of her husband, but finding her efforts in vain, she finally abandoned them, and contented herself with favoring the lovers by every means in her power, without his knowledge, trusting to the chapter of accidents for the result.  Perhaps a few pieces of coin, distributed by Arundel now and then among the servants, contributed to preserve the knowledge of their meetings from the Assistant, who, whatever he might suspect, found it difficult, engaged in his business, to detect them.

While we have been making this tedious but necessary explanation, the young man has had time to reach the thickest part of the forest, lying midway betwixt the residence of the knight and his place of destination.  He followed a narrow path made originally by the Indians, as they traversed the woods in the manner peculiar to themselves, known by the name of Indian file, now skirting the edge of a morass, now penetrating through a thick undergrowth, and now walking in more open spaces and under the shade of enormous trees.

Arundel, as he walked along with his piece in his hand, had kept watchfully looking round to discern any game within range, when, as he reached one of these open spaces, his eyes fell upon a dark object crouched upon a lower limb of a tree immediately over the path before him, and he instantly recognised the animal as the cougar or American panther.  It is the habit of the creature thus to conceal itself in trees, waiting till its prey passes along, when, with one bound, it springs upon its back, and quickly succeeds, by its own weight, and by tearing the veins and arteries of the neck, in bringing it to the ground.

The youth stopped, and gazed upon the motionless beast, whose half-shut eyes he could see winking at him.  He lay extended upon the limb, his forward feet spread out at full length, on which rested his small round head, with little ears falling back almost flat, his hind legs drawn up under his body, and his flexible tail hanging a short distance beneath the bough.  The dark reddish color of the hair of his skin, dashed with blackish tints, harmonized and blended well with the hue of the bark, so that at a distance, to an unpracticed eye, he appeared like a huge excrescence on the tree, or a large butt of a branch that had lodged in its fall.

The young man did not hesitate what to do.  He had come prepared for meeting with wild animals, and felt too much confidence in himself to fear the encounter.  He approached so as to be just without reach of the spring of the creature, and levelling his piece, while he could see the cougar shut its eyes and cling closer to the limb, fired.  The sound of the gun rang through the ancient forest, and in an instant the beast, jumping from the limb, fell at his feet.  So sudden was this, that Arundel had hardly time to withdraw the weapon from his shoulder, before the animal had made the spring.  The first impulse of the youth on finding the ferocious brute thus near,