they
fancy not of our crossing this little brooklet here, because I misled
them ere we departed; and they are now mightily sure of cutting off
our retreat, and getting at the tower before us. How the knaves will
slink back when they find the gate barred in their teeth. Forward, Sir
Harry, and let the Cumberland wolves take the hindmost!"

They dashed down the slope into the heavy mud by the beach, and soon
the little band might have been seen moving like dark specks on the
sandy waste, even though night had come on, so clear and unsullied was
the atmosphere.

The wind, which through the day had blown light, but piercing, from
the north, seemed all at once to become more bland and genial. A
pause was felt; then a veering to and fro, like the flapping sail, ere
the big canvas comes bellying before the wind; a pause, created by one
of those occult and uncomprehended operations of nature, to be
understood only in the secret recesses of her power, where all the
germs of being are elaborated, but whither the most daring and exalted
of human capacities never penetrated.

It was near the turn of the tide, and the wind, obeying her spell, as
though at the call of that mighty wizard, was gradually veering
towards the sea, and shortly would ride on with the rolling billows,
driving forward, like some proud charioteer, the dark waters of the
Atlantic in its progress.

The travellers were pricking on their way discreetly, the channel of
the river just before them, rippling pleasantly over some quiet star,
that seemed to sink deep within its bosom.

To their right was the voice of the restless and mystic ocean, obeying
the fiat of Him who hath fixed its bounds--at too great a distance now
to excite other feelings than those of their own impotence, and the
immensity by which they were surrounded. I know of no sound to be
compared to it. There is nought in the wide range of our intelligence
that can produce the dread, the almost terrific expansion which it
seems to create in the mind, save it be the dizzy view over some dark
and unfathomable abyss--an impression that comes over us like the
dread unutterable anticipations of eternity!

Suddenly a thin white vapour was seen obscuring the brightness in the
west. Then came a cloud-like haze, scudding on the very surface of the
stream, wherein the plash of horses' feet announced their entrance.
They rode slowly on, but the channel was deep, and it seemed as though
some sleight and w