me, to none.--
The Wonder of a Kingdome.

Lovel almost mechanically followed the beggar, who led the way with a
hasty and steady pace, through bush and bramble, avoiding the beaten
path, and often turning to listen whether there were any sounds of
pursuit behind them. They sometimes descended into the very bed of the
torrent, sometimes kept a narrow and precarious path, that the sheep
(which, with the sluttish negligence towards property of that sort
universal in Scotland, were allowed to stray in the copse) had made
along the very verge of its overhanging banks. From time to time Lovel
had a glance of the path which he had traversed the day before in
company with Sir Arthur, the Antiquary, and the young ladies. Dejected,
embarrassed, and occupied by a thousand inquietudes, as he then was,
what would he now have given to regain the sense of innocence which
alone can counter-balance a thousand evils! "Yet, then," such was his
hasty and involuntary reflection, "even then, guiltless and valued by
all around me, I thought myself unhappy. What am I now, with this young
man's blood upon my hands?--the feeling of pride which urged me to the
deed has now deserted me, as the actual fiend himself is said to do
those whom he has tempted to guilt." Even his affection for Miss Wardour
sunk for the time before the first pangs of remorse, and he thought
he could have encountered every agony of slighted love to have had
the conscious freedom from blood-guiltiness which he possessed in the
morning.

These painful reflections were not interrupted by any conversation on
the part of his guide, who threaded the thicket before him, now holding
back the sprays to make his path easy, now exhorting him to make haste,
now muttering to himself, after the custom of solitary and neglected old
age, words which might have escaped Lovel's ear even had he listened to
them, or which, apprehended and retained, were too isolated to convey
any connected meaning,--a habit which may be often observed among people
of the old man's age and calling.

At length, as Lovel, exhausted by his late indisposition, the harrowing
feelings by which he was agitated, and the exertion necessary to keep up
with his guide in a path so rugged, began to flag and fall behind, two
or three very precarious steps placed him on the front of a precipice
overhung with brushwood and copse. Here a cave, as narrow in its
entrance as a fox-earth, was