It is not in my nature to do so; and as long as this boy can sleep at night, I can not.

I will not seek to sleep until he is laid to rest for ever!" The whole of this brief dialogue, which had passed directly beside the recess in which the maiden and youth had taken shelter, was distinctly audible to them both.

The blood of Ralph boiled within him at this latter speech of the ruffian, in which he avowed a spirit of such dire malignity, as, in its utter disproportionateness to the supposed offence of the youth, could only have been sanctioned by the nature which he had declared to have always been his prompter; and, at its close, the arm of the youth, grasping his weapon, was involuntarily stretched forth, and an instant more would have found it buried in the bosom of the wretch--but the action did not escape the quick eye of his companion, who, though trembling with undiminished terror, was yet mistress of all her senses, and perceived the ill-advised nature of his design.

With a motion equally involuntary and sudden with his own, her taper fingers grasped his wrist, and her eyes bright with dewy lustres, were directed upward, sweetly and appealingly to those which now bent themselves down upon her.

In that moment of excitement and impending terror, a consciousness of her situation and a sense of shame which more than ever agitated her, rushed through her mind, and she leaned against the side of the closet for that support for which her now revived and awakened scruples forbade any reference to him from whom she had so recently received it.