'Where are they taking us?' he cried, rising and sitting down again; and peering first this way and then the other. 'My G--d, we are undone! We shall be murdered--I know we shall! Oh dear! what a jolt! They are taking us to some cut-throat place! There again! Didn't you feel it? Don't you understand, woman? Oh, Lord,' he continued, piteously wringing his hands, 'why did I mix myself up with this trouble?' She did not answer, and enraged by her silence and insensibility, the cowardly tutor could have found it in his heart to strike her. Fortunately the ray of light which now penetrated the carriage suggested an idea which he hastened to carry out. He had no paper, and, given paper, he had no ink; but falling back on what he had, he lugged out his snuff-box and pen-knife, and holding the box in the ray of light, and himself as still as the road permitted, he set to work, laboriously and with set teeth, to scrawl on the bottom of the box the message of which we know. To address it to Mr. Fishwick and sign it Julia were natural precautions, since he knew that the girl, and not he, would be the object of pursuit. When he had finished his task, which was no light one--the road growing worse and the carriage shaking more and more--he went to thrust the box under the door, which fitted ill at the bottom. But stooping to remove the straw, he reflected that probably the road they were in was a country lane, where the box would be difficult to find; and in a voice trembling with fear and impatience, he called to the girl to give him her black kerchief. She did not ask him why or for what, but complied without opening her eyes. No words could have described her state more eloquently. He wrapped the thing loosely in the kerchief--which he calculated would catch the passing eye more easily than the box--and knotted the ends together. But when he went to push the package under the door, it proved too bulky; and, with an exclamation of rage, he untied it, and made it up anew and more tightly. At last he thought that he had got it right, and he stooped to feel for the crack; but the carriage, which had been travelling more and more heavily and slowly, came to a sudden standstill, and in a panic he sat up, dropping the box and thrusting the straw over it with his foot. He had scarcely done this when the door was opened, and the masked man, who had threatened them before, thrust in his head. 'Come out!' he said curtly, addressing the tutor, who was the nearer. 'And be sharp about it!' But Mr. Thomasson's eyes, peering through the doorway, sought in vain the least sign of house or village. Beyond the yellow glare cast by the lamp on the wet road, he saw nothing but darkness, night, and the gloomy shapes of trees; and he hung back. 'No,' he said, his voice quavering with fear. 'I--my good man, if you will promise--'