anxiously awaiting his arrival--that he
had morosely kept the inner recess of the cave, and since his return,
which had not been until late in the night, had been seen but two or
three times, and then but for a moment, when he had come forth to make
inquiries for himself.

Leaving his men differently disposed, Dillon at once penetrated into the
small apartment in which his leader was lodged, assured of the propriety
of the intrusion, from what had just been told him.

The recess, which was separated from the outer hall by a curtain of
thick coarse stuff, falling to the floor from a beam, the apertures for
the reception of which had been chiselled in the rock, was dimly
illuminated by a single lamp, hanging from a chain, which was in turn
fastened to a pole that stretched directly across the apartment. A small
table in the centre of the room, covered with a piece of cotton cloth, a
few chairs, a broken mirror, and on a shelf that stood trimly in the
corner, a few glasses and decanters, completed the furniture of the
apartment.

On the table at which the outlaw sat, lay his pistols--a huge and
unwieldy, but well-made pair. A short sword, a dirk and one or two other
weapons of similar description, contemplated only for hand-to-hand
purposes, lay along with them; and the better to complete the picture,
now already something _outre_, a decanter of brandy and tumblers were
contiguous.

Rivers did not observe the slide of the curtain to the apartment, nor
the entrance of Dillon. He was deeply absorbed in contemplation; his
head rested heavily upon his two palms, while his eyes were deeply fixed
upon the now opened miniature which he had torn from the neck of Lucy
Munro, and which rested before him. He sighed not--he spoke not, but
ever and anon, as if perfectly unconscious all the while of what he did,
he drank from the tumbler of the compounded draught that stood before
him, hurriedly and desperately, as if to keep the strong emotion from
choking him. There was in his look a bitter agony of expression,
indicating a vexed spirit, now more strongly than ever at work in a way
which had, indeed, been one of the primest sources of his miserable
life. It was a spirit ill at rest with itself--vexed at its own
feebleness of execution--its incapacity to attain and acquire the
realization of its own wild and vague conceptions. His was the ambition
of one who discovers at every step that nothing can be known, yet will
not give up t