of his bearing or the direction in which
he had just come, Mounting a little rising ground he beheld the abbey
of Ap Gauvon, apparently two miles distant, still reddening with the
angry glare of torches--sometimes gleaming over the outer walls,
sometimes flashing from the windows or upper battlements; a proof that
the police-officers had not yet renounced all hopes of recovering
their prisoner. This spectacle did not tend to restore him to his
self-possession: he descended the hill in trepidation: and, on reaching
its foot, anxiously considered what it would be best to do. At this
moment, the touch of something wet and cold upon his face struck a deadly
chill to his heart: he hoped he might be mistaken; but the next instant
came a second--a third--a fourth, until the whole air was filled with
snow-flakes. Raising his head at this time he beheld the moon, at an
immense altitude above him, shooting down her light through a shaft as
it were in the clouds: the slender orifice of the shaft contracted: a
sickly mist spread over the disk of the luminary; in a moment after all
was gone; and one unbroken canopy of thick dun clouds muffled the whole
hemisphere.

In this perplexity what was he to do? From the hill, which he had just
descended, he remembered to have seen some dark object, apparently
about half a mile distant: this might be a hovel or small cottage; and
in this direction he determined to run. The snow was now in his back;
and the dark spot soon began to swell upon his sight: in five minutes
more he came up to it. He felt about for door or window; but could find
none: and great was his disappointment when, upon more attentive
examination, he perceived that what he had mistaken for a place of
shelter was the antique stone gallows which he had passed in the
afternoon. Under the lee of this old monument of elder days he was
seeking out a favourable spot for a temporary shelter from the violence
of the storm, when to his sudden horror and astonishment up started a
tall female figure and seized him eagerly by the arm. At first she
seemed speechless from some strong passion, and shaken as if by an ague
fit: but, in a few moments she recovered her voice; and with piercing
tones, in which, though trembling from agitation, Bertram immediately
recognized those of poor Gillie Godber, she exclaimed--

"Ah Gregory! is it you? Are you come at last?--My darling! I have
waited for thee--oh how long! Four and twenty years I have we