power, he durst not retrace his footsteps.  His tread was slow and fearful, as he traversed the long and dreary vista.  Every sense was now in full exercise;—­his faculties becoming more acute by the extremity of terror he endured.  His ear caught the slightest sound—­his eye, the least motion that glimmered across his path.  Sometimes a terrific shape seemed to glide past:  he brushed the cold and clammy damps from his brow, and it vanished.

Suddenly a door opened at the extremity of the gallery, and a faint light streamed from the crevice.  Voices—­children’s voices—­were heard in the chamber.  He rushed onward.  Rage, frantic and uncontrolled, possessed him, as he beheld the babes, the intended victims of his avarice, in all the bloom of health and innocence, unconscious of danger, bounding through the apartment, together with their nurse and protector, Alice!  Goaded by his insatiate tormentor, he drew a poniard from his vest, and rushed on the unoffending objects of his hate.  Alice shrieked; she attempted to throw herself between them and their foe, but was too far off to accomplish her purpose.  His arm was too sure, and his stroke too sudden.  But ere the steel could pierce his victims it was arrested.  He looked round, and a female figure, loosely enveloped in a dark cloak, had rescued them from death.  It was the same form that had before interposed between them and the fangs of their remorseless enemy.  Loosened by the sudden spring, her garment flew aside.  Hildebrand gazed silently, but with a look of horror, too wild and intense to be portrayed.  He seemed to recognise the intruder—­his lips moved rapidly while he spoke.

“Thee!—­whom the waves had swallowed!  Have the waters given up their dead?”—­he faintly exclaimed, almost gasping for utterance.

“Monster! canst thou look upon this form,” she cried, “and not wither at the sight?  But I have done,” she meekly continued:  “Heaven hath yet a blessing for the innocent;—­but thy cup of iniquity is full.  Thy doom is at hand.  I have trusted Thee, O my Father; and I trust Thee still!”

It was the much injured and persecuted wife of Sir Henry Fairfax who now stood before the abashed miscreant.

“Away!” she cried; “to Heaven I leave my vengeance and thy crime.  Hence—­to thy home!  Thine, did I say?  Soon, monster, shall thou be chased from thy lair, and the wronged victim regain his right.”

Hildebrand, awed and confounded, retraced his path, brooding over some more cunning stratagem to ensure his prey.  He had passed the bridge, and, on attempting to remount his steed, his attention was directed to a cloud of dust, and a pale flash of arms in the evening light.  Two horsemen drew nigh—­their steeds studded with gouts of foam, and in an instant one of them alighted before the traitor.  It was Sir Henry Fairfax!  “Have I caught thee?” cried the knight.—­“What mischief art thou here a-perpetrating?—­Seize that villain!”