s
deficient intellect, inspired, in the breast of the fierce man, a
feeling of sympathy, which he had not entertained for the whole world of
humanity beside.

Such is the contradictory character of the misled and the erring spirit.
Warped to enjoy crime--to love the deformities of all moral things--to
seek after and to surrender itself up to all manner of perversions, yet
now and then, in the long tissue, returning, for some moments, to the
original temper of that first nature not yet utterly departed; and few
and feeble though the fibres be which still bind the heart to her
worship, still strong enough at times to remind it of the _true_,
however it may be insufficient to restrain it in its wanderings after
the _false_.

But the language and effort of the outlaw, though singularly kind,
failed to have any of the desired effect upon the dwarf. With an
unhesitating refusal to enter the outlaw's dwelling-place in the rocks,
he bounded away into a hollow of the hills, and in a moment was out of
sight of his companion. Fatigued with his recent exertions, and somewhat
more sullen than usual, Rivers entered the gloomy abode, into which it
is not our present design to follow him.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

PURSUIT--DEATH.

The fugitives, meanwhile, pursued their way with the speed of men
conscious that life and death hung upon their progress. There needed no
exhortations from his companion to Ralph Colleton. More than life, with
him, depended upon his speed. The shame of such a death as that to which
he had been destined was for ever before his eyes, and with a heart
nerved to its utmost by a reference to the awful alternative of flight,
he grew reckless in the audacity with which he drove his horse forward
in defiance of all obstacle and over every impediment. Nor were the
present apprehensions of Munro much less than those of his companion. To
be overtaken, as the participant of the flight of one whose life was
forfeit, would necessarily invite such an examination of himself as must
result in the development of his true character, and such a discovery
must only terminate in his conviction and sentence to the same doom. His
previously-uttered presentiment grew more than ever strong with the
growing consciousness of his danger; and with an animation, the fruit of
an anxiety little short of absolute fear, he stimulated the progress of
Colleton, while himself driving the rowel ruthlessly into the smoking
sides of the animal