ll in the right side of the robber
at the very moment he had set spurs in his horse and turned to fly.
Clifford's head drooped to the saddle-bow. Fiercely the horse sprang on.
The robber endeavoured, despite his reeling senses, to retain his seat;
once he raised his head, once he nerved his slackened and listless
limbs, and then, with a faint groan, he fell to the earth. The horse
bounded but one step more, and, true to the tutorship it had received,
stopped abruptly. Clifford raised himself with great difficulty on
one arm; with the other hand he drew forth a pistol. He pointed it
deliberately towards the officer that wounded him. The man stood
motionless, cowering and spellbound, beneath the dilating eye of the
robber. It was but for a moment that the man had cause for dread; for
muttering between his ground teeth, "Why waste it on an enemy?" Clifford
turned the muzzle towards the head of the unconscious steed, which
seemed sorrowfully and wistfully to incline towards him. "Thou,"
he said, "whom I have fed and loved, shalt never know hardship from
another!" and with a merciful cruelty he dragged himself one pace nearer
to his beloved steed, uttered a well-known word, which brought the
docile creature to his side, and placing the muzzle of the pistol close
to his ear, he fired, and fell back senseless at the exertion. The
animal staggered, and dropped down dead.

Meanwhile Clifford's comrade, profiting by the surprise and sudden panic
of the officer, was already out of reach, and darting across the common,
he and his ragged courser speedily vanished.

CHAPTER XXXII

Lose I not
With him what fortune could in life allot?
Lose I not hope, life's cordial?
..............
In fact, the lessons he from prudence took
Were written in his mind as in a book;
There what to do he read, and what to shun,
And all commanded was with promptness done.
He seemed without a passion to proceed,
..............
Yet some believed those passions only slept!
CRABBE.

Relics of love, and life's enchanted spring!
A. WATTS: On burning a Packet of Letters.

Many and sad and deep
Were the thoughts folded in thy silent breast!
Thou, too, could'st watch and weep!