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 counterbalance 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 the boughs of an aged oak, which,
anchored by its thick and twisted roots in the upper part of the cleft, flung
its branches almost straight outward from the cliff, concealing it effectually
from all observation. It might indeed have escaped the attention even of those
who had stood at its very opening