he Brigand Children.--A Revolution of Feeling.--The main
Road.--The Carriage.--In Search of Bob._

Paralyzed with terror, dumb with horror, Bob lay motionless and
almost breathless; and the grisly old hag reached out her long,
lean, thin, bony, withered, shrivelled hand, and took his hair,
while with the other hand she raised her sharp weapon.

She took his hair very lightly and tenderly; so lightly, indeed,
that Bob was just conscious of her touch; and though he expected
that he would be torn from his bed and struck dead the next instant,
yet this fate was delayed.

She took his hair then in her hand very gently and tenderly, and
in her other hand she raised the sharp weapon.

Now, the sharp weapon was a pair of sheep-shears.

These shears she held forward, and with them she snipped off, as
noiselessly as possible, a lock of Bob's hair.

She pressed the lock of hair to her thin lips, looked at it
steadfastly for some time, pressed it once more to her lips, and
then put it in the folds of her dress.

Then kneeling by Bob's side, she looked at him long and earnestly.
She bent over him, and looked down upon him. She laid the shears
upon the floor, clasped her withered hands together, and gazed upon
the boy. He lay still. His eyes were closed; but the delay of his
fate and the snip of the shears in his hair bad roused him somewhat
from his abyss of terror. He opened his eyes wide enough to see
what was going on. He could not see the old woman's face, but he
saw her kneeling, and he saw her thin hands clasped before her,
like one in prayer, and tremulous.

The old woman bent over him; and if Bob could have seen her face
he would have known that this old creature was an object of any
other feeling rather than fear. Pale it was, that face that was
over him, and wrinkled, and emaciated; but there was upon it a
softened expression--an expression of yearning and of longing.
That which at a distance had seemed to his frightened fancy a
hungry, ghoulish look, was now nothing more than the earnest,
fixed gaze of a love that longed to be satisfied--a gaze like
that of a bereaved mother who sees some one who reminds her of
her lost boy, and looks at him with a look of unutterable yearning.
So, now, it was with this poor old decrepit creature. Perhaps in
her past life some son had been torn from her, of whom Bob reminded
her, and she had come now to feast herself with his face, which
reminded her of her lost boy, to take