still full of Uncle
Silas and the sum I hoped to help him with.

Unaccountably one of those coloured engravings arrested my attention.
It represented the solemn solitude of a lofty forest; a girl, in Swiss
costume, was flying in terror, and as she fled flinging a piece of meat
behind her which she had taken from a little market-basket hanging upon her
arm. Through the glade a pack of wolves were pursuing her.

The narrative told, that on her return homeward with her marketing, she had
been chased by wolves, and barely escaped by flying at her utmost speed,
from time to time retarding, as she did so, the pursuit, by throwing, piece
by piece, the contents of her basket, in her wake, to be devoured and
fought for by the famished beasts of prey.

This print had seized my imagination. I looked with a curious interest on
the print: something in the disposition of the trees, their great height,
and rude boughs, interlacing, and the awful shadow beneath, reminded me of
a portion of the Windmill Wood where Milly and I had often rambled. Then I
looked at the figure of the poor girl, flying for her life, and glancing
terrified over her shoulder. Then I gazed on the gaping, murderous pack,
and the hoary brute that led the van; and then I leaned back in my chair,
and I thought--perhaps some latent association suggested what seemed a
thing so unlikely--of a fine print in my portfolio from Vandyke's noble
picture of Belisarius. Idly I traced with my pencil, as I leaned back, on
an envelope that lay upon the table, this little inscription. It was mere
fiddling; and, absurd as it looked, there was nothing but an honest meaning
in it:--'20,000_l_. Date Obolum Belisario!' My dear father had translated
the little Latin inscription for me, and I had written it down as a sort
of exercise of memory; and also, perhaps, as expressive of that sort of
compassion which my uncle's fall and miserable fate excited invariably in
me. So I threw this queer little memorandum upon the open leaf of the book,
and again the flight, the pursuit, and the bait to stay it, engaged my eye.
And I heard a voice near the hearthstone, as I thought, say, in a stern
whisper, 'Fly the fangs of Belisarius!'

'What's that?' said I, turning sharply to Mary Quince.

Mary rose from her work at the fireside, staring at me with that odd sort
of frown that accompanies fear and curiosity.

'You spoke? Did you speak?' I said, catching her by the arm, very much
frightened my