ing!

Putting forth all his moral strength, exerting it to the utmost, he
tries to resign himself to the inevitable.

In vain. Life is too sweet to be so surrendered. He cannot calmly
resign it, and again instinctively makes an effort to fright off his
hideous assailants. His eyes rolling, scintillating in their sockets--
his lips moving--his cries sent from between them--are all to no purpose
now. The coyotes come nearer and nearer. They are within three feet of
his face. He can see their wolfish eyes, the white serrature of their
teeth, the red panting tongues; can feel their fetid breath blown
against his brow. Their jaws are agape. Each instant he expects them
to close around his skull!

Why did he shout, sending Darke away? He regrets having done it.
Better his head to have been crushed or cleft by a tomahawk, killing him
at once, than torn while still alive, gnawed, mumbled over, by those
frightful fangs threatening so near! The thought stifles reflection.
It is of itself excruciating torture. He cannot bear it much longer.
No man could, however strong, however firm his faith in the Almighty.
Even yet he has not lost this. The teachings of early life, the
precepts inculcated by a pious mother, stand him in stead now. And
though sure he must die, and wants death to come quickly, he
nevertheless tries to meet it resignedly, mentally exclaiming:--

"Mother! Father! I come. Soon shall I join you. Helen, my love! Oh,
how I have wronged you in thus throwing my life away! God forgive--"

His regrets are interrupted, as if by God Himself. He has been heard by
the All-Merciful, the Omnipotent; for seemingly no other hand could now
succour him. While the prayerful thoughts are still passing through his
mind, the wolves suddenly cease their attack, and he sees them retiring
with closed jaws and fallen tails! Not hastily, but slow and
skulkingly; ceding the ground inch by inch, as though reluctant to leave
it.

What can it mean?

Casting his eyes outward, he sees nothing to explain the behaviour of
the brutes, nor account for their changed demeanour.

He listens, all ears, expecting to hear the hoof-stroke of a horse--the
same he late saw reined up in front of him, with Richard Darke upon his
back. The ruffian is returning sooner than anticipated.

There is no such sound. Instead, one softer, which, but for the hollow
cretaceous rock underlying the plain and acting as a conductor, would
not