She cared not which direction she pursued, provided she placed a considerable distance between herself and London; for so terrible was the dread under which she laboured from her knowledge of the desperate character and profound cunning of the Resurrection Man, that she conceived it to be impossible for her to be safe so long as she was within even a wide circuit of the great metropolis.
Having passed through Hackney, she speedily left the main road, and struck at random across the fields, careful only to pursue a course which she felt convinced must remove her farther and further from London.
Unweariedly for two long hours did she hurry on her way, until she fell, overcome with weariness, beneath a large tree, whose gigantic leafless boughs creaked ominously in the darkness over her head.
The night was fearfully cold—the grass was damp—and the wind moaned gloomily through the trees.
The Rattlesnake was hungry and thirsty; but she had not food nor drink to satisfy the cravings of nature. In that solitude,—without a light gleaming through the obscurity as a beacon of hospitality,—she felt that her gold was then and there no better to her than the cold soil upon which she rested her weary limbs.
At length, worn out by fatigue and want, she fell asleep.
When she awoke the sun was shining.
But where was she?
Close at hand burnt a blazing fire, fed with wood and turf, and sending up a dense smoke into the fine frosty air. To an iron rod, fastened horizontally to two upright stakes, was suspended a huge caldron, the bubbling of which reached her ears, and the savour of whose contents was wafted most agreeably to her nostrils.
Grouped around the fire, and anxiously watching the culinary process, were two women, four men, and a boy.