brief story we are following; and feeling a
keen interest in her fate--as who that had
ever seen her DID NOT?--I started from my
comfortable seat with more eager alacrity
than, I will confess it, I might have
evinced had my duty called me in another
direction.

In a few minutes I was trotting rapidly
onward, preceded by my guide, who urged
his horse with the remorseless rapidity of
one who seeks by the speed of his progress
to escape observation. Over roads and
through bogs we splashed and clattered,
until at length traversing the brow of a
wild and rocky hill, whose aspect seemed
so barren and forbidding that it might
have been a lasting barrier alike to mortal
sight and step, the lonely building became
visible, lying in a kind of swampy flat,
with a broad reedy pond or lake stretching
away to its side, and backed by a farther
range of monotonous sweeping hills,
marked with irregular lines of grey rock,
which, in the distance, bore a rude and
colossal resemblance to the walls of a
fortification.

Riding with undiminished speed along
a kind of wild horse-track, we turned the