anything of which he might repossess himself would fall upon this woman, by whom in all probability his life had been saved.  He therefore immediately desisted from his attempt, contenting himself with seizing a cutlass, which one of the ruffians had flung aside among the straw.  On his feet, and possessed of this weapon, he already found himself half delivered from the dangers which beset him.  Still, however, he felt stiffened and cramped, both with the cold and by the constrained and unaltered position which he had occupied all night.  But, as he followed the gipsy from the door of the hut, the fresh air of the morning and the action of walking restored circulation and activity to his benumbed limbs.

The pale light of a winter’s morning was rendered more clear by the snow, which was lying all around, crisped by the influence of a severe frost.  Brown cast a hasty glance at the landscape around him, that he might be able again to know the spot.  The little tower, of which only a single vault remained, forming the dismal apartment in which he had spent this remarkable night, was perched on the very point of a projecting rock overhanging the rivulet.  It was accessible only on one side, and that from the ravine or glen below.  On the other three sides the bank was precipitous, so that Brown had on the preceding evening escaped more dangers than one; for, if he had attempted to go round the building, which was once his purpose, he must have been dashed to pieces.  The dell was so narrow that the trees met in some places from the opposite sides.  They were now loaded with snow instead of leaves, and thus formed a sort of frozen canopy over the rivulet beneath, which was marked by its darker colour, as it soaked its way obscurely through wreaths of snow.  In one place, where the glen was a little wider, leaving a small piece of flat ground between the rivulet and the bank, were situated the ruins of the hamlet in which Brown had been involved on the preceding evening.  The ruined gables, the insides of which were japanned with turf-smoke, looked yet blacker contrasted with the patches of snow which had been driven against them by the wind, and with the drifts which lay around them.

Upon this wintry and dismal scene Brown could only at present cast a very hasty glance; for his guide, after pausing an instant as if to permit him to indulge his curiosity, strode hastily before him down the path which led into the glen.  He observed, with some feelings of suspicion, that she chose a track already marked by several feet, which he could only suppose were those of the depredators who had spent the night in the vault.  A moment’s recollection, however, put his suspicions to rest.  It was not to be thought that the woman, who might have delivered him up to her gang when in a state totally defenceless, would have suspended her supposed treachery until he was armed and in the open air, and had so many better chances of defence or escape.  He therefore