There are those here"-- and she looked around with a studious caution as she spoke, while her voice sunk into a whisper--"who only wait the hour and the opportunity to"-- and here her voice faltered as if she felt the imagined prospect--"to put you to a merciless death.

Believe me, and in your confident strength do not despise my warnings.

Nothing but prudence and flight can save you." "Why," said the youth, smiling, and taking her hand in reply, "why should I fear to linger in a region, where one so much more alive to its sternnesses than myself may yet dare to abide?
Think you, sweet Lucy, that I am less hardy, less fearless of the dangers and the difficulties of this region than yourself?
You little know how much at this moment my spirit is willing to encounter," and as he spoke, though his lips wore a smile, there was a stern sadness in his look, and a gloomy contraction of his brow, which made the expression one of the fullest melancholy.
The girl looked upon him with an eye full of a deep, though unconscious interest.

She seemed desirous of searching into that spirit which he had described as so reckless.

Withdrawing her hand suddenly, however, as if now for the first time aware of its position, she replied hastily:-- "Yet, I pray you, Mr.Colleton, let nothing make you indifferent to the warning I have given you.