titude," said Elizabeth, "though I much doubt if flight would have availed me any thing, had I even courage to execute such an intention. But I thought not of the expedient."
"Of what didst thou think, love? where did thy thoughts dwell most, at that fearful moment?"
"The beast! the beast!" cried Elizabeth, veiling her face with her fair hand: "Oh! I saw nothing, I thought of nothing, but the beast. I tried to think of better things, but the horror was too glaring, the danger too much before my eyes."
"Well, well, thou art safe, and we will converse no more on the unpleasant subject. I did not think such an animal yet remained in our forests; but they will stray far from their haunts when pressed by hunger, and"—
A loud knocking at the door of the apartment interrupted what he was about to utter, and he bid the applicant enter. The door was opened by Benjamin, who came in with a discontented air, as if he felt that he had a communication to make that would be out of season.
"Here is Squire Doolittle below, sir," commenced the Major-domo. "He has been standing off and on in the door-yard, maybe for the matter of a glass; and he has sum'mat on his mind that he wants to heave up, d'ye see; but I tells him, says I, man, would you be coming aboard with your complaints, said I, when the Judge has gotten his own child, as it were, out of the jaws of a lion? But damn the bit of manners has the fellow any more than if he was one of them Guineas, down in the kitchen there; and so as he was shearing alongside, every stretch he made towards the house, I could do no better than to let your honour know that the chap was in the offing.
"He must have business of importance," said
