr. Brown the corpse was borne back to Abertâf, and laid out in the parlour of the Globe, where a coroner's jury was immediately summoned to sit on it.

Monsieur Ponce and the constables, with several hundred persons at their heels, commenced their inquisition by proceeding along the high road to a solitary public-house, about two miles off, in front of which stood the abomination of the Rebeccaites, a turnpike-gate, in happy unconsciousness of the doom that awaited it. Here, on making inquiries, they learned that no traveller whatsoever, whether

on foot or horseback, had passed that morning. It was, therefore, concluded that the perpetrator of the crime and his accomplice must be lurking somewhere in the neighbouring woods waiting for the coming on of night, under cover of which they might hope to effect their escape.

The constables, together with the persons by whom they were accompanied, accordingly divided themselves into several small parties, and scoured the country in all directions, now proceeding up narrow lanes, where the trees and bushes meeting atop, formed long obscure arcades, now by slightly marked bridle paths, winding along the sides or up the slopes of hills, between copses and furze bushes, now entering into the thick of the woods, where they, with difficulty, forced their way through tangled undergrowth, drooping branches, and fallen trees. Here the very peculiar odour which exhales from vegetable substances decomposing slowly in a close and stagnant atmosphere, and constituting a very deleterious species of malaria, strikingly affected their fancy. The fetid exhalations bore, they thought, some resemblance to those issuing from a charnel-house. The very nuts, which, in traversing certain hazel copses, they saw pendant in large heavy clusters over the brooks, had a nauseous and repulsive taste, as though penetrated by the pernicious gases there ascending from the earth.

Several times they were startled into the belief that they had discovered their game by the wood-cush or wild pigeon breaking from her leafy hiding place, and rustling forth between the branches of some antique oak or linden-tree, or by the magpie chattering at a safe height over their heads, or by the wood-pecker hammering at a short distance against the rough-furrowed bark of an elm or alder tree. Large flights of rooks here and there cawed loudly overhead, while more than once they caught a glimpse of the solitary sepulchral raven sitting melancholy on some pendant bough.

Presently the day cleared up, the sun shone forth brilliantly, and the landscape assumed an aspect almost more beautiful than that of summer. The country, broken into a rapid succession of hill and dale, was superbly painted with the varied glowing tints of autumn. Here rocks rising in sharp pinnacles, threw back, as it were, the pellucid light which glittered round them like a halo; there the eye caught glimpses of a piny slope sinking abruptly into some deep valley, curtained below from sight by crags and trees; while beyond stretched irregular chains of mountains and small table lands, partly enveloped in a rich mantle of foliage, partly baring their swelling bosoms to the amorous touch of the fertilising sunbeams. From time to time, as their glances darted up the glens, the dingles, and

ravines, which successively disclosed themselves as they proceeded, numerous bright streams were beheld gliding through their stony and willow-fringed channels, while the red and yellow masses of the woods were piled high up in the distance against the clear blue sky.

The constables, though somewhat eager at the outset, soon felt the wings of their enthusiasm flap round their lank sides, admonishing them that a proper supply of belly timber is an indispensable requisite, even to functionaries, so important as they considered themselves. In obedience to this conviction they called to their aid the larders of sundry ale-houses, in which, while they washed down their bread and cheese with the hordeal invention of Osiris, they gave a new impulse to that circle of alarm which was now rapidly clasping the whole district in its embrace. These delays appeared at once cruel and culpable to Pierre Ponce, whose fiery eagerness to apprehend the assassin, seemed altogether to have annihilated in him the cravings of appetite, for during the whole day he neither ate nor drank. The adventurous youth of Abertâf, who had never before been engaged in the chace of a murderer, also suffered their excitement completely to triumph over hunger. Nothing could exceed their diligence or sympathetic anxiety. They darted hither and thither with untiring rapidity.

VOL. I.

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