" Which, it is only fair to say, he
honestly intended to do.
With a hurried nod of parting, he continued in the direction of the
Woods. When he had satisfied himself that the strangers had entered the
settlement and would not follow him for further explanation, he
quickened his pace. In half an hour he passed between two of the
gigantic sentinels that guarded the entrance to a trail. Here he paused
to collect his thoughts. The Woods were vast in extent, the trail dim
and uncertain--at times apparently breaking off, or intersecting
another trail as faint as itself. Believing that Miss Nellie had
diverged from the highway only as a momentary excursion into the shade,
and that she would not dare to penetrate its more sombre and unknown
recesses, he kept within sight of the skirting plain. By degrees the
sedate influence of the silent vaults seemed to depress him. The ardor
of the chase began to flag. Under the calm of their dim roof the fever
of his veins began to subside; his pace slackened; he reasoned more
deliberately. It was by no means probable that the young woman in a
brown duster was Nellie; it was not her habitual traveling dress; it
was not like her to walk unattended in the road; there was nothing in
her tastes and habits to take her into this gloomy forest, allowing
that she had even entered it; and on this absolute question of her
identity the two witnesses were divided.
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