"I know it well," replied the gipsy; "but you will never be murdered like him, Captain de Vaux." "And why not?" said De Vaux, quickly. "What happened to him may happen to me." "My story must explain my words," rejoined Pharold; "I am unarmed--you are armed. All my comrades are there behind us: I go farther from them, and lead you nearer to your home. Were I willing to injure you, here were the place." "Lead on, lead on!" said De Vaux; "I will trust you, and follow you!" "Without reply, the gipsy led the way across the common, with every step of which he seemed so well acquainted as to be able to shape his course amid all the breaks, and bushes, and irregularities of the ground, without ever giving a glance to the right or the left. He said not a word either, and De Vaux followed equally in silence, with his interest and anxiety still more excited than they had been even by his strange companion's letter. In less than a quarter of an hour they had crossed that part of the common which lay between the sand-pit and the edge of the wood, exactly at that point where the hill, of which Morley Down formed the table land, joined on to the general chain of hills, from which it appeared as a kind of offset or promontory, and which, as we have said, were generally covered with forest. The neck of the promontory here overhung the turn of the road and the river, at about a couple of hundred yards nearer to Morley House than the spot where De Vaux had told Manners, on their first arrival in the country, that his uncle had been murdered some years before; and the track that lay between the place where he now stood and the highway was a steep precipitous bank of two or three hundred feet in height, covered with loose stones, scattered bushes, and one or two larger trees, thrown forward beyond the mass of wood on the left. The moon was shining bright on the road and the river, and though she had passed her meridian, promised yet several hours of light. "Come down this little path, sir," said the gipsy. "Under that bank, with those bushes round us, about thirty yards down, we can find shelter, and can see every thing around, so that there will be no fear of interruption." De Vaux followed as he desired, and in a few minutes reached the spot to which he had pointed. There, upon a felled oak, which only remained to be rolled down the hill, he seated himself on a little piece of level ground, where some one had endeavoured ineffectually to establish a quarry, and whence he could behold the village near his aunt's dwelling and the top of Morley House itself, though the view up the valley on the other side was interrupted by the sweep of the woody hill. The gipsy stood beside him, and De Vaux anxiously besought him to produce at once the proofs of the very painful assertions which his letter had contained.