A gleam of triumph broke over the thin sallow countenance of the peer. "If I am not very much mistaken, Colonel Manners," he said, "this very Pharold will be in our hands to-night. He and his gang are not famous alone for one sort of crime. My park-keepers at Dimden informed me a few days ago that they had discovered a plan which these gipsies had laid for robbing my park of the deer; and I immediately took measures to ensure the arrest of the whole of them in the very fact. Nor was my purpose alone to save my game, Colonel Manners, nor to punish deer-stealers," continued Lord Dewry, raising his head and speaking with determined firmness; "no, I had a weightier object in view; I had a more serious offence to avenge." The peer paused; for although he was anxious to make the charge which he had determined to bring against the gipsy, boldly and distinctly to as many private individuals as possible, before he urged it in a public court of justice, yet he felt a difficulty, a hesitation, perhaps we might say a fear, in pronouncing for the first time so false an accusation against a fellow-creature, which was to be supported, too, by so many dark, and tortuous, and deceitful contrivances. There was in his bosom a consciousness of the fallacy, of the futility, we might say, of all human calculations, which produced an undefined dread of rendering his schemes irretrievable by once making the charge to any one. It was to him the passing of the Rubicon; and that step once taken, he felt that he should be involved in a labyrinth of obscure and unknown paths, from which there would be no retreat, and which would conduct him whither he knew not. And yet he saw that it must be taken; that the gipsy's first act after his arrest would undoubtedly be, to charge him with the crime which he had committed; and that it was absolutely necessary, in order to give all his future proceedings a firm basis and a commanding position, to be the person to accuse rather than the person accused. He knew how inferior defence is to attack; how much more faith men are naturally inclined to give to a charge than they give to a recrimination; and from the first commencement of his reply to Colonel Manners he had determined to make it boldly; but when he came to the immediate point where it was to be spoken, he hesitated and paused irresolute.