In this terrible situation, it was plain, he had remained for a considerable period, his clothes and hair (for his hat had fallen to the ground) being saturated with rain; while his face purple with blood, his eyes swollen and protruding from their orbits with a most ghastly look of agony and fear, showed how often the uneasiness of his horse, round whose body his legs were wrapped with the convulsive energy of despair, had brought him to the very verge of strangulation.

The yells of mortal terror, for such they had been, with which he had so long filled the forest, were changed to shrieks of rapture, as soon as he beheld help approach in the person of the astonished soldier.  “Praised be the Etarnal!” he roared; “cut me loose, strannger!—­Praised be the Etarnal, and this here dumb beast!—­Cut me loose, strannger, for the love of God!”

Such was Roland’s intention; for which purpose he had already clapped his hand to his sabre, to employ it in a service more humane than any it had previously known; when, unfortunately, the voice of the fellow did what his distorted countenance had failed to do, and revealed to Roland’s indignant eyes the author of all his present difficulties, the thief of the pinfold, the robber of Brown Briareus,—­in a word, the redoubtable Captain Ralph Stackpole.

In a moment, Roland understood the mystery which he had been before too excited to inquire into.  He remembered the hints of Bruce, and he had learned enough of border customs and principles to perceive that the justice of the woods had at last overtaken the horse-thief.  The pursuing party had captured him,—­taken him in the very manner, while still in possession of the ‘two-year-old pony,’ and at once adjudged him to the penalty prescribed by the border code,—­tied his arms, noosed him with the halter of the stolen horse, and left him to swing, as soon as the animal should be tired of supporting him.  There was a kind of dreadful poetical justice in thus making the stolen horse the thief’s executioner; it gave the animal himself an opportunity to wreak vengeance for all wrongs received, and at the same time allowed his captor the rare privilege of galloping on his back into eternity.

Such was the mode of settling such offences against the peace and dignity of the settlements; such was the way in which Stackpole had been reduced to his unenviable situation; and, that all passers-by might take note that the execution had not been done without authority, there was painted upon the smooth white bark of the tree, in large black letters, traced by a finger well charged with moistened gunpowder, the ominous name—­JUDGE LYNCH,—­the Rhadamanthus of the forest, whose decisions are yet respected in the land, and whose authority sometimes bids fair to supersede that of all erring human tribunals.

Thus tied up, his rifle, knife, and ammunition laid under a tree hard by, that he might have the satisfaction, if satisfaction it could be, of knowing they were in safety, the executioners had left him to his fate, and ridden away long since, to attend to other important affairs of the colony.