"But, see! others are at hand." Their approach, indeed, seemed to have disturbed all the weird children of the waste.

Lights were seen trooping towards them in every direction; sometimes stopping, sometimes rising in the air, now contracting, now expanding, and when within a few yards of the travellers, retreating with inconceivable swiftness.
"It is a marvellous and incomprehensible spectacle," remarked Viviana.
"The common folk hereabouts affirm that these Jack-o'-lanterns, as they term them, always appear in greater numbers when some direful catastrophe is about to take place," rejoined the young merchant.
"Heaven avert it from us," ejaculated Viviana.
"It is an idle superstition," returned Chetham.

"But we must now keep silence," he continued, lowering his voice, and stopping near the charred stump of a tree, left, it would seem, as a mark.

"The road turns here; and, unless our pursuers know it, we shall now quit them for ever.
We must not let a sound betray the course we are about to take." Having turned this dangerous corner in safety, and conducted his companions as noiselessly as possible for a few yards along the cross path, which being much narrower was consequently more perilous than the first, Humphrey Chetham stood still, and, imposing silence upon the others, listened to the approach of their pursuers.

His prediction was speedily and terribly verified.