reat recalled Alice, to herself. "I will do as you wish," said
she meekly.

"Well, then, be quick," said Darvil; "they are now putting the horse
to. And mark me, girl, your father is running away from the gallows,
and that thought does not make a man stand upon scruples. If you once
attempt to give me the slip, or do or say anything that can bring the
bulkies upon us--by the devil in hell!--if, indeed, there be hell or
devil--my knife shall become better acquainted with that throat--so look
to it!"

And this was the father--this the condition--of her whose ear had for
months drunk no other sound than the whispers of flattering love--the
murmurs of Passion from the lips of Poetry.

They continued their journey till midnight; they then arrived at an inn,
little different from the last; but here Alice was no longer consigned
to solitude. In a long room, reeking with smoke, sat from twenty to
thirty ruffians before a table on which mugs and vessels of strong
potations were formidably interspersed with sabres and pistols. They
received Walters and Darvil with a shout of welcome, and would have
crowded somewhat unceremoniously round Alice, if her father, whose
well-known desperate and brutal ferocity made him a man to be respected
in such an assembly, had not said, sternly, "Hands off, messmates, and
make way by the fire for my little girl--she is meat for your masters."

So saying, he pushed Alice down into a huge chair in the chimney-nook,
and, seating himself near her, at the end of the table, hastened to turn
the conversation.

"Well, Captain," said he, addressing a small thin man at the head of the
table, "I and Walters have fairly cut and run--the land has a bad air
for us, and we now want the sea-breeze to cure the rope fever. So,
knowing this was your night, we have crowded sail, and here we are.
You must give the girl there a lift, though I know you don't like such
lumber, and we'll run ashore as soon as we can."

"She seems a quiet little body," replied the captain; "and we would do
more than that to oblige an old friend like you. In half an hour Oliver*
puts on his nightcap, and we must then be off."

* The moon.

"The sooner the better."

The men now appeared to forget the presence of Alice, who sat faint with
fatigue and exhaustion, for she had been too sick at heart to touch the
food brought to her at their previous halting-place, gazing abstractedly
upon the fire. Her father, before their departure,