The old forester at first, who had known and loved her mother when she was as young and as fair, and almost as wretched as her miserable child, was wont to follow her steps at a distance, so deeply was he impressed with the idea that all was not right with her gentle spirit; and he had whispered once into the ear of a fellow-servitor, as old and as faithful as himself, that he had seen her make strange gestures with her hands, and noticed that her lips moved constantly without giving utterance to a sound. But it was not long before she discovered that she was watched; and the moment she discovered it, assuming instantly her usual calm and graceful dignity, she turned about, left the path which she was following, and walked directly up to the old man, where he stood half concealed by the boll of a huge oak, and alarmed now at the consequence of his own precaution. Fixing her soft eyes mournfully, and with half reproachful glance, on those of the old servant, she laid her hand lightly on his arm, and said, with an attempt to be playful, as of old, which was in truth most melancholy, “Ah, I have found you out for all your hiding, Jeremy. So you were watching me in these wild woods;” and then altering her tone in an instant, as if she had become aware that the effort was in vain, “but no,” she added, “no, no—you are mistaken; I am not mad, indeed I am not mad, only most miserable; though God knows, and he only, how soon they may make me mad also. Now listen to me, Jeremy, you must promise me here, and now, that you will do from this time forth whatever I may ask of you. I know that in old times you were good to my mother, and now, God help me, unless it be you alone, there is no one left to be good to her daughter. Say, will you promise me, old Jeremy?” “I will—I will, Mistress Margaret,” replied the old man, moved even to tears by the earnest incoherency of her address. “I will, if they kill me for it! I will do what you bid me, though it be to lose my own life, or—” and he bent his brows darkly, and clenched his hand and repeated in a deep whisper, “or—or to take that of others!” For one moment she gazed at him so wistfully and so wildly, that he imagined that he had hit upon her meaning, and that she only lacked the nerve to speak out her desire openly. He fixed his eye, therefore, firmly and confidently on hers, and tapping the butt of the heavy cross-bow, which lay in the hollow of his left arm, with the fore-finger of his right, “There is no doubt,” he said, “nor any danger. I can send a broad arrow through his heart, as he rides home some night in his cups, I warrant me, and none the wiser.”