The man uttered the most horrid imprecations. 'You noisy slut,' he growled, shoving his face, hideous in its crape mask, into the coach, and speaking in a voice husky with liquor, 'will you stop your whining? Or must I blow you to pieces with my Toby? For you, you white-livered sneak,' he continued, addressing the tutor, 'give me any more of your piping and I'll cut out your tongue! Who is hurting you, I'd like to know! As for you, my fine lady, have a care of your skin, for if I pull you out into the road it will be the worse for you! D'ye hear me? he continued, with a volley of savage oaths. 'A little more of your music, and I'll have you out and strip the clothes off your back! You don't hang me for nothing. D--n you, we are three miles from anywhere, and I have a mind to gag you, whether or no! And I will too, if you so much as open your squeaker again!' 'Let me go,' she cried faintly. 'Let me go.' 'Oh, you will be let go fast enough--the other side of the water,' he answered, with a villainous laugh. 'I'm bail to that. In the meantime keep a still tongue, or it will be the worse for you! Once out of Bristol, and you may pipe as you like!' The girl fell back in her corner with a low wail of despair. The man seeing the effect he had wrought, laughed his triumph, and in sheer brutality passed his light once or twice across her face. Then he closed the door with a crash and mounted; the carriage bounded forward again, and in a trice was travelling onward as rapidly as before. Night had set in, and darkness, a darkness that could almost be felt, reigned in the interior of the chaise. Neither of the travellers could now see the other, though they sat within arm's length. The tutor, as soon as they were well started, and his nerves, shaken by the man's threats, permitted him to think of anything save his own safety, began to wonder that his companion, who had been so forward before, did not now speak; to look for her to speak, and to find the darkness and this silence, which left him to feed on his fears, strangely uncomfortable. He could almost believe that she was no longer there. At length, unable to bear it longer, he spoke. 'I suppose you know,' he said--he was growing vexed with the girl who had brought him into this peril--'who is at the bottom of this?' She did not answer, or rather she answered only by a sudden burst of weeping; not the light, facile weeping of a woman crossed or over-fretted, or frightened; but the convulsive heart-rending sobbing of utter grief and abandonment. The tutor heard, and was at first astonished, then alarmed. 'My dear, good girl, don't cry like that,' he said awkwardly. 'Don't! I--I don't understand it. You--you frighten me. You--you really should not. I only asked you if you knew whose work this was.' 'I know! I know only too well!' she cried passionately. 'God help me! God help all women!'