We have before said that the vehement excitement of continued swift riding produces a paroxysm in the sensorium amounting to delirium. Dick's blood was again on fire. He was first giddy, as after a deep draught of kindling spirit; this passed off, but the spirit was still in his veins--the _estro_ was working in his brain. All his ardor, his eagerness, his fury, returned. He rode like one insane, and his courser partook of his frenzy. She bounded; she leaped; she tore up the ground beneath her; while Dick gave vent to his exultation in one wild, prolonged halloo. More than half his race is run. He has triumphed over every difficulty. He will have no further occasion to halt. Bess carries her forage along with her. The course is straightforward--success seems certain--the goal already reached--the path of glory won. Another wild halloo, to which the echoing woods reply, and away! Away! away! thou matchless steed! yet brace fast thy sinews--hold, hold thy breath, for, alas! the goal is not yet attained! But forward! forward, on they go, High snorts the straining steed, Thick pants the rider's laboring breath, As headlong on they speed! _CHAPTER X_ _THE GIBBET_ See there, see there, what yonder swings And creaks 'mid whistling rain, Gibbet and steel--the accursed wheel-- A murderer in his chain. _William and Helen._ As the eddying currents sweep over its plains in howling, bleak December, the horse and her rider passed over what remained of Lincolnshire. Grantham is gone, and they are now more slowly looking up the ascent of Gonerby Hill, a path well known to Turpin; where often, in bygone nights, many a purse had changed its owner. With that feeling of independence and exhilaration which every one feels, we believe, on having climbed the hill-side, Turpin turned to gaze around. There was triumph in his eye. But the triumph was checked as his glance fell upon a gibbet near him to the right, on the round point of hill which is a landmark to the wide vale of Belvoir. Pressed as he was for time, Dick immediately struck out of the road, and approached the spot where it stood. Two scarecrow objects, covered with rags and rusty links of chains, depended from the tree. A night crow screaming around the carcases added to the hideous effect of the scene. Nothing but the living highwayman and his skeleton brethren was visible upon the solitary spot. Around him was the lonesome waste of hill, o'erlooking the moonlit valley: beneath his feet, a patch of bare and lightning-blasted sod: above, the wan, declining moon and skies, flaked with ghostly clouds; before him, the bleached bodies of the murderers, for such they were. "Will this be my lot, I marvel?" said Dick, looking upwards, with an involuntary shudder. "Ay, marry will it," rejoined a crouching figure, suddenly springing from beside a tuft of briars that skirted the blasted ground.