ls, beyond all ken.

"Oh save me, Antony!" she cried clinging to his arm.

"No one shall touch you. I will guard you with my life!" exclaimed the
impulsive young man, feeling for the sword that was not there.

"Who spoke of hurting the foolish wench?" growled Savage; but Tichborne
said, "No one would hurt you, madam; but it is due to us all that you
should give us your word of honour not to disclose what has passed,
save to our only true mistress."

"Oh yes! yes!" cried Cicely hastily, scarcely knowing what passed her
lips, and only anxious to escape from that gleaming eye of Langston,
which had twice before filled her with a nameless sense of the
necessity of terrified obedience. "Oh! let me go. I hear my father's
voice."

She sprang forward with a cry between joy and terror, and darted up to
Richard Talbot, while Savage, the man who looked most entirely unlike a
disguised gentleman, stepped forward, and in a rough, north country
dialect, averred that the young gentlewoman had lost her way.

"Poor maid," said kind Richard, gathering the two trembling little
hands into one of his own broad ones. "How was it? Thanks, good
fellow," and he dropped a broad piece into Savage's palm; "thou hast
done good service. What, Cis, child, art quaking?"

"Hast seen any hobgoblins, Cis?" said Diccon, at her other side. "I'm
sure I heard them laugh."

"Whist, Dick," said his father, putting a strong arm round the girl's
waist. "See, my wench, yonder is the goodly light of day. We shall
soon be there."

With all his fatherly kindness, he helped the agitated girl up the
remaining ascent, as the lovely piece of blue sky between the
retreating rocks grew wider, and the archway higher above them. Cis
felt that infinite repose and reliance that none else could give, yet
the repose was disturbed by the pang of recollection that the secret
laid on her was their first severance. It was unjust to his kindness;
strange, doubtful, nay grisly, to her foreboding mind, and she shivered
alike from that and the chill of the damp cavern, and then he drew her
cloak more closely about her, and halted to ask for the flask of wine
which one of the adventurous spirits had brought, that Queen
Elizabeth's health might be drunk by her true subjects in the bowels of
the earth. The wine was, of course, exhausted; but Dr. Jones bustled
forward with some cordial waters which he had provided in case of
anyone being struck with the chill of the c