Chapter 21

--The Lord Abbot had a soul
Subtile and quick, and searching as the fire;
By magic stairs he went as deep as hell,
And if in devils' possession gold be kept,
He brought some sure from thence--'tis hid in caves,
Known, save to me, to none.--
The Wonder of a Kingdome.

Lovel almost mechanically followed the beggar, who led the way with a
hasty and steady pace, through bush and bramble, avoiding the beaten
path, and often turning to listen whether there were any sounds of
pursuit behind them. They sometimes descended into the very bed of the
torrent, sometimes kept a narrow and precarious path, that the sheep
(which, with the sluttish negligence towards property of that sort
universal in Scotland, were allowed to stray in the copse) had made along
the very verge of its overhanging banks. From time to time Lovel had a
glance of the path which he had traversed the day before in company with
Sir Arthur, the Antiquary, and the young ladies. Dejected, embarrassed,
and occupied by a thousand inquietudes, as he then was, what would he now
have given to regain the sense of innocence which alone can
counter-balance a thousand evils! "Yet, then," such was his hasty and
involuntary reflection, "even then, guiltless and valued by all around
me, I thought myself unhappy. What am I now, with this young man's blood
upon my hands?--the feeling of pride which urged me to the deed has now
deserted me, as the actual fiend himself is said to do those whom he has
tempted to guilt." Even his affection for Miss Wardour sunk for the time
before the first pangs of remorse, and he thought he could have
encountered every agony of slighted love to have had the conscious
freedom from blood-guiltiness which he possessed in the morning.

These painful reflections were not interrupted by any conversation on the
part of his guide, who threaded the thicket before him, now holding back
the sprays to make his path easy, now exhorting him to make haste, now
muttering to himself, after the custom of solitary and neglected old age,
words which might have escaped Lovel's ear even had he listened to them,
or which, apprehended and retained, were too isolated to convey any
connected meaning,--a habit which may be often observed among people of
the old man's age and calling.

At length, as Lovel, exhausted by his late indisposition, the harrowing
feelings by which he was agitated, and the exertion necessary to keep up
with his guide in a path so rugged, began to flag and fall behind, two or
three very precarious steps placed him on the front of a precipice
overhung with brushwood and copse. Here a cave, as narrow in its entrance
as a fox-earth, was indicated by a small fissure in the rock, screened by