Page:The Necromancer, or, The Tale of the Black Forest Vol. 2.djvu/65

 intending to make me one of their associates in wickedness, ordered me to mount a horse, and forced me to follow them in full speed through fields and forests, notwithstanding the weak state of my body. My conductors, at first only three in number, and clad in linen frocks, blackened with coal dust, rode a head, looking back now and then; their black faces and sooty hands evidently foreboded their dark design.

After half an hour's ride my infernal guides stopped at a lonely public house, alighted, and bade me take care of the horses until they should return.

I obeyed their stern command with gloomy silence, tied the horses to a tree, and sat myself down upon a bench before the house. The haunts of my disordered fancy made the time pass quickly on, I revolved in my afflicted mind my former occupation, the happy hours I had spent in the service of a kind indulgent master, and the horrors of my pre-