There was one came upon me and raised the hue-and-cry', that it would have gone hard with, but for his nimbleness.
I made a thrust at him.' 'You thrust your sword at HIM!' cried the widow, looking upwards.

'You hear this man! you hear and saw!' He looked at her, as, with her head thrown back, and her hands tight clenched together, she uttered these words in an agony of appeal.

Then, starting to his feet as she had done, he advanced towards her.
'Beware!' she cried in a suppressed voice, whose firmness stopped him midway.

'Do not so much as touch me with a finger, or you are lost; body and soul, you are lost.' 'Hear me,' he replied, menacing her with his hand.

'I, that in the form of a man live the life of a hunted beast; that in the body am a spirit, a ghost upon the earth, a thing from which all creatures shrink, save those curst beings of another world, who will not leave me;--I am, in my desperation of this night, past all fear but that of the hell in which I exist from day to day.