ckness at myself and my designs that I could scarce endure; I longed
to throw myself at his feet, avow my intended treachery, and warn him
from that pestilential swamp, to which I was decoying him to die; but my
vow to my dead father, my duty to my innocent youth, prevailed upon
these scruples; and though my face was pale and must have reflected the
horror that oppressed my spirits, it was with a firm step that I
returned to the borders of the swamp, and with smiling lips that I bade
him rise and follow me.

The path on which we now entered was cut, like a tunnel, through the
living jungle. On either hand and overhead, the mass of foliage was
continuously joined; the day sparingly filtered through the depth of
superimpending wood; and the air was hot like steam, and heady with
vegetable odours, and lay like a load upon the lungs and brain.
Underfoot, a great depth of mould received our silent footprints; on
each side, mimosas, as tall as a man, shrank from my passing skirts
with a continuous hissing rustle; and, but for these sentient
vegetables, all in that den of pestilence was motionless and noiseless.

We had gone but a little way in, when Mr. Caulder was seized with sudden
nausea, and must sit down a moment on the path. My heart yearned, as I
beheld him; and I seriously begged the doomed mortal to return upon his
steps. What were a few jewels in the scales with life? I asked. But no,
he said; that witch Madam Jezebel would find them out; he was an honest
man, and would not stand to be defrauded, and so forth, panting the
while, like a sick dog. Presently he got to his feet again, protesting
he had conquered his uneasiness; but as we again began to go forward, I
saw in his changed countenance the first approaches of death.

"Master," said I, "you look pale, deathly pale; your pallor fills me
with dread. Your eyes are bloodshot; they are red like the rubies that
we seek."

"Wench," he cried, "look before you; look at your steps. I declare to
Heaven, if you annoy me once again by looking back, I shall remind you
of the change in your position."

A little after, I observed a worm upon the ground, and told, in a
whisper, that its touch was death. Presently a great green serpent,
vivid as the grass in spring, wound rapidly across the path; and once
again I paused and looked back at my companion with a horror in my eyes.
"The coffin snake," said I, "the snake that dogs its victim like a
hound."

But he was not to b