t if you can't learn to stop talking, I shall set you down as a
fool! For a man of action, you use more of an unnecessary tongue than
any living man I ever met. For God's sake, sink the lawyer when you're
out of court! It will be high time to brush up for a speech when you are
in the dock, and pleading with the halter dangling in your eyes. Oh,
don't glare upon me! He who flings about his arrows by the handful
mustn't be angry if some of them are flung back."

"Are you ready?"

"Ay, ready!--She's opening her eyes. We can leave her now.--What's the
course?"

"We can determine in the open air. He will probably go west, and will
take one or other of the two traces at the fork, and his hoofs will soon
tell us which. Our horses are refreshed by this, and are in readiness.
You have pistols: see to the flints and priming. There must be no
scruples now. The matter has gone quite too far for quiet, and though
the affair was all mine at first, it is now as perfectly yours."

As Rivers spoke, Munro drew forth his pistols and looked carefully at
the priming. The sharp click of the springing steel, as the pan was
thrown open, now fully aroused Lucy to that consciousness which had been
only partial in the greater part of this dialogue. Springing to her feet
with an eagerness and energy that was quite astonishing after her late
prostration, she rushed forward to her uncle, and looked appealingly
into his face, though she did not speak, while her hand grasped
tenaciously his arm.

"What means the girl?" exclaimed Munro, now apprehensive of some mental
derangement. She spoke, with a deep emphasis, but a single sentence:--

"It is written--thou shalt do no murder!"

The solemn tone--the sudden, the almost fierce action--the peculiar
abruptness of the apostrophe--the whitely-robed, the almost spiritual
elevation of figure--all so dramatic--combined necessarily to startle
and surprise; and, for a few moments, no answer was returned to the
unlooked-for speech. But the effect could not be permanent upon minds
made familiar with the thousand forms of human and strong energies.
Munro, after a brief pause, replied--

"Who speaks of murder, girl? Why this wild, this uncalled-for
exhortation?"

"Not wild, not uncalled-for, uncle, but most necessary. Wherefore would
you pursue the youth, arms in your hands, hatred in your heart, and
horrible threatenings upon your lips? Why put yourself into the hands of
this fierce monster, as the shar