thrown open his
holsters, to be prepared for the worst, he rushed into the grove and
beheld a spectacle no more formidable than was presented by a single
individual,--a man in a shaggy blanket-coat,--sitting on horseback under
one of the most venerable of the beeches, and uttering those diabolical
outcries that had alarmed the party, for no imaginable purpose, as Roland
was at first inclined to suspect, unless for his own private diversion.

A second look, however, convinced the soldier that the wretched being had
sufficient cause for his clamour, being, in truth, in a situation almost
as dreadful as any Roland had imagined. His arms were pinioned behind his
back, and his neck secured in a halter (taken, as it appeared, from his
steed), by which he was fastened to a large bough immediately above his
head, with nothing betwixt him and death, save the horse on which he
sat,--a young and terrified beast, at whose slightest start or motion, he
must have swung off and perished, while he possessed no means of
restraining the animal whatever, except such as lay in strength of leg
and virtue of voice.

In this terrible situation, it was plain, he had remained for a
considerable period, his clothes and hair (for his hat had fallen to the
ground) being saturated with rain; while his face purple with blood, his
eyes swollen and protruding from their orbits with a most ghastly look of
agony and fear, showed how often the uneasiness of his horse, round whose
body his legs were wrapped with the convulsive energy of despair, had
brought him to the very verge of strangulation.

The yells of mortal terror, for such they had been, with which he had so
long filled the forest, were changed to shrieks of rapture, as soon as he
beheld help approach in the person of the astonished soldier. "Praised be
the Etarnal!" he roared; "cut me loose, strannger!--Praised be the
Etarnal, and this here dumb beast!--Cut me loose, strannger, for the
love of God!"

Such was Roland's intention; for which purpose he had already clapped his
hand to his sabre, to employ it in a service more humane than any it had
previously known; when, unfortunately, the voice of the fellow did what
his distorted countenance had failed to do, and revealed to Roland's
indignant eyes the author of all his present difficulties, the thief of
the pinfold, the robber of Brown Briareus,--in a word, the redoubtable
Captain Ralph Stackpole.

In a moment, Roland understood the myste