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"A tame panther!" ejaculated Diccon "It must be the one Nantauquas tamed, sir He would have kept it somewhere near Master Rolfe's house"

"And it heard us, and followed us through the gate," I said "It was the third the warder talked of"

We walked on, and the beast, addressing itself to motion, followed at our heels Now and then we looked back at it, but we feared it not

As for ht be the least forht By this I had scarcely any hope--or fear--that I should find her at our journey's end The lonesoht-time forest, the deep and dark river with its ht, pitiless stars, the cold, the loneliness, the distance,--how should she be there? And if not she, who then?

The hut to which I had been directed stood in an angle made by the neck and the main bank of the river On one side of it was the water, on the other a deep wood The place had an evil name, and no ed himself upon its threshold The hut was ruinous: in the surew up around it, and venomous snakes harbored beneath its rotted and broken floor; in the winter the snohitened it, and the wild fowl flew screa in and out of the open door and the s that needed no barring To-night the door was shut and the s in sos showed red; the hut was lighted within, and so tryst

The stillness was deadly It was not silence, for the river ht forest so of the breath, an expectant horror The door, warped and shrunken, was drawn to, but was not fastened, as I could tell by the unbroken line of red light down one side fro no sound, I laid my hand upon it, pushed it open a little way, and looked within the hut

I had thought to find it empty or to find it crowded It was neither A torch lit it, and on the hearth burned a fire Drawn in front of the blaze was an old rude chair, and in it sat a slight figure draped from head to foot in a black cloak The head was bowed and hidden, the whole attitude one of listlessness and dejection As I looked, there cah, and the head drooped lower and lower, as if in a growing hopelessness