which his crime necessarily
inspired. Respited from death and danger, he would atone for it by
penitence and honest works. Kate Allen should be his solace, and there
would be young and lovely children smiling around his board. Such were
the natural dreams of the young and sanguine exile.

"But who shall ride from his destiny?" saith the proverb. The wing of
the bird is no security against the shaft of the fowler, and the helmet
and the shield keep not away the draught that is poisoned. He who wears
the greaves, the gorget, and the coat-of-mail, holds defiance to the
storm of battle; but he drinks and dies in the hall of banqueting. What
matters it, too, though the eagle soars and screams among the clouds,
halfway up to heaven--flaunting his proud pinions, and glaring with
audacious glance in the very eye of the sun--death waits for him in the
quiet of his own eyry, nestling with his brood. These are the goodly
texts of the Arabian sage, in whose garden-tree, so much was he the
beloved of heaven, the birds came and nightly sang for him those solemn
truths--those lessons of a perfect wisdom--which none but the favored of
the Deity are ever permitted to hear. They will find a sufficient
commentary in the fortune of the rider whom we have just beheld setting
out from his parting with his mistress, on his way of new adventure--his
heart comparatively light, and his spirit made buoyant with the throng
of pleasant fancies which continually gathered in his thought.

The interview between Forrester and his mistress had been somewhat
protracted, and his route from her residence to the road in which we
find him, being somewhat circuitous, the night had waned considerably
ere he had made much progress. He now rode carelessly, as one who
mused--his horse, not urged by its rider, became somewhat careful of his
vigor, and his gait was moderated much from that which had marked his
outset. He had entered upon the trace through a thick wood, when the
sound of other hoofs came down upon the wind; not to his ears, for,
swallowed up in his own meditations, his senses had lost much of their
wonted acuteness. He had not been long gone from the point of the road
in which we found him, when his place upon the same route was supplied
by the pursuing party, Rivers and Munro. They were both admirably
mounted, and seemed little to regard, in their manner of using them, the
value of the good beasts which they bestrode--driving them as they did,
res