on the saddle, holding the bridle in
one hand and a switch in the other; and our adventurer sitting on the
crupper, superintending her conduct, and keeping the muzzle of a pistol
close at her ear. In this equipage they travelled across part of the
same wood in which his guide had forsaken him; and it is not to be
supposed that he passed his time in the most agreeable reverie, while he
found himself involved in the labyrinth of those shades, which he
considered as the haunts of robbery and assassination.

Common fear was a comfortable sensation to what he felt in this
excursion. The first steps he had taken for his preservation were the
effects of mere instinct, while his faculties were extinguished or
suppressed by despair; but now, as his reflection began to recur, he was
haunted by the most intolerable apprehensions. Every whisper of the wind
through the thickets was swelled into the hoarse menaces of murder, the
shaking of the boughs was construed into the brandishing of poniards, and
every shadow of a tree became the apparition of a ruffian eager for
blood. In short, at each of these occurrences he felt what was
infinitely more tormenting than the stab of a real dagger; and at every
fresh fillip of his fear, he acted as a remembrancer to his conductress,
in a new volley of imprecations, importing, that her life was absolutely
connected with his opinion of his own safety.

Human nature could not longer subsist under such complicated terror. At
last he found himself clear of the forest, and was blessed with the
distant view of an inhabited place. He then began to exercise his
thoughts upon a new subject. He debated with himself, whether he should
make a parade of his intrepidity and public spirit, by disclosing his
achievement, and surrendering his guide to the penalty of the law; or
leave the old hag and her accomplices to the remorse of their own
consciences, and proceed quietly on his journey to Paris in undisturbed
possession of the prize he had already obtained. This last step he
determined to take, upon recollecting, that, in the course of his
information, the story of the murdered stranger would infallibly attract
the attention of justice, and, in that case, the effects he had borrowed
from the defunct must be refunded for the benefit of those who had a
right to the succession. This was an argument which our adventurer could
not resist; he foresaw that he should be stripped of his acquisition,
which h