"Yes," he said, almost aloud, "there is no doubt of it: Luigi has lured me hither by means of my interest in this pretty Italian,--for what I dare not think! I have been properly cozened,--nicely hoodwinked! On my soul, I seem to deserve my fate as a punishment for my folly! What have I done?--left a fond wife, an only child, friends, home, everything,--all to follow a handsome girl, across a country where robbers are as plentiful as hazel nuts! A wild, hair-brained fool I have been, and am likely to pay the piper for it too! A pretty mess to get into!--left alone in a den of murderers, in the power of the fierce Luigi,--a man without even the mercy of wild wolves, for they kill at once, whilst he leaves me in sickening suspense. I would I knew the worst at once,--anything is better than uncertainty. But then Leonora! could she be so false,--surely all her love for me was not a cheat? I can scarcely think so. Who is she? Perhaps Luigi's daughter. Ha! I have it now: and she is perhaps laughing at my credulity! What is her word to a heretic? She can get absolved from her vow by the next priest! It is a comfortable creed the Roman Catholic: a nice one for robbers, murderers, and cheats. I wonder all wicked men are not Catholics! But why am I here? They will get little from me,--my watch and half a dozen pieces of gold; surely for this I have not been brought here? If they wanted my blood they could have had it a dozen times; the man I met when blindfolded,--a stab in the back would have done the business,--a push off the bridge by my fair guide! After all, matters are not so bad; there may be something behind all this seeming mystery. Leonora may be my friend; I surely wrong her; vice could never assume such a winning guise; falsehood never lurked beneath an open brow like hers! I will 'bide my sugh,' as we say over the Tweed; I may live to laugh over all this yet,--although that coffin is no laughing matter, God knows! I would I had anything else in the room,--it scares one out of his usual coolness! I hope there is not a corpse inside! Old Andrew would say, 'it's no canny.' I declare I will go and have a peep under the cloth,--perhaps there is a friend in it, after all, and I am left to read the riddle; he will think me a slow guesser." The change of thoughts had so altered his feelings he leaped up quite like himself again, and was about to put his plan into execution, when he heard loud voices and oaths, in Italian, English, and other tongues, alarmingly near. "Ho!" he said, almost aloud, "after all, first thoughts are true, and Luigi's ruffians come to give me cause to know them; but, by heaven! we will have a fight,--they shall not kill me like a fox run to earth! there are stores of weapons here; I'll sell my life dearly; some of them shall know 'it is ill fashing wi' a desperate man,' as my northern friends say; they'll find what it is to beard a lion at bay!"