'No, never! Stir but one foot--move but a single limb--and you will lie beside that wretched victim of your hellish arts. Hear me now, David Cross; I am no longer your slave. You have ruined my name; you have defrauded me of the title of wife; you have made me disown my child; you have kept me in poverty, and made me a companion of outcasts; and now you have thrust me from you, like a hideous reptile--but your hour has come; that miserable being, whom you sent here a raving maniac, has let out your secret--it is already on the wings of the wind.' Cross trembled in every joint; a fiend, with demoniac power, seemed glaring at him in the being whom but a moment before he had so shamefully abused. 'Meg, forgive me. I have wronged you; I know I have. Don't take my life, and I will make it all right. I will say you are my wife; I will do anything you want.' '_Forgive_ you? Yes, I will forgive you, when you bring back my poor parents who went down to the grave mourning for her you ruined; when you can tear from my mind the memory of wrongs none but a woman's heart could ever have borne so long. Forgive you? no, never. Your life you may have! but _go_--before the dreadful feelings which have been burning in my heart blaze up again. Go! go quick--' He waited not, but moved to the door, stepped trembling from the threshold, and hurried away through the dark forest. The moment Cross had gone Margaret opened a small trunk, hastily gathered together a few articles of dress, and slipping a little roll of paper containing her stock of money into her pocket, tied up her clothing in a bundle, cast one look upon the dead body, and then quitted the wretched tenement she had so long called her home, firmly resolved never to enter it again. She hastened at once towards the cottage of the Widow Brown, and so rapidly did she thread her way through the intricate path, that before the widow had passed over half the distance to her home, Margaret had overtaken her. 'Don't be frightened, Mrs. Brown; I did not think to reach you so soon--but stop and listen to me.' The widow had indeed stopped, for Margaret came upon her so unexpectedly, that she was much alarmed, and deprived of the ability, even if she had the will, to escape. 'I will listen to you, Margaret, but I have heard dreadful things enough to-night. I am almost distracted now.' 'I would not add a straw to your burdens, my dear good Mrs. Brown, but I am a poor distressed creature. The whole of my life for these many years has been one scene of misery; but I can bear it no longer, and this very night will find me many miles from hence.' 'Oh, _do_, don't talk so, Margaret. Come go with me, and rest you for the night at least; it is so dark, and beginning to storm already.'