ather would be sufficient to destroy you, with them. We
must part, indeed we must part!"
"And can you, Caroline," he demanded, still lingering, but speaking
in a bitter and irritated tone, angry alike with himself, and her, and
with the interruption--"can you hold to your cold and cruel
resolution, now?"
"I can, I must, Sherbrooke," she replied,--"nothing shall shake me."
"Well, then, be it so!" he answered sharply; and turning away, walked
rapidly up the lane.
Caroline stood, for a single instant, on the spot where he left her;
but then all the feelings with which she had struggled during the
whole of that painful conversation with her husband, seemed to break
loose upon her at once, and over-power her. Her head grew giddy, a
weary faintness seemed to come over her heart, and she sank,
unconscious, on the ground.
The next moment six or seven men came quickly up.
"Here's a woman murdered!" cried one--"and the fellow that did it is
off up the lane."
A few hasty exclamations of surprise and pity followed, and then
another man exclaimed, in a hasty and impatient tone, "Take her up in
your arms, Jim, and bring her along. Perhaps we may find this
Messenger the boy talked of, and the murderer together; but let us
make haste, or we shall lose both."
"Mind," said another, speaking almost at the same time, "don't knock
the Messenger's brains out. We will just take and plant him in the
marsh, tie his arms, and put him up to the arm-pits. The boys will
find him there, when they come to drive back the cattle.--The lady
don't seem quite dead, I think."
"Bring her along! bring her along!" cried another voice--"we shall
miss all, if you are so slow;" and thus speaking, the leader of the
party quickened his pace, while the others, having raised the lady
from the ground, bore her onward towards the end of the lane.

CHAPTER XXIV.
We have said that Wilton Brown paused and gazed through the mist at
the figure of a man advancing towards him, and to the reader it need
not be told who the person was that thus came forward. To Wilton,
however, the conviction was brought more slowly; for though he had
heard the sound of a familiar voice, yet it seemed so improbable that
voice should be the voice of Lord Sherbrooke, that the idea never
struck him, till the figure became so distinct as not to leave a
doubt.
"Good God, Sherbrooke!" he exclaimed, advancing towards him at
length--"can it be you?"
"And I may well ask, Wilton, if it be you," said Lord Sherbrooke, in
a ton