amongst them.

Red Grisell, the youngest of the band, struck her comrade on the
cheek--"Faint and weary, ronion, with blood and booty in the wind!"

The tymbesteres smiled grimly on their young sister; but the leader
whispered "Hush!" and they stood for a second or two with outstretched
throats, with dilated nostrils, with pent breath, listening to the
clarion and the hoofs and the rattling armour, the human vultures
foretasting their feast of carnage; then, obedient to a sign from
their chieftainess, they crept lightly and rapidly into the mouth of a
neighbouring alley, where they cowered by the squalid huts, concealed.
The troop passed on,--a gallant and serried band, horse and foot,
about fifteen hundred men. As they filed up the thoroughfare, and the
tramp of the last soldiers fell hollow on the starlit ground, the
tymbesteres stole from their retreat, and, at the distance of some few
hundred yards, followed the procession, with long, silent, stealthy
strides,--as the meaner beasts, in the instinct of hungry cunning,
follow the lion for the garbage of his prey.




CHAPTER V.

THE FUGITIVES ARE CAPTURED--THE TYMBESTERES REAPPEAR--MOONLIGHT ON THE
REVEL OF THE LIVING--MOONLIGHT ON THE SLUMBER OF THE DEAD.

The father and child made their resting-place under the giant oak.
They knew not whither to fly for refuge; the day and the night had