feet, but I found, boy as I was, that mine effaced them. They were certainly the marks of a woman; smaller than those of a grown male, yet firmer set than those of a child. Never since the days of Robinson Crusoe was ever man so panic-struck by footprints in the sand as I. Although it was broad daylight, and the air was alive with sounds, I fairly trembled. The many evil stories which, during my short stay at Fairburn, I had already heard of the old Hall, a corner of which I could discern from where I stood, crowded in upon my brain; the whole demesne seemed under a malign influence--enchanted ground. I turned from the spot, whose lonely beauty had once so won my soul, with fear and loathing; and as I turned, there rang out--it may have been from the thicket across the stream, but the echoes took it up so suddenly, that it seemed to ring all around me--a laugh so terrible, so demoniacally mocking, that I could scarcely believe it came from mortal throat. Again and again it rose, and circled about, as though it would have headed my fleeing steps, and driven me back upon some dreadful Thing, while I fled through the fern towards home at my topmost speed, and the white-tailed rabbits scampered to left and right, less frightened than I. CHAPTER IV. THE DUMB WITNESS. A sentiment of shame prevented my mentioning the affair of the footprints to my tutor; and as for Marmaduke, although we were by this time very intimate, I would not have furnished him with a new occasion for detesting Fairburn Chase upon any account. Not only, however, was my favourite haunt by the brook become an object of aversion to me, but I confess I took much less delight in any part of the Heath demesne. I kept my eyes about me, even in the great avenue, and upon the whole preferred the rector's little garden, if at any time I had a mind for sleeping out of doors. "Meredith," observed Mr. Long to me one morning--he called me "Peter" generally, but when he had anything serious to say it was "Meredith"--"it appears to me that you don't take nearly so much exercise as you used to do. Your appetite is failing. I am really concerned about you." "Thank you, sir, I am pretty well." "Nonsense, Peter, no boy should be 'pretty well;' he should be in the rudest, vulgarest health, or else he is in a bad way. Your good father advised me that if you seemed the least to need it, I should get you a nag. It is Crittenden Fair next week. What say you to my buying you a horse?" "Thank you, sir, that is just what I should like," cried I. "I am certainly getting tired of walking about alone." And then I began to blush a little, for of late rather than go into the Chase I had been accompanying my tutor in his favourite diversion of fishing, which I cared nothing about, or else in his parochial expeditions.