e wall of a
small flanking battery, where two patereroes were placed to scour the
pass, in case any enemy could have mounted so high. Julian had scarce
time to shudder at her purpose, as he beheld her about to spring
from the parapet, ere, like a thing of gossamer, she stood light and
uninjured on the rocky platform below. He endeavoured, by the gravity
of his look and gesture, to make her understand how much he blamed her
rashness; but the reproof, though obviously quite intelligible, was
entirely thrown away. A hasty wave of her hand intimated how she
contemned the danger and the remonstrance; while, at the same time,
she instantly resumed, with more eagerness than before, the earnest
and impressive gestures by which she endeavoured to detain him in the
fortress.

Julian was somewhat staggered by her pertinacity. "Is it possible," he
thought, "that any danger can approach the Countess, of which this
poor maiden has, by the extreme acuteness of her observation, obtained
knowledge which has escaped others?"

He signed to Fenella hastily to give him the tablets and the pencil
which she usually carried with her, and wrote on them the question, "Is
there danger near to your mistress, that you thus stop me?"

"There is danger around the Countess," was the answer instantly written
down; "but there is much more in your own purpose."

"How?--what?--what know you of my purpose?" said Julian, forgetting, in
his surprise, that the party he addressed had neither ear to comprehend,
nor voice to reply to uttered language. She had regained her book in
the meantime, and sketched, with a rapid pencil, on one of the leaves, a
scene which she showed to Julian. To his infinite surprise he recognised
Goddard Crovan's Stone, a remarkable monument, of which she had given
the outline with sufficient accuracy; together with a male and female
figure, which, though only indicated by a few slight touches of the
pencil, bore yet, he thought, some resemblance to himself and Alice
Bridgenorth.

When he had gazed on the sketch for an instant with surprise, Fenella
took the book from his hand, laid her finger upon the drawing, and
slowly and sternly shook her head, with a frown which seemed to prohibit
the meeting which was there represented. Julian, however, though
disconcerted, was in no shape disposed to submit to the authority of
his monitress. By whatever means she, who so seldom stirred from the
Countess's apartment, had become acquainted