“I have nothing to revenge, Guy Rivers—­nothing for you, above all others, to revenge.  Give me the miniature; I have it in trust, and it must not go out of my possession.”

She clung to him as she spoke, fruitlessly endeavoring at the recovery of that which he studiously kept from her reach.  He parried her efforts for a while with something of forbearance; but ere long his original temper returned, and he exclaimed, with all the air of the demon:—­

“Why will you tempt me, and why longer should I trifle?  You cannot have the picture—­it belongs, or should belong, as well as its original, to me.  My concern is now with the robber from whom you obtained it.  Will you not say upon what route he went?  Will you not guide me—­and, remember well—­there are some terrors greater to your mind than any threat of death.  Declare, for the last time—­what road he took.”

The maiden was still, and showed no sign of reply.  Her eye wandered—­her spirit was in prayer.  She was alone with a ruffian, irresponsible and reckless, and she had many fears.

“Will you not speak?” he cried—­“then you must hear.  Disclose the fact, Lucy—­say, what is the road, or what the course you have directed for this youth’s escape, or—­mark me!  I have you in my power—­my fullest power—­with nothing to restrain my passion or my power, and—­”

She struggled desperately to release herself from his grasp, but he renewed it with all his sinewy strength, enforcing, with a vicelike gripe, the consciousness, in her mind, of the futility of all her physical efforts.

“Do you not hear!” he said.  “Do you comprehend me.”

“Do your worst!” she cried.  “Kill me!  I defy your power and your malice!”

“Ha! but do you defy my passions.  Hark ye, if ye fear not death, there is something worse than death to so romantic a damsel, which shall teach ye fear.  Obey me, girl—­report the route taken by this fugitive, or by all that is black in hell or bright in heaven, I—­”

And with a whisper, he hissed the concluding and cruel threat in the ears of the shuddering and shrinking girl.  With a husky horror in her voice, she cried out:—­

“You dare not! monster as you are, you dare not!” then shrieking, at the full height of her voice—­“Save me, uncle! save me! save me!”

“Save you!  It is he that dooms you!  He has given you up to any fate that I shall decree!”

“Liar! away!  I defy you.  You dare not, ruffian!  Your foul threat is but meant to frighten me.”

The creeping terrors of her voice, as she spoke, contradicted the tenor of her speech.  Her fears—­quite as extreme as he sought to make them—­were fully evinced in her trembling accents.

“Frighten you!” answered the ruffian.  “Frighten you! why, not so difficult a matter either!  But it is as easy to do, as to threaten—­to make you feel as to make you fear—­and why not? why should you not become the thing at once for which you have been long destined?  Once certainly mine, Lucy Munro, you will abandon the silly notion that you can be anything to Ralph Colleton!  Come!—­”