was attended with the same
results--opinions being as varied as ever. Still that warning toll had
some connection with their fellow-men, some link, which, however
remote, united them to those who were now slumbering in happiness and
security. Yet of their true course and bearing they were as ignorant
as ever.

"Now, by'r lady," said one, "there's either witch or wizard at the
tail o' this. Haven't I passed this very place to and fro, man and
boy, these twenty years, and never went away by a yard's space, right
or left. Now"----

"Right well, Humphry Braithwaite, should I know it too, and yet we
might be in a wilderness for aught I can distinguish, either land-mark
or sea-mark. Hush, I'm sure that bell is from the right."

"Nay, I hear it yonder, to the left, if I'm not witched."

"Thee'rt gone daft, man, 'tis----Well, if the sound binna from both
sides, right and left! I hear it behind me now."

"We must be moving," said the leader. There's no chance for us here.
We can but meet the enemy at the worst, and there are three chances of
escaping for one of drowning, which way soever we take, at a blind
venture. Then let us away together; and may the Virgin and St Bees be
our helper!"

But there were some who would rather trust to their own guidance; and
what with the indecision of one, the obstinacy of another, and the
timidity of a third, he soon found himself with only one companion,
besides his good grey steed, when he flung the reins to his control,
and spurred forward.

Reckless, almost driven to desperation, he committed his way to the
beast's better discretion, as he thought, goading on the jaded animal
incessantly, his fellow-traveller still keeping behind, but at no
great distance. They halted after a space; but how long it is
impossible to say. Hours and minutes, in seasons of pain or
excitement, are, in the mind's duration, arbitrary and conventional.
To measure time by the state of our feelings would be as futile as an
attempt to measure space by the slowness or impetuosity of our
movements. Hours dwindle into minutes, and minutes are exaggerated
into hours, according to the circumstances under which the mind moves
on. We are conscious of existence only by the succession of our
feelings. We are conscious of time only by its lapse. Hence we are apt
to make the same measure serve for both; and, as our own dispositions
predicate, so doth time run fast or slow. True it is that time cannot
measure thought.