clouds before they would sink to rest beneath the western sky. The
twilight was becoming grey, however, and the light falling short, when,
at about the distance of half a mile before they reached the spot where
the common terminated, the two travellers approached a rise and fall in
the ground, beyond which ran a little stream with a small old bridge of
one arch, not in the best repair, carrying the highway over the water
with a sharp and sudden turn. Scattered about in the neighbourhood of
the bridge, and on the slope that led down to it, perched upon sundry
knolls and banks, and pieces of broken ground, were a number of old
beeches, mostly hollowed out by time, but still flourishing green in
their decay. These trees, together with the twilight, prevented the
bridge itself from being seen by the travellers; but as they came near,
they heard a sudden cry, as if called forth by either terror or
surprise, and Wilton instantly checked his horse to listen.
"Did you not hear a scream?" he said, addressing his companion in a low
voice.
"Yes," answered the other, "I thought I did: let us ride on and see."
Wilton's spurs instantly touched his horse's side, and he rode quickly
down the slope towards the bridge, which he well remembered, when a
scene was suddenly presented to his view, which for a moment puzzled and
confounded him.
Just at the turn of the bridge lay overturned upon the road one of the
large, heavy, wide-topped vehicles, called a coach in those days, while
round about it appeared a group of persons whose situation, for a
moment, seemed to him dubious, but which soon became more plain. A
gentleman, somewhat advanced in life--perhaps about fifty-eight or
fifty-nine, if not more--stood by the door of the carriage, from which
he had recently emerged, and with him two women, one of whom was a young
lady, apparently of about seventeen years of age, and the other her
maid. Three men--servants stood about their master; but they had not the
slightest appearance of any intention of giving aid to any one; for,
though sundry were the situations and attitudes in which they stood,
each of those attitudes betokened, in a greater or a less degree, the
uncomfortable sensation of fear. One of them, indeed, had a brace of
pistols in his two hands, but those hands dropped, as it were, powerless
by his side, and his knees were bent into a crooked line, which
certainly indicated no great firmness of heart.
To account for the trepidation displayed by several of the per