heard the wheels rattle on, and the horses gallop hard down the hill
towards the park.

The autumn wind swept through the trees, it shook the branches of the
lofty ash that overhung the Accursed One. What observer of Nature knows
not that peculiar sound which the ash gives forth in the blast? Not the
solemn groan of the oak, not the hollow murmur of the beech, but a shrill
wail, a shriek as of a human voice in sharp anguish. Varney shuddered,
as if he had heard the death-cry of his intended victim. Through briers
and thickets, torn by the thorns, bruised by the boughs, he plunged
deeper and deeper into the wood, gained at length the main path cut
through it, found himself in a lane, and rode on, careless whither, till
he had reached a small town, about ten miles from Laughton, where he
resolved to wait till his nerves had recovered their tone, and he could
more calmly calculate the chances of safety.




CHAPTER XXVII.

LUCRETIA REGAINS HER SON.

It seemed as if now, when danger became most imminent and present, that
that very danger served to restore to Lucretia Dalibard her faculties,
which during the earlier day had been steeped in a kind of dreary stupor.
The absolute necessity of playing out her execrable part with all
suitable and consistent hypocrisy, braced her into iron. But the
disguise she assumed was a supernatural effort, it stretched to cracking
every fibre of the brain; it seemed almost to herself as if, her object