husband was involved, forbore all enquiry that might make the wife an informer against him; and sate by her side, trying to revive her, with offers of friendship and assistance.

But when, anxious to escape from this eventful Forest, and still confiding in the simplicity and goodness of her hostess, she begged a clear direction to the shortest way for getting to the high road; saying, 'Alas! how little had I imagined that there had been any spot in England, where travellers were thus dreadfully waylaid to their destruction!' Dame Fairfield, suddenly ceasing her outcries, demanded what she meant; saying, 'Why sure, and sure, there be no daunger to nobody in our Forest! We do go up it and down it, noight and day, without no manner of fear; and though I do come from afar off myself, being but a straunger in these parts, till I was married; my[Pg 686] feather-in-law, who has lived in them, mon and boy, better than ninety and odd years,—for, thof a be still as fresh as a rose, a be a'most a hondred; he do tell me that a would carry his gold watch, if a had one, in his open hand, from top to bottom of our nine walks, in the pitch of the night; and a should aunswer to come to no harm; for a had never heard of a traveller as had had so much as a hair of his head hurt in the New Forest.'

[Pg 686]

'What is it you tell me, my good dame?' cried Juliet amazed: 'What are these alarming scenes that I have witnessed? And why are your apprehensions for your husband so direful?'

'The La be good unto me!' exclaimed the dame: 'why sure and sure you do no' go to think the poor mon be a murderer?'

'I am disposed to think whatever you will bid me,' replied Juliet, 'for I see in you such perfect truth and candour, that I cannot hesitate in giving you my belief.'

'Why the La be good unto me, my good gentlewoman, there be but small need to make bad worse! What the poor mon ha' done, may bring un to be honged and transported; but if so be a had killed a mon, a might go to old Nick besoides; and no one could say a deserved ony better.'

Juliet earnestly begged an explanation; and Dame Fairfield then confessed, that her husband and Nat Mixon were deer-stealers.

After the tremendous sensations to which the mistake of Juliet, from her ignorance of this species of traffic, had given rise, so unexpected a solution of her perplexity, made this crime, contrasted with the assassination of a 

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