shaking in every joint with terror, and snorting fearfully. Louisa
herself had relinquished her reins, and, with her hands pressed on her
face, sat bending forward in her saddle, in an attitude of despair,
mingled strangely with resignation.

“Are you safe?” cried the Judge, first breaking the awful silence of
the moment.

“By God’s blessing,” returned the youth; but if there had been
branches to the tree we must have been lost—”

He was interrupted by the figure of Louisa slowly yielding in her
saddle, and but for his arm she would have sunk to the earth. Terror,
however, was the only injury that the clergyman’s daughter had
sustained, and, with the aid of Elizabeth, she was soon restored to
her senses. After some little time was lost in recovering her
strength, the young lady was replaced in her saddle, and supported on
either side by Judge Temple and Mr. Edwards she was enabled to follow
the party in their slow progress.

“The sudden fallings of the trees,” said Marmaduke, “are the most
dangerous accidents in the forest, for they are not to be foreseen,
being impelled by no winds, nor any extraneous or visible cause
against which we can guard.”

“The reason of their falling, Judge Temple, is very obvious,” said the
sheriff. “The tree is old and decayed, and it is gradually weakened
by the frosts, until a line drawn from the centre of gravity falls
without its base, and then the tree comes of a certainty; and I should
like to know what greater compulsion there can be for any thing than a