The reader, who loves variety, will not be displeased, perhaps, to find that this story, leaving the two horsemen whom we have conducted a short stage on their way, now turns to another of our characters not less important to our tale.
In the same wood, which we have already described as clothing the hills and skirting the road over which De Vaux and his companion were travelling, but in a far more intricate part thereof than that into which the reader's eye has hitherto penetrated, might be seen, at the hour which we have chosen for the commencement of our tale, the figure of a man creeping quietly, but quickly, along a path so covered by the long branches of the underwood, that it could only be followed out by one who knew well the deepest recesses of the forest.
This personage was spare in form, and without being tall, as compared with other men, he was certainly tall in reference to his other proportions. His arms were long and sinewy, his feet small, his ankles well turned, and his whole body giving the promise of great activity, though at a time of life when the agile pliancy of youth is generally past and gone. He was dressed in an old brown long coat,"a world too wide" for his spare form, so that, as he crept along with a quiet, serpentine turning of his body, he looked like an eel in a great coat, if the reader's imagination be vivid enough to call up such an image. A hat, which had seen other days, and many of them, covered his brows; but under that hat was a countenance, which, however ordinary might be the rest of his appearance, redeemed the whole from the common herd. The complexion spoke his race: it was of a pale, greenish tint, without any rosier hue in the cheeks to enliven the pure gipsy colour of his skin. His nose was small, and slightly aquiline, though of a peculiar bend, forming, from the forehead to the tip, what Hogarth drew for the line of beauty. The eyebrows were small, and pencilled like a Circassian's, and the eyes themselves, shining through their long, thick, black eyelashes, were full of deep light, and--to use a very anomalous crowd of words--of wild, dark, melancholy fire. His forehead was broad and high; and the long, soft, glossy, black hair that fell in untrimmed profusion round his face had hardly suffered from the blanching hand of time, although his age could not be less than fifty-five or fifty-six, and might be more. His teeth, too, were unimpaired, and of as dazzling a whiteness as if beetle and recca had all possessed the properties their venders assert, and had all been tried on them in their turn.
Such was his appearance, as, creeping along through the brushwood with a stealthy motion, which would hardly have disturbed the deer from their lair, he made his way towards the spot where we have seen that his fellows were encamped. He was still far distant from it, however; and although it was evident that he was, or had been, well acquainted with the intricacies of the wood, yet it appeared that some leading marks were nece
