red by the intelligence, that the passes were secured by soldiers laying in wait for him. Beneath that very ash sate the old woman who apprised him of his danger. How strange that my whole fortunes should have become inseparably interwoven with that man's, without any thing more on my part, than the discharge of an ordinary duty of humanity! Would to Heaven it were possible I could find my humble quiet and tranquillity of mind upon the spot where I lost them!"
Thus arranging his reflections betwixt speech and thought, he turned his horse's head up the path.
Evening lowered around him as he advanced up the narrow dell which had once been a wood, but was now divested of trees, unless where a few, from their inaccessible situation on the edge of precipitous banks, or clinging among rocks and huge stones, defied the invasion of men and of cattle, like the scattered tribes of a
