into a rude strain, which, coming from stentorian lungs, found a ready
echo in every jutting rock and space of wood for a mile round. The
musician went on merrily from verse to verse of his forest minstrelsy as
he continued to approach; describing in his strain, with a ready
ballad-facility, the numberless pleasures to be found in the life of the
woodman. Uncouthly, and in a style partaking rather more of the savage
than the civilized taste and temper, it enumerated the distinct features
of each mode of life with much ingenuity and in stanzas smartly
epigrammatic, did not hesitate to assign the preference to the former.

As the new-comer approached the spot where Ralph Colleton lay, there was
still a partial though dim light over the forest. The twilight was
richly clear, and there were some faint yellow lines of the sun's last
glances lingering still on the remote horizon. The moon, too, in the
opposite sky, about to come forth, had sent before her some few faint
harbingers of her approach; and it was not difficult for the sturdy
woodman to discern the body of the traveller, lying, as it did, almost
in his path. A few paces farther on stood his steed, cropping the young
grass, and occasionally, with uplifted head, looking round with
something like human wonderment, for the assertion of that authority
which heretofore had him in charge. At the approach of the stranger he
did not start, but, seeming conscious of some change for the better in
his own prospects, he fell again to work upon the herbage as if no
interruption had occurred to his repast.

The song of the woodman ceased as he discovered the body. With an
exclamation, he stooped down to examine it, and his hands were suffused
with the blood which had found its way through the garments. He saw that
life was not extinct, and readily supposing the stupor the consequence
of loss of blood rather than of vital injury, he paused a few moments as