's head, and forced him to leap over the blazing boundary.

In vain the pursuers attempted to follow. Their horses refused to
encounter the flames; while Wyat's steed, urged on by its frantic
master, reared bolt upright, and dislodged him.

But the demon held on his way, apparently unscathed in the midst of the
flames, casting a look of grim defiance at his pursuers. As he passed
a tree, from which volumes of fire were bursting, the most appalling
shrieks reached his ear, and he beheld Morgan Fenwolf emerging from a
hole in the trunk. But without bestowing more than a glance upon his
unfortunate follower, he dashed forward, and becoming involved in the
wreaths of flame and smoke, was lost to sight.

Attracted by Fenwolf's cries, the beholders perceived him crawl out of
the hole, and clamber into the upper part of the tree, where he roared
to them most piteously for aid. But even if they had been disposed
to render it, it was impossible to do so now; and after terrible and
protracted suffering, the poor wretch, half stifled with smoke, and
unable longer to maintain his hold of the branch to which he crept, fell
into the flames beneath, and perished.

Attributing its outbreak to supernatural agency, the party gazed on in
wonder at the fire, and rode round it as closely as their steeds would
allow them. But though they tarried till the flames had abated, and
little was left of the noble grove but a collection of charred and
smoking stumps, nothing was seen of the fiend or of the hapless girl
he had carried off. It served to confirm the notion of the supernatural
origin of the fire, in that it was confined within the mystic circle,
and did not extend farther into the woods.

At the time that the flames first burst forth, and revealed the
countenances of the lookers--on, it was discovered that the self-styled
Dacre and Cryspyn were no other than the king and the Duke of Suffolk.

"If this mysterious being is mortal, he must have perished now,"
observed Henry; "and if he is not, it is useless to seek for him
further."

Day had begun to break as the party quitted the scene of devastation.
The king and Suffolk, with the archers, returned to the castle; but
Wyat, Surrey, and Richmond rode towards the lake, and proceeded along
its banks in the direction of the forester's hut.

Their progress was suddenly arrested by the sound of lamentation, and
they perceived, in a little bay overhung by trees, which screened it
from th