Obey me, girl--report the route taken by this fugitive, or by all that is black in hell or bright in heaven, I--" And with a whisper, he hissed the concluding and cruel threat in the ears of the shuddering and shrinking girl.

With a husky horror in her voice, she cried out:-- "You dare not! monster as you are, you dare not!" then shrieking, at the full height of her voice--"Save me, uncle! save me! save me!" "Save you! It is he that dooms you! He has given you up to any fate that I shall decree!" "Liar! away! I defy you.

You dare not, ruffian! Your foul threat is but meant to frighten me." The creeping terrors of her voice, as she spoke, contradicted the tenor of her speech.

Her fears--quite as extreme as he sought to make them--were fully evinced in her trembling accents.
"Frighten you!" answered the ruffian.

"Frighten you! why, not so difficult a matter either! But it is as easy to do, as to threaten--to make you feel as to make you fear--and why not?
why should you not become the thing at once for which you have been long destined?
Once certainly mine, Lucy Munro, you will abandon the silly notion that you can be anything to Ralph Colleton! Come!--" Her shrieks answered him.