And with a whisper, he hissed the concluding and cruel threat in the ears of the shuddering and shrinking girl. With a husky horror in her voice, she cried out:-- "You dare not! monster as you are, you dare not!" then shrieking, at the full height of her voice--"Save me, uncle! save me! save me!" "Save you! It is he that dooms you! He has given you up to any fate that I shall decree!" "Liar! away! I defy you. You dare not, ruffian! Your foul threat is but meant to frighten me." The creeping terrors of her voice, as she spoke, contradicted the tenor of her speech. Her fears--quite as extreme as he sought to make them--were fully evinced in her trembling accents. "Frighten you!" answered the ruffian. "Frighten you! why, not so difficult a matter either! But it is as easy to do, as to threaten--to make you feel as to make you fear--and why not? why should you not become the thing at once for which you have been long destined? Once certainly mine, Lucy Munro, you will abandon the silly notion that you can be anything to Ralph Colleton! Come!--" Her shrieks answered him. He clapped his handkerchief upon her mouth. "Uncle! uncle! save me!" She was half stifled--she felt breath and strength failing. Her brutal assailant was hauling her away, with a force to which she could no longer oppose resistance; and with a single half-ejaculated prayer--"Oh, God! be merciful!" she sunk senselessly at his feet, even as a falling corse. CHAPTER XXI. "THOU SHALT DO NO MURDER!" Even at this moment, Munro entered the apartment. He came not a moment too soon. Rivers had abused his opportunity thus far; and it is not to be doubted that he would have forborne none of the advantages which his brute strength afforded him over the feeble innocent, were it not for the interposition of the uncle. He _had_ lied, when he had asserted to the girl the sanction of the uncle for his threatened crime. Munro was willing that his niece should become the _wife_ of the outlaw, and barely willing to consent even to this; but for anything less than this--base as he was--he would sooner have braved every issue with the ruffian, and perished himself in defence of the girl's virtue. He had his pride of family, strange to say, though nursed and nestled in a bosom which could boast no other virtue. The moment he saw the condition of Lucy, with the grasp of Rivers still upon her, he tore her away with the strength of a giant. "What have you been doing, Guy?" His keen and suspicious glance of eye conveyed the question more significantly. "Nothing! she is a fool only!" "And you have been a brute! Beware! I tell you, Guy Rivers, if you but ruffle the hair of this child in violence, I will knife you, as soon as I would my worst enemy." "Pshaw! I only threatened her to make her confess where she had sent Colleton or hidden him."