e went? Will you not guide me--and,
remember well--there are some terrors greater to your mind than any
threat of death. Declare, for the last time--what road he took."

The maiden was still, and showed no sign of reply. Her eye wandered--her
spirit was in prayer. She was alone with a ruffian, irresponsible and
reckless, and she had many fears.

"Will you not speak?" he cried--"then you must hear. Disclose the fact,
Lucy--say, what is the road, or what the course you have directed for
this youth's escape, or--mark me! I have you in my power--my fullest
power--with nothing to restrain my passion or my power, and--"

She struggled desperately to release herself from his grasp, but he
renewed it with all his sinewy strength, enforcing, with a vicelike
gripe, the consciousness, in her mind, of the futility of all her
physical efforts.

"Do you not hear!" he said. "Do you comprehend me."

"Do your worst!" she cried. "Kill me! I defy your power and your
malice!"

"Ha! but do you defy my passions. Hark ye, if ye fear not death, there
is something worse than death to so romantic a damsel, which shall teach
ye fear. Obey me, girl--report the route taken by this fugitive, or by
all that is black in hell or bright in heaven, I--"

And with a whisper, he hissed the concluding and cruel threat in the
ears of the shuddering and shrinking girl. With a husky horror in her
voice, she cried out:--

"You dare not! monster as you are, you dare not!" then shrieking, at the
full height of her voice--"Save me, uncle! save me! save me!"

"Save you! It is he that dooms you! He has given you up to any fate that
I shall decree!"

"Liar! away! I defy you. You dare not, ruffian! Your foul threat is but
meant to frighten me."

The creeping terrors of her voice, as she spoke, contradicted the tenor
of her speech. Her fears--quite as extreme as he sought to make
them--were fully evinced in her trembling accents.

"Frighten you!" answered the ruffian. "Frighten you! why, not so
difficult a matter either! But it is as easy to do, as to threaten--to
make you feel as to make you fear--and why not? why should you not
become the thing at once for which you have been long destined? Once
certainly mine, Lucy Munro, you will abandon the silly notion that you
can be anything to Ralph Colleton! Come!--"

Her shrieks answered him. He clapped his handkerchief upon her mouth.

"Uncle! uncle! save me!"

She was half stifled--she felt breath and st