"What about that? Night or day is all one to me. What will you give me
if I find him before midnight?"

"Anything I've got in the world."

"Give me a sovereign?"

"A thousand!"

"Give me a kiss?"

"A hundred!"

"Then I'll tell you what I'll do--I don't mind a little trouble, to
stop your crying, mamma, because you are the right sort. I'll get the
village out, and we will tread the wood with torches, an' all for them
as can't see by night; I can see all one; and you shall have your kid
home to supper. You see, there's a heavy dew, and he is not like me,
that would rather sleep in this wood than the best bed in London city;
a night in a wood would about settle his hash. So here goes. I can run
a mile in six minutes and a half."

With these words, the strange boy was off like an arrow from a bow.

Lady Bassett, exhausted by anxiety and excitement, was glad to sit
down; her trembling heart would not let her leave the place that she
now began to hope contained her child. She sat down and waited
patiently.

The sun set, the moon rose, the stars glittered; the infinite leaves
stood out dark and solid, as if cut out of black marble; all was dismal
silence and dread suspense to the solitary watcher.

Yet the lady of Huntercombe Hall sat on, sick at heart, but patient,
beneath that solemn sky.

She shuddered a little as the cold dews gathered on her, for she was a
woman nursed in luxury's lap; but she never moved.

The silence was dismal. Had that wild boy forgotten his promise, or
were there no parents in the village, that their feet lagged so?

It was nearly ten o'clock, when her keen ears, strained to the utmost,
discovered a faint buzzing of voices; but where she could not tell.

The sounds increased and increased, and then there was a temporary
silence; and after that a faint hallooing in the wood to her right. The
wood was five hundred acres, and the bulk of it lay in front and to her
left.

The hallooing got louder and louder; the whole wood seemed to echo; her
heart beat high; lights glimmered nearer and nearer, hares and rabbits
pattered by and startled her, and pheasants thundered off their roosts
with an incredible noise, owls flitted, and bats innumerable, disturbed
and terrified by the glaring lights and loud resounding halloos.

Nearer, nearer came the sounds, till at last a line of men and boys,
full fifty carrying torches and lanterns, came up, and lighted up the
dew-spangled leaves, and made