A STRANGE STORY

By Edward Bulwer Lytton

(Lord Lytton)

PREFACE. 

Of the many illustrious thinkers whom the schools of France havecontributed to the intellectual philosophy of our age, Victor Cousin, the most accomplished, assigns to Maine de Biran the rank of the mostoriginal. 

In the successive developments of his own mind, Maine de Biran may, indeed, be said to represent the change that has been silently atwork throughout the general mind of Europe since the close of thelast century. He begins his career of philosopher with blind faith inCondillac and Materialism. As an intellect severely conscientious in thepursuit of truth expands amidst the perplexities it revolves, phenomenawhich cannot be accounted for by Condillac's sensuous theories opento his eye. To the first rudimentary life of man, the animal life, "characterized by impressions, appetites, movements, organic in theirorigin and ruled by the Law of Necessity, " (1) he is compelled to add, "the second, or human life, from which Free-will and Self-consciousnessemerge. " He thus arrives at the union of mind and matter; but still asomething is wanted, --some key to the marvels which neither of theseconditions of vital being suffices to explain. And at last the grandself-completing Thinker attains to the Third Life of Man in Man's Soul. 

 "There are not, " says this philosopher, towards the close of his last and loftiest work, --"there are not only two principles opposed to each other in Man, --there are three. For there are in him three lives and three orders of faculties. Though all should be in accord and in harmony between the sensitive and the active faculties which constitute Man, there would still be a nature superior, a third life which would not be satisfied; which would make felt (ferait sentir) the truth that there is another happiness, another wisdom, another perfection, at once above the greatest human happiness, above the highest wisdom, or intellectual and moral perfection of which the human being is susceptible. " (2)

Now, as Philosophy and Romance both take their origin in the Principleof Wonder, so in the "Strange Story" submitted to the Public it will beseen that Romance, through the freest exercise of its wildest vagaries, conducts its bewildered hero towards the same goal to which Philosophyleads its luminous Student, through far grander portents of Nature, farhigher visions of Supernatural Power, than Fable can yield to Fancy. That goal is defined in these noble words:--

 "The relations (rapports) which exist between the elements and the products of the three lives of Man are the subjects of meditation, the fairest and finest, but also the most difficult. The Stoic Philosophy shows us all which can be most elevated in active life; but it makes abstraction of the animal nature, and absolutely fails to recognize all which belongs to the life of the spirit. Its practical morality is beyond the forces of humanity. Christianity alone embraces the whole Man. It dissimulates none of the sides of his nature, and avails itself of his miseries and his weakness in order to conduct him to his end in showing him all the want that he has of a succor more exalted. " (3)

In the passages thus quoted, I imply one of the objects for which thistale has been written; and I cite them, with a wish to acknowledge oneof those priceless obligations which writings the lightest and mostfantastic often incur to reasoners the most serious and profound. 

But I here construct a romance which should have, as a romance, someinterest for the general reader. I do not elaborate a treatise submittedto the logic of sages. And it is only when "in fairy fiction drest" thatRomance gives admission to "truths severe. "

I venture to assume that none will question my privilege to availmyself of the marvellous agencies which have ever been at the legitimatecommand of the fabulist. 

To the highest form of romantic narrative, the Epic, critics, indeed, have declared that a supernatural machinery is indispensable. That theDrama has availed itself of the same license as the Epic, it would beunnecessary to say to the countrymen of Shakspeare, or to the generationthat is yet studying the enigmas of Goethe's "Faust. " Prose Romance hasimmemorially asserted, no less than the Epic or the Drama, its heritagein the Realm of the Marvellous. The interest which attaches to thesupernatural is sought in the earliest Prose Romance which modern timestake from the ancient, and which, perhaps, had its origin in the lostNovels of Miletus; (4) and the right to invoke such interest has, eversince, been maintained by Romance through all varieties of formand fancy, --from the majestic epopee of "Telemaque" to the gracefulfantasies of "Undine, " or the mighty mockeries of "Gulliver's Travels"down to such comparatively commonplace elements of wonder as yetpreserve from oblivion "The Castle of Otranto" and "The Old EnglishBaron. "

Now, to my mind, the true reason why a supernatural agency isindispensable to the conception of the Epic, is that the Epic is thehighest and the completest form in which Art can express either Man orNature, and that without some gleams of the supernatural, Man is not mannor Nature, nature. 

It is said, by a writer to whom an eminent philosophical critic justlyapplies the epithets of "pious and profound:" (5)

 "Is it unreasonable to confess that we believe in God, not by reason of the Nature which conceals Him, but by reason of the Supernatural in Man which alone reveals and proves Him to exist?. .. Man reveals God: for Man, by his intelligence, rises above Nature; and in virtue of this intelligence is conscious of himself as a power not only independent of, but opposed to, Nature, and capable of resisting, conquering, and controlling her. "(6)

If the meaning involved in the argument, of which I have here made butscanty extracts, be carefully studied, I think that we shall finddeeper reasons than the critics who dictated canons of taste to the lastcentury discovered, --why the supernatural is indispensable to the Epic, and why it is allowable to all works of imagination, in which Art lookson Nature with Man's inner sense of a something beyond and above her. 

But the Writer who, whether in verse or prose, would avail himself ofsuch sources of pity or terror as flow from the Marvellous, can onlyattain his object in proportion as the wonders he narrates are of a kindto excite the curiosity of the age he addresses. 

In the brains of our time, the faculty of Causation is very markedlydeveloped. People nowadays do not delight in the Marvellous according tothe old childlike spirit. They say in one breath, "Very extraordinary!"and in the next breath ask, "How do you account for it?" If the Authorof this work has presumed to borrow from science some elements ofinterest for Romance, he ventures to hope that no thoughtful reader--andcertainly no true son of science--will be disposed to reproach him. Infact, such illustrations from the masters of Thought were essential tothe completion of the purpose which pervades the work. 

That purpose, I trust, will develop itself in proportion as the storyapproaches the close; and whatever may appear violent or melodramaticin the catastrophe, will, perhaps, be found, by a reader capable ofperceiving the various symbolical meanings conveyed in the story, essential to the end in which those meanings converge, and towards whichthe incidents that give them the character and interest of of fiction, have been planned and directed from the commencement. 

Of course, according to the most obvious principles of art, the narratorof a fiction must be as thoroughly in earnest as if he were the narratorof facts. One could not tell the most extravagant fairy-tale so as torouse and sustain the attention of the most infantine listener, if thetale were told as if the taleteller did not believe in it. But when thereader lays down this "Strange Story, " perhaps he will detect, throughall the haze of romance, the outlines of these images suggested to hisreason: Firstly, the image of sensuous, soulless Nature, such asthe Materialist had conceived it; secondly, the image of Intellect, obstinately separating all its inquiries from the belief in thespiritual essence and destiny of man, and incurring all kinds ofperplexity and resorting to all kinds of visionary speculation before itsettles at last into the simple faith which unites the philosopher andthe infant; and thirdly, the image of the erring but pure-thoughtedvisionary, seeking over-much on this earth to separate soul from mind, till innocence itself is led astray by a phantom, and reason is lost inthe space between earth and the stars. Whether in these pictures therebe any truth worth the implying, every reader must judge for himself;and if he doubt or deny that there be any such truth, still, in theprocess of thought which the doubt or denial enforces, he may chance ona truth which it pleases himself to discover. 

 "Most of the Fables of AEsop, "--thus says Montaigne in his charming essay "Of Books"(7)--"have several senses and meanings, of which the Mythologists choose some one that tallies with the fable. But for the most part 't is only what presents itself at the first view, and is superficial; there being others more lively, essential, and internal, into which they had not been able to penetrate; and"--adds Montaigne--"the case is the very same with me. "

(1) OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. I. See introduction. 

(2) OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. Iii. P. 546(Anthropologie). 

(3) OEuvres inedites de Maine de Biran, vol. Iii. P. 524. 

(4) "The Golden Ass" of Apuleius. 

(5) Sir William Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics, p. 40. 

(6) Jacobi: Von der Gottlichen Dingen; Werke, p. 424-426. 

(7) Translation, 1776, Yol. Ii. P. 103. 

CHAPTER I. 

In the year 18-- I settled as a physician at one of the wealthiest ofour great English towns, which I will designate by the initial L----. I was yet young, but I had acquired some reputation by a professionalwork, which is, I believe, still amongst the received authorities on thesubject of which it treats. I had studied at Edinburgh and at Paris, andhad borne away from both those illustrious schools of medicine whateverguarantees for future distinction the praise of professors may concedeto the ambition of students. On becoming a member of the College ofPhysicians, I made a tour of the principal cities of Europe, takingletters of introduction to eminent medical men, and gathering from manytheories and modes of treatment hints to enlarge the foundations ofunprejudiced and comprehensive' practice. I had resolved to fix myultimate residence in London. But before this preparatory tour wascompleted, my resolve was changed by one of those unexpected eventswhich determine the fate man in vain would work out for himself. Inpassing through the Tyro, on my way into the north of Italy, I found ina small inn, remote from medical attendance, an English traveller seizedwith acute inflammation of the lungs, and in a state of imminent danger. I devoted myself to him night and day; and, perhaps more through carefulnursing than active remedies, I had the happiness to effect his completerecovery. The traveller proved to be Julius Faber, a physician of greatdistinction, contented to reside, where he was born, in the provincialcity of L----, but whose reputation as a profound and originalpathologist was widely spread, and whose writings had formed nounimportant part of my special studies. It was during a short holidayexcursion, from which he was about to return with renovated vigour, thathe had been thus stricken down. The patient so accidentally met withbecame the founder of my professional fortunes. He conceived a warmattachment for me, --perhaps the more affectionate because he was achildless bachelor, and the nephew who would succeed to his wealthevinced no desire to succeed to the toils by which the wealth had beenacquired. Thus, having an heir for the one, he had long looked about foran heir to the other, and now resolved on finding that heir in me. So when we parted Dr. Faber made me promise to correspond with himregularly, and it was not long before he disclosed by letter theplans he had formed in my favour. He said that he was growing old;his practice was beyond his strength; he needed a partner; he was notdisposed to put up to sale the health of patients whom he had learned toregard as his children: money was no object to him, but it was an objectclose at his heart that the humanity he had served, and the reputationhe had acquired, should suffer no loss in his choice of a successor. Infine, he proposed that I should at once come to L---- as his partner, with the view of succeeding to his entire practice at the end of twoyears, when it was his intention to retire. 

The opening into fortune thus afforded to me was one that rarelypresents itself to a young man entering upon an overcrowded profession;and to an aspirant less allured by the desire of fortune than the hopeof distinction, the fame of the physician who thus generously offeredto me the inestimable benefits of his long experience and his cordialintroduction was in itself an assurance that a metropolitan practice isnot essential to a national renown. 

I went, then, to L----, and before the two years of my partnership hadexpired, my success justified my kind friend's selection, and far morethan realized my own expectations. I was fortunate in effectingsome notable cures in the earliest cases submitted to me, and it iseverything in the career of a physician when good luck wins betimes forhim that confidence which patients rarely accord except to lengthenedexperience. To the rapid facility with which my way was made, somecircumstances apart from professional skill probably contributed. I wassaved from the suspicion of a medical adventurer by the accidents ofbirth and fortune. I belonged to an ancient family (a branch of the oncepowerful border-clan of the Fenwicks) that had for many generations helda fair estate in the neighbourhood of Windermere. As an only son I hadsucceeded to that estate on attaining my majority, and had sold it topay off the debts which had been made by my father, who had the costlytastes of an antiquary and collector. The residue on the sale insured mea modest independence apart from the profits of a profession; and as Ihad not been legally bound to defray my father's debts, so I obtainedthat character for disinterestedness and integrity which always inEngland tends to propitiate the public to the successes achieved byindustry or talent. Perhaps, too, any professional ability I mightpossess was the more readily conceded, because I had cultivated withassiduity the sciences and the scholarship which are collaterallyconnected with the study of medicine. Thus, in a word, I establisheda social position which came in aid of my professional repute, andsilenced much of that envy which usually embitters and sometimes impedessuccess. 

Dr. Faber retired at the end of the two years agreed upon. He wentabroad; and being, though advanced in years, of a frame still robust, and habits of mind still inquiring and eager, he commenced a lengthenedcourse of foreign travel, during which our correspondence, at firstfrequent, gradually languished, and finally died away. 

I succeeded at once to the larger part of the practice which the laboursof thirty years had secured to my predecessor. My chief rival was aDr. Lloyd, a benevolent, fervid man, not without genius, if genius bepresent where judgment is absent; not without science, if that may bescience which fails in precision, --one of those clever desultory menwho, in adopting a profession, do not give up to it the whole force andheat of their minds. Men of that kind habitually accept a mechanicalroutine, because in the exercise of their ostensible calling theirimaginative faculties are drawn away to pursuits more alluring. Therefore, in their proper vocation they are seldom bold orinventive, --out of it they are sometimes both to excess. And when theydo take up a novelty in their own profession they cherish it with anobstinate tenacity, and an extravagant passion, unknown to those quietphilosophers who take up novelties every day, examine them with thesobriety of practised eyes, to lay down altogether, modify in part, oraccept in whole, according as inductive experiment supports or destroysconjecture. 

Dr. Lloyd had been esteemed a learned naturalist long before he wasadmitted to be a tolerable physician. Amidst the privations of hisyouth he had contrived to form, and with each succeeding year he hadperseveringly increased, a zoological collection of creatures, notalive, but, happily for the be holder, stuffed or embalmed. From what Ihave said, it will be truly inferred that Dr. Lloyd's early career asa physician had not been brilliant; but of late years he had graduallyrather aged than worked himself into that professional authority andstation which time confers on a thoroughly respectable man whom no oneis disposed to envy, and all are disposed to like. 

Now in L---- there were two distinct social circles, --that of thewealthy merchants and traders, and that of a few privileged familiesinhabiting a part of the town aloof from the marts of commerce, andcalled the Abbey Hill. These superb Areopagites exercised over the wivesand daughters of the inferior citizens to whom all of L----, except theAbbey Hill, owed its prosperity, the same kind of mysterious influencewhich the fine ladies of May Fair and Belgravia are reported to holdover the female denizens of Bloomsbury and Marylebone. 

Abbey Hill was not opulent; but it was powerful by a concentrationof its resources in all matters of patronage. Abbey Hill had its ownmilliner and its own draper, its own confectioner, butcher, baker, andtea-dealer; and the patronage of Abbey Hill was like the patronageof royalty, --less lucrative in itself than as a solemn certificate ofgeneral merit. The shops on which Abbey Hill conferred its customwere certainly not the cheapest, possibly not the best; but they wereundeniably the most imposing. The proprietors were decorously pompous, the shopmen superciliously polite. They could not be more so if they hadbelonged to the State, and been paid by a public which they benefitedand despised. The ladies of Low Town (as the city subjacent to the Hillhad been styled from a date remote in the feudal ages) entered thoseshops with a certain awe, and left them with a certain pride. There theyhad learned what the Hill approved; there they had bought what the Hillhad purchased. It is much in this life to be quite sure that we are inthe right, whatever that conviction may cost us. Abbey Hill had beenin the habit of appointing, amongst other objects of patronage, its ownphysician. But that habit had fallen into disuse during the latter yearsof my predecessor's practice. His superiority over all other medicalmen in the town had become so incontestable, that, though he wasemphatically the doctor of Low Town, the head of its hospitals andinfirmaries, and by birth related to its principal traders, still asAbbey Hill was occasionally subject to the physical infirmities ofmeaner mortals, so on those occasions it deemed it best not to pushthe point of honour to the wanton sacrifice of life. Since Low Townpossessed one of the most famous physicians in England, Abbey Hillmagnanimously resolved not to crush him by a rival. Abbey Hill let himfeel its pulse. 

When my predecessor retired, I had presumptuously expected that the Hillwould have continued to suspend its normal right to a special physician, and shown to me the same generous favour it had shown to him, who haddeclared me worthy to succeed to his honours. I had the more excuse forthis presumption because the Hill had already allowed me to visit a fairproportion of its invalids, had said some very gracious things to meabout the great respectability of the Fenwick family, and sent me someinvitations to dinner, and a great many invitations to tea. 

But my self-conceit received a notable check. Abbey Hill declared thatthe time had come to reassert its dormant privilege; it must have adoctor of its own choosing, --a doctor who might, indeed, be permittedto visit Low Town from motives of humanity or gain, but who mustemphatically assert his special allegiance to Abbey Hill by fixinghis home on that venerable promontory. Miss Brabazon, a spinster ofuncertain age but undoubted pedigree, with small fortune but high nose, which she would pleasantly observe was a proof of her descent fromHumphrey Duke of Gloucester (with whom, indeed, I have no doubt, inspite of chronology, that she very often dined), was commissioned toinquire of me diplomatically, and without committing Abbey Hill too muchby the overture, whether I would take a large and antiquated mansion, inwhich abbots were said to have lived many centuries ago, and which wasstill popularly styled Abbots' House, situated on the verge of the Hill, as in that case the "Hill" would think of me. 

"It is a large house for a single man, I allow, " said Miss Brabazon, candidly; and then added, with a sidelong glance of alarming sweetness, "but when Dr. Fenwick has taken his true position (so old a family!)amongst us, he need not long remain single, unless he prefer it. "

I replied, with more asperity than the occasion called for, that I hadno thought of changing my residence at present, and if the Hill wantedme, the Hill must send for me. 

Two days afterwards Dr. Lloyd took Abbots' House, and in less than aweek was proclaimed medical adviser to the Hill. The election had beendecided by the fiat of a great lady, who reigned supreme on the sacredeminence, under the name and title of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz. 

"Dr. Fenwick, " said this lady, "is a clever young man and a gentleman, but he gives himself airs, --the Hill does not allow any airs but itsown. Besides, he is a new comer: resistance to new corners, and, indeed, to all things new, except caps and novels, is one of the bonds that keepold established societies together. Accordingly, it is by my advice thatDr. Lloyd has taken Abbots' House; the rent would be too high for hismeans if the Hill did not feel bound in honour to justify the trust hehas placed in its patronage. I told him that all my friends, when theywere in want of a doctor, would send for him; those who are my friendswill do so. What the Hill does, plenty of common people down there willdo also, --so that question is settled!" And it was settled. 

Dr. Lloyd, thus taken by the hand, soon extended the range of his visitsbeyond the Hill, which was not precisely a mountain of gold to doctors, and shared with myself, though in a comparatively small degree, the muchmore lucrative practice of Low Town. 

I had no cause to grudge his success, nor did I. But to my theories ofmedicine his diagnosis was shallow, and his prescriptions obsolete. Whenwe were summoned to a joint consultation, our views as to the propercourse of treatment seldom agreed. Doubtless he thought I ought to havedeferred to his seniority in years; but I held the doctrine which youthdeems a truth and age a paradox, --namely, that in science the young menare the practical elders, inasmuch as they are schooled in the latestexperiences science has gathered up, while their seniors are cramped bythe dogmas they were schooled to believe when the world was some decadesthe younger. 

Meanwhile my reputation continued rapidly to advance; it became morethan local; my advice was sought even by patients from the metropolis. That ambition, which, conceived in early youth, had decided my careerand sweetened all its labours, --the ambition to take a rank and leavea name as one of the great pathologists to whom humanity accords agrateful, if calm, renown, --saw before it a level field and a certaingoal. 

I know not whether a success far beyond that usually attained at the ageI had reached served to increase, but it seemed to myself to justify, the main characteristic of my moral organization, --intellectual pride. 

Though mild and gentle to the sufferers under my care, as a necessaryelement of professional duty, I was intolerant of contradiction fromthose who belonged to my calling, or even from those who, in generalopinion, opposed my favourite theories. I had espoused a school ofmedical philosophy severely rigid in its inductive logic. My creed wasthat of stern materialism. I had a contempt for the understanding of menwho accepted with credulity what they could not explain by reason. Myfavourite phrase was "common-sense. " At the same time I had no prejudiceagainst bold discovery, and discovery necessitates conjecture, butI dismissed as idle all conjecture that could not be brought to apractical test. 

As in medicine I had been the pupil of Broussais, so in metaphysics Iwas the disciple of Condillac. I believed with that philosopher that"all our knowledge we owe to Nature; that in the beginning we canonly instruct ourselves through her lessons; and that the whole art ofreasoning consists in continuing as she has compelled us to commence. "Keeping natural philosophy apart from the doctrines of revelation, Inever assailed the last; but I contended that by the first no accuratereasoner could arrive at the existence of the soul as a third principleof being equally distinct from mind and body. That by a miracle manmight live again, was a question of faith and not of understanding. Ileft faith to religion, and banished it from philosophy. How define witha precision to satisfy the logic of philosophy what was to live again?The body? We know that the body rests in its grave till by the processof decomposition its elemental parts enter into other forms ofmatter. The mind? But the mind was as clearly the result of the bodilyorganization as the music of the harpsichord is the result of theinstrumental mechanism. The mind shared the decrepitude of the body inextreme old age, and in the full vigour of youth a sudden injury to thebrain might forever destroy the intellect of a Plato or a Shakspeare. But the third principle, --the soul, --the something lodged within thebody, which yet was to survive it? Where was that soul hidden out ofthe ken of the anatomist? When philosophers attempted to define it, werethey not compelled to confound its nature and its actions with thoseof the mind? Could they reduce it to the mere moral sense, varyingaccording to education, circumstances, and physical constitution? Buteven the moral sense in the most virtuous of men may be swept away bya fever. Such at the time I now speak of were the views I held, --viewscertainly not original nor pleasing; but I cherished them with as fond atenacity as if they had been consolatory truths of which I was thefirst discoverer. I was intolerant to those who maintained oppositedoctrines, --despised them as irrational, or disliked them asinsincere. Certainly if I had fulfilled the career which my ambitionpredicted, --become the founder of a new school in pathology, and summedup my theories in academical lectures, --I should have added anotherauthority, however feeble, to the sects which circumscribe the interestof man to the life that has its close in his grave. 

Possibly that which I have called my intellectual pride was morenourished than I should have been willing to grant by the self-reliancewhich an unusual degree of physical power is apt to bestow. Nature hadblessed me with the thews of an athlete. Among the hardy youths ofthe Northern Athens I had been preeminently distinguished for featsof activity and strength. My mental labours, and the anxiety whichis inseparable from the conscientious responsibilities of the medicalprofession, kept my health below the par of keen enjoyment, but had inno way diminished my rare muscular force. I walked through the crowdwith the firm step and lofty crest of the mailed knight of old, whofelt himself, in his casement of iron, a match against numbers. Thus thesense of a robust individuality, strong alike in disciplined reasonand animal vigour, habituated to aid others, needing no aid for itself, contributed to render me imperious in will and arrogant in opinion. Norwere such defects injurious to me in my profession; on the contrary, aided as they were by a calm manner, and a presence not without thatkind of dignity which is the livery of self-esteem, they served toimpose respect and to inspire trust. 

CHAPTER II. 

I had been about six years at L---- when I became suddenly involved ina controversy with Dr. Lloyd. Just as this ill-fated man appeared at theculminating point of his professional fortunes, he had the imprudenceto proclaim himself not only an enthusiastic advocate of mesmerism as acurative process, but an ardent believer of the reality of somnambularclairvoyance as an invaluable gift of certain privileged organizations. To these doctrines I sternly opposed myself, --the more sternly, perhaps, because on these doctrines Dr. Lloyd founded an argument for theexistence of soul, independent of mind, as of matter, and builtthereon a superstructure of physiological fantasies, which, could itbe substantiated, would replace every system of metaphysics on whichrecognized philosophy condescends to dispute. 

About two years before he became a disciple rather of Puysegur thanMesmer (for Mesmer hard little faith in that gift of clairvoyance ofwhich Puysegur was, I believe, at least in modern times, the firstaudacious asserter), Dr. Lloyd had been afflicted with the loss of awife many years younger than himself, and to whom he had been tenderlyattached. And this bereavement, in directing the hopes that consoledhim to a world beyond the grave, had served perhaps to render him morecredulous of the phenomena in which he greeted additional proofs ofpurely spiritual existence. Certainly, if, in controverting the notionsof another physiologist, I had restricted myself to that fair antagonismwhich belongs to scientific disputants anxious only for the truth, Ishould need no apology for sincere conviction and honest argument; butwhen, with condescending good-nature, as if to a man much younger thanhimself, who was ignorant of the phenomena which he nevertheless denied, Dr. Lloyd invited me to attend his seances and witness his cures, myamour propre became aroused and nettled, and it seemed to me necessaryto put down what I asserted to be too gross an outrage on common-senseto justify the ceremony of examination. I wrote, therefore, a smallpamphlet on the subject, in which I exhausted all the weapons that ironycan lend to contempt. Dr. Lloyd replied; and as he was no very skilfularguer, his reply injured him perhaps more than my assault. Meanwhile, I had made some inquiries as to the moral character of his favouriteclairvoyants. I imagined that I had learned enough to justify me intreating them as flagrant cheats, and himself as their egregious dupe. 

Low Town soon ranged itself, with very few exceptions, on my side. TheHill at first seemed disposed to rally round its insulted physician, andto make the dispute a party question, in which the Hill would have beensignally worsted, when suddenly the same lady paramount, who had securedto Dr. Lloyd the smile of the Eminence, spoke forth against him, and theEminence frowned. 

"Dr. Lloyd, " said the Queen of the Hill, "is an amiable creature, but onthis subject decidedly cracked. Cracked poets may be all the better forbeing cracked, --cracked doctors are dangerous. Besides, in desertingthat old-fashioned routine, his adherence to which made his claim tothe Hill's approbation, and unsettling the mind of the Hill with wildrevolutionary theories, Dr. Lloyd has betrayed the principles on whichthe Hill itself rests its social foundations. Of those principles Dr. Fenwick has made himself champion; and the Hill is bound to support him. There, the question is settled!"

And it was settled. 

From the moment Mrs. Colonel Poyntz thus issued the word of command, Dr. Lloyd was demolished. His practice was gone, as well as his repute. Mortification or anger brought on a stroke of paralysis which, disablingmy opponent, put an end to our controversy. An obscure Dr. Jones, whohad been the special pupil and protege of Dr. Lloyd, offered himself asa candidate for the Hill's tongues and pulses. The Hill gave him littleencouragement. It once more suspended its electoral privileges, and, without insisting on calling me up to it, the Hill quietly called mein whenever its health needed other advice than that of its visitingapothecary. Again it invited me, sometimes to dinner, often to tea; andagain Miss Brabazon assured me by a sidelong glance that it was no faultof hers if I were still single. 

I had almost forgotten the dispute which had obtained for me soconspicuous a triumph, when one winter's night I was roused from sleepby a summons to attend Dr Lloyd, who, attacked by a second stroke a fewhours previously, had, on recovering sense, expressed a vehement desireto consult the rival by whom he had suffered so severely. I dressedmyself in haste and hurried to his house. 

A February night, sharp and bitter; an iron-gray frost below, a spectralmelancholy moon above. I had to ascend the Abbey Hill by a steep, blindlane between high walls. I passed through stately gates, which stoodwide open, into the garden ground that surrounded the old Abbots'House. At the end of a short carriage-drive the dark and gloomy buildingcleared itself from leafless skeleton trees, --the moon resting keen andcold on its abrupt gables and lofty chimney-stacks. An old woman-servantreceived me at the door, and, without saying a word, led me through along low hall, and up dreary oak stairs, to a broad landing, at whichshe paused for a moment, listening. Round and about hall, staircase, andlanding were ranged the dead specimens of the savage world which it hadbeen the pride of the naturalist's life to collect. Close where I stoodyawned the open jaws of the fell anaconda, its lower coils hidden, asthey rested on the floor below, by the winding of the massive stairs. Against the dull wainscot walls were pendent cases stored with grotesqueunfamiliar mummies, seen imperfectly by the moon that shot through thewindow-panes, and the candle in the old woman's hand. And as now sheturned towards me, nodding her signal to follow, and went on up theshadowy passage, rows of gigantic birds--ibis and vulture, and huge seaglaucus--glared at me in the false light of their hungry eyes. 

So I entered the sick-room, and the first glance told me that my art waspowerless there. 

The children of the stricken widower were grouped round his bed, theeldest apparently about fifteen, the youngest four; one little girl--theonly female child--was clinging to her father's neck, her face pressedto his bosom, and in that room her sobs alone were loud. 

As I passed the threshold, Dr. Lloyd lifted his face, which had beenbent over the weeping child, and gazed on me with an aspect of strangeglee, which I failed to interpret. Then as I stole towards him softlyand slowly, he pressed his lips on the long fair tresses that streamedwild over his breast, motioned to a nurse who stood beside his pillow totake the child away, and in a voice clearer than I could have expectedin one on whose brow lay the unmistakable hand of death, he badethe nurse and the children quit the room. All went sorrowfully, butsilently, save the little girl, who, borne off in the nurse's arms, continued to sob as if her heart were breaking. 

I was not prepared for a scene so affecting; it moved me to the quick. My eyes wistfully followed the children so soon to be orphans, as oneafter one went out into the dark chill shadow, and amidst the bloodlessforms of the dumb brute nature, ranged in grisly vista beyond thedeath-room of man. And when the last infant shape had vanished, and thedoor closed with a jarring click, my sight wandered loiteringly aroundthe chamber before I could bring myself to fix it on the broken form, beside which I now stood in all that glorious vigour of frame which hadfostered the pride of my mind. In the moment consumed by my mournfulsurvey, the whole aspect of the place impressed itself ineffaceablyon lifelong remembrance. Through the high, deepsunken casement, acrosswhich the thin, faded curtain was but half drawn, the moonlight rushed, and then settled on the floor in one shroud of white glimmer, lost underthe gloom of the death-bed. The roof was low, and seemed lower stillby heavy intersecting beams, which I might have touched with my liftedhand. And the tall guttering candle by the bedside, and the flicker fromthe fire struggling out through the fuel but newly heaped on it, threwtheir reflection on the ceiling just over my head in a reek of quiveringblackness, like an angry cloud. 

Suddenly I felt my arm grasped; with his left hand (the right side wasalready lifeless) the dying man drew me towards him nearer and nearer, till his lips almost touched my ear, and, in a voice now firm, nowsplitting into gasp and hiss, thus he said, "I have summoned you to gazeon your own work! You have stricken down my life at the moment when itwas most needed by my children, and most serviceable to mankind. HadI lived a few years longer, my children would have entered on manhood, safe from the temptations of want and undejected by the charityof strangers. Thanks to you, they will be penniless orphans. Fellow-creatures afflicted by maladies your pharmacopoeia had failedto reach came to me for relief, and they found it. 'The effect ofimagination, ' you say. What matters, if I directed the imagination tocure? Now you have mocked the unhappy ones out of their last chance oflife. They will suffer and perish. Did you believe me in error? Stillyou knew that my object was research into truth. You employed againstyour brother in art venomous drugs and a poisoned probe. Look at me! Areyou satisfied with your work?"

I sought to draw back and pluck my arm from the dying man's grasp. Icould not do so without using a force that would have been inhuman. Hislips drew nearer still to my ear. 

"Vain pretender, do not boast that you brought a genius for epigram tothe service of science. Science is lenient to all who offer experimentas the test of conjecture. You are of the stuff of which inquisitors aremade. You cry that truth is profaned when your dogmas are questioned. In your shallow presumption you have meted the dominions of nature, andwhere your eye halts its vision, you say, 'There nature must close;'in the bigotry which adds crime to presumption, you would stone thediscoverer who, in annexing new realms to her chart, unsettles yourarbitrary landmarks. Verily, retribution shall await you! In thosespaces which your sight has disdained to explore you shall yourself bea lost and bewildered straggler. Hist! I see them already! The gibberingphantoms are gathering round you!"

The man's voice stopped abruptly; his eye fixed in a glazing stare;his hand relaxed its hold; he fell back on his pillow. I stole from theroom; on the landing-place I met the nurse and the old woman-servant. Happily the children were not there. But I heard the wail of the femalechild from some room not far distant. 

I whispered hurriedly to the nurse, "All is over!" passed again underthe jaws of the vast anaconda, and on through the blind lane between thedead walls, on through the ghastly streets, under the ghastly moon, wentback to my solitary home. 

CHAPTER III. 

It was some time before I could shake off the impression made on me bythe words and the look of that dying man. 

It was not that my conscience upbraided me. What had I done? Denouncedthat which I held, in common with most men of sense in or out of myprofession, to be one of those illusions by which quackery draws profitfrom the wonder of ignorance. Was I to blame if I refused to treatwith the grave respect due to asserted discovery in legitimate sciencepretensions to powers akin to the fables of wizards? Was I to descendfrom the Academe of decorous science to examine whether a slumberingsibyl could read from a book placed at her back, or tell me at L----what at that moment was being done by my friend at the Antipodes?

And what though Dr. Lloyd himself might be a worthy and honest man, anda sincere believer in the extravagances for which he demanded an equalcredulity in others, do not honest men every day incur the penaltyof ridicule if, from a defect of good sense, they make themselvesridiculous? Could I have foreseen that a satire so justly provokedwould inflict so deadly a wound? Was I inhumanly barbarous because theantagonist destroyed was morbidly sensitive? My conscience, therefore, made me no reproach, and the public was as little severe as myconscience. The public had been with me in our contest; the public knewnothing of my opponent's deathbed accusations; the public knew only thatI had attended him in his last moments; it saw me walk beside the bierthat bore him to his grave; it admired the respect to his memory whichI evinced in the simple tomb that I placed over his remains, inscribedwith an epitaph that did justice to his unquestionable benevolence andintegrity; above all, it praised the energy with which I set on foot asubscription for his orphan children, and the generosity with which Iheaded that subscription by a sum that was large in proportion to mymeans. 

To that sum I did not, indeed, limit my contribution. The sobs of thepoor female child rang still on my heart. As her grief had been keenerthan that of her brothers, so she might be subjected to sharper trialsthan they, when the time came for her to fight her own way through theworld; therefore I secured to her, but with such precautions that thegift could not be traced to my hand, a sum to accumulate till she wasof marriageable age, and which then might suffice for a small weddingportion; or if she remained single, for an income that would placeher beyond the temptation of want, or the bitterness of a serviledependence. 

That Dr. Lloyd should have died in poverty was a matter of surprise atfirst, for his profits during the last few years had been considerable, and his mode of life far from extravagant. But just before the date ofour controversy he had been induced to assist the brother of his lostwife, who was a junior partner in a London bank, with the loan of hisaccumulated savings. This man proved dishonest; he embezzled that andother sums intrusted to him, and fled the country. The same sentiment ofconjugal affection which had cost Dr. Lloyd his fortune kept him silentas to the cause of the loss. It was reserved for his executors todiscover the treachery of the brother-in-law whom he, poor man, wouldhave generously screened from additional disgrace. 

The Mayor of L----, a wealthy and public-spirited merchant, purchasedthe museum, which Dr. Lloyd's passion for natural history had inducedhim to form; and the sum thus obtained, together with that raisedby subscription, sufficed not only to discharge all debts due by thedeceased, but to insure to the orphans the benefits of an education thatmight fit at least the boys to enter fairly armed into that game, moreof skill than of chance, in which Fortune is really so little blindedthat we see, in each turn of her wheel, wealth and its honours pass awayfrom the lax fingers of ignorance and sloth, to the resolute grasp oflabour and knowledge. 

Meanwhile a relation in a distant county undertook the charge of theorphans; they disappeared from the scene, and the tides of life in acommercial community soon flowed over the place which the dead man hadoccupied in the thoughts of his bustling townsfolk. 

One person at L----, and only one, appeared to share and inherit therancour with which the poor physician had denounced me on his death-bed. It was a gentleman named Vigors, distantly related to the deceased, and who had been, in point of station, the most eminent of Dr. Lloyd'spartisans in the controversy with myself, a man of no great scholasticacquirements, but of respectable abilities. He had that kind of powerwhich the world concedes to respectable abilities when accompaniedwith a temper more than usually stern, and a moral character more thanusually austere. His ruling passion was to sit in judgment upon others;and being a magistrate, he was the most active and the most rigid of allthe magistrates L---- had ever known. 

Mr. Vigors at first spoke of me with great bitterness, as having ruined, and in fact killed, his friend, by the uncharitable and unfair acerbitywhich he declared I had brought into what ought to have been anunprejudiced examination of simple matter of fact. But finding nosympathy in these charges, he had the discretion to cease from makingthem, contenting himself with a solemn shake of his head if he heard myname mentioned in terms of praise, and an oracular sentence or two, such as "Time will show, " "All's well that ends well, " etc. Mr. Vigors, however, mixed very little in the more convivial intercourse ofthe townspeople. He called himself domestic; but, in truth, he wasungenial, --a stiff man, starched with self-esteem. He thought that hisdignity of station was not sufficiently acknowledged by the merchants ofLow Town, and his superiority of intellect not sufficiently recognizedby the exclusives of the Hill. His visits were, therefore, chieflyconfined to the houses of neighbouring squires, to whom his reputationas a magistrate, conjoined with his solemn exterior, made him one ofthose oracles by which men consent to be awed on condition that the aweis not often inflicted. And though he opened his house three timesa week, it was only to a select few, whom he first fed and thenbiologized. Electro-biology was very naturally the special entertainmentof a man whom no intercourse ever pleased in which his will was notimposed upon others. Therefore he only invited to his table persons whomhe could stare into the abnegation of their senses, willing to say thatbeef was lamb, or brandy was coffee, according as he willed them to say. And, no doubt, the persons asked would have said anything he willed, so long as they had, in substance, as well as in idea, the beef and thebrandy, the lamb and the coffee. I did not, then, often meet Mr. Vigorsat the houses in which I occasionally spent my evenings. I heard of hisenmity as a man safe in his home hears the sough of a wind on a commonwithout. If now and then we chanced to pass in the streets, he lookedup at me (he was a small man walking on tiptoe) with a sullen scowl ofdislike; and from the height of my stature, I dropped upon the small manand sullen scowl the affable smile of supreme indifference. 

CHAPTER IV. 

I had now arrived at that age when an ambitious man, satisfied withhis progress in the world without, begins to feel in the cravings ofunsatisfied affection the void of a solitary hearth. I resolved tomarry, and looked out for a wife. I had never hitherto admitted into mylife the passion of love. In fact, I had regarded that passion, evenin my earlier youth, with a certain superb contempt, --as a maladyengendered by an effeminate idleness, and fostered by a sicklyimagination. 

I wished to find in a wife a rational companion, an affectionate andtrustworthy friend. No views of matrimony could be less romantic, moresoberly sensible, than those which I conceived. Nor were my requirementsmercenary or presumptuous. I cared not for fortune; I asked nothingfrom connections. My ambition was exclusively professional; it could beserved by no titled kindred, accelerated by no wealthy dower. I wasno slave to beauty. I did not seek in a wife the accomplishments of afinishing-school teacher. 

Having decided that the time had come to select my helpmate, I imaginedthat I should find no difficulty in a choice that my reason wouldapprove. But day upon day, week upon week, passed away, and though amongthe families I visited there were many young ladies who possessed morethan the qualifications with which I conceived that I should be amplycontented, and by whom I might flatter myself that my proposals wouldnot be disdained, I saw not one to whose lifelong companionship I shouldnot infinitely have preferred the solitude I found so irksome. 

One evening, in returning home from visiting a poor female patient whomI attended gratuitously, and whose case demanded more thought than thatof any other in my list, --for though it had been considered hopeless inthe hospital, and she had come home to die, I felt certain that I couldsave her, and she seemed recovering under my care, --one evening--it wasthe fifteenth of May--I found myself just before the gates of the housethat had been inhabited by Dr. Lloyd. Since his death the house had beenunoccupied; the rent asked for it by the proprietor was considered high;and from the sacred Hill on which it was situated, shyness or pridebanished the wealthier traders. The garden gates stood wide open, asthey had stood on the winter night on which I had passed through themto the chamber of death. The remembrance of that deathbed came vividlybefore me, and the dying man's fantastic threat rang again in mystartled ears. An irresistible impulse, which I could not then accountfor, and which I cannot account for now, --an impulse the reverse of thatwhich usually makes us turn away with quickened step from a spot thatrecalls associations of pain, --urged me on through the open gates up theneglected grass-grown road, urged me to look, under the weltering sun ofthe joyous spring, at that house which I bad never seen but in the gloomof a winter night, under the melancholy moon. As the building came insight, with dark-red bricks, partially overgrown with ivy, I perceivedthat it was no longer unoccupied. I saw forms passing athwart the openwindows; a van laden with articles of furniture stood before the door;a servant in livery was beside it giving directions to the men who wereunloading. Evidently some family was just entering into possession. I felt somewhat ashamed of my trespass, and turned round quickly toretrace my steps. I had retreated but a few yards, when I saw before me, at the entrance gates, Mr. Vigors, walking beside a lady apparently ofmiddle age; while, just at hand, a path cut through the shrubs gave viewof a small wicketgate at the end of the grounds. I felt unwilling notonly to meet the lady, whom I guessed to be the new occupier, and towhom I should have to make a somewhat awkward apology for intrusion, butstill more to encounter the scornful look of Mr. Vigors in what appearedto my pride a false or undignified position. Involuntarily, therefore, Iturned down the path which would favour my escape unobserved. When abouthalf way between the house and the wicket-gate, the shrubs that hadclothed the path on either side suddenly opened to the left, bringinginto view a circle of sward, surrounded by irregular fragments of oldbrickwork partially covered with ferns, creepers, or rockplants, weeds, or wild flowers; and, in the centre of the circle, a fountain, or ratherwell, over which was built a Gothic monastic dome, or canopy, restingon small Norman columns, time-worn, dilapidated. A large willow overhungthis unmistakable relic of the ancient abbey. There was an air ofantiquity, romance, legend about this spot, so abruptly disclosed amidstthe delicate green of the young shrubberies. But it was not the ruinedwall nor the Gothic well that chained my footstep and charmed my eye. 

It was a solitary human form, seated amidst the mournful ruins. 

The form was so slight, the face so young, that at the first glance Imurmured to myself, "What a lovely child!" But as my eye lingeredit recognized in the upturned thoughtful brow, in the sweet, seriousaspect, in the rounded outlines of that slender shape, the inexpressibledignity of virgin woman. 

A book was on her lap, at her feet a little basket, half-filled withviolets and blossoms culled from the rock-plants that nestled amidst theruins. Behind her, the willow, like an emerald waterfall, showered downits arching abundant green, bough after bough, from the tree-top to thesward, descending in wavy verdure, bright towards the summit, in thesmile of the setting sun, and darkening into shadow as it neared theearth. 

She did not notice, she did not see me; her eyes were fixed upon thehorizon, where it sloped farthest into space, above the treetops andthe ruins, --fixed so intently that mechanically I turned my own gaze tofollow the flight of hers. It was as if she watched for some expected, familiar sign to grow out from the depths of heaven; perhaps to greet, before other eyes beheld it, the ray of the earliest star. 

The birds dropped from the boughs on the turf around her so fearlesslythat one alighted amidst the flowers in the little basket at her feet. There is a famous German poem, which I had read in my youth, called theMaiden from Abroad, variously supposed to be an allegory of Spring, orof Poetry, according to the choice of commentators: it seemed to meas if the poem had been made for her. Verily, indeed, in her, poetor painter might have seen an image equally true to either of thoseadornments of the earth; both outwardly a delight to sense, yet bothwakening up thoughts within us, not sad, but akin to sadness. 

I heard now a step behind me, and a voice which I recognized to be thatof Mr. Vigors. I broke from the charm by which I had been so lingeringlyspell-bound, hurried on confusedly, gained the wicket-gate, from which ashort flight of stairs descended into the common thoroughfare. And therethe every-day life lay again before me. On the opposite side, houses, shops, church-spires; a few steps more, and the bustling streets! Howimmeasurably far from, yet how familiarly near to, the world in which wemove and have being is that fairy-land of romance which opens out fromthe hard earth before us, when Love steals at first to our side, fadingback into the hard earth again as Love smiles or sighs its farewell!

CHAPTER V. 

And before that evening I had looked on Mr. Vigors with supremeindifference! What importance he now assumed in my eyes! The lady withwhom I had seen him was doubtless the new tenant of that house in whichthe young creature by whom my heart was so strangely moved evidently hadher home. Most probably the relation between the two ladies was thatof mother and daughter. Mr. Vigors, the friend of one, might himself berelated to both, might prejudice them against me, might--Here, startingup, I snapped the thread of conjecture, for right before my eyes, on thetable beside which I had seated myself on entering my room, lay a cardof invitation:--

 MRS. POYNTZ. At Home, Wednesday, May 15th. Early. 

Mrs. Poyntz, --Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, the Queen of the Hill? There, at herhouse, I could not fail to learn all about the new comers, who couldnever without her sanction have settled on her domain. 

I hastily changed my dress, and, with beating heart, wound my way up thevenerable eminence. 

I did not pass through the lane which led direct to Abbots' House (forthat old building stood solitary amidst its grounds a little apartfrom the spacious platform on which the society of the Hill wasconcentrated), but up the broad causeway, with vistaed gaslamps; thegayer shops still-unclosed, the tide of busy life only slowly ebbingfrom the still-animated street, on to a square, in which the four mainthoroughfares of the city converged, and which formed the boundary ofLow Town. A huge dark archway, popularly called Monk's Gate, at theangle of this square, made the entrance to Abbey Hill. When the arch waspassed, one felt at once that one was in the town of a former day. Thepavement was narrow and rugged; the shops small, their upper storiesprojecting, with here and there plastered fronts, quaintly arabesque. An ascent, short, but steep and tortuous, conducted at once to the oldAbbey Church, nobly situated in a vast quadrangle, round which werethe genteel and gloomy dwellings of the Areopagites of the Hill. Moregenteel and less gloomy than the rest--lights at the windows and flowerson the balcony--stood forth, flanked by a garden wall at either side, the mansion of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz. 

As I entered the drawing-room, I heard the voice of the hostess; itwas a voice clear, decided, metallic, bell-like, uttering these words:"Taken Abbots' House? I will tell you. "

CHAPTER VI. 

Mrs. Poyntz was seated on the sofa; at her right sat fat Mrs. Bruce, whowas a Scotch lord's grand-daughter; at her left thin Miss Brabazon, who was an Irish baronet's niece. Around her--a few seated, manystanding--had grouped all the guests, save two old gentlemen, who hadremained aloof with Colonel Poyntz near the whist-table, waiting for thefourth old gentleman who was to make up the rubber, but who was at thatmoment spell-bound in the magic circle which curiosity, that strongestof social demons, had attracted round the hostess. 

"Taken Abbots' House? I will tell you. --Ah, Dr. Fenwick, charmed to seeyou. You know Abbots' House is let at last? Well, Miss Brabazon, dear, you ask who has taken it. I will inform you, --a particular friend ofmine. "

"Indeed! Dear me!" said Miss Brabazon, looking confused. "I hope I didnot say anything to--"

"Wound my feelings. Not in the least. You said your uncle Sir Phelimemployed a coachmaker named Ashleigh, that Ashleigh was an uncommonname, though Ashley was a common one; you intimated an appallingsuspicion that the Mrs. Ashleigh who had come to the Hill was the coachmaker's widow. I relieve your mind, --she is not; she is the widow ofGilbert Ashleigh, of Kirby Hall. "

"Gilbert Ashleigh, " said one of the guests, a bachelor, whose parentshad reared him for the Church, but who, like poor Goldsmith, did notthink himself good enough for it, a mistake of over-modesty, for hematured into a very harmless creature. "Gilbert Ashleigh? I was atOxford with him, --a gentleman commoner of Christ Church. Good-lookingman, very; sapped--"

"Sapped! what's that?--Oh, studied. That he did all his life. He marriedyoung, --Anne Chaloner; she and I were girls together; married the sameyear. They settled at Kirby Hall--nice place, but dull. Poyntz and Ispent a Christmas there. Ashleigh when he talked was charming, but hetalked very little. Anne, when she talked, was commonplace, and shetalked very much. Naturally, poor thing, ---she was so happy. Poyntz andI did not spend another Christmas there. Friendship is long, but life isshort. Gilbert Ashleigh's life was short indeed; he died in the seventhyear of his marriage, leaving only one child, a girl. Since then, thoughI never spent another Christmas at Kirby Hall, I have frequently spent aday there, doing my best to cheer up Anne. She was no longer talkative, poor dear. Wrapped up in her child, who has now grown into a beautifulgirl of eighteen--such eyes, her father's--the real dark blue--rare;sweet creature, but delicate; not, I hope, consumptive, but delicate;quiet, wants life. My girl Jane adores her. Jane has life enough fortwo. "

"Is Miss Ashleigh the heiress to Kirby Hall?" asked Mrs. Bruce, who hadan unmarried son. 

"No. Kirby Hall passed to Ashleigh Sumner, the male heir, a cousin. And the luckiest of cousins! Gilbert's sister, showy woman (indeed allshow), had contrived to marry her kinsman, Sir Walter Ashleigh Haughton, the head of the Ashleigh family, --just the man made to be the reflectorof a showy woman! He died years ago, leaving an only son, Sir James, who was killed last winter, by a fall from his horse. And here, again, Ashleigh Summer proved to be the male heir-at-law. During the minorityof this fortunate youth, Mrs. Ashleigh had rented Kirby Hall of hisguardian. He is now just coming of age, and that is why she leaves. Lilian Ashleigh will have, however, a very good fortune, --is what wegenteel paupers call an heiress. Is there anything more you want toknow?"

Said thin Miss Brabazon, who took advantage of her thinness to wedgeherself into every one's affairs, "A most interesting account. Whata nice place Abbots' House could be made with a little taste! Soaristocratic! Just what I should like if I could afford it!The drawing-room should be done up in the Moorish style, withgeranium-coloured silk curtains, like dear Lady L----'s boudoir atTwickenham. And Mrs. Ashleigh has taken the house on lease too, Isuppose!" Here Miss Brabazon fluttered her fan angrily, and thenexclaimed, "But what on earth brings Mrs. Ashleigh here?"

Answered Mrs. Colonel Poyntz, with the military frankness by which shekept her company in good humour, as well as awe, --

"Why do any of us come here? Can any one tell me?"

There was a blank silence, which the hostess herself was the first tobreak. 

"None of us present can say why we came here. I can tell you why Mrs. Ashleigh came. Our neighbour, Mr. Vigors, is a distant connection ofthe late Gilbert Ashleigh, one of the executors to his will, and theguardian to the heir-at-law. About ten days ago Mr. Vigors called on me, for the first time since I felt it my duty to express my disapprobationof the strange vagaries so unhappily conceived by our poor dear friendDr. Lloyd. And when he had taken his chair, just where you now sit, Dr. Fenwick, he said in a sepulchral voice, stretching out two fingers, so, --as if I were one of the what-do-you-call-'ems who go to sleep whenhe bids them, 'Marm, you know Mrs. Ashleigh? You correspond with her?''Yes, Mr. Vigors; is there any crime in that? You look as if therewere. ' 'No crime, marm, ' said the man, quite seriously. 'Mrs. Ashleigh is a lady of amiable temper, and you are a woman of masculineunderstanding. '"

Here there was a general titter. Mrs. Colonel Poyntz hushed it with alook of severe surprise. "What is there to laugh at? All women would bemen if they could. If my understanding is masculine, so much the betterfor me. I thanked Mr. Vigors for his very handsome compliment, and hethen went on to say that though Mrs. Ashleigh would now have to leaveKirby Hall in a very few weeks, she seemed quite unable to make up hermind where to go; that it had occurred to him that, as Miss Ashleigh wasof an age to see a little of the world, she ought not to remain buriedin the country; while, being of quiet mind, she recoiled from thedissipation of London. Between the seclusion of the one and the turmoilof the other, the society of L---- was a happy medium. He should be gladof my opinion. He had put off asking for it, because he owned his beliefthat I had behaved unkindly to his lamented friend, Dr. Lloyd; but henow found himself in rather an awkward position. His ward, young Sumner, had prudently resolved on fixing his country residence at Kirby Hall, rather than at Haughton Park, the much larger seat which had so suddenlypassed to his inheritance, and which he could not occupy without a vastestablishment, that to a single man, so young, would be but a cumbersomeand costly trouble. Mr. Vigors was pledged to his ward to obtain himpossession of Kirby Hall, the precise day agreed upon, but Mrs. Ashleighdid not seem disposed to stir, --could not decide where else to go. Mr. Vigors was loth to press hard on his old friend's widow and child. Itwas a thousand pities Mrs Ashleigh could not make up her mind; she hadhad ample time for preparation. A word from me at this moment wouldbe an effective kindness. Abbots' House was vacant, with a garden soextensive that the ladies would not miss the country. Another party wasafter it, but--'Say no more, ' I cried; 'no party but my dear old friendAnne Ashleigh shall have Abbots' House. So that question is settled. 'I dismissed Mr. Vigors, sent for my carriage, that is, for Mr. Barker'syellow fly and his best horses, --and drove that very day to Kirby Hall, which, though not in this county, is only twenty-five miles distant. Islept there that night. By nine o'clock the next morning I had securedMrs. Ashleigh's consent, on the promise to save her all trouble; cameback, sent for the landlord, settled the rent, lease, agreement; engagedForbes' vans to remove the furniture from Kirby Hall; told Forbes tobegin with the beds. When her own bed came, which was last night, AnneAshleigh came too. I have seen her this morning. She likes the place, so does Lilian. I asked them to meet you all here to-night; but Mrs. Ashleigh was tired. The last of the furniture was to arrive today;and though dear Mrs. Ashleigh is an undecided character, she is notinactive. But it is not only the planning where to put tables and chairsthat would have tried her today: she has had Mr. Vigors on her handsall the afternoon, and he has been--here's her little note--what are thewords? No doubt 'most overpowering and oppressive;' no, 'most kind andattentive, '--different words, but, as applied to Mr. Vigors, they meanthe same thing. 

"And now, next Monday---we must leave them in peace till then--you willall call on the Ashleighs. The Hill knows what is due to itself; itcannot delegate to Mr. Vigors, a respectable man indeed, but who doesnot belong to its set, its own proper course of action towards thosewho would shelter themselves on its bosom. The Hill cannot be kind andattentive, overpowering or oppressive by proxy. To those newborn intoits family circle it cannot be an indifferent godmother; it has towardsthem all the feelings of a mother, --or of a stepmother, as the case maybe. Where it says 'This can be no child of mine, ' it is a stepmotherindeed; but in all those whom I have presented to its arms, it hashitherto, I am proud to say, recognized desirable acquaintances, and tothem the Hill has been a mother. And now, my dear Mr. Sloman, go to yourrubber; Poyntz is impatient, though he don't show it. Miss Brabazon, love, we all long to see you seated at the piano, --you play so divinely!Something gay, if you please; something gay, but not very noisy, --Mr. Leopold Symthe will turn the leaves for you. Mrs. Bruce, your ownfavourite set at vingt-un, with four new recruits. Dr. Fenwick, you arelike me, don't play cards, and don't care for music; sit here, and talkor not, as you please, while I knit. "

The other guests thus disposed of, some at the card-tables, some roundthe piano, I placed myself at Mrs. Poyntz's side, on a seat niched inthe recess of a window which an evening unusually warm for the month ofMay permitted to be left open. I was next to one who had known Lilianas a child, one from whom I had learned by what sweet name to callthe image which my thoughts had already shrined. How much that I stilllonged to know she could tell me! But in what form of question could Ilead to the subject, yet not betray my absorbing interest in it? Longingto speak, I felt as if stricken dumb; stealing an unquiet glance towardsthe face beside me, and deeply impressed with that truth which the Hillhad long ago reverently acknowledged, --namely, that Mrs. Colonel Poyntzwas a very superior woman, a very powerful creature. 

And there she sat knitting, rapidly, firmly; a woman somewhat on theother side of forty, complexion a bronze paleness, hair a bronze brown, in strong ringlets cropped short behind, --handsome hair for a man; lipsthat, when closed, showed inflexible decision, when speaking, becamesupple and flexible with an easy humour and a vigilant finesse; eyesof a red hazel, quick but steady, --observing, piercing, dauntless eyes;altogether a fine countenance, --would have been a very fine countenancein a man; profile sharp, straight, clear-cut, with an expression, whenin repose, like that of a sphinx; a frame robust, not corpulent; ofmiddle height, but with an air and carriage that made her appear tall;peculiarly white firm hands, indicative of vigorous health, not a veinvisible on the surface. 

There she sat knitting, knitting, and I by her side, gazing now onherself, now on her work, with a vague idea that the threads in theskein of my own web of love or of life were passing quick through thosenoiseless fingers. And, indeed, in every web of romance, the fondest, one of the Parcae is sure to be some matter-of-fact She, Social Destiny, as little akin to romance herself as was this worldly Queen of the Hill. 

CHAPTER VII. 

I have given a sketch of the outward woman of Mrs. Colonel Poyntz. Theinner woman was a recondite mystery deep as that of the sphinx, whosefeatures her own resembled. But between the outward and the inward womanthere is ever a third woman, --the conventional woman, --such as the wholehuman being appears to the world, --always mantled, sometimes masked. 

I am told that the fine people of London do not recognize the titleof "Mrs. Colonel. " If that be true, the fine people of London must beclearly in the wrong, for no people in the universe could be finer thanthe fine people of Abbey Hill; and they considered their sovereign hadas good a right to the title of Mrs. Colonel as the Queen of England hasto that of "our Gracious Lady. " But Mrs. Poyntz herself never assumedthe title of Mrs. Colonel; it never appeared on her cards, --any morethan the title of "Gracious Lady" appears on the cards which convey theinvitation that a Lord Steward or Lord Chamberlain is commanded byher Majesty to issue. To titles, indeed, Mrs. Poyntz evinced nosuperstitious reverence. Two peeresses, related to her, not distantly, were in the habit of paying her a yearly visit which lasted two or threedays. The Hill considered these visits an honour to its eminence. Mrs. Poyntz never seemed to esteem them an honour to herself; never boastedof them; never sought to show off her grand relations, nor put herselfthe least out of the way to receive them. Her mode of life was free fromostentation. She had the advantage of being a few hundreds a yearricher than any other inhabitant of the Hill; but she did not devote hersuperior resources to the invidious exhibition of superior splendour. Like a wise sovereign, the revenues of her exchequer were applied to thebenefit of her subjects, and not to the vanity of egotistical parade. Asno one else on the Hill kept a carriage, she declined to keep one. Herentertainments were simple, but numerous. Twice a week she received theHill, and was genuinely at home to it. She contrived to make her partiesproverbially agreeable. The refreshments were of the same kind as thosewhich the poorest of her old maids of honour might proffer; but theywere better of their kind, the best of their kind, --the best tea, thebest lemonade, the best cakes. Her rooms had an air of comfort, whichwas peculiar to them. They looked like rooms accustomed to receive, andreceive in a friendly way; well warmed, well lighted, card-tables andpiano each in the place that made cards and music inviting; on the wallsa few old family portraits, and three or four other pictures said to bevaluable and certainly pleasing, --two Watteaus, a Canaletti, a Weenix;plenty of easy-chairs and settees covered with a cheerful chintz, --inthe arrangement of the furniture generally an indescribable carelesselegance. She herself was studiously plain in dress, more conspicuouslyfree from jewelry and trinkets than any married lady on the Hill. ButI have heard from those who were authorities on such a subject that shewas never seen in a dress of the last year's fashion. She adopted themode as it came out, just enough to show that she was aware it was out;but with a sober reserve, as much as to say, "I adopt the fashion as faras it suits myself; I do not permit the fashion to adopt me. " In short, Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was sometimes rough, sometimes coarse, alwaysmasculine, and yet somehow or other masculine in a womanly way; but shewas never vulgar because never affected. It was impossible not to allowthat she was a thorough gentlewoman, and she could do things thatlower other gentlewomen, without any loss of dignity. Thus she was anadmirable mimic, certainly in itself the least ladylike condescension ofhumour. But when she mimicked, it was with so tranquil a gravity, or soroyal a good humour, that one could only say, "What talents for societydear Mrs. Colonel has!" As she was a gentlewoman emphatically, so theother colonel, the he-colonel, was emphatically a gentleman; rather shy, but not cold; hating trouble of every kind, pleased to seem a cipher inhis own house. If the sole study of Mrs. Colonel had been to makeher husband comfortable, she could not have succeeded better than bybringing friends about him and then taking them off his hands. ColonelPoyntz, the he-colonel, had seen, in his youth, actual service; but hadretired from his profession many years ago, shortly after his marriage. He was a younger brother of one of the principal squires in the country;inherited the house he lived in, with some other valuable property inand about L----, from an uncle; was considered a good landlord; andpopular in Low Town, though he never interfered in its affairs. He waspunctiliously neat in his dress; a thin youthful figure, crowned with athick youthful wig. He never seemed to read anything but the newspapersand the "Meteorological Journal:" was supposed to be the mostweatherwise man in all L----. He had another intellectualpredilection, --whist; but in that he had less reputation for wisdom. Perhaps it requires a rarer combination of mental faculties to winan odd trick than to divine a fall in the glass. For the rest, thehe-colonel, many years older than his wife, despite the thin youthfulfigure, was an admirable aid-de-camp to the general in command, Mrs. Colonel; and she could not have found one more obedient, more devoted, or more proud of a distinguished chief. 

In giving to Mrs. Colonel Poyntz the appellation of Queen of the Hill, let there be no mistake. She was not a constitutional sovereign; hermonarchy was absolute. All her proclamations had the force of laws. 

Such ascendancy could not have been attained without considerabletalents for acquiring and keeping it. Amidst all her off-hand, brisk, imperious frankness, she had the ineffable discrimination of tact. Whether civil or rude, she was never civil or rude but what she carriedpublic opinion along with her. Her knowledge of general society musthave been limited, as must be that of all female sovereigns; but sheseemed gifted with an intuitive knowledge of human nature, which sheapplied to her special ambition of ruling it. I have not a doubt that ifshe had been suddenly transferred, a perfect stranger, to the world ofLondon, she would have soon forced her way to its selectest circles, and, when once there, held her own against a duchess. 

I have said that she was not affected: this might be one cause of hersway over a set in which nearly every other woman was trying rather toseem, than to be, a somebody. 

Put if Mrs. Colonel Poyntz was not artificial, she was artful, orperhaps I might more justly say artistic. In all she said and did therewere conduct, system, plan. She could be a most serviceable friend, amost damaging enemy; yet I believe she seldom indulged in strong likingsor strong hatreds. All was policy, --a policy akin to that of a grandparty chief, determined to raise up those whom, for any reason of state, it was prudent to favour, and to put down those whom, for any reason ofstate, it was expedient to humble or to crush. 

Ever since the controversy with Dr. Lloyd, this lady had honoured mewith her benignest countenance; and nothing could be more adroitthan the manner in which, while imposing me on others as an oracularauthority, she sought to subject to her will the oracle itself. 

She was in the habit of addressing me in a sort of motherly way, as ifshe had the deepest interest in my welfare, happiness, and reputation. And thus, in every compliment, in every seeming mark of respect, shemaintained the superior dignity of one who takes from responsiblestation the duty to encourage rising merit; so that, somehow or other, despite all that pride which made me believe that I needed no helpingand to advance or to clear my way through the world, I could not shakeoff from my mind the impression that I was mysteriously patronized byMrs. Colonel Poyntz. 

We might have sat together five minutes, side by side in silence ascomplete as if in the cave of Trophonius--when without looking up fromher work, Mrs. Poyntz said abruptly, --

"I am thinking about you, Dr. Fenwick. And you--are thinking about someother woman. Ungrateful man!"

"Unjust accusation! My very silence should prove how intently mythoughts were fixed on you, and on the weird web which springs underyour hand in meshes that bewilder the gaze and snare the attention. "

Mrs. Poyntz looked up at me for a moment--one rapid glance of the brightred hazel eye--and said, --

"Was I really in your thoughts? Answer truly. "

"Truly, I answer, you were. "

"That is strange! Who can it be?"

"Who can it be? What do you mean?"

"If you were thinking of me, it was in connection with some otherperson, --some other person of my own sex. It is certainly not poor dearMiss Brabazon. Who else can it be?"

Again the red eye shot over me, and I felt my cheek redden beneath it. 

"Hush!" she said, lowering her voice; "you are in love!"

"In love!--I! Permit me to ask you why you think so?"

"The signs are unmistakable; you are altered in your manner, even in theexpression of your face, since I last saw you; your manner is generallyquiet and observant, --it is now restless and distracted; your expressionof face is generally proud and serene, --it is now humbled andtroubled. You have something on your mind! It is not anxiety for yourreputation, --that is established; nor for your fortune, --that is made;it is not anxiety for a patient or you would scarcely be here. Butanxiety it is, --an anxiety that is remote from your profession, thattouches your heart and is new to it!"

I was startled, almost awed; but I tried to cover my confusion with aforced laugh. 

"Profound observer! Subtle analyst! You have convinced me that I mustbe in love, though I did not suspect it before. But when I strive toconjecture the object, I am as much perplexed as yourself; and with you, I ask, who can it be?"

"Whoever it be, " said Mrs. Poyntz, who had paused, while I spoke, fromher knitting, and now resumed it very slowly and very carefully, as ifher mind and her knitting worked in unison together, --"whoever it be, love in you would be serious; and, with or without love, marriage isa serious thing to us all. It is not every pretty girl that would suitAllen Fenwick. "

"Alas! is there any pretty girl whom Allen Fenwick would suit?"

"Tut! You should be above the fretful vanity that lays traps for acompliment. Yes; the time has come in your life and your career whenyou would do well to marry. I give my consent to that, " she added witha smile as if in jest, and a slight nod as if in earnest. The knittinghere went on more decidedly, more quickly. "But I do not yet see theperson. No! 'T is a pity, Allen Fenwick" (whenever Mrs. Poyntz calledme by my Christian name, she always assumed her majestic motherlymanner), --"a pity that, with your birth, energies, perseverance, talents, and, let me add, your advantages of manner and person, --a pitythat you did not choose a career that might achieve higher fortunes andlouder fame than the most brilliant success can give to a provincialphysician. But in that very choice you interest me. My choice has beenmuch thesame, --a small circle, but the first in it. Yet, had I been aman, or had my dear Colonel been a man whom it was in the power of awoman's art to raise one step higher in that metaphorical ladder whichis not the ladder of the angels, why, then--what then? No matter! Iam contented. I transfer my ambition to Jane. Do you not think herhandsome?"

"There can be no doubt of that, " said I, carelessly and naturally. 

"I have settled Jane's lot in my own mind, " resumed Mrs. Poyntz, striking firm into another row of knitting. "She will marry a countrygentleman of large estate. He will go into parliament. She will studyhis advancement as I study Poyntz's comfort. If he be clever, she willhelp to make him a minister; if he be not clever, his wealth will makeher a personage, and lift him into a personage's husband. And, now thatyou see I have no matrimonial designs on you, Allen Fenwick, think if itwill be worth while to confide in me. Possibly I may be useful--"

"I know not how to thank you; but, as yet, I have nothing to confide. "

While thus saying, I turned my eyes towards the open window beside whichI sat. It was a beautiful soft night, the May moon in all her splendour. The town stretched, far and wide, below with all its numberlesslights, --below, but somewhat distant; an intervening space was covered, here, by the broad quadrangle (in the midst of which stood, massive andlonely, the grand old church), and, there, by the gardens and scatteredcottages or mansions that clothed the sides of the hill. 

"Is not that house, " I said, after a short pause, "yonder with the threegables, the one in which--in which poor Dr. Lloyd lived--Abbots' House?"

I spoke abruptly, as if to intimate my desire to change the subject ofconversation. My hostess stopped her knitting, half rose, looked forth. 

"Yes. But what a lovely night! How is it that the moon blends intoharmony things of which the sun only marks the contrast? That statelyold church tower, gray with its thousand years, those vulgar tile-roofsand chimney-pots raw in the freshness of yesterday, --now, under themoonlight, all melt into one indivisible charm!"

As my hostess thus spoke, she had left her seat, taking her work withher, and passed from the window into the balcony. It was not often thatMrs. Poyntz condescended to admit what is called "sentiment" intothe range of her sharp, practical, worldly talk; but she did so attimes, --always, when she did, giving me the notion of an intellect muchtoo comprehensive not to allow that sentiment has a place in this life, but keeping it in its proper place, by that mixture of affability andindifference with which some high-born beauty allows the genius, butchecks the presumption, of a charming and penniless poet. For a fewminutes her eyes roved over the scene in evident enjoyment; then, asthey slowly settled upon the three gables of Abbots' House, her faceregained that something of hardness which belonged to its decidedcharacter; her fingers again mechanically resumed her knitting, and shesaid, in her clear, unsoftened, metallic chime of voice, "Can you guesswhy I took so much trouble to oblige Mr. Vigors and locate Mrs. Ashleighyonder?"

"You favoured us with a full explanation of your reasons. "

"Some of my reasons; not the main one. People who undertake the taskof governing others, as I do, be their rule a kingdom or a hamlet, mustadopt a principle of government and adhere to it. The principle thatsuits best with the Hill is Respect for the Proprieties. We have notmuch money; entre nous, we have no great rank. Our policy is, then, toset up the Proprieties as an influence which money must court and rankis afraid of. I had learned just before Mr. Vigors called on me thatLady Sarah Bellasis entertained the idea of hiring Abbots' House. London has set its face against her; a provincial town would be morecharitable. An earl's daughter, with a good income and an awfully badname, of the best manners and of the worst morals, would have made sadhavoc among the Proprieties. How many of our primmest old maids wouldhave deserted tea and Mrs. Poyntz for champagne and her ladyship! TheHill was never in so imminenta danger. Rather than Lady Sarah Bellasisshould have had that house, I would have taken it myself, and stocked itwith owls. 

"Mrs. Ashleigh turned up just in the critical moment. Lady Sarah isfoiled, the Proprieties safe, and so that question is settled. "

"And it will be pleasant to have your early friend so near you. "

Mrs. Poyntz lifted her eyes full upon me. 

"Do you know Mrs. Ashleigh?"

"Not in the least. "

"She has many virtues and few ideas. She is commonplace weak, as Iam commonplace strong. But commonplace weak can be very lovable. Herhusband, a man of genius and learning, gave her his whole heart, --aheart worth having; but he was not ambitious, and he despised theworld. "

"I think you said your daughter was very much attached to Miss Ashleigh?Does her character resemble her mother's?"

I was afraid while I spoke that I should again meet Mrs. Poyntz'ssearching gaze, but she did not this time look up from her work. 

"No; Lilian is anything but commonplace. "

"You described her as having delicate health; you implied a hope thatshe was not consumptive. I trust that there is no serious reason forapprehending a constitutional tendency which at her age would requirethe most careful watching!"

"I trust not. If she were to die--Dr. Fenwick, what is the matter?"

So terrible had been the picture which this woman's words had broughtbefore me, that I started as if my own life had received a shock. 

"I beg pardon, " I said falteringly, pressing my hand to my heart; "asudden spasm here, --it is over now. You were saying that--that--"

"I was about to say-" and here Mrs. Poyntz laid her hand lightly onmine, --"I was about to say that if Lilian Ashleigh were to die, I shouldmourn for her less than I might for one who valued the things of theearth more. But I believe there is no cause for the alarm my words soinconsiderately excited in you. Her mother is watchful and devoted; andif the least thing ailed Lilian, she would call in medical advice. Mr. Vigors would, I know, recommend Dr. Jones. "

Closing our conference with those stinging words, Mrs. Poyntz hereturned back into the drawing-room. 

I remained some minutes on the balcony, disconcerted, enraged. Withwhat consummate art had this practised diplomatist wound herself into mysecret! That she had read my heart better than myself was evident fromthat Parthian shaft, barbed with Dr. Jones, which she had shot over hershoulder in retreat. That from the first moment in which she had decoyedme to her side, she had detected "the something" on my mind, was perhapsbut the ordinary quickness of female penetration. But it was with noordinary craft that the whole conversation afterwards had been so shapedas to learn the something, and lead me to reveal the some one to whomthe something was linked. For what purpose? What was it to her? Whatmotive could she have beyond the mere gratification of curiosity?Perhaps, at first, she thought I had been caught by her daughter's showybeauty, and hence the half-friendly, half-cynical frankness with whichshe had avowed her ambitious projects for that young lady's matrimonialadvancement. Satisfied by my manner that I cherished no presumptuoushopes in that quarter, her scrutiny was doubtless continued from thatpleasure in the exercise of a wily intellect which impels schemers andpoliticians to an activity for which, without that pleasure itself, there would seem no adequate inducement. And besides, the ruling passionof this petty sovereign was power; and if knowledge be power, there isno better instrument of power over a contumacious subject than that holdon his heart which is gained in the knowledge of its secret. 

But "secret"! Had it really come to this? Was it possible that the meresight of a human face, never beheld before, could disturb the wholetenor of my life, --a stranger of whose mind and character I knewnothing, whose very voice I had never heard? It was only by theintolerable pang of anguish that had rent my heart in the words, carelessly, abruptly spoken, "if she were to die, " that I had felt howthe world would be changed to me, if indeed that face were seen in it nomore! Yes, secret it was no longer to myself, I loved! And like all onwhom love descends, sometimes softly, slowly, with the gradual wing ofthe cushat settling down into its nest, sometimes with the swoop of theeagle on his unsuspecting quarry, I believed that none ever before lovedas I loved; that such love was an abnormal wonder, made solely forme, and I for it. Then my mind insensibly hushed its angrier and moreturbulent thoughts, as my gaze rested upon the roof-tops of Lilian'shome, and the shimmering silver of the moonlit willow, under which I hadseen her gazing into the roseate heavens. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

When I returned to the drawing-room, the party was evidently about tobreak up. Those who had grouped round the piano were now assembled roundthe refreshment-table. The cardplayers had risen, and were settling ordiscussing gains and losses. While I was searching for my hat, whichI had somewhere mislaid, a poor gentleman, tormented by tic-doloureux, crept timidly up to me, --the proudest and the poorest of all thehidalgos settled on the Hill. He could not afford a fee for aphysician's advice; but pain had humbled his pride, and I saw at aglance that he was considering how to take a surreptitious advantage ofsocial intercourse, and obtain the advice without paying the fee. Theold man discovered the hat before I did, stooped, took it up, extendedit to me with the profound bow of the old school, while the other hand, clenched and quivering, was pressed into the hollow of his cheek, and his eyes met mine with wistful mute entreaty. The instinct of myprofession seized me at once. I could never behold suffering withoutforgetting all else in the desire to relieve it. 

"You are in pain, " said I, softly. "Sit down and describe the symptoms. Here, it is true, I am no professional doctor, but I am a friend who isfond of doctoring, and knows something about it. "

So we sat down a little apart from the other guests, and after a fewquestions and answers, I was pleased to find that his "tic" did notbelong to the less curable kind of that agonizing neuralgia. I wasespecially successful in my treatment of similar sufferings, for which Ihad discovered an anodyne that was almost specific. I wrote on a leaf ofmy pocketbook a prescription which I felt sure would be efficacious, andas I tore it out and placed it in his hand, I chanced to look up, andsaw the hazel eyes of my hostess fixed upon me with a kinder and softerexpression than they often condescended to admit into their cold andpenetrating lustre. At that moment, however, her attention was drawnfrom me to a servant, who entered with a note, and I heard him say, though in an undertone, "From Mrs. Ashleigh. "

She opened the note, read it hastily, ordered the servant to waitwithout the door, retired to her writing-table, which stood near theplace at which I still lingered, rested her face on her hand, and seemedmusing. Her meditation was very soon over. She turned her head, and tomy surprise, beckoned to me. I approached. 

"Sit here, " she whispered: "turn your back towards those people, who areno doubt watching us. Read this. "

She placed in my hand the note she had just received. It contained but afew words, to this effect:--

 DEAR MARGARET, --I am so distressed. Since I wrote to you a few hours ago, Lilian is taken suddenly ill, and I fear seriously. What medical man should I send for? Let my servant have his name and address. 

 A. A. 

I sprang from my seat. 

"Stay, " said Mrs. Poyntz. "Would you much care if I sent the servant toDr. Jones?"

"Ah, madam, you are cruel! What have I done that you should become myenemy?"

"Enemy! No. You have just befriended one of my friends. In this worldof fools intellect should ally itself with intellect. No; I am not yourenemy! But you have not yet asked me to be your friend. "

Here she put into my hands a note she had written while thus speaking. "Receive your credentials. If there be any cause for alarm, or if I canbe of use, send for me. " Resuming the work she had suspended, but withlingering, uncertain fingers, she added, "So far, then, this is settled. Nay, no thanks; it is but little that is settled as yet. "

CHAPTER IX. 

In a very few minutes I was once more in the grounds of that old gablehouse; the servant, who went before me, entered them by the stairs andthe wicket-gate of the private entrance; that way was the shortest. So again I passed by the circling glade and the monastic well, --sward, trees, and ruins all suffused in the limpid moonlight. 

And now I was in the house; the servant took up-stairs the note withwhich I was charged, and a minute or two afterwards returned andconducted me to the corridor above, in which Mrs. Ashleigh received me. I was the first to speak. 

"Your daughter--is--is--not seriously ill, I hope. What is it?"

"Hush!" she said, under her breath. "Will you step this way for amoment?" She passed through a doorway to the right. I followed her, and as she placed on the table the light she had been holding, I lookedround with a chill at the heart, --it was the room in which Dr. Lloyd haddied. Impossible to mistake. The furniture indeed was changed, there wasno bed in the chamber; but the shape of the room, the position of thehigh casement, which was now wide open, and through which the moonlightstreamed more softly than on that drear winter night, the great squarebeams intersecting the low ceiling, --all were impressed vividly on mymemory. The chair to which Mrs. Ashleigh beckoned me was placed just onthe spot where I had stood by the bedhead of the dying man. 

I shrank back, --I could not have seated myself there. So I remainedleaning against the chimney-piece, while Mrs. Ashleigh told her story. 

She said that on their arrival the day before, Lilian had been in morethan usually good health and spirits, delighted with the old house, the grounds, and especially the nook by the Monk's Well, at which Mrs. Ashleigh had left her that evening in order to make some purchases inthe town, in company with Mr. Vigors. When Mrs. Ashleigh returned, sheand Mr. Vigors had sought Lilian in that nook, and Mrs. Ashleigh thendetected, with a mother's eye, some change in Lilian which alarmed her. She seemed listless and dejected, and was very pale; but she denied thatshe felt unwell. On regaining the house she had sat down in the room inwhich we then were, --"which, " said Mrs. Ashleigh, "as it is not requiredfor a sleeping-room, my daughter, who is fond of reading, wished to fitup as her own morning-room, or study. I left her here and went into thedrawing-room below with Mr. Vigors. When he quitted me, which he didvery soon, I remained for nearly an hour giving directions about theplacing of furniture, which had just arrived, from our late residence. I then went up-stairs to join my daughter, and to my terror found herapparently lifeless in her chair. She had fainted away. "

I interrupted Mrs. Ashleigh here. "Has Miss Ashleigh been subject tofainting fits?"

"No, never. When she recovered she seemed bewildered, disinclined tospeak. I got her to bed, and as she then fell quietly to sleep, my mindwas relieved. I thought it only a passing effect of excitement, in achange of abode; or caused by something like malaria in the atmosphereof that part of the grounds in which I had found her seated. "

"Very likely. The hour of sunset at this time of year is trying todelicate constitutions. Go on. "

"About three quarters of an hour ago she woke up with a loud cry, andhas been ever since in a state of great agitation, weeping violently, and answering none of my questions. Yet she does not seem light-headed, but rather what we call hysterical. "

"You will permit me now to see her. Take comfort; in all you tell me Isee nothing to warrant serious alarm. "

CHAPTER X. 

To the true physician there is an inexpressible sanctity in the sickchamber. At its threshold the more human passions quit their hold onhis heart. Love there would be profanation; even the grief permitted toothers he must put aside. He must enter that room--a calm intelligence. He is disabled for his mission if he suffer aught to obscure thekeen quiet glance of his science. Age or youth, beauty or deformity, innocence or guilt, merge their distinctions in one commonattribute, -human suffering appealing to human skill. 

Woe to the households in which the trusted Healer feels not on hisconscience the solemn obligations of his glorious art! Reverently as ina temple, I stood in the virgin's chamber. When her mother placed herhand in mine, and I felt the throb of its pulse, I was aware of noquicker beat of my own heart. I looked with a steady eye on the facemore beautiful from the flush that deepened the delicate hues ofthe young cheek, and the lustre that brightened the dark blue of thewandering eyes. She did not at first heed me, did not seem aware ofmy presence; but kept murmuring to herself words which I could notdistinguish. 

At length, when I spoke to her, in that low, soothing tone which welearn at the sick-bed, the expression of her face altered suddenly; shepassed the hand I did not hold over her forehead, turned round, lookedat me full and long, with unmistakable surprise, yet not as if thesurprise displeased her, --less the surprise which recoils from thesight of a stranger than that which seems doubtfully to recognize anunexpected friend. Yet on the surprise there seemed to creep somethingof apprehension, of fear; her hand trembled, her voice quivered, as shesaid, --

"Can it be, can it be? Am I awake? Mother, who is this?"

"Only a kind visitor, Dr. Fenwick, sent by Mrs. Poyntz, for I was uneasyabout you, darling. How are you now?"

"Better. Strangely better. "

She removed her hand gently from mine, and with an involuntary modestshrinking turned towards Mrs. Ashleigh, drawing her mother towardsherself, so that she became at once hidden from me. 

Satisfied that there was here no delirium, nor even more than the slightand temporary fever which often accompanies a sudden nervous attack inconstitutions peculiarly sensitive, I retired noiselessly from theroom, and went, not into that which had been occupied by the ill-fatedNaturalist, but down-stairs into the drawing-room, to write myprescription. I had already sent the servant off with it to thechemist's before Mrs. Ashleigh joined me. 

"She seems recovering surprisingly; her forehead is cooler; sheis perfectly self-possessed, only she cannot account for her ownseizure, --cannot account either for the fainting or the agitation withwhich she awoke from sleep. "

"I think I can account for both. The first room in which sheentered--that in which she fainted--had its window open; the sides ofthe window are overgrown with rank creeping plants in full blossom. MissAshleigh had already predisposed herself to injurious effects from theeffluvia by fatigue, excitement, imprudence in sitting out at the fallof a heavy dew. The sleep after the fainting fit was the more disturbed, because Nature, always alert and active in subjects so young, wasmaking its own effort to right itself from an injury. Nature has nearlysucceeded. What I have prescribed will a little aid and accelerate thatwhich Nature has yet to do, and in a day or two I do not doubt that yourdaughter will be perfectly restored. Only let me recommend care to avoidexposure to the open air during the close of the day. Let her avoid alsothe room in which she was first seized, for it is a strange phenomenonin nervous temperaments that a nervous attack may, without visiblecause, be repeated in the same place where it was first experienced. Youhad better shut up the chamber for at least some weeks, burn fires init, repaint and paper it, sprinkle chloroform. You are not, perhaps, aware that Dr. Lloyd died in that room after a prolonged illness. Sufferme to wait till your servant returns with the medicine, and let meemploy the interval in asking you a few questions. Miss Ashleigh, yousay, never had a fainting fit before. I should presume that she is notwhat we call strong. But has she ever had any illness that alarmed you?"

"Never. "

"No great liability to cold and cough, to attacks of the chest orlungs?"

"Certainly not. Still I have feared that she may have a tendency toconsumption. Do you think so? Your questions alarm me!"

"I do not think so; but before I pronounce a positive opinion, onequestion more. You say you have feared a tendency to consumption. Isthat disease in her family? She certainly did not inherit it from you. But on her father's side?"

"Her father, " said Mrs. Ashleigh, with tears in her eyes, "died young, but of brain fever, which the medical men said was brought on by overstudy. "

"Enough, my dear madam. What you say confirms my belief that yourdaughter's constitution is the very opposite to that in which the seedsof consumption lurk. It is rather that far nobler constitution, which the keenness of the nervous susceptibility renders delicate butelastic, --as quick to recover as it is to suffer. "

"Thank you, thank you, Dr. Fenwick, for what you say. You take a loadfrom my heart; for Mr. Vigors, I know, thinks Lilian consumptive, andMrs. Poyntz has rather frightened me at times by hints to the sameeffect. But when you speak of nervous susceptibility, I do not quiteunderstand you. My daughter is not what is commonly called nervous. Hertemper is singularly even. "

"But if not excitable, should you also say that she is notimpressionable? The things which do not disturb her temper may, perhaps, deject her spirits. Do I make myself understood?"

"Yes, I think I understand your distinction; but I am not quite sureif it applies. To most things that affect the spirits she is not moresensitive than other girls, perhaps less so; but she is certainly veryimpressionable in some things. "

"In what?"

"She is more moved than any one I ever knew by objects in externalnature, rural scenery, rural sounds, by music, by the books that shereads, --even books that are not works of imagination. Perhaps in allthis she takes after her poor father, but in a more marked degree, --atleast, I observe it more in her; for he was very silent and reserved. And perhaps also her peculiarities have been fostered by the seclusionin which she has been brought up. It was with a view to make her alittle more like girls of her own age that our friend, Mrs. Poyntz, induced me to come here. Lilian was reconciled to this change; but sheshrank from the thoughts of London, which I should have preferred. Herpoor father could not endure London. "

"Miss Ashleigh is fond of reading?"

"Yes, she is fond of reading, but more fond of musing. She will sit byherself for hours without book or work, and seem as abstracted as if ina dream. She was so even in her earliest childhood. Then she would tellme what she had been conjuring up to herself. She would say that she hadseen--positively seen--beautiful lands far away from earth; flowers andtrees not like ours. As she grew older this visionary talk displeasedme, and I scolded her, and said that if others heard her, they wouldthink that she was not only silly but very untruthful. So of late yearsshe never ventures to tell me what, in such dreamy moments, she suffersherself to imagine; but the habit of musing continues still. Do you notagree with Mrs. Poyntz that the best cure would be a little cheerfulsociety amongst other young people?"

"Certainly, " said I, honestly, though with a jealous pang. "But herecomes the medicine. Will you take it up to her, and then sit with herhalf an hour or so? By that time I expect she will be asleep. I willwait here till you return. Oh, I can amuse myself with the newspapersand books on your table. Stay! one caution: be sure there are no flowersin Miss Ashleigh's sleeping-room. I think I saw a treacherous rose-treein a stand by the window. If so, banish it. "

Left alone, I examined the room in which, oh, thought of joy! I hadsurely now won the claim to become a privileged guest. I touched thebooks Lilian must have touched; in the articles of furniture, as yetso hastily disposed that the settled look of home was not about them, I still knew that I was gazing on things which her mind must associatewith the history of her young life. That luteharp must be surely hers, and the scarf, with a girl's favourite colours, --pure white and paleblue, --and the bird-cage, and the childish ivory work-case, withimplements too pretty for use, --all spoke of her. 

It was a blissful, intoxicating revery, which Mrs. Ashleigh's entrancedisturbed. 

Lilian was sleeping calmly. I had no excuse to linger there any longer. 

"I leave you, I trust, with your mind quite at ease, " said I. "You willallow me to call to-morrow, in the afternoon?"

"Oh, yes, gratefully. "

Mrs. Ashleigh held out her hand as I made towards the door. 

Is there a physician who has not felt at times how that ceremonious feethrows him back from the garden-land of humanity into the market-placeof money, --seems to put him out of the pale of equal friendship, andsay, "True, you have given health and life. Adieu! there, you are paidfor it!" With a poor person there would have been no dilemma, butMrs. Ashleigh was affluent: to depart from custom here was almostimpertinence. But had the penalty of my refusal been the doom of neveragain beholding Lilian, I could not have taken her mother's gold. So Idid not appear to notice the hand held out to me, and passed by with aquickened step. 

"But, Dr. Fenwick, stop!"

"No, ma'am, no! Miss Ashleigh would have recovered as soon without me. Whenever my aid is really wanted, then--but Heaven grant that time maynever come! We will talk again about her to-morrow. "

I was gone, --now in the garden ground, odorous with blossoms; now in thelane, inclosed by the narrow walls; now in the deserted streets, overwhich the moon shone full as in that winter night when I hurried fromthe chamber of death. But the streets were not ghastly now, and the moonwas no longer Hecate, that dreary goddess of awe and spectres, but thesweet, simple Lady of the Stars, on whose gentle face lovers have gazedever since (if that guess of astronomers be true) she was parted fromearth to rule the tides of its deeps from afar, even as love, from lovedivided, rules the heart that yearns towards it with mysterious law. 

CHAPTER XI. 

With what increased benignity I listened to the patients who visited methe next morning! The whole human race seemed to be worthier of love, and I longed to diffuse amongst all some rays of the glorious hope thathad dawned upon my heart. My first call, when I went forth, was on thepoor young woman from whom I had been returning the day before, when animpulse, which seemed like a fate, had lured me into the grounds where Ihad first seen Lilian. I felt grateful to this poor patient; without herLilian herself might be yet unknown to rue. 

The girl's brother, a young man employed in the police, and whose paysupported a widowed mother and the suffering sister, received me at thethreshold of the cottage. 

"Oh, sir, she is so much better to-day; almost free from pain. Will shelive now; can she live?"

"If my treatment has really done the good you say; if she be reallybetter under it, I think her recovery may be pronounced. But I mustfirst see her. "

The girl was indeed wonderfully better. I felt that my skill wasachieving a signal triumph; but that day even my intellectual pride wasforgotten in the luxurious unfolding of that sense of heart which had sonewly waked into blossom. 

As I recrossed the threshold, I smiled on the brother, who was stilllingering there, --

"Your sister is saved, Wady. She needs now chiefly wine, and good thoughlight nourishment; these you will find at my house; call there for themevery day. "

"God bless you, sir! If ever I can serve you--" His tongue faltered, hecould say no more. 

Serve me, Allen Fenwick--that poor policeman! Me, whom a king could notserve! What did I ask from earth but Fame and Lilian's heart? Thronesand bread man wins from the aid of others; fame and woman's heart he canonly gain through himself. 

So I strode gayly up the hill, through the iron gates, into the fairyground, and stood before Lilian's home. 

The man-servant, on opening the door, seemed somewhat confused, and saidhastily before I spoke, --

"Not at home, sir; a note for you. "

I turned the note mechanically in my hand; I felt stunned. 

"Not at home! Miss Ashleigh cannot be out. How is she?"

"Better, sir, thank you. "

I still could not open the note; my eyes turned wistfully towardsthe windows of the house, and there--at the drawing-room window--Iencountered the scowl of Mr. Vigors. I coloured with resentment, divinedthat I was dismissed, and walked away with a proud crest and a firmstep. 

When I was out of the gates, in the blind lane, I opened the note. Itbegan formally. "Mrs. Ashleigh presents her compliments, " and went on tothank me, civilly enough, for my attendance the night before, would notgive me the trouble to repeat my visit, and inclosed a fee, double theamount of the fee prescribed by custom. I flung the money, as an aspthat had stung me, over the high wall, and tore the note into shreds. Having thus idly vented my rage, a dull gnawing sorrow came heavily downupon all other emotions, stifling and replacing them. At the mouth ofthe lane I halted. I shrank from the thought of the crowded streetsbeyond; I shrank yet more from the routine of duties, which stretchedbefore me in the desert into which daily life was so suddenly smitten. Isat down by the roadside, shading my dejected face with a nervous hand. I looked up as the sound of steps reached my ear, and saw Dr. Jonescoming briskly along the lane, evidently from Abbots' House. He musthave been there at the very time I had called. I was not only dismissedbut supplanted. I rose before he reached the spot on which I had seatedmyself, and went my way into the town, went through my allotted round ofprofessional visits; but my attentions were not so tenderly devoted, my kill so genially quickened by the glow of benevolence, as my poorerpatients had found them in the morning. I have said how the physicianshould enter the sick-room. "A Calm Intelligence!" But if you strike ablow on the heart, the intellect suffers. Little worth, I suspect, wasmy "calm intelligence" that day. Bichat, in his famous book upon Lifeand Death, divides life into two classes, --animal and organic. Man'sintellect, with the brain for its centre, belongs to life animal; hispassions to life organic, centred in the heart, in the viscera. Alas!if the noblest passions through which alone we lift ourselves into themoral realm of the sublime and beautiful really have their centre in thelife which the very vegetable, that lives organically, shares with us!And, alas! if it be that life which we share with the vegetable, thatcan cloud, obstruct, suspend, annul that life centred in the brain, which we share with every being howsoever angelic, in every starhowsoever remote, on whom the Creator bestows the faculty of thought!

CHAPTER XII. 

But suddenly I remembered Mrs. Poyntz. I ought to call on her. So Iclosed my round of visits at her door. The day was then far advanced, and the servant politely informed me that Mrs. Poyntz was at dinner. Icould only leave my card, with a message that I would pay my respects toher the next day. That evening I received from her this note:--

 Dear Dr. Fenwick, --I regret much that I cannot have the pleasure of seeing you to-morrow. Poyntz and I are going to visit his brother, at the other end of the county, and we start early. We shall be away some days. Sorry to hear from Mrs. Ashleigh that she has been persuaded by Mr. Vigors to consult Dr. Jones about Lilian. Vigors and Jones both frighten the poor mother, and insist upon consumptive tendencies. Unluckily, you seem to have said there was little the matter. Some doctors train their practice as some preachers fill their churches, --by adroit use of the appeals to terror. You do not want patients, Dr. Jones does. And, after all, better perhaps as it is. Yours, etc. M. Poyntz. 

To my more selfish grief, anxiety for Lilian was now added. I had seenmany more patients die from being mistreated for consumption than fromconsumption itself. And Dr. Jones was a mercenary, cunning, needy man, with much crafty knowledge of human foibles, but very little skill inthe treatment of human maladies. My fears were soon confirmed. A fewdays after I heard from Miss Brabazon that Miss Ashleigh was seriouslyill, kept her room. Mrs. Ashleigh made this excuse for not immediatelyreturning the visits which the Hill had showered upon her. Miss Brabazonhad seen Dr. Jones, who had shaken his head, said it was a serious case;but that time and care (his time and his care!) might effect wonders. 

How stealthily at the dead of the night I would climb the Hill and looktowards the windows of the old sombre house, --one window, in which alight burned dim and mournful, the light of a sick-room, --of hers!

At length Mrs. Poyntz came back, and I entered her house, having fullyresolved beforehand on the line of policy to be adopted towards thepotentate whom I hoped to secure as an ally. It was clear that neitherdisguise nor half-confidence would baffle the penetration of so keen anintellect, nor propitiate the good will of so imperious and resolute atemper. Perfect frankness here was the wisest prudence; and afterall, it was most agreeable to my own nature, and most worthy of my ownhonour. 

Luckily, I found Mrs. Poyntz alone, and taking in both mine the handshe somewhat coldly extended to me, I said, with the earnestness ofsuppressed emotion, --

"You observed when I last saw you, that I had not yet asked you to bemy friend. I ask it now. Listen to me with all the indulgence you canvouchsafe, and let me at least profit by your counsel if you refuse togive me your aid. "

Rapidly, briefly, I went on to say how I had first seen Lilian, and howsudden, how strange to myself, had been the impression which that firstsight of her had produced. 

"You remarked the change that had come over me, " said I; "you divinedthe cause before I divined it myself, --divined it as I sat there besideyou, thinking that through you I might see, in the freedom of socialintercourse, the face that was then haunting me. You know what hassince passed. Miss Ashleigh is ill; her case is, I am convinced, wholly misunderstood. All other feelings are merged in one sense ofanxiety, --of alarm. But it has become due to me, due to all, to incurthe risk of your ridicule even more than of your reproof, by stating toyou thus candidly, plainly, bluntly, the sentiment which renders alarmso poignant, and which, if scarcely admissible to the romance of somewild dreamy boy, may seem an unpardonable folly in a man of my years andmy sober calling, --due to me, to you, to Mrs. Ashleigh, because stillthe dearest thing in life to me is honour. And if you, who know Mrs. Ashleigh so intimately, who must be more or less aware of her plans orwishes for her daughter's future, --if you believe that those plans orwishes lead to a lot far more ambitious than an alliance with me couldoffer to Miss Ashleigh, then aid Mr. Vigors in excluding me from thehouse; aid me in suppressing a presumptuous, visionary passion. I cannotenter that house without love and hope at my heart; and the thresholdof that house I must not cross if such love and such hope would be a sinand a treachery in the eyes of its owner. I might restore Miss Ashleighto health; her gratitude might--I cannot continue. This danger mustnot be to me nor to her, if her mother has views far above such ason-in-law. And I am the more bound to consider all this while it is yettime, because I heard you state that Miss Ashleigh had a fortune, waswhat would be here termed an heiress. And the full consciousness thatwhatever fame one in my profession may live to acquire, does notopen those vistas of social power and grandeur which are openedby professions to my eyes less noble in themselves, --that fullconsciousness, I say, was forced upon me by certain words of your own. For the rest, you know my descent is sufficiently recognized as thatamidst well-born gentry to have rendered me no mesalliance to familiesthe most proud of their ancestry, if I had kept my hereditary estate andavoided the career that makes me useful to man. But I acknowledge thaton entering a profession such as mine--entering any profession exceptthat of arms or the senate--all leave their pedigree at its door, anerased or dead letter. All must come as equals, high-born or low-born, into that arena in which men ask aid from a man as he makes himself; tothem his dead forefathers are idle dust. Therefore, to the advantage ofbirth I cease to have a claim. I am but a provincial physician, whosestation would be the same had he been a cobbler's son. But gold retainsits grand privilege in all ranks. He who has gold is removed fromthe suspicion that attaches to the greedy fortune-hunter. My privatefortune, swelled by my savings, is sufficient to secure to any one Imarried a larger settlement than many a wealthy squire can make. I needno fortune with a wife; if she have one, it would be settled on herself. Pardon these vulgar details. Now, have I made myself understood?"

"Fully, " answered the Queen of the Hill, who had listened to me quietly, watchfully, and without one interruption, "fully; and you have donewell to confide in me with so generous an unreserve. But before I sayfurther, let me ask, what would be your advice for Lilian, supposingthat you ought not to attend her? You have no trust in Dr. Jones;neither have I. And Annie Ashleigh's note received to-day, begging meto call, justifies your alarm. Still you think there is no tendency toconsumption?"

"Of that I am certain so far as my slight glimpse of a case that to me, however, seems a simple and not uncommon one, will permit. But inthe alternative you put--that my own skill, whatever its worth, isforbidden--my earnest advice is that Mrs. Ashleigh should take herdaughter at once to London, and consult there those great authorities towhom I cannot compare my own opinion or experience; and by their counselabide. "

Mrs. Poyntz shaded her eyes with her hand for a few moments, and seemedin deliberation with herself. Then she said, with her peculiar smile, half grave, half ironical, --

"In matters more ordinary you would have won me to your side long ago. That Mr. Vigors should have presumed to cancel my recommendation to asettler on the Hill was an act of rebellion, and involved the honourof my prerogative; but I suppressed my indignation at an affront sounusual, partly out of pique against yourself, but much more, I think, out of regard for you. "

"I understand. You detected the secret of my heart; you knew that Mrs. Ashleigh would not wish to see her daughter the wife of a provincialphysician. "

"Am I sure, or are you sure, that the daughter herself would accept thatfate; or if she accepted it, would not repent?"

"Do you not think me the vainest of men when I say this, --that I cannotbelieve I should be so enthralled by a feeling at war with my reason, unfavoured by anything I can detect in my habits of mind, or even by thedreams of a youth which exalted science and excluded love, unless I wasintimately convinced that Miss Ashleigh's heart was free, that I couldwin, and that I could keep it! Ask me why I am convinced of this, and Ican tell you no more why I think that she could love me than I can tellyou why I love her!"

"I am of the world, worldly; but I am a woman, womanly, --though I maynot care to be thought it. And, therefore, though what you say is, regarded in a worldly point of view, sheer nonsense, regarded in awomanly point of view, it is logically sound. But still you cannot knowLilian as I do. Your nature and hers are in strong contrast. I do notthink she is a safe wife for you. The purest, the most innocent creatureimaginable, certainly that, but always in the seventh heaven; and youin the seventh heaven just at this moment, but with an irresistiblegravitation to the solid earth, which will have its way again whenthe honeymoon is over--I do not believe you two would harmonize byintercourse. I do not believe Lilian would sympathize with you, and I amsure you could not sympathize with her throughout the long dull courseof this workday life. And, therefore, for your sake, as well as hers, Iwas not displeased to find that Dr. Jones had replaced you; and now, inreturn for your frankness, I say frankly, do not go again to that house. Conquer this sentiment, fancy, passion, whatever it be. And I willadvise Mrs. Ashleigh to take Lilian to town. Shall it be so settled?"

I could not speak. I buried my face in my hands-misery, misery, desolation!

I know not how long I remained thus silent, perhaps many minutes. Atlength I felt a cold, firm, but not ungentle hand placed upon mine; anda clear, full, but not discouraging voice said to me, --

"Leave me to think well over this conversation, and to ponder well thevalue of all you have shown that you so deeply feel. The interests oflife do not fill both scales of the balance. The heart, which does notalways go in the same scale with the interests, still has its weight inthe scale opposed to them. I have heard a few wise men say, as many asilly woman says, 'Better be unhappy with one we love, than be happywith one we love not. ' Do you say that too?"

"With every thought of my brain, every beat of my pulse, I say it. "

"After that answer, all my questionings cease. You shall hear from meto-morrow. By that time, I shall have seen Annie and Lilian. I shallhave weighed both scales of the balance, --and the heart here, AllenFenwick, seems very heavy. Go, now. I hear feet on the stairs, Poyntzbringing up some friendly gossiper; gossipers are spies. "

I passed my hand over my eyes, tearless, but how tears would haverelieved the anguish that burdened them! and, without a word, went downthe stairs, meeting at the landing-place Colonel Poyntz and the old manwhose pain my prescription had cured. The old man was whistling a merrytune, perhaps first learned on the playground. He broke from it tothank, almost to embrace me, as I slid by him. I seized his jocundblessing as a good omen, and carried it with me as I passed into thebroad sunlight. Solitary--solitary! Should I be so evermore?

CHAPTER XIII. 

The next day I had just dismissed the last of my visiting patients, andwas about to enter my carriage and commence my round, when I received atwisted note containing but these words:--

 Call on me to-day, as soon as you can. 

 M. Poyntz. 

A few minutes afterwards I was in Mrs. Poyntz's drawing-room. 

"Well, Allen Fenwick" said she, "I do not serve friends by halves. Nothanks! I but adhere to a principle I have laid down for myself. I spentlast evening with the Ashleighs. Lilian is certainly much altered, --veryweak, I fear very ill, and I believe very unskillfully treated by Dr. Jones. I felt that it was my duty to insist on a change of physician;but there was something else to consider before deciding who thatphysician should be. I was bound, as your confidante, to consult yourown scruples of honour. Of course I could not say point-blank to Mrs. Ashleigh, 'Dr. Fenwick admires your daughter, would you object to himas a son-in-law?' Of course I could not touch at all on the secret withwhich you intrusted me; but I have not the less arrived at a conclusion, in agreement with my previous belief, that not being a woman of theworld, Annie Ashleigh has none of the ambition which women of the worldwould conceive for a daughter who has a good fortune and considerablebeauty; that her predominant anxiety is for her child's happiness, andher predominant fear is that her child will die. She would never opposeany attachment which Lilian might form; and if that attachment were forone who had preserved her daughter's life, I believe her own heart wouldgratefully go with her daughter's. So far, then, as honour is concerned, all scruples vanish. "

I sprang from my seat, radiant with joy. Mrs. Poyntz dryly continued:"You value yourself on your common-sense, and to that I address a fewwords of counsel which may not be welcome to your romance. I said thatI did not think you and Lilian would suit each other in the longrun; reflection confirms me in that supposition. Do not look at me soincredulously and so sadly. Listen, and take heed. Ask yourself what, asa man whose days are devoted to a laborious profession, whose ambitionis entwined with its success, whose mind must be absorbed in itspursuits, --ask yourself what kind of a wife you would have sought towin; had not this sudden fancy for a charming face rushed over yourbetter reason, and obliterated all previous plans and resolutions. Surely some one with whom your heart would have been quite at rest; bywhom your thoughts would have been undistracted from the channels intowhich your calling should concentrate their flow; in short, a serenecompanion in the quiet holiday of a trustful home! Is it not so?"

"You interpret my own thoughts when they have turned towards marriage. But what is there in Lilian Ashleigh that should mar the picture youhave drawn?"

"What is there in Lilian Ashleigh which in the least accords with thepicture? In the first place, the wife of a young physician should notbe his perpetual patient. The more he loves her, and the more worthy shemay be of love, the more her case will haunt him wherever he goes. Whenhe returns home, it is not to a holiday; the patient he most cares for, the anxiety that most gnaws him, awaits him there. "

"But, good heavens! why should Lilian Ashleigh be a perpetual patient?The sanitary resources of youth are incalculable. And--"

"Let me stop you; I cannot argue against a physician in love! I willgive up that point in dispute, remaining convinced that there issomething in Lilian's constitution which will perplex, torment, andbaffle you. It was so with her father, whom she resembles in face and incharacter. He showed no symptoms of any grave malady. His outward formwas, like Lilian's, a model of symmetry, except in this, that, likehers, it was too exquisitely delicate; but when seemingly in the midstof perfect health, at any slight jar on the nerves he would becomealarmingly ill. I was sure that he would die young, and he did so. "

"Ay, but Mrs. Ashleigh said that his death was from brain-fever, broughton by over-study. Rarely, indeed, do women so fatigue the brain. Nofemale patient, in the range of my practice, ever died of purely mentalexertion. "

"Of purely mental exertion, no; but of heart emotion, many femalepatients, perhaps? Oh, you own that! I know nothing about nerves; but Isuppose that, whether they act on the brain or the heart, the resultto life is much the same if the nerves be too finely strung for life'sdaily wear and tear. And this is what I mean, when I say you and Lilianwill not suit. As yet, she is a mere child; her nature undeveloped, andher affections therefore untried. You might suppose that you had won herheart; she might believe that she gave it to you, and both be deceived. If fairies nowadays condescended to exchange their offspring with thoseof mortals, and if the popular tradition did not represent a fairychangeling as an ugly peevish creature, with none of the grace of itsparents, I should be half inclined to suspect that Lilian was one of theelfin people. She never seems at home on earth; and I do not think shewill ever be contented with a prosaic earthly lot. Now I have told youwhy I do not think she will suit you. I must leave it to yourself toconjecture how far you would suit her. I say this in due season, whileyou may set a guard upon your impulse; while you may yet watch, andweigh, and meditate; and from this moment on that subject I say no more. I lend advice, but I never throw it away. "

She came here to a dead pause, and began putting on her bonnet andscarf, which lay on the table beside her. I was a little chilled by herwords, and yet more by the blunt, shrewd, hard look and manner whichaided the effect of their delivery; but the chill melted away in thesudden glow of my heart when she again turned towards me and said, --

"Of course you guess, from these preliminary cautions, that you aregoing into danger? Mrs. Ashleigh wishes to consult you about Lilian, andI propose to take you to her house. "

"Oh, my friend, my dear friend, how can I ever repay you?" I caught herhand, the white firm hand, and lifted it to my lips. 

She drew it somewhat hastily away, and laying it gently on my shoulder, said, in a soft voice, "Poor Allen, how little the world knows eitherof us! But how little perhaps we know ourselves! Come, your carriage ishere? That is right; we must put down Dr. Jones publicly and in all ourstate. "

In the carriage Mrs. Poyntz told me the purport of that conversationwith Mrs. Ashleigh to which I owed my re-introduction to Abbots' House. It seems that Mr. Vigors had called early the morning after my firstvisit! had evinced much discomposure on hearing that I had beensummoned! dwelt much on my injurious treatment of Dr. Lloyd, whom, as distantly related to himself, and he (Mr. Vigors) being distantlyconnected with the late Gilbert Ashleigh, he endeavoured to fasten uponhis listener as one of her husband's family, whose quarrel she was boundin honour to take up. He spoke of me as an infidel "tainted with Frenchdoctrines, " and as a practitioner rash and presumptuous; proving his ownfreedom from presumption and rashness by flatly deciding that my opinionmust be wrong. Previously to Mrs. Ashleigh's migration to L----, Mr. Vigors had interested her in the pretended phenomena of mesmerism. Hehad consulted a clairvoyante, much esteemed by poor Dr. Lloyd, asto Lilian's health, and the clairvoyante had declared her to beconstitutionally predisposed to consumption. Mr. Vigors persuaded Mrs. Ashleigh to come at once with him and see this clairvoyante herself, armed with a lock of Lilian's hair and a glove she had worn, as themedia of mesmerical rapport. 

The clairvoyante, one of those I had publicly denounced as an impostor, naturally enough denounced me in return. On being asked solemnly byMr. Vigors "to look at Dr. Fenwick and see if his influence would bebeneficial to the subject, " the sibyl had become violently agitated, andsaid that, "when she looked at us together, we were enveloped in a blackcloud; that this portended affliction and sinister consequences; thatour rapport was antagonistic. " Mr. Vigors then told her to dismiss myimage, and conjure up that of Dr. Jones. Therewith the somnambule becamemore tranquil, and said: "Dr. Jones would do well if he would be guidedby higher lights than his own skill, and consult herself daily as to theproper remedies. The best remedy of all would be mesmerism. But sinceDr. Lloyd's death, she did not know of a mesmerist, sufficiently gifted, in affinity with the patient. " In fine, she impressed and awed Mrs. Ashleigh, who returned in haste, summoned Dr. Jones, and dismissedmyself. 

"I could not have conceived Mrs. Ashleigh to be so utterly wanting incommon-sense, " said I. "She talked rationally enough when I saw her. "

"She has common-sense in general, and plenty of the sense most common, "answered Mrs. Poyntz; "but she is easily led and easily frightenedwherever her affections are concerned, and therefore, just as easily asshe had been persuaded by Mr. Vigors and terrified by the somnambule, I persuaded her against the one, and terrified her against the other. Ihad positive experience on my side, since it was clear that Lilian hadbeen getting rapidly worse under Dr. Jones's care. The main obstaclesI had to encounter in inducing Mrs. Ashleigh to consult you againwere, first, her reluctance to disoblige Mr. Vigors, as a friend andconnection of Lilian's father; and, secondly, her sentiment of shamein re-inviting your opinion after having treated you with so littlerespect. Both these difficulties I took on myself. I bring you to herhouse, and, on leaving you, I shall go on to Mr. Vigors, and tell himwhat is done is my doing, and not to be undone by him; so that matteris settled. Indeed, if you were out of the question, I should not sufferMr. Vigors to re-introduce all these mummeries of clairvoyance andmesmerism into the precincts of the Hill. I did not demolish a man Ireally liked in Dr. Lloyd, to set up a Dr. Jones, whom I despise, in hisstead. Clairvoyance on Abbey Hill, indeed! I saw enough of it before. "

"True; your strong intellect detected at once the absurdity of the wholepretence, --the falsity of mesmerism, the impossibility of clairvoyance. "

"No, my strong intellect did nothing of the kind. I do not know whethermesmerism be false or clairvoyance impossible; and I don't wish to know. All I do know is, that I saw the Hill in great danger, --young ladiesallowing themselves to be put to sleep by gentlemen, and pretendingthey had no will of their own against such fascination! Improper andshocking! And Miss Brabazon beginning to prophesy, and Mrs. LeopoldSmythe questioning her maid (whom Dr. Lloyd declared to be highlygifted) as to all the secrets of her friends. When I saw this, I said, 'The Hill is becoming demoralized; the Hill is making itself ridiculous;the Hill must be saved!' I remonstrated with Dr. Lloyd as a friend; heremained obdurate. I annihilated him as an enemy, not to me but to theState. I slew my best lover for the good of Rome. Now you know why Itook your part, --not because I have any opinion, one way or the other, as to the truth or falsehood of what Dr. Lloyd asserted; but I have astrong opinion that, whether they be true or false, his notions werethose which are not to be allowed on the Hill. And so, Allen Fenwick, that matter was settled. "

Perhaps at another time I might have felt some little humiliationto learn that I had been honoured with the influence of this greatpotentate not as a champion of truth, but as an instrument of policy;and I might have owned to some twinge of conscience in having assistedto sacrifice a fellow-seeker after science--misled, no doubt, butpreferring his independent belief to his worldly interest--and sacrificehim to those deities with whom science is ever at war, --the Prejudicesof a Clique sanctified into the Proprieties of the World. But at thatmoment the words I heard made no perceptible impression on my mind. Thegables of Abbots' House were visible above the evergreens and lilacs;another moment, and the carriage stopped at the door. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Mrs. Ashleigh received us in the dining-room. Her manner to me, atfirst, was a little confused and shy. But my companion soon communicatedsomething of her own happy ease to her gentler friend. After a shortconversation we all three went to Lilian, who was in a little room onthe ground-floor, fitted up as her study. I was glad to perceive that myinterdict of the deathchamber had been respected. 

She reclined on a sofa near the window, which was, however, jealouslyclosed; the light of the bright May-day obscured by blinds andcurtains; a large fire on the hearth; the air of the room that of ahot-house, --the ignorant, senseless, exploded system of nursing intoconsumption those who are confined on suspicion of it! She did not heedus as we entered noiselessly; her eyes were drooped languidly on thefloor, and with difficulty I suppressed the exclamation that rose to mylips on seeing her. She seemed within the last few days so changed, andon the aspect of the countenance there was so profound a melancholy!But as she slowly turned at the sound of our footsteps, and her eyes metmine, a quick blush came into the wan cheek, and she half rose, but sankback as if the effort exhausted her. There was a struggle for breath, and a low hollow cough. Was it possible that I had been mistaken, andthat in that cough was heard the warning knell of the most insidiousenemy to youthful life?

I sat down by her side; I lured her on to talk of indifferentsubjects, --the weather, the gardens, the bird in the cage, which wasplaced on the table near her. Her voice, at first low and feeble, becamegradually stronger, and her face lighted up with a child's innocent, playful smile. No, I had not been mistaken! That was no lymphatic, nerveless temperament, on which consumption fastens as its lawful prey;here there was no hectic pulse, no hurried waste of the vital flame. Quietly and gently I made my observations, addressed my questions, applied my stethoscope; and when I turned my face towards her mother'sanxious, eager eyes, that face told my opinion; for her mother sprangforward, clasped my hand, and said, through her struggling tears, --

"You smile! You see nothing to fear?"

"Fear! No, indeed! You will soon be again yourself, Miss Ashleigh, willyou not?"

"Yes, " she said, with her sweet laugh, "I shall be well now very soon. But may I not have the window open; may I not go into the garden? I solong for fresh air. "

"No, no, darling, " exclaimed Mrs. Ashleigh, "not while the east windslast. Dr. Jones said on no account. On no account, Dr. Fenwick, eh?"

"Will you take my arm, Miss Ashleigh, for a few turns up and downthe room?" said I. "We will then see how far we may rebel against Dr. Jones. "

She rose with some little effort, but there was no cough. At firsther step was languid; it became lighter and more elastic after a fewmoments. 

"Let her come out, " said I to Mrs. Ashleigh. "The wind is not in theeast, and, while we are out, pray bid your servant lower to the last barin the grate that fire, --only fit for Christmas. "

"But--"

"Ah, no buts! He is a poor doctor who is not a stern despot. "

So the straw hat and mantle were sent for. Lilian was wrapped withunnecessary care, and we all went forth into the garden. Involuntarilywe took the way to the Monk's Well, and at every step Lilian seemed torevive under the bracing air and temperate sun. We paused by the well. 

"You do not feel fatigued, Miss Ashleigh?"

"No. "

"But your face seems changed. It is grown sadder. "

"Not sadder. "

"Sadder than when I first saw it, --saw it when you were seated here!" Isaid this in a whisper. I felt her hand tremble as it lay on my arm. 

"You saw me seated here!"

"Yes. I will tell you how some day. "

Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and there was in them that same surprisewhich I had noticed on my first visit, --a surprise that perplexed me, blended with no displeasure, but yet with a something of vague alarm. 

We soon returned to the house. 

Mrs. Ashleigh made me a sign to follow her into the drawing-room, leaving Mrs. Poyntz with Lilian. 

"Well?" said she, tremblingly. 

"Permit me to see Dr. Jones's prescriptions. Thank you. Ay, I thoughtso. My dear madam, the mistake here has been in depressing natureinstead of strengthening; in narcotics instead of stimulants. The mainstimulants which leave no reaction are air and light. Promise me that Imay have my own way for a week, --that all I recommend will be implicitlyheeded?"

"I promise. But that cough, --you noticed it?"

"Yes. The nervous system is terribly lowered, and nervous exhaustion isa strange impostor; it imitates all manner of complaints with whichit has no connection. The cough will soon disappear! But pardon myquestion. Mrs. Poyntz tells me that you consulted a clairvoyants aboutyour daughter. Does Miss Ashleigh know that you did so?"

"No; I did not tell her. "

"I am glad of that. And pray, for Heaven's sake, guard her against allthat may set her thinking on such subjects. Above all, guard her againstconcentring attention on any malady that your fears erroneously ascribeto her. It is amongst the phenomena of our organization that you cannotclosely rivet your consciousness on any part of the frame, howeverhealthy, but it will soon begin to exhibit morbid sensibility. Tryto fix all your attention on your little finger for half an hour, andbefore the half hour is over the little finger will be uneasy, probablyeven painful. How serious, then, is the danger to a young girl, at theage in which imagination is most active, most intense, if you forceupon her a belief that she is in danger of a mortal disease! It is apeculiarity of youth to brood over the thought of early death much moreresignedly, much more complacently, than we do in maturer years. Impresson a young imaginative girl, as free from pulmonary tendencies as youand I are, the conviction that she must fade away into the grave, andthough she may not actually die of consumption, you instil slow poisoninto her system. Hope is the natural aliment of youth. You impoverishnourishment where you discourage hope. As soon as this temporary illnessis over, reject for your daughter the melancholy care which seems to herown mind to mark her out from others of her age. Rear her for the air, which is the kindest life-giver; to sleep with open windows: to be outat sunrise. Nature will do more for her than all our drugs can do. Youhave been hitherto fearing Nature; now trust to her. "

Here Mrs. Poyntz joined us, and having, while I had been speaking, written my prescription and some general injunctions, I closed my advicewith an appeal to that powerful protectress. 

"This, my dear madam, is a case in which I need your aid, and I askit. Miss Ashleigh should not be left with no other companion than hermother. A change of faces is often as salutary as a change of air. If you could devote an hour or two this very evening to sit with MissAshleigh, to talk to her with your usual cheerfulness, and--"

"Annie, " interrupted Mrs. Poyntz, "I will come and drink tea with you athalf-past seven, and bring my knitting; and perhaps, if you ask him, Dr. Fenwick will come too! He can be tolerably entertaining when he likesit. "

"It is too great a tax on his kindness, I fear, " said Mrs. Ashleigh. "But, " she added cordially, "I should be grateful indeed if he wouldspare us an hour of his time. "

I murmured an assent which I endeavoured to make not too joyous. 

"So that matter is settled, " said Mrs. Poyntz; "and now I shall go toMr. Vigors and prevent his further interference. "

"Oh, but, Margaret, pray don't offend him, --a connection of my poordear Gilbert's. And so tetchy! I am sure I do not know how you'll manageto--"

"To get rid of him? Never fear. As I manage everything and everybody, "said Mrs. Poyntz, bluntly. So she kissed her friend on the forehead, gave me a gracious nod, and, declining the offer of my carriage, walkedwith her usual brisk, decided tread down the short path towards thetown. 

Mrs. Ashleigh timidly approached me, and again the furtive handbashfully insinuated the hateful fee. 

"Stay, " said I; "this is a case which needs the most constant watching. I wish to call so often that I should seem the most greedy of doctors ifmy visits were to be computed at guineas. Let me be at ease to effectmy cure; my pride of science is involved in it. And when amongst all theyoung ladies of the Hill you can point to none with a fresher bloom, ora fairer promise of healthful life, than the patient you intrust to mycare, why, then the fee and the dismissal. Nay, nay; I must refer you toour friend Mrs. Poyntz. It was so settled with her before she brought mehere to displace Dr. Jones. " Therewith I escaped. 

CHAPTER XV. 

In less than a week Lilian was convalescent; in less than a fortnightshe regained her usual health, --nay, Mrs. Ashleigh declared that shehad never known her daughter appear so cheerful and look so well. I hadestablished a familiar intimacy at Abbots' House; most of my eveningswere spent there. As horse exercise formed an important part of myadvice, Mrs. Ashleigh had purchased a pretty and quiet horse for herdaughter; and, except the weather was very unfavourable, Lilian nowrode daily with Colonel Poyntz, who was a notable equestrian, and oftenaccompanied by Miss Jane Poyntz, and other young ladies of the Hill. I was generally relieved from my duties in time to join her as shereturned homewards. Thus we made innocent appointments, openly, frankly, in her mother's presence, she telling me beforehand in what directionexcursions had been planned with Colonel Poyntz, and I promising to fallin with the party--if my avocations would permit. At my suggestion, Mrs. Ashleigh now opened her house almost every evening to some of theneighbouring families; Lilian was thus habituated to the intercourse ofyoung persons of her own age. Music and dancing and childlike games madethe old house gay. And the Hill gratefully acknowledged to Mrs. Poyntz, "that the Ashleighs were indeed a great acquisition. "

But my happiness was not uncheckered. In thus unselfishly surroundingLilian with others, I felt the anguish of that jealousy which isinseparable from those earlier stages of love, when the lover as yethas won no right to that self-confidence which can only spring from theassurance that he is loved. 

In these social reunions I remained aloof from Lilian. I saw her courtedby the gay young admirers whom her beauty and her fortune drew aroundher, --her soft face brightening in the exercise of the dance, which thegravity of my profession rather than my years forbade to join; and herlaugh, so musically subdued, ravishing my ear and fretting my heartas if the laugh were a mockery on my sombre self and my presumptuousdreams. But no, suddenly, shyly, her eyes would steal away from thoseabout her, steal to the corner in which I sat, as if they missed me, and, meeting my own gaze, their light softened before they turned away;and the colour on her cheek would deepen, and to her lip there came asmile different from the smile that it shed on others. And then--andthen--all jealousy, all sadness vanished, and I felt the glory whichblends with the growing belief that we are loved. 

In that diviner epoch of man's mysterious passion, when ideas ofperfection and purity, vague and fugitive before, start forth andconcentre themselves round one virgin shape, --that rises out from thesea of creation, welcomed by the Hours and adorned by the Graces, --howthe thought that this archetype of sweetness and beauty singles himselffrom the millions, singles himself for her choice, ennobles and liftsup his being! Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like himself, yet for a while the illusion has grandeur. Though it comes from thesenses which shall later oppress and profane it, the senses at firstshrink into shade, awed and hushed by the presence that charms them. Allthat is brightest and best in the man has soared up like long-dormantinstincts of Heaven, to greet and to hallow what to him seems life'sfairest dream of the heavenly! Take the wings from the image of Love, and the god disappears from the form!

Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment'srelief from it sufficed for my rapture. But I had a cause for disquietless acute but less varying than jealousy. 

Despite Lilian's recovery from the special illness which had moreimmediately absorbed my care, I remained perplexed as to its causeand true nature. To her mother I gave it the convenient epithet of"nervous;" but the epithet did not explain to myself all the symptoms Iclassified by it. There was still, at times, when no cause was apparentor conjecturable, a sudden change in the expression of her countenance, in the beat of her pulse; the eye would become fixed, the bloom wouldvanish, the pulse would sink feebler and feebler till it could bescarcely felt; yet there was no indication of heart disease, ofwhich such sudden lowering of life is in itself sometimes a warningindication. The change would pass away after a few minutes, during whichshe seemed unconscious, or, at least, never spoke--never appeared toheed what was said to her. But in the expression of her countenancethere was no character of suffering or distress; on the contrary, a wondrous serenity, that made her beauty more beauteous, her veryyouthfulness younger; and when this spurious or partial kind of syncopepassed, she recovered at once without effort, without acknowledgingthat she had felt faint or unwell, but rather with a sense of recruitedvitality, as the weary obtain from a sleep. For the rest her spiritswere more generally light and joyous than I should have premised fromher mother's previous description. She would enter mirthfully into themirth of young companions round her: she had evidently quick perceptionof the sunny sides of life; an infantine gratitude for kindness; aninfantine joy in the trifles that amuse only those who delight in tastespure and simple. But when talk rose into graver and more contemplativetopics, her attention became earnest and absorbed; and sometimes a richeloquence, such as I have never before nor since heard from lips soyoung, would startle me first into a wondering silence, and soon into adisapproving alarm: for the thoughts she then uttered seemed to me toofantastic, too visionary, too much akin to the vagaries of a wild thoughbeautiful imagination. And then I would seek to check, to sober, to distract fancies with which my reason had no sympathy, and theindulgence of which I regarded as injurious to the normal functions ofthe brain. 

When thus, sometimes with a chilling sentence, sometimes with ahalf-sarcastic laugh, I would repress outpourings frank and musicalas the songs of a forest-bird, she would look at me with a kind ofplaintive sorrow, --often sigh and shiver as she turned away. Only inthose modes did she show displeasure; otherwise ever sweet and docile, and ever, if, seeing that I had pained her, I asked forgiveness, humbling herself rather to ask mine, and brightening our reconciliationwith her angel smile. As yet I had not dared to speak of love; as yet Igazed on her as the captive gazes on the flowers and the stars throughthe gratings of his cell, murmuring to himself, "When shall the doorsunclose?"

CHAPTER XVI. 

It was with a wrath suppressed in the presence of the fair ambassadress, that Mr. Vigors had received from Mrs. Poyntz the intelligence that Ihad replaced Dr. Jones at Abbots' House not less abruptly than Dr. Joneshad previously supplanted me. As Mrs. Poyntz took upon herself the wholeresponsibility of this change, Mr. Vigors did not venture to condemn itto her face; for the Administrator of Laws was at heart no little in aweof the Autocrat of Proprieties; as Authority, howsoever established, isin awe of Opinion, howsoever capricious. 

To the mild Mrs. Ashleigh the magistrate's anger was more decidedlymanifested. He ceased his visits; and in answer to a long anddeprecatory letter with which she endeavoured to soften his resentmentand win him back to the house, he replied by an elaborate combinationof homily and satire. He began by excusing himself from acceptingher invitations, on the ground that his time was valuable, his habitsdomestic; and though ever willing to sacrifice both time and habitswhere he could do good, he owed it to himself and to mankind tosacrifice neither where his advice was rejected and his opinioncontemned. He glanced briefly, but not hastily, at the respect withwhich her late husband had deferred to his judgment, and the benefitswhich that deference had enabled him to bestow. He contrasted thehusband's deference with the widow's contumely, and hinted at theevils which the contumely would not permit him to prevent. He couldnot presume to say what women of the world might think due to deceasedhusbands, but even women of the world generally allowed the claims ofliving children, and did not act with levity where their interests wereconcerned, still less where their lives were at stake. As to Dr. Jones, he, Mr. Vigors, had the fullest confidence in his skill. Mrs. Ashleighmust judge for herself whether Mrs. Poyntz was as good an authority uponmedical science as he had no doubt she was upon shawls and ribbons. Dr. Jones was a man of caution and modesty; he did not indulge in thehollow boasts by which charlatans decoy their dupes; but Dr. Jones hadprivately assured him that though the case was one that admitted of norash experiments, he had no fear of the result if his own prudent systemwere persevered in. What might be the consequences of any other system, Dr. Jones would not say, because he was too high-minded to express hisdistrust of the rival who had made use of underhand arts to supplanthim. But Mr. Vigors was convinced, from other sources of information(meaning, I presume, the oracular prescience of his clairvoyants), thatthe time would come when the poor young lady would herself insist ondiscarding Dr. Fenwick, and when "that person" would appear in a verydifferent light to many who now so fondly admired and so reverentiallytrusted him. When that time arrived, he, Mr. Vigors, might again be ofuse; but, meanwhile, though he declined to renew his intimacy at Abbots'House, or to pay unavailing visits of mere ceremony, his interest inthe daughter of his old friend remained undiminished, nay, was ratherincreased by compassion; that he should silently keep his eye uponher; and whenever anything to her advantage suggested itself to him, he should not be deterred by the slight with which Mrs. Ashleighhad treated his judgment from calling on her, and placing before herconscience as a mother his ideas for her child's benefit, leaving toherself then, as now, the entire responsibility of rejecting the advicewhich he might say, without vanity, was deemed of some value by thosewho could distinguish between sterling qualities and specious pretences. 

Mrs. Ashleigh's was that thoroughly womanly nature which instinctivelyleans upon others. She was diffident, trustful, meek, affectionate. Notquite justly had Mrs. Poyntz described her as "commonplace weak, " forthough she might be called weak, it was not because she was commonplace;she had a goodness of heart, a sweetness of disposition, to whichthat disparaging definition could not apply. She could only be calledcommonplace inasmuch as in the ordinary daily affairs of life she had agreat deal of ordinary daily commonplace good-sense. Give her a routineto follow, and no routine could be better adhered to. In the allottedsphere of a woman's duties she never seemed in fault. No household, noteven Mrs. Poyntz's, was more happily managed. The old Abbots' House hadmerged its original antique gloom in the softer character of pleasingrepose. All her servants adored Mrs. Ashleigh; all found it a pleasureto please her; her establishment had the harmony of clockwork; comfortdiffused itself round her like quiet sunshine round a sheltered spot. To gaze on her pleasing countenance, to listen to the simple talk thatlapsed from her guileless lips, in even, slow, and lulling murmur, wasin itself a respite from "eating cares. " She was to the mind what thecolour of green is to the eye. She had, therefore, excellent sense inall that relates to every-day life. There, she needed not to consultanother; there, the wisest might have consulted her with profit. Butthe moment anything, however trivial in itself, jarred on the routine towhich her mind had grown wedded, the moment an incident hurried her outof the beaten track of woman's daily life, then her confidence forsookher; then she needed a confidant, an adviser; and by that confidantor adviser she could be credulously lured or submissively controlled. Therefore, when she lost, in Mr. Vigors, the guide she had beenaccustomed to consult whenever she needed guidance, she turned;helplessly and piteously, first to Mrs. Poyntz, and then yet moreimploringly to me, because a woman of that character is never quitesatisfied without the advice of a man; and where an intimacy morefamiliar than that of his formal visits is once established with aphysician, confidence in him grows fearless and rapid, as the naturalresult of sympathy concentrated on an object of anxiety in commonbetween himself and the home which opens its sacred recess to hisobservant but tender eye. Thus Mrs. Ashleigh had shown me Mr. Vigors'sletter, and, forgetting that I might not be as amiable as herself, besought me to counsel her how to conciliate and soften her losthusband's friend and connection. That character clothed him with dignityand awe in her soft forgiving eyes. So, smothering my own resentment, less perhaps at the tone of offensive insinuation against myself thanat the arrogance with which this prejudiced intermeddler implied to amother the necessity of his guardian watch over a child under herown care, I sketched a reply which seemed to me both dignified andplacatory, abstaining from all discussion, and conveying the assurancethat Mrs. Ashleigh would be at all times glad to hear, and disposed torespect, whatever suggestion so esteemed a friend of her husband wouldkindly submit to her for the welfare of her daughter. 

There all communication had stopped for about a month since the date ofmy reintroduction to Abbots' House. One afternoon I unexpectedly met Mr. Vigors at the entrance of the blind lane, I on my way to Abbots' House, and my first glance at his face told me that he was coming from it, forthe expression of that face was more than usually sinister; the sullenscowl was lit into significant menace by a sneer of unmistakabletriumph. I felt at once that he had succeeded in some machinationagainst me, and with ominous misgivings quickened my steps. 

I found Mrs. Ashleigh seated alone in front of the house, under a largecedar-tree that formed a natural arbour in the centre of the sunny lawn. She was perceptibly embarrassed as I took my seat beside her. 

"I hope, " said I, forcing a smile, "that Mr. Vigors has not been tellingyou that I shall kill my patient, or that she looks much worse than shedid under Dr. Jones's care?"

"No, " she said. "He owned cheerfully that Lilian had grown quite strong, and said, without any displeasure, that he had heard how gay she hadbeen, riding out and even dancing, --which is very kind in him, for hedisapproves of dancing, on principle. "

"But still I can see he has said something to vex or annoy you; and, tojudge by his countenance when I met him in the lane, I should conjecturethat that something was intended to lower the confidence you so kindlyrepose in me. "

"I assure you not; he did not mention your name, either to me or toLilian. I never knew him more friendly; quite like old times. He is agood man at heart, very, and was much attached to my poor husband. "

"Did Mr. Ashleigh profess a very high opinion of Mr. Vigors?"

"Well, I don't quite know that, because my dear Gilbert never spoke tome much about him. Gilbert was naturally very silent. But he shrank fromall trouble--all worldly affairs--and Mr. Vigors managed his estate, andinspected his steward's books, and protected him through a long lawsuitwhich he had inherited from his father. It killed his father. I don'tknow what we should have done without Mr. Vigors, and I am so glad hehas forgiven me. "

"Hem! Where is Miss Ashleigh? Indoors?"

"No; somewhere in the grounds. But, my dear Dr. Fenwick, do not leave meyet; you are so very, very kind, and somehow I have grown to look uponyou quite as an old friend. Something has happened which has put me out, quite put me out. "

She said this wearily and feebly, closing her eyes as if she were indeedput out in the sense of extinguished. 

"The feeling of friendship you express, " said I, with earnestness, "isreciprocal. On my side it is accompanied by a peculiar gratitude. I ama lonely man, by a lonely fireside, no parents, no near kindred, and inthis town, since Dr. Faber left it, without cordial intimacy till I knewyou. In admitting me so familiarly to your hearth, you have given mewhat I have never known before since I came to man's estate, --a glimpseof the happy domestic life; the charm and relief to eye, heart, andspirit which is never known but in households cheered by the face ofwoman. Thus my sentiment for you and yours is indeed that of an oldfriend; and in any private confidence you show me, I feel as if I wereno longer a lonely man, without kindred, without home. "

Mrs. Ashleigh seemed much moved by these words, which my heart hadforced from my lips; and, after replying to me with simple unaffectedwarmth of kindness, she rose, took my arm, and continued thus as wewalked slowly to and fro the lawn: "You know, perhaps, that my poorhusband left a sister, now a widow like myself, Lady Haughton. "

"I remember that Mrs. Poyntz said you had such a sister-in-law, but Inever heard you mention Lady Haughton till now. Well!"

"Well, Mr. Vigors has brought me a letter from her, and it is that whichhas put me out. I dare say you have not heard me speak before of LadyHaughton, for I am ashamed to say I had almost forgotten her existence. She is many years older than my husband was; of a very differentcharacter. Only came once to see him after our marriage. Hurt me byridiculing him as a bookworm; offended him by looking a little down onme, as a nobody without spirit and fashion, which was quite true. And, except by a cold and unfeeling letter of formal condolence after I lostmy dear Gilbert, I have never heard from her since I have been a widow, till to-day. But, after all, she is my poor husband's sister, and hiseldest sister, and Lilian's aunt; and, as Mr. Vigors says, 'Duty isduty. '"

Had Mrs. Ashleigh said "Duty is torture, " she could not have uttered themaxim with more mournful and despondent resignation. 

"And what does this lady require of you, which Mr. Vigors deems it yourduty to comply with?"

"Dear me! What penetration! You have guessed the exact truth. But Ithink you will agree with Mr. Vigors. Certainly I have no option; yes, Imust do it. "

"My penetration is in fault now. Do what? Pray explain. "

"Poor Lady Haughton, six months ago, lost her only son, Sir James. Mr. Vigors says he was a very fine young man, of whom any mother would havebeen proud. I had heard he was wild; Mr. Vigors says, however, that hewas just going to reform, and marry a young lady whom his mother chosefor him, when, unluckily, he would ride a steeplechase, not beingquite sober at the time, and broke his neck. Lady Haughton has been, ofcourse, in great grief. She has retired to Brighton; and she wrote to mefrom thence, and Mr. Vigors brought the letter. He will go back to herto-day. "

"Will go back to Lady Haughton? What! Has he been to her? Is he, then, as intimate with Lady Haughton as he was with her brother?"

"No; but there has been a long and constant correspondence. She had asettlement on the Kirby Estate, --a sum which was not paid off duringGilbert's life; and a very small part of the property went to Sir James, which part Mr. Ashleigh Sumner, the heir-at-law to the rest of theestate, wished Mr. Vigors, as his guardian, to buy during his minority, and as it was mixed up with Lady Haughton's settlement her consent wasnecessary as well as Sir James's. So there was much negotiation, and, since then, Ashleigh Sumner has come into the Haughton property, on poorSir James's decease; so that complicated all affairs between Mr. Vigorsand Lady Haughton, and he has just been to Brighton to see her. Andpoor Lady Haughton, in short, wants me and Lilian to go and visit her. I don't like it at all. But you said the other day you thought sea airmight be good for Lilian during the heat of the summer, and she seemswell enough now for the change. What do you think?"

"She is well enough, certainly. But Brighton is not the place I wouldrecommend for the summer; it wants shade, and is much hotter than L----"

"Yes; but unluckily Lady Haughton foresaw that objection, and she has ajointure-house some miles from Brighton, and near the sea. She says thegrounds are well wooded, and the place is proverbially cool and healthy, not far from St. Leonard's Forest. And, in short, I have written to saywe will come. So we must, unless, indeed, you positively forbid it. "

"When do you think of going?"

"Next Monday. Mr. Vigors would make me fix the day. If you knew how Idislike moving when I am once settled; and I do so dread Lady Haughton, she is so fine, and so satirical! But Mr. Vigors says she is very muchaltered, poor thing! I should like to show you her letter, but I badjust sent it to Margaret--Mrs. Poyntz--a minute or two before you came. She knows something of Lady Haughton. Margaret knows everybody. And weshall have to go in mourning for poor Sir James, I suppose; and Margaretwill choose it, for I am sure I can't guess to what extent we shouldbe supposed to mourn. I ought to have gone in mourning before--poorGilbert's nephew--but I am so stupid, and I had never seen him. And--Butoh, this is kind! Margaret herself, --my dear Margaret!"

We had just turned away from the house, in our up-and-down walk; andMrs. Poyntz stood immediately fronting us. "So, Anne, you have actuallyaccepted this invitation--and for Monday next?"

"Yes. Did I do wrong?"

"What does Dr. Fenwick say? Can Lilian go with safety?"

I could not honestly say she might not go with safety, but my heart sanklike lead as I answered, --

"Miss Ashleigh does not now need merely medical care; but more than halfher cure has depended on keeping her spirits free from depression. Shemay miss the cheerful companionship of your daughter, and other youngladies of her own age. A very melancholy house, saddened by a recentbereavement, without other guests; a hostess to whom she is a stranger, and whom Mrs. Ashleigh herself appears to deem formidable, --certainlythese do not make that change of scene which a physician wouldrecommend. When I spoke of sea air being good for Miss Ashleigh, Ithought of our own northern coasts at a later time of the year, whenI could escape myself for a few weeks and attend her. The journey to anorthern watering-place would be also shorter and less fatiguing; theair there more invigorating. "

"No doubt that would be better, " said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly; "but so faras your objections to visiting Lady Haughton have been stated, theyare groundless. Her house will not be melancholy; she will have otherguests, and Lilian will find companions, young like herself, --youngladies--and young gentlemen too!"

There was something ominous, something compassionate, in the look whichMrs. Poyntz cast upon me, in concluding her speech, which in itself wascalculated to rouse the fears of a lover. Lilian away from me, inthe house of a worldly-fine lady--such as I judged Lady Haughton tobe--surrounded by young gentlemen, as well as young ladies, by admirers, no doubt, of a higher rank and more brilliant fashion than she had yetknown! I closed my eyes, and with strong effort suppressed a groan. 

"My dear Annie, let me satisfy myself that Dr. Fenwick really doesconsent to this journey. He will say to me what he may not to you. Pardon me, then, if I take him aside for a few minutes. Let me find youhere again under this cedar-tree. "

Placing her arm in mine, and without waiting for Mrs. Ashleigh's answer, Mrs. Poyntz drew me into the more sequestered walk that belted the lawn;and when we were out of Mrs. Ashleigh's sight and hearing, said, --

"From what you have now seen of Lilian Ashleigh, do you still desire togain her as your wife?"

"Still? Ob, with an intensity proportioned to the fear with which I nowdread that she is about to pass away from my eyes--from my life!"

"Does your judgment confirm the choice of your heart? Reflect before youanswer. "

"Such selfish judgment as I had before I knew her would not confirmbut oppose it. The nobler judgment that now expands all my reasonings, approves and seconds my heart. No, no; do not smile so sarcastically. This is not the voice of a blind and egotistical passion. Let meexplain myself if I can. I concede to you that Lilian's character isundeveloped; I concede to you, that amidst the childlike freshness andinnocence of her nature, there is at times a strangeness, a mystery, which I have not yet traced to its cause. But I am certain that theintellect is organically as sound as the heart, and that intellect andheart will ultimately--if under happy auspices--blend in that felicitousunion which constitutes the perfection of woman. But it is becauseshe does, and may for years, may perhaps always, need a more devoted, thoughtful care than natures less tremulously sensitive, that myjudgment sanctions my choice; for whatever is best for her is best forme. And who would watch over her as I should?"

"You have never yet spoken to Lilian as lovers speak?"

"Oh, no, indeed. "

"And, nevertheless, you believe that your affection would not beunreturned?"

"I thought so once; I doubt now, --yet, in doubting, hope. But why do youalarm me with these questions? You, too, forebode that in this visit Imay lose her forever?"

"If you fear that, tell her so, and perhaps her answer may dispel yourfear. "

"What! now, already, when she has scarcely known me a month. Might I notrisk all if too premature?"

"There is no almanac for love. With many women love is born the momentthey know they are beloved. All wisdom tells us that a moment once goneis irrevocable. Were I in your place, I should feel that I approached amoment that I must not lose. I have said enough; now I shall rejoin Mrs. Ashleigh. "

"Stay--tell me first what Lady Haughton's letter really contains toprompt the advice with which you so transport, and yet so daunt, me whenyou proffer it. "

"Not now; later, perhaps, --not now. If you wish to see Lilian alone, sheis by the Old Monk's Well; I saw her seated there as I passed that wayto the house. "

"One word more, --only one. Answer this question frankly, for it is oneof honour. Do you still believe that my suit to her daughter would notbe disapproved of by Mrs. Ashleigh?"

"At this moment I am sure it would not; a week hence I might not giveyou the same answer. "

So she passed on with her quick but measured tread, back through theshady walk, on to the open lawn, till the last glimpse of her pale grayrobe disappeared under the boughs of the cedar-tree. Then, with astart, I broke the irresolute, tremulous suspense in which I had vainlyendeavoured to analyze my own mind, solve my own doubts, concentrate myown will, and went the opposite way, skirting the circle of that hauntedground, --as now, on one side its lofty terrace, the houses of theneighbouring city came full and close into view, divided from myfairy-land of life but by the trodden murmurous thoroughfare winding lowbeneath the ivied parapets; and as now, again, the world of men abruptlyvanished behind the screening foliage of luxuriant June. 

At last the enchanted glade opened out from the verdure, its bordersfragrant with syringa and rose and woodbine; and there, by the graymemorial of the gone Gothic age, my eyes seemed to close their unquietwanderings, resting spell-bound on that image which had become to me theincarnation of earth's bloom and youth. 

She stood amidst the Past, backed by the fragments of walls which manhad raised to seclude him from human passion, locking, under those lidsso downcast, the secret of the only knowledge I asked from the boundlessFuture. 

Ah! what mockery there is in that grand word, the world's fiercewar-cry, --Freedom! Who has not known one period of life, and that sosolemn that its shadows may rest over all life hereafter, when onehuman creature has over him a sovereignty more supreme and absolute thanOrient servitude adores in the symbols of diadem and sceptre? What crestso haughty that has not bowed before a hand which could exalt or humble!What heart so dauntless that has not trembled to call forth the voiceat whose sound open the gates of rapture or despair! That life alone isfree which rules, and suffices for itself. That life we forfeit when welove!

CHAPTER XVII. 

How did I utter it? By what words did my heart make itself known? Iremember not. All was as a dream that falls upon a restless, feverishnight, and fades away as the eyes unclose on the peace of a cloudlessheaven, on the bliss of a golden sun. A new morrow seemed indeed uponthe earth when I woke from a life-long yesterday, --her dear hand inmine, her sweet face bowed upon my breast. 

And then there was that melodious silence in which there is no soundaudible from without; yet within us there is heard a lulling celestialmusic, as if our whole being, grown harmonious with the universe, joinedfrom its happy deeps in the hymn that unites the stars. 

In that silence our two hearts seemed to make each other understood, tobe drawing nearer and nearer, blending by mysterious concord into thecompleteness of a solemn union, never henceforth to be rent asunder. 

At length I said softly: "And it was here on this spot that I first sawyou, --here that I for the first time knew what power to change our worldand to rule our future goes forth from the charm of a human face!"

Then Lilian asked me timidly, and without lifting her eyes, how I hadso seen her, reminding me that I promised to tell her, and had never yetdone so. 

And then I told her of the strange impulse that bad led me into thegrounds, and by what chance my steps had been diverted down the paththat wound to the glade; how suddenly her form had shone upon myeyes, gathering round itself the rose hues of the setting sun, and howwistfully those eyes had followed her own silent gaze into the distantheaven. 

As I spoke, her hand pressed mine eagerly, convulsively, and, raisingher face from my breast, she looked at me with an intent, anxiousearnestness. That look!--twice before it had thrilled and perplexed me. 

"What is there in that look, oh, my Lilian, which tells me that thereis something that startles you, --something you wish to confide, and yetshrink from explaining? See how, already, I study the fair book fromwhich the seal has been lifted! but as yet you must aid me to construeits language. "

"If I shrink from explaining, it is only because I fear that I cannotexplain so as to be understood or believed. But you have a right to knowthe secrets of a life which you would link to your own. Turn your faceaside from me; a reproving look, an incredulous smile, chill--oh, youcannot guess how they chill me, when I would approach that which to meis so serious and so solemnly strange. "

I turned my face away, and her voice grew firmer as, after a briefpause, she resumed, --

"As far back as I can remember in my infancy, there have been momentswhen there seems to fall a soft hazy veil between my sight and thethings around it, thickening and deepening till it has the likenessof one of those white fleecy clouds which gather on the verge of thehorizon when the air is yet still, but the winds are about to rise; andthen this vapour or veil will suddenly open, as clouds open, and let inthe blue sky. "

"Go on, " I said gently, for here she came to a stop. She continued, speaking somewhat more hurriedly, --

"Then, in that opening, strange appearances present them selves tome, as in a vision. In my childhood these were chiefly landscapes ofwonderful beauty. I could but faintly describe them then; I could notattempt to describe them now, for they are almost gone from my memory. My dear mother chid me for telling her what I saw, so I did not impressit on my mind by repeating it. As I grew up, this kind of vision--ifI may so call it--became much less frequent, or much less distinct; Istill saw the soft veil fall, the pale cloud form and open, but oftenwhat may then have appeared was entirely forgotten when I recoveredmyself, waking as from a sleep. Sometimes, however, the recollectionwould be vivid and complete; sometimes I saw the face of my lost father;sometimes I heard his very voice, as I had seen and heard him in myearly childhood, when he would let me rest for hours beside him as hemused or studied, happy to be so quietly near him, for I loved him, oh, so dearly! and I remember him so distinctly, though I was only in mysixth year when he died. Much more recently--indeed, within the last fewmonths--the images of things to come are reflected on the space thatI gaze into as clearly as in a glass. Thus, for weeks before I camehither, or knew that such a place existed, I saw distinctly the oldHouse, yon trees, this sward, this moss-grown Gothic fount; and, withthe sight, an impression was conveyed to me that in the scene before memy old childlike life would pass into some solemn change. So that when Icame here, and recognized the picture in my vision, I took an affectionfor the spot, --an affection not without awe, a powerful, perplexinginterest, as one who feels under the influence of a fate of which aprophetic glimpse has been vouchsafed. And in that evening, when youfirst saw me, seated here--"

"Yes, Lilian, on that evening--"

"I saw you also, but in my vision--yonder, far in the deeps ofspace, --and--and my heart was stirred as it had never been before; andnear where your image grew out from the cloud I saw my father's face, and I heard his voice, not in my ear, but as in my heart, whispering--"

"Yes, Lilian--whispering--what?"

"These words, --only these, --'Ye will need one another. ' But then, suddenly, between my upward eyes and the two forms they had beheld, there rose from the earth, obscuring the skies, a vague, dusky vapour, undulous, and coiling like a vast serpent, --nothing, indeed, of itsshape and figure definite, but of its face one abrupt glare; a flashfrom two dread luminous eyes, and a young head, like the Medusa's, changing, more rapidly than I could have drawn breath, into a grinningskull. Then my terror made me bow my head, and when I raised it again, all that I had seen was vanished. But the terror still remained, evenwhen I felt my mother's arm round me and heard her voice. And then, whenI entered the house, and sat down again alone, the recollection of whatI had seen--those eyes, that face, that skull--grew on me stronger andstronger till I fainted, and remember no more, until my eyes, opening, saw you by my side, and in my wonder there was not terror. No, a senseof joy, protection, hope, yet still shadowed by a kind of fear or awe, in recognizing the countenance which had gleamed on me from the skiesbefore the dark vapour had risen, and while my father's voice hadmurmured, 'Ye will need one another. ' And now--and now--will you loveme less that you know a secret in my being which I have told to noother, --cannot construe to myself? Only--only, at least, do not mock me;do not disbelieve me! Nay, turn from me no longer now: now I ask to meetyour eyes. Now, before our hands can join again, tell me that you do notdespise me as untruthful, do not pity me as insane. "

"Hush, hush!" I said, drawing her to my breast. "Of all you tell mewe will talk hereafter. The scales of our science have no weights fineenough for the gossamer threads of a maiden's pure fancies. Enough forme--for us both--if out from all such illusions start one truth, toldto you, lovely child, from the heavens; told to me, ruder man, on theearth; repeated by each pulse of this heart that woos you to hear andto trust, --now and henceforth through life unto death, 'Each has need ofthe other, '--I of you, I of you! my Lilian! my Lilian!"

CHAPTER XVIII. 

In spite of the previous assurance of Mrs. Poyntz, it was not without anuneasy apprehension that I approached the cedar-tree, under which Mrs. Ashleigh still sat, her friend beside her. I looked on the fair creaturewhose arm was linked in mine. So young, so singularly lovely, and withall the gifts of birth and fortune which bend avarice and ambition themore submissively to youth and beauty, I felt as if I had wronged what aparent might justly deem her natural lot. 

"Oh, if your mother should disapprove!" said I, falteringly. Lilianleaned on my arm less lightly. "If I had thought so, " she said with hersoft blush, "should I be thus by your side?"

So we passed under the boughs of the dark tree, and Lilian left me andkissed Mrs. Ashleigh's cheek; then, seating herself on the turf, laidher head on her mother's lap. I looked on the Queen of the Hill, whosekeen eye shot over me. I thought there was a momentary expression ofpain or displeasure on her countenance; but it passed. Stillthere seemed to me something of irony, as well as of triumph orcongratulation, in the half-smile with which she quitted her seat, andin the tone with which she whispered, as she glided by me to the opensward, "So, then, it is settled. "

She walked lightly and quickly down the lawn. When she was out of sightI breathed more freely. I took the seat which she had left, by Mrs. Ashleigh's side, and said, "A little while ago I spoke of myself as aman without kindred, without home, and now I come to you and ask forboth. "

Mrs. Ashleigh looked at me benignly, then raised her daughter's facefrom her lap, and whispered, "Lilian;" and Lilian's lips moved, but Idid not hear her answer. Her mother did. She took Lilian's hand, simplyplaced it in mine, and said, "As she chooses, I choose; whom she loves, I love. "

CHAPTER XIX. 

From that evening till the day Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian went on thedreaded visit, I was always at their house, when my avocations allowedme to steal to it; and during those few days, the happiest I had everknown, it seemed to me that years could not have more deepened myintimacy with Lilian's exquisite nature, made me more reverential of itspurity, or more enamoured of its sweetness. I could detect in her butone fault, and I rebuked myself for believing that it was a fault. We see many who neglect the minor duties of life, who lack watchfulforethought and considerate care for others, and we recognize thecause of this failing in levity or egotism. Certainly, neither of thosetendencies of character could be ascribed to Lilian. Yet still in dailytrifles there was something of that neglect, some lack of that care andforethought. She loved her mother with fondness and devotion, yet itnever occurred to her to aid in those petty household cares in which hermother centred so much of habitual interest. She was full of tendernessand pity to all want and suffering, yet many a young lady on the Hillwas more actively beneficent, --visiting the poor in their sickness, orinstructing their children in the Infant Schools. I was persuadedthat her love for me was deep and truthful; it was clearly void of allambition; doubtless she would have borne, unflinching and contented, whatever the world considers to be a sacrifice and privation, --yet Ishould never have expected her to take her share in the troublesof ordinary life. I could never have applied to her the homely butsignificant name of helpmate. I reproach myself while I write fornoticing such defect--if defect it were--in what may be called thepractical routine of our positive, trivial, human existence. No doubt itwas this that had caused Mrs. Poyntz's harsh judgment against the wisdomof my choice. But such chiller shade upon Lilian's charming nature wasreflected from no inert, unamiable self-love. It was but the consequenceof that self-absorption which the habit of revery had fostered. Icautiously abstained from all allusion to those visionary deceptions, which she had confided to me as the truthful impressions of spirit, ifnot of sense. To me any approach to what I termed "superstition" wasdispleasing; any indulgence of fantasies not within the measuredand beaten track of healthful imagination more than displeased me inher, --it alarmed. I would not by a word encourage her in persuasionswhich I felt it would be at present premature to reason against, andcruel indeed to ridicule. I was convinced that of themselves thesemists round her native intelligence, engendered by a solitary and musingchildhood, would subside in the fuller daylight of wedded life. Sheseemed pained when she saw how resolutely I shunned a subject dear toher thoughts. She made one or two timid attempts to renew it, butmy grave looks sufficed to check her. Once or twice indeed, on suchoccasions, she would turn away and leave me, but she soon came back;that gentle heart could not bear one unkindlier shade between itselfand what it loved. It was agreed that our engagement should be, for thepresent, confided only to Mrs. Poyntz. When Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilianreturned, which would be in a few weeks at furthest, it should beproclaimed; and our marriage could take place in the autumn, when Ishould be most free for a brief holiday from professional toils. 

So we parted-as lovers part. I felt none of those jealous fearswhich, before we were affianced, had made me tremble at the thought ofseparation, and had conjured up irresistible rivals. But it was with asettled, heavy gloom that I saw her depart. From earth was gone a glory;from life a blessing. 

CHAPTER XX. 

During the busy years of my professional career, I had snatched leisurefor some professional treatises, which had made more or less sensation, and one of them, entitled "The Vital Principle; its Waste and Supply, "had gained a wide circulation among the general public. This lasttreatise contained the results of certain experiments, then new inchemistry, which were adduced in support of a theory I entertained as tothe re-invigoration of the human system by principles similar tothose which Liebig has applied to the replenishment of an exhaustedsoil, --namely, the giving back to the frame those essentials to itsnutrition, which it has lost by the action or accident of time; orsupplying that special pabulum or energy in which the individualorganism is constitutionally deficient; and neutralizing orcounterbalancing that in which it super-abounds, --a theory upon whichsome eminent physicians have more recently improved with signal success. But on these essays, slight and suggestive, rather than dogmatic, I setno value. I had been for the last two years engaged on a work of muchwider range, endeared to me by a far bolder ambition, --a work upon whichI fondly hoped to found an enduring reputation as a severe andoriginal physiologist. It was an Inquiry into Organic Life, similar incomprehensiveness of survey to that by which the illustrious Muller, ofBerlin, has enriched the science of our age; however inferior, alas! tothat august combination of thought and learning in the judgment whichchecks presumption, and the genius which adorns speculation. But at thatday I was carried away by the ardour of composition, and I admired myperformance because I loved my labour. This work had been entirely laidaside for the last agitated month; now that Lilian was gone, I resumedit earnestly, as the sole occupation that had power and charm enough torouse me from the aching sense of void and loss. 

The very night of the day she went, I reopened my manuscript. I had leftoff at the commencement of a chapter Upon Knowledge as derived from ourSenses. As my convictions on this head were founded on the well-knownarguments of Locke and Condillac against innate ideas, and on thereasonings by which Hume has resolved the combination of sensationsinto a general idea to an impulse arising merely out of habit, so I setmyself to oppose, as a dangerous concession to the sentimentalities ormysticism of a pseudo-philosophy, the doctrine favoured by most of ourrecent physiologists, and of which some of the most eminent of Germanmetaphysicians have accepted the substance, though refining into asubtlety its positive form, --I mean the doctrine which Muller himselfhas expressed in these words:--

 "That innate ideas may exist cannot in the slightest degree be denied: it is, indeed, a fact. All the ideas of animals, which are induced by instinct, are innate and immediate: something presented to the mind, a desire to attain which is at the same time given. The new-born lamb and foal have such innate ideas, which lead them to follow their mother and suck the teats. Is it not in some measure the same with the intellectual ideas of man?"(1)

To this question I answered with an indignant "No!" A "Yes" would haveshaken my creed of materialism to the dust. I wrote on rapidly, warmly. I defined the properties and meted the limits of natural laws, which Iwould not admit that a Deity himself could alter. I clamped and soldereddogma to dogma in the links of my tinkered logic, till out from my page, to my own complacent eye, grew Intellectual Man, as the pure formationof his material senses; mind, or what is called soul, born from andnurtured by them alone; through them to act, and to perish with themachine they moved. Strange, that at the very time my love for Lilianmight have taught me that there are mysteries in the core of thefeelings which my analysis of ideas could not solve, I should sostubbornly have opposed as unreal all that could be referred to thespiritual! Strange, that at the very time when the thought that I mightlose from this life the being I had known scarce a month had just beforeso appalled me, I should thus complacently sit down to prove that, according to the laws of the nature which my passion obeyed, I mustlose for eternity the blessing I now hoped I had won to my life! But howdistinctly dissimilar is man in his conduct from man in his systems!See the poet reclined under forest boughs, conning odes to his mistress;follow him out into the world; no mistress ever lived for him there!(2)See the hard man of science, so austere in his passionless problems;follow him now where the brain rests from its toil, where the heartfinds its Sabbath--what child is so tender, so yielding, and soft?

But I had proved to my own satisfaction that poet and sage are dust, and no more, when the pulse ceases to beat. And on that consolatoryconclusion my pen stopped. 

Suddenly, beside me I distinctly heard a sigh, --a compassionate, mournful sigh. The sound was unmistakable. I started from my seat, looked round, amazed to discover no one, --no living thing! The windowswere closed, the night was still. That sigh was not the wail of thewind. But there, in the darker angle of the room, what was that? Asilvery whiteness, vaguely shaped as a human form, receding, fading, gone! Why, I know not--for no face was visible, no form, if form itwere, more distinct than the colourless outline, --why, I know not, butI cried aloud, "Lilian! Lilian!" My voice came strangely back to my ownear; I paused, then smiled and blushed at my folly. "So I, too, havelearned what is superstition, " I muttered to myself. "And here is ananecdote at my own expense (as Muller frankly tells us anecdotes of theillusions which would haunt his eyes, shut or open), --an anecdote I mayquote when I come to my chapter on the Cheats of the Senses and SpectralPhantasms. " I went on with my book, and wrote till the lights waned inthe gray of the dawn. And I said then, in the triumph of my pride, asI laid myself down to rest, "I have written that which allots withprecision man's place in the region of nature; written that whichwill found a school, form disciples; and race after race of thosewho cultivate truth through pure reason shall accept my bases if theyenlarge my building. " And again I heard the sigh, but this time itcaused no surprise. "Certainly, " I murmured, "a very strange thing isthe nervous system!" So I turned on my pillow, and, wearied out, fellasleep. 

(1) Muller's "Elements of Physiology, " vol. Ii. P. 134. Translated byDr. Baley. 

(2) Cowley, who wrote so elaborate a series of amatory poems, is said"never to have been in love but once, and then he never had resolutionto tell his passion. "--Johnson's "Lives of the Poets:" COWLEY. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The next day, the last of the visiting patients to whom my forenoonswere devoted had just quitted me, when I was summoned in haste to attendthe steward of a Sir Philip Derval not residing at his family seat, which was about five miles from L----. It was rarely indeed that personsso far from the town, when of no higher rank than this applicant, askedmy services. 

But it was my principle to go wherever I was summoned; my professionwas not gain, it was healing, to which gain was the incident, notthe essential. This case the messenger reported as urgent. I went onhorseback, and rode fast; but swiftly as I cantered through the villagethat skirted the approach to Sir Philip Derval's park, the evident carebestowed on the accommodation of the cottagers forcibly struck me. Ifelt that I was on the lands of a rich, intelligent, and beneficentproprietor. Entering the park, and passing before the manor-house, thecontrast between the neglect and the decay of the absentee's statelyHall and the smiling homes of his villagers was disconsolately mournful. 

An imposing pile, built apparently by Vanbrugh, with decoratedpilasters, pompous portico, and grand perron (or double flight of stairsto the entrance), enriched with urns and statues, but discoloured, mildewed, chipped, half-hidden with unpruned creepers and ivy. Most ofthe windows were closed with shutters, decaying for want of paint; insome of the casements the panes were broken; the peacock perched on theshattered balustrade, that fenced a garden overgrown with weeds. Thesun glared hotly on the place, and made its ruinous condition still morepainfully apparent. I was glad when a winding in the park-road shutthe house from my sight. Suddenly I emerged through a copse of ancientyew-trees, and before me there gleamed, in abrupt whiteness, a buildingevidently designed for the family mausoleum, classical in its outline, with the blind iron door niched into stone walls of massive thickness, and surrounded by a funereal garden of roses and evergreens, fenced withan iron rail, party-gilt. 

The suddenness with which this House of the Dead came upon me heightenedalmost into pain, if not into awe, the dismal impression which theaspect of the deserted home in its neighbourhood had made. I spurred myhorse, and soon arrived at the door of my patient, who lived in a fairbrick house at the other extremity of the park. 

I found my patient, a man somewhat advanced in years, but of a robustconformation, in bed: he had been seized with a fit, which was supposedto be apoplectic, a few hours before; but was already sensible, and outof immediate danger. After I had prescribed a few simple remedies, Itook aside the patient's wife, and went with her to the parlour belowstairs, to make some inquiry about her husband's ordinary regimen andhabits of life. These seemed sufficiently regular; I could discover noapparent cause for the attack, which presented symptoms not familiar tomy experience. "Has your husband ever had such fits before?"

"Never!"

"Had he experienced any sudden emotion? Had he heard any unexpectednews; or had anything happened to put him out?"

The woman looked much disturbed at these inquiries. I pressed them moreurgently. At last she burst into tears, and clasping my hand, said, "Oh, doctor, I ought to tell you--I sent for you on purpose--yet I fear youwill not believe me: my good man has seen a ghost!"

"A ghost!" said I, repressing a smile. "Well, tell me all, that I mayprevent the ghost coming again. "

The woman's story was prolix. Its substance was this Her husband, habitually an early riser, had left his bed that morning still earlierthan usual, to give directions about some cattle that were to be sentfor sale to a neighbouring fair. An hour afterwards he had been found bya shepherd, near the mausoleum, apparently lifeless. On being removed tohis own house, he had recovered speech, and bidding all except his wifeleave the room, he then told her that on walking across the park towardsthe cattle-sheds, he had seen what appeared to him at first a pale lightby the iron door of the mausoleum. On approaching nearer, this lightchanged into the distinct and visible form of his master, Sir PhilipDerval, who was then abroad, --supposed to be in the East, where he hadresided for many years. The impression on the steward's mind was sostrong, that he called out, "Oh, Sir Philip!" when looking stillmore intently, he perceived that the face was that of a corpse. As hecontinued to gaze, the apparition seemed gradually to recede, asif vanishing into the sepulchre itself. He knew no more; he becameunconscious. It was the excess of the poor woman's alarm, on hearingthis strange tale, that made her resolve to send for me instead of theparish apothecary. She fancied so astounding a cause for her husband'sseizure could only be properly dealt with by some medical man reputedto have more than ordinary learning; and the steward himself objected tothe apothecary in the immediate neighbourhood, as more likely to annoyhim by gossip than a physician from a comparative distance. 

I took care not to lose the confidence of the good wife by paradingtoo quickly my disbelief in the phantom her husband declared that he adseen; but as the story itself seemed at once to decide the nature of thefit to be epileptic, I began to tell her of similar delusions which, inmy experience, had occurred to those subjected to epilepsy, andfinally soothed her into the conviction that the apparition was clearlyreducible to natural causes. Afterwards, I led her on to talk aboutSir Philip Derval, less from any curiosity I felt about the absentproprietor than from a desire to re-familiarize her own mind to hisimage as a living man. The steward had been in the service of SirPhilip's father, and had known Sir Philip himself from a child. He waswarmly attached to his master, whom the old woman described as a man ofrare benevolence and great eccentricity, which last she imputed to hisstudious habits. He had succeeded to the title and estates as a minor. For the first few years after attaining his majority, he had mixed muchin the world. When at Derval Court his house had been filled with gaycompanions, and was the scene of lavish hospitality; but the estatewas not in proportion to the grandeur of the mansion, still less to theexpenditure of the owner. He had become greatly embarrassed; and somelove disappointment (so it was rumoured) occurring simultaneously withhis pecuniary difficulties, he had suddenly changed his way of life, shut himself up from his old friends, lived in seclusion, taking tobooks and scientific pursuits, and as the old woman said vaguely andexpressively, "to odd ways. " He had gradually by an economy that, towards himself, was penurious, but which did not preclude muchjudicious generosity to others, cleared off his debts; and, once morerich, he had suddenly quitted the country, and taken to a life oftravel. He was now about forty-eight years old, and had been eighteenyears abroad. He wrote frequently to his steward, giving him minute andthoughtful instructions in regard to the employment, comforts, and homesof the peasantry, but peremptorily ordering him to spend no money on thegrounds and mansion, stating as a reason why the latter might be allowedto fall into decay, his intention to pull it down whenever he returnedto England. 

I stayed some time longer than my engagements well warranted at mypatient's house, not leaving till the sufferer, after a quiet sleep, hadremoved from his bed to his armchair, taken food, and seemed perfectlyrecovered from his attack. 

Riding homeward, I mused on the difference that education makes, evenpathologically, between man and man. Here was a brawny inhabitant ofrural fields, leading the healthiest of lives, not conscious of thefaculty we call imagination, stricken down almost to Death's door byhis fright at an optical illusion, explicable, if examined, by the samesimple causes which had impressed me the night before with a moment'sbelief in a sound and a spectre, --me who, thanks to sublime education, went so quietly to sleep a few minutes after, convinced hat no phantom, the ghostliest that ear ever heard or eye ever saw, can be anything elsebut a nervous phenomenon. 

CHAPTER XXII. 

That evening I went to Mrs. Poyntz's; it was one of her ordinary"reception nights, " and I felt that she would naturally expect myattendance as "a proper attention. "

I joined a group engaged in general conversation, of which Mrs. Poyntzherself made the centre, knitting as usual, --rapidly while she talked, slowly when she listened. 

Without mentioning the visit I had paid that morning, I turned theconversation on the different country places in the neighbourhood, andthen incidentally asked, "What sort of a man is Sir Philip Derval? Is itnot strange that he should suffer so fine a place to fall into decay?"The answers I received added little to the information I had alreadyobtained. Mrs. Poyntz knew nothing of Sir Philip Derval, except as a manof large estates, whose rental had been greatly increased by a rise inthe value of property he possessed in the town of L----, and which laycontiguous to that of her husband. Two or three of the older inhabitantsof the Hill had remembered Sir Philip in his early days, when he wasgay, high-spirited, hospitable, lavish. One observed that the onlyperson in L---- whom he had admitted to his subsequent seclusion wasDr. Lloyd, who was then without practice, and whom he had employed as anassistant in certain chemical experiments. 

Here a gentleman struck into the conversation. He was a stranger tome and to L----, a visitor to one of the dwellers on the Hill, who hadasked leave to present him to its queen as a great traveller and anaccomplished antiquary. 

 Said this gentleman: "Sir Philip Derval? I know him. I met him in theEast. He was then still, I believe, very fond of chemical science; aclever, odd, philanthropical man; had studied medicine, or at leastpractised it; was said to have made many marvellous cures. I becameacquainted with him in Aleppo. He had come to that town, not muchfrequented by English travellers, in order to inquire into the murder oftwo men, of whom one was his friend and the other his countryman. "

"This is interesting, " said Mrs. Poyntz, dryly. "We who live on thisinnocent Hill all love stories of crime; murder is the pleasantestsubject you could have hit on. Pray give us the details. "

"So encouraged, " said the traveller, good-humouredly, "I will nothesitate to communicate the little I know. In Aleppo there had lived forsome years a man who was held by the natives in great reverence. He hadthe reputation of extraordinary wisdom, but was difficult of access;the lively imagination of the Orientals invested his character withthe fascinations of fable, --in short, Haroun of Aleppo was popularlyconsidered a magician. Wild stories were told of his powers, of hispreternatural age, of his hoarded treasures. Apart from such disputabletitles to homage, there seemed no question, from all I heard, that hislearning was considerable, his charities extensive, his manner of lifeirreproachably ascetic. He appears to have resembled those Arabian sagesof the Gothic age to whom modern science is largely indebted, --a mysticenthusiast, but an earnest scholar. A wealthy and singular Englishman, long resident in another part of the East, afflicted by some languishingdisease, took a journey to Aleppo to consult this sage, who, amonghis other acquirements, was held to have discovered rare secrets inmedicine, --his countrymen said in 'charms. ' One morning, not long afterthe Englishman's arrival, Haroun was found dead in his bed, apparentlystrangled, and the Englishman, who lodged in another part of the town, had disappeared; but some of his clothes, and a crutch on which hehabitually supported himself, were found a few miles distant fromAleppo, near the roadside. There appeared no doubt that he, too, hadbeen murdered, but his corpse could not be discovered. Sir Philip Dervalhad been a loving disciple of this Sage of Aleppo, to whom he assured mehe owed not only that knowledge of medicine which, by report, SirPhilip possessed, but the insight into various truths of nature, on thepromulgation of which, it was evident, Sir Philip cherished the ambitionto found a philosophical celebrity for himself. "

"Of what description were those truths of nature?" I asked, somewhatsarcastically. 

"Sir, I am unable to tell you, for Sir Philip did not inform me, nordid I much care to ask; for what may be revered as truths in Asia areusually despised as dreams in Europe. To return to my story: SirPhilip had been in Aleppo a little time before the murder; had left theEnglishman under the care of Haroun. He returned to Aleppo on hearingthe tragic events I have related, and was busy in collecting suchevidence as could be gleaned, and instituting inquiries after ourmissing countryman at the time I myself chanced to arrive in the city. I assisted in his researches, but without avail. The assassins remainedundiscovered. I do not myself doubt that they were mere vulgar robbers. Sir Philip had a darker suspicion of which he made no secret to me; butas I confess that I thought the suspicion groundless, you will pardonme if I do not repeat it. Whether since I left the East the Englishman'sremains have been discovered, I know not. Very probably; for Iunderstand that his heirs have got hold of what fortune he left, --lessthan was generally supposed. But it was reported that he had buriedgreat treasures, a rumour, however absurd, not altogether inconsistentwith his character. "

"What was his character?" asked Mrs. Poyntz. 

"One of evil and sinister repute. He was regarded with terror by theattendants who had accompanied him to Aleppo. But he had lived in avery remote part of the East, little known to Europeans, and, from all Icould learn, had there established an extraordinary power, strengthenedby superstitious awe. He was said to have studied deeply that knowledgewhich the philosophers of old called 'occult, ' not, like the Sageof Aleppo, for benevolent, but for malignant ends. He was accused ofconferring with evil spirits, and filling his barbaric court (forhe lived in a kind of savage royalty) with charmers and sorcerers. Isuspect, after all, that he was only, like myself, an ardent antiquary, and cunningly made use of the fear he inspired in order to secure hisauthority, and prosecute in safety researches into ancient sepulchres ortemples. His great passion was, indeed, in excavating such remains, inhis neighbourhood; with what result I know not, never having penetratedso far into regions infested by robbers and pestiferous with malaria. Hewore the Eastern dress, and always carried jewels about him. I cameto the conclusion that for the sake of these jewels he was murdered, perhaps by some of his own servants (and, indeed, two at least of hissuite were missing), who then at once buried his body, and kept theirown secret. He was old, very infirm; could never have got far from thetown without assistance. "

"You have not yet told us his name, " said Mrs. Poyntz. 

"His name was Grayle. "

"Grayle!" exclaimed Mrs. Poyntz, dropping her work. "Louis Grayle?"

"Yes; Louis Grayle. You could not have known him?"

"Known him! No; but I have often heard my father speak of him. Such, then, was the tragic end of that strong dark creature, for whom, as ayoung girl in the nursery, I used to feel a kind of fearful admiringinterest?"

"It is your turn to narrate now, " said the traveller. 

And we all drew closer round our hostess, who remained silent somemoments, her brow thoughtful, her work suspended. 

"Well, " said she at last, looking round us with a lofty air, whichseemed half defying, "force and courage are always fascinating, evenwhen they are quite in the wrong. I go with the world, because the worldgoes with me; if it did not--" Here she stopped for a moment, clenchedthe firm white hand, and then scornfully waved it, left the sentenceunfinished, and broke into another. 

"Going with the world, of course we must march over those who standagainst it. But when one man stands single-handed against our march, wedo not despise him; it is enough to crush. I am very glad I did not seeLouis Grayle when I was a girl of sixteen. " Again she paused a moment, and resumed: "Louis Grayle was the only son of a usurer, infamous forthe rapacity with which he had acquired enormous wealth. Old Grayledesired to rear his heir as a gentleman; sent him to Eton. Boys arealways aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he wasfierce; he struck boys bigger than himself, --fought till he washalf killed. My father was at school with him; described him asa tiger-whelp. One day he--still a fag--struck a sixth-form boy. Sixth-form boys do not fight fags; they punish them. Louis Grayle wasordered to hold out his hand to the cane; he received the blow, drewforth his schoolboy knife, and stabbed the punisher. After that, he leftEton. I don't think he was publicly expelled--too mere a child for thathonour--but he was taken or sent away; educated with great care underthe first masters at home. When he was of age to enter the University, old Grayle was dead. Louis was sent by his guardians to Cambridge, withacquirements far exceeding the average of young men, and with unlimitedcommand of money. My father was at the same college, and described himagain, --haughty, quarrelsome, reckless, handsome, aspiring, brave. Does that kind of creature interest you, my dears?" (appealing to theladies). 

"La!" said Miss Brabazon; "a horrid usurer's son!"

"Ay, true; the vulgar proverb says it is good to be born with a silverspoon in one's mouth: so it is when one has one's own family crest onit; ut when it is a spoon on which people recognize their family crest, and cry out, 'Stolen from our plate chest, ' it is a heritage thatoutlaws a babe in his cradle. However, young men at college who wantmoney are less scrupulous about descent than boys at Eton are. LouisGrayle found, while at college, plenty of wellborn acquaintances willingto recover from him some of the plunder his father had extorted fromtheirs. He was too wild to distinguish himself by academical honours, but my father said that the tutors of the college declared there werenot six undergraduates in the University who knew as much hard and dryscience as wild Louis Grayle. He went into the world, no doubt, hopingto shine; but his father's name was too notorious to admit the son intogood society. The Polite World, it is true, does not examine a scutcheonwith the nice eye of a herald, nor look upon riches with the statelycontempt of a stoic; still the Polite World has its family pride andits moral sentiment. It does not like to be cheated, --I mean, inmoney matters; and when the son of a man who has emptied its purse andforeclosed on its acres rides by its club-windows, hand on haunch, andhead in the air, no lion has a scowl more awful, no hyena a laugh moredread, than that same easy, good-tempered, tolerant, polite, well-bredWorld which is so pleasant an acquaintance, so languid a friend, and--soremorseless an--enemy. In short, Louis Grayle claimed the right to becourted, --he was shunned; to be admired, --he was loathed. Even his oldcollege acquaintances were shamed out of knowing him. Perhaps hecould have lived through all this had he sought to glide quietly intoposition; but he wanted the tact of the well-bred, and strove to stormhis way, not to steal it. Reduced for companions to needy parasites, he braved and he shocked all decorous opinion by that ostentation ofexcess, which made Richelieus and Lauzuns the rage. But then Richelieusand Lauzuns were dukes! He now very naturally took the Polite World intohate, --gave it scorn for scorn. He would ally himself with Democracy;his wealth could not get him into a club, but it would buy him intoparliament; he could not be a Lauzun, nor, perhaps, a Mirabeau, but hemight be a Danton. He had plenty of knowledge and audacity, and withknowledge and audacity a good hater is sure to be eloquent. Possibly, then, this poor Louis Grayle might have made a great figure, left hismark on his age and his name in history; but in contesting the borough, which he was sure to carry, he had to face an opponent in a real finegentleman whom his father had ruined, cool and highbred, with a tonguelike a rapier, a sneer like an adder. A quarrel of course; Louis Graylesent a challenge. The fine gentleman, known to be no coward (finegentlemen never are), was at first disposed to refuse with contempt. ButGrayle had made himself the idol of the mob; and at a word from Grayle, the fine gentleman might have been ducked at a pump, or tossed ina blanket, --that would have made him ridiculous; to be shot at is atrifle, to be laughed at is serious. He therefore condescended to acceptthe challenge, and my father was his second. 

"It was settled, of course, according to English custom, that bothcombatants should fire at the same time, and by signal. The antagonistfired at the right moment; his ball grazed Louis Grayle's temple. LouisGrayle had not fired. He now seemed to the seconds to take slow anddeliberate aim. They called out to him not to fire; they were rushing toprevent him, when the trigger was pulled, and his opponent fell dead onthe field. The fight was, therefore, considered unfair; Louis Grayle wastried for his life: he did not stand the trial in person. (1) He escapedto the Continent; hurried on to some distant uncivilized lands; couldnot be traced; reappeared in England no more. The lawyer who conductedhis defence pleaded skilfully. He argued that the delay in firing wasnot intentional, therefore not criminal, --the effect of the stun whichthe wound in the temple had occasioned. The judge was a gentleman, andsummed up the evidence so as to direct the jury to a verdict againstthe low wretch who had murdered a gentleman; but the jurors were notgentlemen, and Grayle's advocate had of course excited their sympathyfor a son of the people, whom a gentleman had wantonly insulted. Theverdict was manslaughter; but the sentence emphatically marked theaggravated nature of the homicide, --three years' imprisonment. Grayleeluded the prison, but he was a man disgraced and an exile, --hisambition blasted, his career an outlaw's, and his age not yettwenty-three. My father said that he was supposed to have changed hisname; none knew what had become of him. And so this creature, brilliantand daring, whom if born under better auspices we might now be allfawning on, cringing to, --after living to old age, no one knowshow, --dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, you say, knows by whom. "

"I saw some account of his death in the papers about three years ago, "said one of the party; "but the name was misspelled, and I had no ideathat it was the same man who had fought the duel which Mrs. ColonelPoyntz has so graphically described. I have a very vague recollection ofthe trial; it took place when I was a boy, more than forty years since. The affair made a stir at the time, but was soon forgotten. "

"Soon forgotten, " said Mrs. Poyntz; "ay, what is not? Leave your placein the world for ten minutes, and when you come back somebody else hastaken it; but when you leave the world for good, who remembers that youhad ever a place even in the parish register?"

"Nevertheless, " said I, "a great poet has said, finely and truly, "'The sun of Homer shines upon us still. '"

"But it does not shine upon Homer; and learned folks tell me that weknow no more who and what Homer was, if there was ever a single Homerat all, or rather, a whole herd of Homers, than we know about the man inthe moon, --if there be one man there, or millions of men. Now, my dearMiss Brabazon, it will be very kind in you to divert our thoughtsinto channels less gloomy. Some pretty French air--Dr. Fenwick, I havesomething to say to you. " She drew me towards the window. "So AnnieAshleigh writes me word that I am not to mention your engagement. Do youthink it quite prudent to keep it a secret?"

"I do not see how prudence is concerned in keeping it secret one way orthe other, --it is a mere matter of feeling. Most people wish to abridge, as far as they can, the time in which their private arrangements are thetopic of public gossip. "

"Public gossip is sometimes the best security for the due completion ofprivate arrangements. As long as a girl is not known to be engaged, her betrothed must be prepared for rivals. Announce the engagement, andrivals are warned off. "

"I fear no rivals. "

"Do you not? Bold man! I suppose you will write to Lilian?"

"Certainly. "

"Do so, and constantly. By-the-way, Mrs. Ashleigh, before she went, asked me to send her back Lady Haughton's letter of invitation. Whatfor, --to show to you?"

"Very likely. Have you the letter still? May I see it?"

"Not just at present. When Lilian or Mrs. Ashleigh writes to you, comeand tell me how they like their visit, and what other guests form theparty. "

Therewith she turned away and conversed apart with the traveller. 

Her words disquieted me, and I felt that they were meant to do so, wherefore I could not guess. But there is no language on earth which hasmore words with a double meaning than that spoken by the Clever Woman, who is never so guarded as when she appears to be frank. 

As I walked home thoughtfully, I was accosted by a young man, the sonof one of the wealthiest merchants in the town. I had attended him withsuccess some months before, in a rheumatic fever: he and his family weremuch attached to me. 

"Ah, my dear Fenwick, I am so glad to see you; I owe you anobligation of which you are not aware, --an exceedingly pleasanttravelling-companion. I came with him to-day from London, where I havebeen sight-seeing and holidaymaking for the last fortnight. "

"I suppose you mean that you kindly bring me a patient?"

"No, only an admirer. I was staying at Fenton's Hotel. It so happenedone day that I had left in the coffee-room your last work on the VitalPrinciple, which, by the by, the bookseller assures me is sellingimmensely among readers as non-professional as myself. Coming into thecoffee-room again, I found a gentleman reading the book. I claimed itpolitely; he as politely tendered his excuse for taking it. We madeacquaintance on the spot. The next day we were intimate. He expressedgreat interest and curiosity about your theory and your experiments. Itold him I knew you. You may guess if I described you as less clever inyour practice than you are in your writings; and, in short, he camewith me to L----, partly to see our flourishing town, principally on mypromise to introduce him to you. My mother, you know, has what she callsa dejeuner tomorrow, --dejeuner and dance. You will be there?"

"Thank you for reminding me of her invitation. I will avail myself ofit if I can. Your new friend will be present? Who and what is he, --amedical student?"

"No, a mere gentleman at ease, but seems to have a good deal of generalinformation. Very young, apparently very rich, wonderfully good-looking. I am sure you will like him; everybody must. "

"It is quite enough to prepare me to like him that he is a friend ofyours. " And so we shook hands and parted. 

(1) Mrs. Poyntz here makes a mistake in law which, though very evident, her listeners do not seem to have noticed. Her mistake will be referredto later. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 

It was late in the afternoon of the following day before I was able tojoin the party assembled at the merchant's house; it was a villa abouttwo miles out of the town, pleasantly situated amidst flower-gardenscelebrated in the neighbourhood for their beauty. The breakfast had beenlong over; the company was scattered over the lawn, --some formed intoa dance on the smooth lawn; some seated under shady awnings; othersgliding amidst parterres, in which all the glow of colour took a gloryyet more vivid under the flush of a brilliant sunshine; and the rippleof a soft western breeze. Music, loud and lively, mingled with thelaughter of happy children, who formed much the larger number of theparty. 

Standing at the entrance of an arched trellis, that led from the hardierflowers of the lawn to a rare collection of tropical plants under alofty glass dome (connecting, as it were, the familiar vegetation of theNorth with that of the remotest East), was a form that instantaneouslycaught and fixed my gaze. The entrance of the arcade was covered withparasite creepers, in prodigal luxuriance, of variegated gorgeoustints, --scarlet, golden, purple; and the form, an idealized picture ofman's youth fresh from the hand of Nature, stood literally in a frame ofblooms. 

Never have I seen human face so radiant as that young man's. There wasin the aspect an indescribable something that literally dazzled. As onecontinued to gaze, it was with surprise; one was forced to acknowledgethat in the features themselves there was no faultless regularity; norwas the young man's stature imposing, about the middle height. But theeffect of the whole was not less transcendent. Large eyes, unspeakablylustrous; a most harmonious colouring; an expression of contagiousanimation and joyousness; and the form itself so critically fine, thatthe welded strength of its sinews was best shown in the lightness andgrace of its movements. 

He was resting one hand carelessly on the golden locks of a child thathad nestled itself against his knees, looking up to his face in thatsilent loving wonder with which children regard something too strangelybeautiful for noisy admiration; he himself was conversing with thehost, an old gray-haired, gouty man, propped on his crutched stick, andlistening with a look of mournful envy. To the wealth of the old man allthe flowers in that garden owed their renewed delight in the summerair and sun. Oh, that his wealth could renew to himself one hour of theyouth whose incarnation stood beside him, Lord, indeed, of Creation; itssplendour woven into his crown of beauty, its enjoyments subject to hissceptre of hope and gladness. 

I was startled by the hearty voice of the merchant's son. "Ah, my dearFenwick, I was afraid you would not come, --you are late. There isthe new friend of whom I spoke to you last night; let me now make youacquainted with him. " He drew my arm in his, and led me up to theyoung man, where he stood under the arching flowers, and whom he thenintroduced to me by the name of Margrave. 

Nothing could be more frankly cordial than Mr. Margrave's manner. In afew minutes I found myself conversing with him familiarly, as if wehad been reared in the same home, and sported together in the sameplayground. His vein of talk was peculiar, off-hand, careless, shiftingfrom topic to topic with a bright rapidity. 

He said that he liked the place; proposed to stay in it some weeks;asked my address, which I gave to him; promised to call soon at anearly hour, while my time was yet free from professional visits. Iendeavoured, when I went away, to analyze to myself the fascinationwhich this young stranger so notably exercised over all who approachedhim; and it seemed to me, ever seeking to find material causes for allmoral effects, that it rose from the contagious vitality of that rarestof all rare gifts in highly-civilized circles, --perfect health; thathealth which is in itself the most exquisite luxury; which, findinghappiness in the mere sense of existence, diffuses round it, like anatmosphere, the harmless hilarity of its bright animal being. Health, to the utmost perfection, is seldom known after childhood; health to theutmost cannot be enjoyed by those who overwork the brain, or admit thesure wear and tear of the passions. The creature I had just seen gaveme the notion of youth in the golden age of the poets, --the youth of thecareless Arcadian, before nymph or shepherdess had vexed his heart witha sigh. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

The house I occupied at L---- was a quaint, old-fashioned building, acorner-house. One side, in which was the front entrance, looked upona street which, as there were no shops in it, and it was no directthoroughfare to the busy centres of the town, was always quiet, andat some hours of the day almost deserted. The other side of the housefronted a lane; opposite to it was the long and high wall of the gardento a Young Ladies' Boarding-school. My stables adjoined the house, abutting on a row of smaller buildings, with little gardens before them, chiefly occupied by mercantile clerks and retired tradesmen. By the lanethere was a short and ready access both to the high turnpike-road, andto some pleasant walks through green meadows and along the banks of ariver. 

This house I had inhabited since my arrival at L----, and it had tome so many attractions, in a situation sufficiently central to beconvenient for patients, and yet free from noise, and favourable toready outlet into the country for such foot or horse exercise as myprofessional avocations would allow me to carve for myself out of whatthe Latin poet calls the "solid day, " that I had refused to change itfor one better suited to my increased income; but it was not a housewhich Mrs. Ashleigh would have liked for Lilian. The main objection toit in the eyes of the "genteel" was, that it had formerly belonged to amember of the healing profession who united the shop of an apothecaryto the diploma of a surgeon; but that shop had given the house a specialattraction to me; for it had been built out on the side of the housewhich fronted the lane, occupying the greater portion of a small gravelcourt, fenced from the road by a low iron palisade, and separatedfrom the body of the house itself by a short and narrow corridor thatcommunicated with the entrance-hall. This shop I turned into a rudestudy for scientific experiments, in which I generally spent some earlyhours of the morning, before my visiting patients began to arrive. Ienjoyed the stillness of its separation from the rest of the house; Ienjoyed the glimpse of the great chestnut-trees, which overtopped thewall of the school-garden; I enjoyed the ease with which, by opening theglazed sash-door, I could get out, if disposed for a short walk, intothe pleasant fields; and so completely had I made this sanctuary my own, that not only my man-servant knew that I was never to be disturbed whenin it, except by the summons of a patient, but even the housemaidwas forbidden to enter it with broom or duster, except upon specialinvitation. The last thing at night, before retiring to rest, it was theman-servant's business to see that the sash-window was closed, and thegate to the iron palisade locked; but during the daytime I so often wentout of the house by that private way that the gate was then very seldomlocked, nor the sash-door bolted from within. In the town of L----there was little apprehension of house-robberies, --especially in thedaylight, --and certainly in this room, cut off from the mainbuilding, there was nothing to attract a vulgar cupidity. A few of theapothecary's shelves and cases still remained on the walls, with, hereand there, a bottle of some chemical preparation for experiment; two orthree worm-eaten, wooden chairs; two or three shabby old tables; anold walnut-tree bureau without a lock, into which odds and ends wereconfusedly thrust, and sundry ugly-looking inventions of mechanicalscience, were, assuredly, not the articles which a timid proprietorwould guard with jealous care from the chances of robbery. It will beseen later why I have been thus prolix in description. The morning afterI had met the young stranger by whom I had been so favourably impressed, I was up as usual, a little before the sun, and long before any of myservants were astir. I went first into the room I have mentioned, andwhich I shall henceforth designate as my study, opened the window, unlocked the gate, and sauntered for some minutes up and down the silentlace skirting the opposite wall, and overhung by the chestnut-treesrich in the garniture of a glorious summer; then, refreshed for work, I re-entered my study, and was soon absorbed in the examination ofthat now well-known machine, which was then, to me at least, anovelty, --invented, if I remember right, by Dubois-Reymond, sodistinguished by his researches into the mysteries of organicelectricity. It is a wooden cylinder fixed against the edge of a table;on the table two vessels filled with salt and water are so placed that, as you close your hands on the cylinder, the forefinger of each handcan drop into the water; each of the vessels has a metallic plate, and communicates by wires with a galvanometer with its needle. Now thetheory is, that if you clutch the cylinder firmly with the right hand, leaving the left perfectly passive, the needle in the galvanometer willmove from west to south; if, in like manner, you exert the left arm, leaving the right arm passive, the needle will deflect from west tonorth. Hence, it is argued that the electric current is induced throughthe agency of the nervous system, and that, as human Will produces themuscular contraction requisite, so is it human Will that causesthe deflection of the needle. I imagine that if this theory weresubstantiated by experiment, the discovery might lead to some sublimeand unconjectured secrets of science. For human Will, thus activelyeffective on the electric current, and all matter, animate or inanimate, having more or less of electricity, a vast field became opened toconjecture. By what series of patient experimental deduction might notscience arrive at the solution of problems which the Newtonian law ofgravitation does not suffice to solve; and--But here I halt. At thedate which my story has reached, my mind never lost itself long in theCloudland of Guess. 

I was dissatisfied with my experiment. The needle stirred, indeed, but erratically, and not in directions which, according to the theory, should correspond to my movement. I was about to dismiss the trial withsome uncharitable contempt of the foreign philosopher's dogmas, whenI heard a loud ring at my street-door. While I paused to conjecturewhether my servant was yet up to attend to the door, and which of mypatients was the most likely to summon me at so unseasonable an hour, a shadow darkened my window. I looked up, and to my astonishment beheldthe brilliant face of Mr. Margrave. The sash to the door was alreadypartially opened; he raised it higher, and walked into the room. "Was ityou who rang at the street-door, and at this hour?" said I. 

"Yes; and observing, after I had rung, that all the shutters were stillclosed, I felt ashamed of my own rash action, and made off rather thanbrave the reproachful face of some injured housemaid, robbed of hermorning dreams. I turned down that pretty lane, --lured by the greenof the chestnut-trees, --caught sight of you through the window, tookcourage, and here I am! You forgive me?" While thus speaking, hecontinued to move along the littered floor of the dingy room, with theundulating restlessness of some wild animal in the confines of its den, and he now went on, in short fragmentary sentences, very slightly linkedtogether, but smoothed, as it were, into harmony by a voice musical andfresh as a sky lark's warble. "Morning dreams, indeed! dreams that wastethe life of such a morning. Rosy magnificence of a summer dawn! Do younot pity the fool who prefers to lie a bed, and to dream rather than tolive? What! and you, strong man, with those noble limbs, in this den! Doyou not long for a rush through the green of the fields, a bath in theblue of the river?"

Here he came to a pause, standing, still in the gray light of thegrowing day, with eyes whose joyous lustre forestalled the sun's, andlips which seemed to laugh even in repose. 

But presently those eyes, as quick as they were bright, glanced over thewalls, the floor, the shelves, the phials, the mechanical inventions, and then rested full on my cylinder fixed to the table. He approached, examined it curiously, asked what it was. I explained. To gratify himI sat down and renewed my experiment, with equally ill success. Theneedle, which should have moved from west to south, describing an angleof from thirty degrees to forty or even fifty degrees, only made a fewtroubled, undecided oscillations. 

"Tut, " cried the young man, "I see what it is; you have a wound in yourright hand. "

That was true; I had burned my band a few days before in a chemicalexperiment, and the sore had not healed. 

"Well, " said I, "and what does that matter?"

"Everything; the least scratch in the skin of the hand produces chemicalactions on the electric current, independently of your will. Let metry. "

He took my place, and in a moment the needle in the galvanometerresponded to his grasp on the cylinder, exactly as the inventivephilosopher had stated to be the due result of the experiment. 

I was startled. 

"But how came you, Mr. Margrave, to be so well acquainted with ascientific process little known, and but recently discovered?"

"I well acquainted! not so. But I am fond of all experiments that relateto animal life. Electricity, especially, is full of interest. "

On that I drew him out (as I thought), and he talked volubly. I wasamazed to find this young man, in whose brain I had conceived thoughtkept one careless holiday, was evidently familiar with the physicalsciences, and especially with chemistry, which was my own study bypredilection. But never had I met with a student in whom a knowledge soextensive was mixed up with notions so obsolete or so crotchety. In onesentence he showed that he had mastered some late discovery by Faradayor Liebig; in the next sentence he was talking the wild fallaciesof Cardan or Van Helmont. I burst out laughing at some paradox aboutsympathetic powders, which he enounced as if it were a recognized truth. 

"Pray tell me, " said I, "who was your master in physics; for a clevererpupil never had a more crack-brained teacher. "

"No, " he answered, with his merry laugh, "it is not the teacher's fault. I am a mere parrot; just cry out a few scraps of learning picked up hereand there. But, however, I am fond of all researches into Nature; allguesses at her riddles. To tell you the truth, one reason why I havetaken to you so heartily is not only that your published work caught myfancy in the dip which I took into its contents (pardon me if I say dip, I never do more than dip into any book), but also because young ----tells me that which all whom I have met in this town confirm; namely, that you are one of those few practical chemists who are at onceexceedingly cautious and exceedingly bold, --willing to try every newexperiment, but submitting experiment to rigid tests. Well, I have anexperiment running wild in this giddy head of mine, and I want you, some day when at leisure, to catch it, fix it as you have fixed thatcylinder, make something of it. I am sure you can. "

"What is it?"

"Something akin to the theories in your work. You would replenish orpreserve to each special constitution the special substance that mayfail to the equilibrium of its health. But you own that in a largeproportion of cases the best cure of disease is less to deal with thedisease itself than to support and stimulate the whole system, so as toenable Nature to cure the disease and restore the impaired equilibriumby her own agencies. Thus, if you find that in certain cases of nervousdebility a substance like nitric acid is efficacious, it is becausethe nitric acid has a virtue in locking up, as it were, the nervousenergy, --that is, preventing all undue waste. Again, in some cases ofwhat is commonly called feverish cold, stimulants like ammonia assistNature itself to get rid of the disorder that oppresses its normalaction; and, on the same principle, I apprehend, it is contended thata large average of human lives is saved in those hospitals whichhave adopted the supporting system of ample nourishment and alcoholicstimulants. "

"Your medical learning surprises me, " said I, smiling; "and withoutpausing to notice where it deals somewhat superficially with disputablepoints in general, and my own theory in particular, I ask you for thededuction you draw from your premises. "

"It is simply this: that to all animate bodies, however various, theremust be one principle in common, --the vital principle itself. What ifthere be one certain means of recruiting that principle; and what ifthat secret can be discovered?"

"Pshaw! The old illusion of the mediaeval empirics. "

"Not so. But the mediaeval empirics were great discoverers. You sneer atVan Helmont, who sought, in water, the principle of all things; but VanHelmont discovered in his search those invisible bodies called gases. Now the principle of life must be certainly ascribed to a gas. (1) Andwhat ever is a gas chemistry should not despair of producing! But I canargue no longer now, --never can argue long at a stretch; we are wastingthe morning; and, joy! the sun is up! See! Out! come out! out! and greetthe great Lifegiver face to face. "

I could not resist the young man's invitation. In a few minutes wewere in the quiet lane under the glinting chestnut-trees. Margrave waschanting, low, a wild tune, --words in a strange language. 

"What words are those, --no European language, I think; for I know alittle of most of the languages which are spoken in our quarter of theglobe, at least by its more civilized races. "

"Civilized race! What is civilization? Those words were uttered by menwho founded empires when Europe itself was not civilized! Hush, is itnot a grand old air?" and lifting his eyes towards the sun, he gave ventto a voice clear and deep as a mighty bell! The air was grand; the wordshad a sonorous swell that suited it, and they seemed to me jubilant andyet solemn. He stopped abruptly as a path from the lane had led us intothe fields, already half-bathed in sunlight, dews glittering on thehedgerows. 

"Your song, " said I, "would go well with the clash of cymbals or thepeal of the organ. I am no judge of melody, but this strikes me as thatof a religious hymn. "

"I compliment you on the guess. It is a Persian fire-worshipper's hymnto the sun. The dialect is very different from modern Persian. Cyrus theGreat might have chanted it on his march upon Babylon. "

"And where did you learn it?"

"In Persia itself. "

"You have travelled much, learned much, --and are so young and so fresh. Is it an impertinent question if I ask whether your parents are yetliving, or are you wholly lord of yourself?"

"Thank you for the question, --pray make my answer known in the town. Parents I have not, --never had. "

"Never had parents!"

"Well, I ought rather to say that no parents ever owned me. I am anatural son, a vagabond, a nobody. When I came of age I received ananonymous letter, informing me that a sum--I need not say what, butmore than enough for all I need--was lodged at an English banker's inmy name; that my mother had died in my infancy; that my father was alsodead--but recently; that as I was a child of love, and he was unwillingthat the secret of my birth should ever be traced, he had provided forme, not by will, but in his life, by a sum consigned to the trust of thefriend who now wrote to me; I need give myself no trouble to learn more. Faith, I never did! I am young, healthy, rich, --yes, rich! Now you knowall, and you had better tell it, that I may win no man's courtesy and nomaiden's love upon false pretences. I have not even a right, you see, tothe name I bear. Hist! let me catch that squirrel. "

With what a panther-like bound he sprang! The squirrel eluded his grasp, and was up the oak-tree; in a moment he was up the oak-tree too. Inamazement I saw him rising from bough to bough; saw his bright eyes andglittering teeth through the green leaves. Presently I heard the sharppiteous cry of the squirrel, echoed by the youth's merry laugh; anddown, through that maze of green, Hargrave came, dropping on the grassand bounding up, as Mercury might have bounded with his wings at hisheels. 

"I have caught him. What pretty brown eyes!"

Suddenly the gay expression of his face changed to that of a savage; thesquirrel had wrenched itself half-loose, and bitten him. The poor brute!In an instant its neck was wrung, its body dashed on the ground;and that fair young creature, every feature quivering with rage, wasstamping his foot on his victim again and again! It was horrible. Icaught him by the arm indignantly. He turned round on me like a wildbeast disturbed from its prey, --his teeth set, his hand lifted, his eyeslike balls of fire. 

"Shame!" said I, calmly; "shame on you!"

He continued to gaze on me a moment or so, his eye glaring, his breathpanting; and then, as if mastering himself with an involuntary effort, his arm dropped to his side, and he said quite humbly, "I beg yourpardon; indeed I do. I was beside myself for a moment; I cannot bearpain;" and he looked in deep compassion for himself at his wounded hand. "Venomous brute!" And he stamped again on the body of the squirrel, already crushed out of shape. 

I moved away in disgust, and walked on. 

But presently I felt my arm softly drawn aside, and a voice, dulcet asthe coo of a dove, stole its way into my ears. There was no resistingthe charm with which this extraordinary mortal could fascinate eventhe hard and the cold; nor them, perhaps, the least. For as you see inextreme old age, when the heart seems to have shrunk into itself, andto leave but meagre and nipped affections for the nearest relations ifgrown up, the indurated egotism softens at once towards a playful child;or as you see in middle life, some misanthrope, whose nature has beensoured by wrong and sorrow, shrink from his own species, yet makefriends with inferior races, and respond to the caress of a dog, --so, for the worldling or the cynic, there was an attraction in the freshnessof this joyous favourite of Nature, --an attraction like that of abeautiful child, spoilt and wayward, or of a graceful animal, halfdocile, half fierce. 

"But, " said I, with a smile, as I felt all displeasure gone, "suchindulgence of passion for such a trifle is surely unworthy a student ofphilosophy!"

"Trifle, " he said dolorously. "But I tell you it is pain; pain is notrifle. I suffer. Look!"

I looked at the hand, which I took in mine. The bite no doubt had beensharp; but the hand that lay in my own was that which the Greek sculptorgives to a gladiator; not large (the extremities are never largein persons whose strength comes from the just proportion of all themembers, rather than the factitious and partial force which continuedmuscular exertion will give to one part of the frame, to the comparativeweakening of the rest), but with the firm-knit joints, the solidfingers, the finished nails, the massive palm, the supple polished skin, in which we recognize what Nature designs the human hand to be, --theskilled, swift, mighty doer of all those marvels which win Natureherself from the wilderness. 

"It is strange, " said I, thoughtfully; "but your susceptibility tosuffering confirms my opinion, which is different from the popularbelief, --namely, that pain is most acutely felt by those in whom theanimal organization being perfect, and the sense of vitality exquisitelykeen, every injury or lesion finds the whole system rise, as it were, torepel the mischief and communicate the consciousness of it to all thosenerves which are the sentinels to the garrison of life. Yet my theoryis scarcely borne out by general fact. The Indian savages must have ahealth as perfect as yours; a nervous system as fine, --witness theirmarvellous accuracy of ear, of eye, of scent, probably also of touch;yet they are indifferent to physical pain; or must I mortify your prideby saying that they have some moral quality defective in you whichenables them to rise superior to it?"

"The Indian savages, " said Margrave, sullenly, "have not a healthas perfect as mine, and in what you call vitality--the blissfulconsciousness of life--they are as sticks and stones compared to me. "

"How do you know?"

"Because I have lived with them. It is a fallacy to suppose that thesavage has a health superior to that of the civilized man, --if thecivilized man be but temperate; and even if not, he has the staminathat can resist for years the effect of excesses which would destroy thesavage in a month. As to the savage's fine perceptions of sense, suchdo not come from exquisite equilibrium of system, but are hereditaryattributes transmitted from race to race, and strengthened by trainingfrom infancy. But is a pointer stronger and healthier than a mastiff, because the pointer through long descent and early teaching creepsstealthily to his game and stands to it motionless? I will talk of thislater; now I suffer! Pain, pain! Has life any ill but pain?"

It so happened that I had about me some roots of the white lily, which Imeant, before returning home, to leave with a patient suffering from oneof those acute local inflammations, in which that simple remedy oftenaffords great relief. I cut up one of these roots, and bound the coolingleaves to the wounded hand with my handkerchief. 

"There, " said I. "Fortunately if you feel pain more sensibly thanothers, you will recover from it more quickly. " And in a few minutes mycompanion felt perfectly relieved, and poured out his gratitude with anextravagance of expression and a beaming delight of countenance whichpositively touched me. 

"I almost feel, " said I, "as I do when I have stilled an infant'swailing, and restored it smiling to its mother's breast. "

"You have done so. I am an infant, and Nature is my mother. Oh, to berestored to the full joy of life, the scent of wild flowers, the song ofbirds, and this air--summer air--summer air!"

I know not why it was, but at that moment, looking at him and hearinghim, I rejoiced that Lilian was not at L----. "But I came out to bathe. Can we not bathe in that stream?"

"No. You would derange the bandage round your hand; and for all bodilyills, from the least to the gravest, there is nothing like leavingNature at rest the moment we have hit on the means which assist her ownefforts at cure. "

"I obey, then; but I so love the water. "

"You swim, of course?"

"Ask the fish if it swim. Ask the fish if it can escape me! I delight todive down--down; to plunge after the startled trout, as an otter does;and then to get amongst those cool, fragrant reeds and bulrushes, orthat forest of emerald weed which one sometimes finds waving under clearrivers. Man! man! could you live but an hour of my life you would knowhow horrible a thing it is to die!"

"Yet the dying do not think so; they pass away calm and smiling, as youwill one day. "

"I--I! die one day--die!" and he sank on the grass, and buried his faceamongst the herbage, sobbing aloud. 

Before I could get through half a dozen words I meant to soothe, hehad once more bounded up, dashed the tears from his eyes, and was againsinging some wild, barbaric chant. Abstracting itself from the appeal toits outward sense by melodies of which the language was unknown, my mindsoon grew absorbed in meditative conjectures on the singular nature, so wayward, so impulsive, which had forced intimacy on a man grave andpractical as myself. 

I was puzzled how to reconcile so passionate a childishness, soundisciplined a want of self-control, with an experience of mankind soextended by travel, with an education desultory and irregular indeed, but which must, at some time or other, have been familiarized to severereasonings and laborious studies. In Margrave there seemed to be wantingthat mysterious something which is needed to keep our faculties, howeverseverally brilliant, harmoniously linked together, --as the string bywhich a child mechanically binds the wildflowers it gathers, shapingthem at choice into the garland or the chain. 

(1) "According to the views we have mentioned, we must ascribe life toa gas, that is, to an aeriform body. "--Liebig: "Organic Chemistry, "Mayfair's translation, p. 363. --It is perhaps not less superfluous to addthat Liebig does not support the views "according to which life must beascribed to a gas, " than it would be to state, had Dugald Stewart beenquoted as writing, "According to the views we have mentioned the mindis but a bundle of impressions, " that Dugald Stewart was not supporting, but opposing, the views of David Hume. The quotation is merely meant toshow, in the shortest possible compass, that there are views entertainedby speculative reasoners of our day which, according to Liebig, wouldlead to the inference at which Margrave so boldly arrives. Margraveis, however, no doubt, led to his belief by his reminiscences of VanHelmont, to whose discovery of gas he is referring. Van Helmont plainlyaffirms "that the arterial spirit of our life is of the nature of agas;" and in the same chapter (on the fiction of elementary complexionsand mixtures) says, "Seeing that the spirit of our life, since it is agas, is most mightily and swiftly affected by any other gas, " etc. Herepeats the same dogma in his treatise on "Long Life, " and indeed verygenerally throughout his writings, observing, in his chapter on theVital Air, that the spirit of life is a salt, sharp vapour, made of thearterial blood, etc. Liebig, therefore, in confuting some modern notionsas to the nature of contagion by miasma, is leading their reasoningsback to that assumption in the Brawn of physiological science by whichthe discoverer of gas exalted into the principle of life the substanceto which he first gave the name, now so familiarly known. It isnevertheless just to Van Helmont to add that his conception of the vitalprinciple was very far from being as purely materialistic as itwould seem to those unacquainted with his writings; for he carefullydistinguishes that principle of life which he ascribes to a gas, and bywhich he means the sensuous animal life, from the intellectual immortalprinciple of soul. Van Helmont, indeed, was a sincere believer of DivineRevelation. "The Lord Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, " sayswith earnest humility this daring genius, in that noble chapter "Onthe completing of the mind by the 'prayer of silence, ' and the lovingoffering tip of the heart, soul, and strength to the obedience ofthe Divine will, " from which some of the most eloquent of recentphilosophers, arguing against materialism, have borrowed largely insupport and in ornament of their lofty cause. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

My intercourse with Margrave grew habitual and familiar. He came tomy house every morning before sunrise; in the evenings we were againbrought together: sometimes in the houses to which we were both invited, sometimes at his hotel, sometimes in my own home. 

Nothing more perplexed me than his aspect of extreme youthfulness, contrasted with the extent of the travels, which, if he were to bebelieved, had left little of the known world unexplored. One day I askedhim bluntly how old he was. 

"How old do I look? How old should you suppose me to be?"

"I should have guessed you to be about twenty, till you spoke of havingcome of age some years ago. "

"Is it a sign of longevity when a man looks much younger than he is?"

"Conjoined with other signs, certainly!"

"Have I the other signs?"

"Yes, a magnificent, perhaps a matchless, constitutional organization. But you have evaded my question as to your age; was it an impertinenceto put it?"

"No. I came of age--let me see--three years ago. "

"So long since? Is it possible? I wish I had your secret!"

"Secret! What secret?"

"The secret of preserving so much of boyish freshness in the wear andtear of man-like passions and man-like thoughts. "

"You are still young yourself, --under forty?"

"Oh, yes! some years under forty. "

"And Nature gave you a grander frame and a finer symmetry of featurethan she bestowed on me. "

"Pooh! pooh! You have the beauty that must charm the eyes of woman, andthat beauty in its sunny forenoon of youth. Happy man! if you love andwish to be sure that you are loved again. "

"What you call love--the unhealthy sentiment, the feverish folly--leftbehind me, I think forever, when--"

"Ay, indeed, --when?"

"I came of age!"

"Hoary cynic! and you despise love! So did I once. Your time may come. "

"I think not. Does any animal, except man, love its fellow she-animal asman loves woman?"

"As man loves woman? No, I suppose not. "

"And why should the subject animals be wiser than their king? But toreturn: you would like to have my youth and my careless enjoyment ofyouth?"

"Can you ask, --who would not?" Margrave looked at me for a moment withunusual seriousness, and then, in the abrupt changes common to hiscapricious temperament, began to sing softly one of his barbaricchants, --a chant different from any I had heard him sing before, made, either by the modulation of his voice or the nature of the tune, sosweet that, little as music generally affected me, this thrilled to myvery heart's core. I drew closer and closer to him, and murmured when hepaused, --

"Is not that a love-song?"

"No;" said he, "it is the song by which the serpent-charmer charms theserpent. "

CHAPTER XXVI. 

Increased intimacy with my new acquaintance did not diminish the charmof his society, though it brought to light some startling defects, both in his mental and moral organization. I have before said thathis knowledge, though it had swept over a wide circuit and dipped intocurious, unfrequented recesses, was desultory and erratic. It certainlywas not that knowledge, sustained and aspiring, which the poet assuresus is "the wing on which we mount to heaven. " So, in his facultiesthemselves there were singular inequalities, or contradictions. Hispower of memory in some things seemed prodigious, but when examined itwas seldom accurate; it could apprehend, but did not hold together witha binding grasp what metaphysicians call "complex ideas. " He thus seemedunable to put it to any steadfast purpose in the sciences of whichit retained, vaguely and loosely, many recondite principles. Forthe sublime and beautiful in literature lie had no taste whatever. Apassionate lover of nature, his imagination had no response to the artsby which nature is expressed or idealized; wholly unaffected by poetryor painting. Of the fine arts, music alone attracted and pleased him. His conversation was often eminently suggestive, touching on much, whether in books or mankind, that set one thinking; but I never rememberhim to have uttered any of those lofty or tender sentiments which formthe connecting links between youth and genius; for if poets sing to theyoung, and the young hail their own interpreters in poets, it is becausethe tendency of both is to idealize the realities of life, --findingeverywhere in the real a something that is noble or fair, and making thefair yet fairer, and the noble nobler still. 

In Margrave's character there seemed no special vices, no specialvirtues; but a wonderful vivacity, joyousness, animal good-humour. Hewas singularly temperate, having a dislike to wine, perhaps from thatpurity of taste which belongs to health absolutely perfect. No healthfulchild likes alcohol; no animal, except man, prefers wine to water. 

But his main moral defect seemed to me in a want of sympathy, even wherehe professed attachment. He who could feel so acutely for himself, be unmanned by the bite of a squirrel, and sob at the thought that heshould one day die, was as callous to the sufferings of another as adeer who deserts and butts from him a wounded comrade. 

I give an instance of this hardness of heart where I should have leastexpected to find it in him. 

He had met and joined me as I was walking to visit a patient on theoutskirts of the town, when we fell in with a group of children, justlet loose for an hour or two from their day-school. Some of thesechildren joyously recognized him as having played with them at theirhomes; they ran up to him, and he seemed as glad as themselves at themeeting. 

He suffered them to drag him along with them, and became as merry andsportive as the youngest of the troop. 

"Well, " said I, laughing, "if you are going to play at leap-frog, praydon't let it be on the high road, or you will be run over by cartsand draymen; see that meadow just in front to the left, --off with youthere!"

"With all my heart, " cried Margrave, "while you pay your visit. Comealong, boys. "

A little urchin, not above six years old, but who was lame, began tocry; he could not run, --he should be left behind. 

Margrave stooped. "Climb on my shoulder, little one, and I'll be yourhorse. "

The child dried its tears, and delightedly obeyed. "Certainly, " said Ito myself, "Margrave, after all, must have a nature as gentle as it issimple. What other young man, so courted by all the allurements thatsteal innocence from pleasure, would stop in the thoroughfares to playwith children?"

The thought had scarcely passed through my mind when I heard a scream ofagony. Margrave had leaped the railing that divided the meadow from theroad, and, in so doing, the poor child, perched on his shoulder, had, perhaps from surprise or fright, loosened its hold and fallen heavily;its cries were piteous. Margrave clapped his hands to his ears, utteredan exclamation of anger, and not even stopping to lift up the boy, orexamine what the hurt was, called to the other children to come on, andwas soon rolling with them on the grass, and pelting them with daisies. When I came up, only one child remained by the sufferer, -his littlebrother, a year older than himself. The child had fallen on his arm, which was not broken, but violently contused. The pain must have beenintense. I carried the child to his home, and had to remain there sometime. I did not see Margrave till the next morning. When he then called, I felt so indignant that I could scarcely speak to him. When at lastI rebuked him for his inhumanity, he seemed surprised; with difficultyremembered the circumstance, and then merely said, as if it were themost natural confession in the world, "Oh, nothing so discordant as a child's wail. I hate discords. I ampleased with the company of children; but they must be children wholaugh and play. Well, why do you look at me so sternly? What have I saidto shock you?"

"Shock me! you shock manhood itself! Go; I cannot talk to you now. I ambusy. "

But he did not go; and his voice was so sweet, and his ways so winning, that disgust insensibly melted into that sort of forgiveness one accords(let me repeat the illustration) to the deer that forsakes its comrade. The poor thing knows no better. And what a graceful beautiful thing thiswas!

The fascination--I can give it no other name--which Margrave exercised, was not confined to me; it was universal, --old, young, high, low, man, woman, child, all felt it. Never in Low Town had stranger, even the mostdistinguished by fame, met with a reception so cordial, so flattering. His frank confession that he was a natural son, far from being to hisinjury, served to interest people more in him, and to prevent all thoseinquiries in regard to his connections and antecedents which wouldotherwise have been afloat. To be sure, he was evidently rich, --at leasthe had plenty of money. He lived in the best rooms in the principalhotel; was very hospitable; entertained the families with whom he hadgrown intimate; made them bring their children, --music and dancingafter dinner. Among the houses in which he had established familiaracquaintance was that of the mayor of the town, who had bought Dr. Lloyd's collection of subjects in natural history. To that collectionthe mayor had added largely by a very recent purchase. He had arrangedthese various specimens, which his last acquisitions had enriched bythe interesting carcasses of an elephant and a hippopotamus, in a largewooden building contiguous to his dwelling, which had been constructedby a former proprietor (a retired fox-hunter) as a riding-house; andbeing a man who much affected the diffusion of knowledge, he proposedto open this museum to the admiration of the general public, and, athis death, to bequeath it to the Athenaeum or Literary Institute ofhis native town. Margrave, seconded by the influence of the mayor'sdaughters, had scarcely been three days at L---- before he had persuadedthis excellent and public-spirited functionary to inaugurate the openingof his museum by the popular ceremony of a ball. A temporary corridorshould unite the drawing-rooms, which were on the ground floor, withthe building that contained the collection; and thus the fete would beelevated above the frivolous character of a fashionable amusement, andconsecrated to the solemnization of an intellectual institute. Dazzledby the brilliancy of this idea, the mayor announced his intention togive a ball that should include the surrounding neighbourhood, and beworthy, in all expensive respects, of the dignity of himself and theoccasion. A night had been fixed for the ball, --a night that becamememorable indeed to me! The entertainment was anticipated with a livelyinterest, in which even the Hill condescended to share. The Hill didnot much patronize mayors in general; but when a Mayor gave a ball fora purpose so patriotic, and on a scale so splendid, the Hill liberallyacknowledged that Commerce was, on the whole, a thing which the Eminencemight, now and then, condescend to acknowledge without absolutelyderogating from the rank which Providence had assigned to it amongst theHigh Places of earth. Accordingly, the Hill was permitted by its Queento honour the first magistrate of Low Town by a promise to attendhis ball. Now, as this festivity had originated in the suggestion ofMargrave, so, by a natural association of ideas, every one, in talkingof the ball, talked also of Margrave. 

The Hill had at first affected to ignore a stranger whose debut had beenmade in the mercantile circle of Low Town. But the Queen of the Hill nowsaid, sententiously, "This new man in a few days has become a Celebrity. It is the policy of the Hill to adopt Celebrities, if the Celebritiespay respect to the Proprieties. Dr. Fenwick is requested to procure Mr. Margrave the advantage of being known to the Hill. "

I found it somewhat difficult to persuade Margrave to accept the Hill'scondescending overture. He seemed to have a dislike to all societiespretending to aristocratic distinction, --a dislike expressed with afierceness so unwonted, that it made one suppose he had, at some timeor other, been subjected to mortification by the supercilious airs thatblow upon heights so elevated. However, he yielded to my instances, andaccompanied me one evening to Mrs. Poyntz's house. The Hill was encampedthere for the occasion. Mrs. Poyntz was exceedingly civil to him, andafter a few commonplace speeches, hearing that he was fond of music, consigned him to the caressing care of Miss Brabazon, who was atthe head of the musical department in the Queen of the Hill'sadministration. 

Mrs. Poyntz retired to her favourite seat near the window, inviting meto sit beside her; and while she knitted in silence, in silence my eyeglanced towards Margrave, in the midst of the group assembled round thepiano. 

Whether he was in more than usually high spirits, or whether he wasactuated by a malign and impish desire to upset the established laws ofdecorum by which the gayeties of the Hill were habitually subdued intoa serene and somewhat pensive pleasantness, I know not; but it was notmany minutes before the orderly aspect of the place was grotesquelychanged. 

Miss Brabazon having come to the close of a complicated and drearysonata, I heard Margrave abruptly ask her if she could play theTarantella, that famous Neapolitan air which is founded on the legendarybelief that the bite of the tarantula excites an irresistible desire todance. On that highbred spinster's confession that she was ignorant ofthe air, and had not even heard of the legend, Margrave said, "Let meplay it to you, with variations of my own. " Miss Brabazon graciouslyyielded her place at the instrument. Margrave seated himself, --there wasgreat curiosity to hear his performance. Margrave's fingers rushed overthe keys, and there was a general start, the prelude was so unlike anyknown combination of harmonious sounds. Then he began a chant--song Ican scarcely call it--words certainly not in Italian, perhaps in someuncivilized tongue, perhaps in impromptu gibberish. And the torture ofthe instrument now commenced in good earnest: it shrieked, it groaned, wilder and noisier. Beethoven's Storm, roused by the fell touch ofa German pianist, were mild in comparison; and the mighty voice, dominating the anguish of the cracking keys, had the full diapason of achorus. Certainly I am no judge of music, but to my ear the discord wasterrific, --to the ears of better informed amateurs it seemed ravishing. All were spellbound; even Mrs. Poyntz paused from her knitting, as theFates paused from their web at the lyre of Orpheus. To this breathlessdelight, however, soon succeeded a general desire for movement. To myamazement, I beheld these formal matrons and sober fathers of familiesforming themselves into a dance, turbulent as a children's ball atChristmas; and when, suddenly desisting from his music, Margrave startedup, caught the skeleton hand of lean Miss Brabazon, and whirled herinto the centre of the dance, I could have fancied myself at a witch'ssabbat. My eye turned in scandalized alarm towards Mrs. Poyntz. Thatgreat creature seemed as much astounded as myself. Her eyes were fixedon the scene in a stare of positive stupor. For the first time, nodoubt, in her life, she was overcome, deposed, dethroned. The awe of herpresence was literally whirled away. The dance ceased as suddenly as ithad begun. Darting from the galvanized mummy whom he had selected as hispartner, Margrave shot to Mrs. Poyntz's side, and said, "Ten thousandpardons for quitting you so soon, but the clock warns me that I have anengagement elsewhere. " In another moment he was gone. 

The dance halted, people seemed slowly returning to their senses, looking at each other bashfully and ashamed. 

"I could not help it, dear, " sighed Miss Brabazon at last, sinking intoa chair, and casting her deprecating, fainting eyes upon the hostess. 

"It is witchcraft, " said fat Mrs. Bruce, wiping her forehead. 

"Witchcraft!" echoed Mrs. Poyntz; "it does indeed look like it. Anamazing and portentous exhibition of animal spirits, and not to beendured by the Proprieties. Where on earth can that young savage havecome from?"

"From savage lands, " said I, --"so he says. "

"Do not bring him here again, " said Mrs. Poyntz. "He would soon turn theHill topsy-turvy. But how charming! I should like to see more of him, "she added, in an under voice, "if he would call on me some morning, andnot in the presence of those for whose Proprieties I am responsible. Jane must be out in her ride with the colonel. "

Margrave never again attended the patrician festivities of the Hill. Invitations were poured upon him, especially by Miss Brabazon and theother old maids, but in vain. 

"Those people, " said he, "are too tamed and civilized for me; and sofew young persons among them. Even that girl Jane is only young on thesurface; inside, as old as the World or her mother. I like youth, realyouth, --I am young, I am young!"

And, indeed, I observed he would attach himself to some young person, often to some child, as if with cordial and special favour, yet fornot more than an hour or so, never distinguishing them by the samepreference when he next met them. I made that remark to him, in rebukeof his fickleness, one evening when he had found me at work on myAmbitious Book, reducing to rule and measure the Laws of Nature. 

"It is not fickleness, " said he, --"it is necessity. "

"Necessity! Explain yourself. "

"I seek to find what I have not found, " said he; "it is my necessityto seek it, and among the young; and disappointed in one, I turn to theother. Necessity again. But find it at last I must. "

"I suppose you mean what the young usually seek in the young; and if, as you said the other day, you have left love behind you, you now wanderback to re-find it. "

"Tush! If I may judge by the talk of young fools, love may be foundevery day by him who looks out for it. What I seek is among the rarestof all discoveries. You might aid me to find it, and in so doing aidyourself to a knowledge far beyond all that your formal experiments canbestow. "

"Prove your words, and command my services, " said I, smiling somewhatdisdainfully. 

"You told me that you had examined into the alleged phenomena of animalmagnetism, and proved some persons who pretend to the gift which theScotch call second sight to be bungling impostors. You were right. Ihave seen the clairvoyants who drive their trade in this town; a commongipsy could beat them in their own calling. But your experience musthave shown you that there are certain temperaments in which the giftof the Pythoness is stored, unknown to the possessor, undetected by thecommon observer; but the signs of which should be as apparent to themodern physiologist, as they were to the ancient priest. "

"I at least, as a physiologist, am ignorant of the signs: what arethey?"

"I should despair of making you comprehend them by mere verbaldescription. I could guide your observation to distinguish themunerringly were living subjects before us. But not one in a million hasthe gift to an extent available for the purposes to which the wise wouldapply it. Many have imperfect glimpses; few, few indeed, the unveiled, lucent sight. They who have but the imperfect glimpses mislead anddupe the minds that consult them, because, being sometimes marvellouslyright, they excite a credulous belief in their general accuracy; and asthey are but translators of dreams in their own brain, their assurancesare no more to be trusted than are the dreams of commonplace sleepers. But where the gift exists to perfection, he who knows how to direct andto profit by it should be able to discover all that he desires to knowfor the guidance and preservation of his own life. He will be forewarnedof every danger, forearmed in the means by which danger is avoided. For the eye of the true Pythoness matter has no obstruction, space noconfines, time no measurement. "

"My dear Margrave, you may well say that creatures so gifted are rare;and, for my part, I would as soon search for a unicorn, as, to use youraffected expression, for a Pythoness. "

"Nevertheless, whenever there come across the course of your practicesome young creature to whom all the evil of the world is as yet unknown, to whom the ordinary cares and duties of the world are strange andunwelcome; who from the earliest dawn of reason has loved to sit apartand to muse; before whose eyes visions pass unsolicited; who converseswith those who are not dwellers on the earth, and beholds in the spacelandscapes which the earth does not reflect--"

"Margrave, Margrave! of whom do you speak?"

"Whose frame, though exquisitely sensitive, has still a health anda soundness in which you recognize no disease; whose mind has atruthfulness that you know cannot deceive you, and a simple intelligencetoo clear to deceive itself; who is moved to a mysterious degree byall the varying aspects of external nature, --innocently joyous, or unaccountably sad, --when, I say, such a being comes across yourexperience, inform me; and the chances are that the true Pythoness isfound. "

I had listened with vague terror, and with more than one exclamation ofamazement, to descriptions which brought Lilian Ashleigh before me;and I now sat mute, bewildered, breathless, gazing upon Margrave, andrejoicing that, at least, Lilian he had never seen. 

He returned my own gaze steadily, searchingly, and then, breaking into aslight laugh, resumed:--

"You call my word 'Pythoness' affected. I know of no better. Myrecollections of classic anecdote and history are confused and dim;but somewhere I have read or heard that the priests of Delphi wereaccustomed to travel chiefly into Thrace or Thessaly, in search of thevirgins who might fitly administer their oracles, and that the oraclesgradually ceased in repute as the priests became unable to discover theorganization requisite in the priestesses, and supplied by craft andimposture, or by such imperfect fragmentary developments as belong nowto professional clairvoyants, the gifts which Nature failed to afford. Indeed, the demand was one that mast have rapidly exhausted so limiteda supply. The constant strain upon faculties so wearying to the vitalfunctions in their relentless exercise, under the artful stimulants bywhich the priests heightened their power, was mortal, and no Pythonessever retained her life more than three years from the time that her giftwas elaborately trained and developed. "

"Pooh! I know of no classical authority for the details you soconfidently cite. Perhaps some such legends may be found in theAlexandrian Platonists, but those mystics are no authority on such asubject. After all;" I added, recovering from my first surprise, or awe, "the Delphic oracles were proverbially ambiguous, and their responsesmight be read either way, --a proof that the priests dictated the verses, though their arts on the unhappy priestess might throw her into realconvulsions, and the real convulsions, not the false gift, might shortenher life. Enough of such idle subjects! Yet no! one question more. Ifyou found your Pythoness, what then?"

"What then? Why, through her aid I might discover the process of anexperiment which your practical science would assist me to complete. "

"Tell me of what kind is your experiment; and precisely because suchlittle science as I possess is exclusively practical, I may assist youwithout the help of the Pythoness. "

Margrave was silent for some minutes, passing his hand several timesacross his forehead, which was a frequent gesture of his, and thenrising, he answered, in listless accents, --

"I cannot say more now, my brain is fatigued; and you are not yet in theright mood to hear me. By the way, how close and reserved you are withme!"

"How so?"

"You never told me that you were engaged to be married. You leave me, who thought to have won your friendship, to hear what concerns you sointimately from a comparative stranger. "

"Who told you?"

"That woman with eyes that pry and lips that scheme, to whose house youtook me. "

"Mrs. Poyntz! is it possible? When?"

"This afternoon. I met her in the street; she stopped me, and, aftersome unmeaning talk, asked if I had seen you lately; if I did not findyou very absent and distracted: no wonder;--you were in love. The younglady was away on a visit, and wooed by a dangerous rival. "

"Wooed by a dangerous rival!"

"Very rich, good-looking, young. Do you fear him? You turn pale. "

"I do not fear, except so far as he who loves truly, loves humbly, and fears not that another may be preferred, but that another may beworthier of preference than himself. But that Mrs. Poyntz should tellyou all this does amaze me. Did she mention the name of the young lady?"

"Yes; Lilian Ashleigh. Henceforth be more frank with me. Who knows? Imay help you. Adieu!"

CHAPTER XXVII. 

When Margrave had gone, I glanced at the clock, --not yet nine. Iresolved to go at once to Mrs. Poyntz. It was not an evening onwhich she received, but doubtless she would see me. She owed me anexplanation. How thus carelessly divulge a secret she had been enjoinedto keep; and this rival, of whom I was ignorant? It was no longer amatter of wonder that Hargrave should have described Lilian's peculiaridiosyncrasies in his sketch of his fabulous Pythoness. Doubtless Mrs. Poyntz had, with unpardonable levity of indiscretion, revealed all ofwhich she disapproved in my choice. But for what object? Was thisher boasted friendship for me? Was it consistent with the regard sheprofessed for Mrs. Ashleigh and Lilian? Occupied by these perplexed andindignant thoughts, I arrived at Mrs. Poyntz's house, and was admittedto her presence. She was fortunately alone; her daughter and the colonelhad gone to some party on the Hill. I would not take the hand she heldout to me on entrance; seated myself in stern displeasure, and proceededat once to inquire if she had really betrayed to Mr. Margrave the secretof my engagement to Lilian. 

"Yes, Allen Fenwick; I have this day told, not only Mr. Margrave, butevery person I met who is likely to tell it to some one else, the secretof your engagement to Lilian Ashleigh. I never promised to conceal it;on the contrary, I wrote word to Anne Ashleigh that I would thereinact as my own judgment counselled me. I think my words to you were that'public gossip was sometimes the best security for the completion ofprivate engagements. '"

"Do you mean that Mrs. Or Miss Ashleigh recoils from the engagement withme, and that I should meanly compel them both to fulfil it by calling inthe public to censure them--if--if--Oh, madam, this is worldly artificeindeed!"

"Be good enough to listen to me quietly. I have never yet showed you theletter to Mrs. Ashleigh, written by Lady Haughton, and delivered by Mr. Vigors. That letter I will now show to you; but before doing so I mustenter into a preliminary explanation. Lady Haughton is one of thosewomen who love power, and cannot obtain it except through wealth andstation, --by her own intellect never obtain it. When her husband diedshe was reduced from an income of twelve thousand a year to a jointureof twelve hundred, but with the exclusive guardianship of a young son, aminor, and adequate allowances for the charge; she continued, therefore, to preside as mistress over the establishments in town and country;still had the administration of her son's wealth and rank. She stintedhis education, in order to maintain her ascendancy over him. He becamea brainless prodigal, spendthrift alike of health and fortune. Alarmed, she saw that, probably, he would die young and a beggar; his only hopeof reform was in marriage. She reluctantly resolved to marry him to apenniless, well-born, soft-minded young lady whom she knew she couldcontrol; just before this marriage was to take place he was killed bya fall from his horse. The Haughton estate passed to his cousin, theluckiest young man alive, --the same Ashleigh Sumner who had alreadysucceeded, in default of male issue, to poor Gilbert Ashleigh'slanded possessions. Over this young man Lady Haughton could expect noinfluence. She would be a stranger in his house. But she had a niece!Mr. Vigors assured her the niece was beautiful. And if the niececould become Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner, then Lady Haughton would be a lessunimportant Nobody in the world, because she would still have hernearest relation in a Somebody at Haughton Park. Mr. Vigors has hisown pompous reasons for approving an alliance which he might help toaccomplish. The first step towards that alliance was obviously to bringinto reciprocal attraction the natural charms of the young lady and theacquired merits of the young gentleman. Mr. Vigors could easily inducehis ward to pay a visit to Lady Haughton, and Lady Haughton had only toextend her invitations to her niece; hence the letter to Mrs. Ashleigh, of which Mr. Vigors was the bearer, and hence my advice to you, of whichyou can now understand the motive. Since you thought Lilian Ashleigh theonly woman you could love, and since I thought there were other women inthe world who might do as well for Ashleigh Sumner, it seemed to mefair for all parties that Lilian should not go to Lady Haughton's inignorance of the sentiments with which she had inspired you. A girl canseldom be sure that she loves until she is sure that she is loved. And now, " added Mrs. Poyntz, rising and walking across the room toher bureau, --"now I will show you Lady Haughton's invitation to Mrs. Ashleigh. Here it is!"

I ran my eye over the letter, which she thrust into my hand, resumingher knitting-work while I read. 

The letter was short, couched in conventional terms of hollow affection. The writer blamed herself for having so long neglected her brother'swidow and child; her heart had been wrapped up too much in the son shehad lost; that loss had made her turn to the ties of blood still left toher; she had heard much of Lilian from their common friend, Mr. Vigors;she longed to embrace so charming a niece. Then followed the invitationand the postscript. The postscript ran thus, so far as I can remember:--

 "Whatever my own grief at my irreparable bereavement, I am no egotist; I keep my sorrow to myself. You will find some pleasant guests at my house, among others our joint connection, young Ashleigh Sumner. "

"Woman's postscripts are proverbial for their significance, " said Mrs. Poyntz, when I had concluded the letter and laid it on the table; "andif I did not at once show you this hypocritical effusion, it was simplybecause at the name Ashleigh Sumner its object became transparent, not perhaps to poor Anne Ashleigh nor to innocent Lilian, but to myknowledge of the parties concerned, as it ought to be to that shrewdintelligence which you derive partly from nature, partly from theinsight into life which a true physician cannot fail to acquire. And ifI know anything of you, you would have romantically said, had you seenthe letter at first, and understood its covert intention, 'Let me notshackle the choice of the woman I love, and to whom an alliance socoveted in the eyes of the world might, if she were left free, beproffered. '"

"I should not have gathered from the postscript all that you see in it;but had its purport been so suggested to me, you are right, I shouldhave so said. Well, and as Mr. Margrave tells me that you informed himthat I have a rival, I am now to conclude that the rival is Mr. AshleighSumner?"

"Has not Mrs. Ashleigh or Lilian mentioned him in writing to you?"

"Yes, both; Lilian very slightly, Mrs. Ashleigh with some praise, as ayoung man of high character, and very courteous to her. "

"Yet, though I asked you to come and tell me who were the guests at LadyHaughton's, you never did so. "

"Pardon me; but of the guests I thought nothing, and letters addressedto my heart seemed to me too sacred to talk about. And Ashleigh Sumnerthen courts Lilian! How do you know?"

"I know everything that concerns me; and here, the explanation issimple. My aunt, Lady Delafield, is staying with Lady Haughton. LadyDelafield is one of the women of fashion who shine by their own light;Lady Haughton shines by borrowed light, and borrows every ray she canfind. "

"And Lady Delafield writes you word--"

"That Ashleigh Sumner is caught by Lilian's beauty. "

"And Lilian herself--"

"Women like Lady Delafield do not readily believe that any girlcould refuse Ashleigh Sumner; considered in himself, he is steady andgood-looking; considered as owner of Kirby Hall and Haughton Park, hehas, in the eyes of any sensible mother, the virtues of Cato and thebeauty of Antinous. "

I pressed my hand to my heart; close to my heart lay a letter fromLilian, and there was no word in that letter which showed that her heartwas gone from mine. I shook my head gently, and smiled in confidingtriumph. 

Mrs. Poyntz surveyed me with a bent brow and a compressed lip. 

"I understand your smile, " she said ironically. "Very likely Lilian maybe quite untouched by this young man's admiration, but Anne Ashleigh maybe dazzled by so brilliant a prospect for her daughter; and, in short, Ithought it desirable to let your engagement be publicly known throughoutthe town to-day. That information will travel; it will reach AshleighSumner through Mr. Vigors, or others in this neighbourhood, with whom Iknow that he corresponds. It will bring affairs to a crisis, and beforeit may be too late. I think it well that Ashleigh Sumner should leavethat house; if he leave it for good, so much the better. And, perhaps, the sooner Lilian returns to L---- the lighter your own heart will be. "

"And for these reasons you have published the secret of--"

"Your engagement? Yes. Prepare to be congratulated wherever you go. Andnow if you hear either from mother or daughter that Ashleigh Sumner hasproposed, and been, let us say, refused, I do not doubt that, in thepride of your heart, you will come and tell me. "

"Rely upon it, I will; but before I take leave, allow me to ask why youdescribed to a young man like Mr. Margrave--, whose wild and strangehumours you have witnessed and not approved--any of those traits ofcharacter in Miss Ashleigh which distinguish her from other girls of herage?"

"I? You mistake. I said nothing to him of her character. I mentioned hername, and said she was beautiful, that was all. "

"Nay, you said that she was fond of musing, of solitude; that in herfancies she believed in the reality of visions which might flit beforeher eyes as they flit before the eyes of all imaginative dreamers. "

"Not a word did I say to Mr. Margrave of such peculiarities in Lilian;not a word more than what I have told you, on my honour!"

Still incredulous, but disguising my incredulity with that convenientsmile by which we accomplish so much of the polite dissimulationindispensable to the decencies of civilized life, I took my departure, returned home, and wrote to Lilian. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

The conversation with Mrs. Poyntz left my mind restless and disquieted. I had no doubt, indeed, of Lilian's truth; but could I be sure thatthe attentions of a young man, with advantages of fortune so brilliant, would not force on her thoughts the contrast of the humbler lot and theduller walk of life in which she had accepted as companion a man removedfrom her romantic youth less by disparity of years than by gravityof pursuits? And would my suit now be as welcomed as it had been by amother even so unworldly as Mrs. Ashleigh? Why, too, should both motherand daughter have left me so unprepared to hear that I had a rival; whynot have implied some consoling assurance that such rivalry need notcause me alarm? Lilian's letters, it is true, touched but little on anyof the persons round her; they were filled with the outpourings ofan ingenuous heart, coloured by the glow of a golden fancy. They werewritten as if in the wide world we two stood apart alone, consecratedfrom the crowd by the love that, in linking us together, had hallowedeach to the other. Mrs. Ashleigh's letters were more general anddiffusive, --detailed the habits of the household, sketched the guests, intimated her continued fear of Lady Haughton, but had said nothing moreof Mr. Ashleigh Sumner than I had repeated to Mrs. Poyntz. However, inmy letter to Lilian I related the intelligence that had reached me, andimpatiently I awaited her reply. 

Three days after the interview with Mrs. Poyntz, and two days before thelong-anticipated event of the mayor's ball, I was summoned to attenda nobleman who had lately been added to my list of patients, and whoseresidence was about twelve miles from L----. The nearest way was throughSir Philip Derval's park. I went on horseback, and proposed to stop onthe way to inquire after the steward, whom I had seen but once since hisfit, and that was two days after it, when he called himself at myhouse to thank me for my attendance, and to declare that he was quiterecovered. 

As I rode somewhat fast through the park, I came, however, upon thesteward, just in front of the house. I reined in my horse and accostedhim. He looked very cheerful. 

"Sir, " said he, in a whisper, "I have heard from Sir Philip; his letteris dated since--since-my good woman told you what I saw, --well, sincethen. So that it must have been all a delusion of mine, as you told her. And yet, well--well--we will not talk of it, doctor; but I hope you havekept the secret. Sir Philip would not like to hear of it, if he comesback. "

"Your secret is quite safe with me. But is Sir Philip likely to comeback?"

"I hope so, doctor. His letter is dated Paris, and that's nearer homethan he has been for many years; and--but bless me! some one is comingout of the house, --a young gentleman! Who can it be?"

I looked, and to my surprise I saw Margrave descending the statelystairs that led from the front door. The steward turned towards him, and I mechanically followed, for I was curious to know what had broughtMargrave to the house of the long-absent traveller. 

It was easily explained. Mr. Margrave had heard at L---- much of thepictures and internal decorations of the mansion. He had, by dintof coaxing (he said, with his enchanting laugh), persuaded the oldhousekeeper to show him the rooms. 

"It is against Sir Philip's positive orders to show the house to anystranger, sir; and the housekeeper has done very wrong, " said thesteward. 

"Pray don't scold her. I dare say Sir Philip would not have refused me apermission he might not give to every idle sightseer. Fellow-travellershave a freemasonry with each other; and I have been much in the samefar countries as himself. I heard of him there, and could tell you moreabout him, I dare say, than you know yourself. "

"You, sir! pray do then. "

"The next time I come, " said Margrave, gayly; and, with a nod to me, he glided off through the trees of the neighbouring grove, along thewinding footpath that led to the lodge. 

"A very cool gentleman, " muttered the steward; "but what pleasant wayshe has! You seem to know him, sir. Who is he, may I ask?"

"Mr. Margrave, --a visitor at L----, and he has been a great traveller, as he says; perhaps he met Sir Philip abroad. "

"I must go and hear what he said to Mrs. Gates; excuse me, sir, but I amso anxious about Sir Philip. "

"If it be not too great a favour, may I be allowed the same privilegegranted to Mr. Margrave? To judge by the outside of the house, theinside must be worth seeing; still, if it be against Sir Philip'spositive orders--"

"His orders were, not to let the Court become a show-house, --to admitnone without my consent; but I should be ungrateful indeed, doctor, if Irefused that consent to you. "

I tied my horse to the rusty gate of the terrace-walk, and followedthe steward up the broad stairs of the terrace. The great doors wereunlocked. We entered a lofty hall with a domed ceiling; at the back ofthe hall the grand staircase ascended by a double flight. The design wasundoubtedly Vanbrugh's, --an architect who, beyond all others, soughtthe effect of grandeur less in space than in proportion; but Vanbrugh'sdesigns need the relief of costume and movement, and the forms of a morepompous generation, in the bravery of velvets and laces, glancing amidthose gilded columns, or descending with stately tread those broadpalatial stairs. His halls and chambers are so made for festival andthrong, that they become like deserted theatres, inexpressibly desolate, as we miss the glitter of the lamps and the movement of the actors. 

The housekeeper had now appeared, --a quiet, timid old woman. She excusedherself for admitting Margrave--not very intelligibly. It was plainto see that she had, in truth, been unable to resist what the stewardtermed his "pleasant ways. "

As if to escape from a scolding, she talked volubly all the time, bustling nervously through the rooms, along which I followed herguidance with a hushed footstep. The principal apartments were on theground-floor, or rather, a floor raised some ten or fifteen feet abovethe ground; they had not been modernized since the date in which theywere built. Hangings of faded silk; tables of rare marble, and moulderedgilding; comfortless chairs at drill against the walls; pictures, ofwhich connoisseurs alone could estimate the value, darkened by dust orblistered by sun and damp, made a general character of discomfort. Onnot one room, on not one nook, still lingered some old smile of home. 

Meanwhile, I gathered from the housekeeper's rambling answers toquestions put to her by the steward, as I moved on, glancing at thepictures, that Margrave's visit that day was not his first. He had beento the house twice before, --his ostensible excuse that he was an amateurin pictures (though, as I had before observed, for that department ofart he had no taste); but each time he had talked much of Sir Philip. Hesaid that though not personally known to him, he had resided in the sametowns abroad, and had friends equally intimate with Sir Philip; but whenthe steward inquired if the visitor had given any information as tothe absentee, it became very clear that Margrave had been rather askingquestions than volunteering intelligence. 

We had now come to the end of the state apartments, the last of whichwas a library. "And, " said the old woman, "I don't wonder the gentlemanknew Sir Philip, for he seemed a scholar, and looked very hard over thebooks, especially those old ones by the fireplace, which Sir Philip, Heaven bless him, was always poring into. "

Mechanically I turned to the shelves by the fireplace, and examined thevolumes ranged in that department. I found they contained the worksof those writers whom we may class together under the title ofmystics, --Iamblichus and Plotinus; Swedenborg and Behmen; Sandivogius, Van Helmont, Paracelsus, Cardan. Works, too, were there, by writers lessrenowned, on astrology, geomancy, chiromancy, etc. I began to understandamong what class of authors Margrave had picked up the strange notionswith which he was apt to interpolate the doctrines of practicalphilosophy. 

"I suppose this library was Sir Philip's usual sitting-room?" said I. 

"No, sir; he seldom sat here. This was his study;" and the old womanopened a small door, masked by false book backs. I followed her into aroom of moderate size, and evidently of much earlier date than the restof the house. "It is the only room left of an older mansion, " said thesteward in answer to my remark. "I have heard it was spared on accountof the chimneypiece. But there is a Latin inscription which will tellyou all about it. I don't know Latin myself. "

The chimneypiece reached to the ceiling. The frieze of the lower partrested on rude stone caryatides; the upper part was formed of oak panelsvery curiously carved in the geometrical designs favoured by the tasteprevalent in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, but different from anyI had ever seen in the drawings of old houses, --and I was not quiteunlearned in such matters, for my poor father was a passionate antiquaryin all that relates to mediaeval art. The design in the oak panels wascomposed of triangles interlaced with varied ingenuity, and enclosed incircular bands inscribed with the signs of the Zodiac. 

On the stone frieze supported by the caryatides, immediately under thewoodwork, was inserted a metal plate, on which was written, in Latin, afew lines to the effect that "in this room, Simon Forman, the seekerof hidden truth, taking refuge from unjust persecution, made thosediscoveries in nature which he committed, for the benefit of a wiserage, to the charge of his protector and patron, the worshipful Sir MilesDerval, knight. "

Forman! The name was not quite unfamiliar to me; but it was not withoutan effort that my memory enabled me to assign it to one of the mostnotorious of those astrologers or soothsayers whom the superstition ofan earlier age alternately persecuted and honoured. 

The general character of the room was more cheerful than the statelierchambers I had hitherto passed through, for it had still the look ofhabitation, --the armchair by the fireplace; the kneehole writing-tablebeside it; the sofa near the recess of a large bay-window, withbook-prop and candlestick screwed to its back; maps, coiled in theircylinders, ranged under the cornice; low strong safes, skirtingtwo sides of the room, and apparently intended to hold papers andtitle-deeds, seals carefully affixed to their jealous locks. Placed onthe top of these old-fashioned receptacles were articles familiar tomodern use, --a fowling-piece here, fishing-rods there, two or threesimple flower-vases, a pile of music books, a box of crayons. Allin this room seemed to speak of residence and ownership, --of theidiosyncrasies of a lone single man, it is true, but of a man of one'sown time, --a country gentleman of plain habits but not uncultivatedtastes. 

I moved to the window; it opened by a sash upon a large balcony, fromwhich a wooden stair wound to a little garden, not visible in front ofthe house, surrounded by a thick grove of evergreens, through whichone broad vista was cut, and that vista was closed by a view of themausoleum. 

I stepped out into the garden, --a patch of sward with a fountain in thecentre, and parterres, now more filled with weeds than flowers. At theleft corner was a tall wooden summer-house or pavilion, --its door wideopen. "Oh, that's where Sir Philip used to study many a long summer'snight, " said the steward. 

"What! in that damp pavilion?"

"It was a pretty place enough then, sir; but it is very old, --they sayas old as the room you have just left. "

"Indeed, I must look at it, then. "

The walls of this summer-house had once been painted in the arabesquesof the Renaissance period; but the figures were now scarcely traceable. The woodwork had started in some places, and the sunbeams stole throughthe chinks and played on the floor, which was formed from old tilesquaintly tessellated and in triangular patterns; similar to those Ihad observed in the chimneypiece. The room in the pavilion was large, furnished with old worm-eaten tables and settles. "It was not only herethat Sir Philip studied, but sometimes in the room above, " said thesteward. 

"How do you get to the room above? Oh, I see; a stair case in theangle. " I ascended the stairs with some caution, for they were crookedand decayed; and, on entering the room above, comprehended at once whySir Philip had favoured it. 

The cornice of the ceiling rested on pilasters, within which thecompartments were formed into open unglazed arches, surrounded by arailed balcony. Through these arches, on three sides of the room, theeye commanded a magnificent extent of prospect. On the fourth side theview was bounded by the mausoleum. In this room was a large telescope;and on stepping into the balcony, I saw that a winding stair mountedthence to a platform on the top of the pavilion, --perhaps once used asan observatory by Forman himself. 

"The gentleman who was here to-day was very much pleased with thislook-out, sir, " said the housekeeper. "Who would not be? I suppose SirPhilip has a taste for astronomy. "

"I dare say, sir, " said the steward, looking grave; "he likes mostout-of-the-way things. "

The position of the sun now warned me that my time pressed, and that Ishould have to ride fast to reach my new patient at the hour appointed. I therefore hastened back to my horse, and spurred on, wonderingwhether, in the chain of association which so subtly links our pursuitsin manhood to our impressions in childhood, it was the Latin inscriptionon the chimneypiece that had originally biassed Sir Philip Derval'sliterary taste towards the mystic jargon of the books at which I hadcontemptuously glanced. 

CHAPTER XXIX. 

I did not see Margrave the following day, but the next morning, a littleafter sunrise, he walked into my study, according to his ordinary habit. 

"So you know something about Sir Philip Derval?" said I. "What sort of aman is he?"

"Hateful!" cried Margrave; and then checking himself, burst out intohis merry laugh. "Just like my exaggerations! I am not acquainted withanything to his prejudice. I came across his track once or twice in theEast. Travellers are always apt to be jealous of each other. "

"You are a strange compound of cynicism and credulity; but I should havefancied that you and Sir Philip would have been congenial spirits, whenI found, among his favourite books, Van Helmont and Paracelsus. Perhapsyou, too, study Swedenborg, or, worse still, Ptolemy and Lilly?"

"Astrologers? No! They deal with the future! I live for the day; only Iwish the day never had a morrow!"

"Have you not, then that vague desire for the something beyond, --thatnot unhappy, but grand discontent with the limits of the immediatePresent, from which man takes his passion for improvement and progress, and from which some sentimental philosophers have deduced an argument infavour of his destined immortality?"

"Eh!" said Margrave, with as vacant a stare as that of a peasant whomone has addressed in Hebrew. "What farrago of words is this? I do notcomprehend you. "

"With your natural abilities, " I asked with interest, "do you never feela desire for fame?"

"Fame? Certainly not. I cannot even understand it!"

"Well, then, would you have no pleasure in the thought that you hadrendered a service to humanity?"

Margrave looked bewildered; after a moment's pause, he took from thetable a piece of bread that chanced to be there, opened the window, andthrew the crumbs into the lane. The sparrows gathered round the crumbs. 

"Now, " said Margrave, "the sparrows come to that dull pavement for thebread that recruits their lives in this world; do you believe that onesparrow would be silly enough to fly to a house-top for the sake of somebenefit to other sparrows, or to be chirruped about after he was dead?I care for science as the sparrow cares for bread, --it may help me tosomething good for my own life; and as for fame and humanity, I carefor them as the sparrow cares for the general interest and posthumousapprobation of sparrows!"

"Margrave, there is one thing in you that perplexes me more thanall else--human puzzle as you are--in your many eccentricities andself-contradictions. "

"What is that one thing in me most perplexing?"

"This: that in your enjoyment of Nature you have all the freshness of achild, but when you speak of Man and his objects in the world, you talkin the vein of some worn-out and hoary cynic. At such times, were Ito close my eyes, I should say to myself, 'What weary old man is thusventing his spleen against the ambition which has failed, and the lovewhich has forsaken him?' Outwardly the very personation of youth, andrevelling like a butterfly in the warmth of the sun and the tints of theherbage, why have you none of the golden passions of the young, --theirbright dreams of some impossible love, their sublime enthusiasm forsome unattainable glory? The sentiment you have just clothed in theillustration by which you place yourself on a level with the sparrows istoo mean and too gloomy to be genuine at your age. Misanthropy is amongthe dismal fallacies of gray beards. No man, till man's energies leavehim, can divorce himself from the bonds of our social kind. "

"Our kind! Your kind, possibly; but I--" He swept his hand over hisbrow, and resumed, in strange, absent, and wistful accents: "I wonderwhat it is that is wanting here, and of which at moments I have adim reminiscence. " Again he paused, and gazing on me, said with moreappearance of friendly interest than I had ever before remarked in hiscountenance, "You are not looking well. Despite your great physicalstrength, you suffer like your own sickly patients. "

"True! I suffer at this moment, but not from bodily pain. "

"You have some cause of mental disquietude?"

"Who in this world has not?"

"I never have. "

"Because you own you have never loved. Certainly, you never seem to carefor any one but yourself; and in yourself you find an unbroken sunnyholiday, --high spirits, youth, health, beauty, wealth. Happy boy!"

At that moment my heart was heavy within me. 

Margrave resumed, --

"Among the secrets which your knowledge places at the command of yourart, what would you give for one which would enable you to defy andto deride a rival where you place your affections, which could lock toyourself, and imperiously control, the will of the being whom you desireto fascinate, by an influence paramount, transcendent?"

"Love has that secret, " said I, --"and love alone. "

"A power stronger than love can suspend, can change love itself. But iflove be the object or dream of your life, love is the rosy associateof youth and beauty. Beauty soon fades, youth soon departs. What ifin nature there were means by which beauty and youth can be fixed intoblooming duration, --means that could arrest the course, nay, repair theeffects, of time on the elements that make up the human frame?"

"Silly boy! Have the Rosicrucians bequeathed to you a prescription forthe elixir of life?"

"If I had the prescription I should not ask your aid to discover itsingredients. "

"And is it in the hope of that notable discovery you have studiedchemistry, electricity, and magnetism? Again I say, Silly boy!"

Margrave did not heed my reply. His face was overcast, gloomy, troubled. 

"That the vital principle is a gas, " said he, abruptly, "I am fullyconvinced. Can that gas be the one which combines caloric with oxygen?"

"Phosoxygen? Sir Humphrey Davy demonstrates that gas not to be, asLavoisier supposed, caloric, but light, combined with oxygen; and hesuggests, not indeed that it is the vital principle itself, but thepabulum of life to organic beings. " (1)

"Does he?" said Margrave, his, face clearing up. "Possibly, possibly, then, here we approach the great secret of secrets. Look you, AllenFenwick: I promise to secure to you unfailing security from all thejealous fears that now torture your heart; if you care for that famewhich to me is not worth the scent of a flower, the balm of a breeze, I will impart to you a knowledge which, in the hands of ambition, woulddwarf into commonplace the boasted wonders of recognized science. I willdo all this, if, in return, but for one month you will give yourself upto my guidance in whatever experiments I ask, no matter how wild theymay seem to you. "

"My dear Margrave, I reject your bribes as I would reject the moon andthe stars which a child might offer to me in exchange for a toy; but Imay give the child its toy for nothing, and I may test your experimentsfor nothing some day when I have leisure. "

I did not hear Margrave's answer, for at that moment my servant enteredwith letters. Lilian's hand! Tremblingly, breathlessly, I broke theseal. Such a loving, bright, happy letter; so sweet in its gentlechiding of my wrongful fears! It was implied rather than said thatAshleigh Sumner had proposed and been refused. He had now left thehouse. Lilian and her mother were coming back; in a few days we shouldmeet. In this letter were inclosed a few lines from Mrs. Ashleigh. Shewas more explicit about my rival than Lilian had been. If no allusionto his attentions had been made to me before, it was from a delicateconsideration for myself. Mrs. Ashleigh said that "the young man hadheard from L---- of our engagement, and--disbelieved it;" but, as Mrs. Poyntz had so shrewdly predicted, hurried at once to the avowal of hisown attachment, and the offer of his own hand. On Lilian's refusal hispride had been deeply mortified. He had gone away manifestly in moreanger than sorrow. 

 "Lady Delafield, dear Margaret Poyntz's aunt, had been most kind in trying to soothe Lady Haughton's disappointment, which was rudely expressed, --so rudely, " added Mrs. Ashleigh, "that it gives us an excuse to leave sooner than had been proposed, --which I am very glad of. Lady Delafield feels much for Mr. Sumner; has invited him to visit her at a place she has near Worthing. She leaves to-morrow in order to receive him; promises to reconcile him to our rejection, which, as he was my poor Gilbert's heir, and was very friendly at first, would be a great relief to my mind. Lilian is well, and so happy at the thoughts of coming back. "

When I lifted my eyes from these letters I was as a new man, and theearth seemed a new earth. I felt as if I had realized Margrave's idledreams, --as if youth could never fade, love could never grow cold. 

"You care for no secrets of mine at this moment, " said Margrave, abruptly. 

"Secrets!" I murmured; "none now are worth knowing. I am loved! I amloved!"

"I bide my time, " said Margrave; and as my eyes met his, I saw therea look I had never seen in those eyes before, sinister, wrathful, menacing. He turned away, went out through the sash-door of the study;and as he passed towards the fields under the luxuriant chestnut-trees, I heard his musical, barbaric chant, --the song by which theserpent-charmer charms the serpent, --sweet, so sweet, the very birds onthe boughs hushed their carol as if to listen. 

(1) See Sir Humphrey Davy on Heat, Light, and the Combinations of Light

CHAPTER XXX. 

I called that day on Mrs. Poyntz, and communicated to her the purport ofthe glad news I had received. 

She was still at work on the everlasting knitting, her firm fingerslinking mesh into mesh as she listened; and when I had done, she laidher skein deliberately down, and said, in her favourite characteristicformula, --

"So at last?--that is settled!"

She rose and paced the room as men are apt to do in reflection, womenrarely need such movement to aid their thoughts; her eyes were fixedon the floor, and one hand was lightly pressed on the palm of theother, --the gesture of a musing reasoner who is approaching the close ofa difficult calculation. 

At length she paused, fronting me, and said dryly, --

"Accept my congratulations. Life smiles on you now; guard that smile, and when we meet next, may we be even firmer friends than we are now!"

"When we meet next, --that will be to-night--you surely go to the mayor'sgreat ball? All the Hill descends to Low Town to-night. "

"No; we are obliged to leave L---- this afternoon; in less than twohours we shall be gone, --a family engagement. We may be weeks away; youwill excuse me, then, if I take leave of you so unceremoniously. Stay, a motherly word of caution. That friend of yours, Mr. Margrave! Moderateyour intimacy with him; and especially after you are married. There isin that stranger, of whom so little is known, a something which I cannotcomprehend, --a something that captivates and yet revolts. I findhim disturbing my thoughts, perplexing my conjectures, haunting myfancies, --I, plain woman of the world! Lilian is imaginative; beware ofher imagination, even when sure of her heart. Beware of Margrave. Thesooner he quits L---- the better, believe me, for your peace of mind. Adieu! I must prepare for our journey. "

"That woman, " muttered I, on quitting her house, "seems to have somestrange spite against my poor Lilian, ever seeking to rouse my owndistrust of that exquisite nature which has just given me such proof ofits truth. And yet--and yet--is that woman so wrong here? True! Margravewith his wild notions, his strange beauty!--true--true--he mightdangerously encourage that turn for the mystic and visionary whichdistresses me in Lilian. Lilian should not know him. How induce him toleave L----? Ah, those experiments on which he asks my assistance! Imight commence them when he comes again, and then invent some excusetosend him for completer tests to the famous chemists of Paris orBerlin. "

CHAPTER XXXI. 

It is the night of the mayor's ball! The guests are assembling fast;county families twelve miles round have been invited, as well as theprincipal families of the town. All, before proceeding to the room setapart for the dance, moved in procession through the museum, --homage toscience before pleasure!

The building was brilliantly lighted, and the effect was striking, perhaps because singular and grotesque. There, amidst stands of flowersand evergreens, lit up with coloured lamps, were grouped the deadrepresentatives of races all inferior--some deadly--to man. The fancy ofthe ladies had been permitted to decorate and arrange these types of theanimal world. The tiger glared with glass eyes from amidst artificialreeds and herbage, as from his native jungle; the grisly white bearpeered from a mimic iceberg. There, in front, stood the sage elephant, facing a hideous hippopotamus; whilst an anaconda twined its long spireround the stem of some tropical tree in zinc. In glass cases, broughtinto full light by festooned lamps, were dread specimens of the reptilerace, --scorpion and vampire, and cobra capella, with insects of gorgeoushues, not a few of them with venomed stings. 

But the chief boast of the collection was in the varieties of theGenus Simia, --baboons and apes, chimpanzees, with their human visage, mockeries of man, from the dwarf monkeys perched on boughs lopped fromthe mayor's shrubberies, to the formidable ourangoutang, leaning on hishuge club. 

Every one expressed to the mayor admiration, to each other antipathy, for this unwonted and somewhat ghastly, though instructive, addition tothe revels of a ballroom. 

Margrave, of course, was there, and seemingly quite at home, glidingfrom group to group of gayly-dressed ladies, and brilliant witha childish eagerness to play off the showman. Many of these grimfellow-creatures he declared he had seen, played, or fought with. Hehad something true or false to say about each. In his high spirits hecontrived to make the tiger move, and imitated the hiss of the terriblyanaconda. All that he did had its grace, its charm; and the buzz ofadmiration and the flattering glances of ladies' eyes followed himwherever he moved. 

However, there was a general feeling of relief when the mayor led theway from the museum into the ballroom. In provincial parties guestsarrive pretty much within the same hour, and so few who had once paidtheir respects to the apes and serpents, the hippopotamus and the tiger, were disposed to repeat the visit, that long before eleven o'clock themuseum was as free from the intrusion of human life as the wilderness inwhich its dead occupants had been born. 

I had gone my round through the rooms, and, little disposed to besocial, had crept into the retreat of a window-niche, pleased to thinkmyself screened by its draperies, --not that I was melancholy, far fromit; for the letter I had received that morning from Lilian had raised mywhole being into a sovereignty of happiness high beyond the reach ofthe young pleasure-hunters, whose voices and laughter blended with thatvulgar music. 

To read her letter again I had stolen to my nook, and now, sure thatnone saw me kiss it, I replaced it in my bosom. I looked through theparted curtain; the room was comparatively empty; but there, through theopen folding-doors, I saw the gay crowd gathered round the dancers, and there again, at right angles, a vista along the corridor afforded aglimpse of the great elephant in the deserted museum. 

Presently I heard, close beside me, my host's voice. 

"Here's a cool corner, a pleasant sofa, you can have it all to yourself. What an honour to receive you under my roof, and on this interestingoccasion! Yes, as you say, there are great changes in L---- since youleft us. Society has much improved. I must look about and find somepersons to introduce to you. Clever! oh, I know your tastes. We havea wonderful man, --a new doctor. Carries all before him; very highcharacter, too; good old family, greatly looked up to, even apart fromhis profession. Dogmatic a little, --a Sir Oracle, --'Lets no dog bark;'you remember the quotation, --Shakspeare. Where on earth is he? My dearSir Philip, I am sure you would enjoy his conversation. "

Sir Philip! Could it be Sir Philip Derval to whom the mayor was givinga flattering yet scarcely propitiatory description of myself? Curiositycombined with a sense of propriety in not keeping myself an unsuspectedlistener; I emerged from the curtain, but silently, and reached thecentre of the room before the mayor perceived me. He then came up to meeagerly, linked his arm in mine, and leading me to a gentleman seated ona sofa, close by the window I had quitted, said, --

"Doctor, I must present you to Sir Philip Derval, just returned toEngland, and not six hours in L----. If you would like to see the museumagain, Sir Philip, the doctor, I am sure, will accompany you. "

"No, I thank you; it is painful to me at present to see, even underyour roof, the collection which my poor dear friend, Dr. Lloyd, was soproudly beginning to form when I left these parts. "

"Ay, Sir Philip, Dr. Lloyd was a worthy man in his way, but sadly dupedin his latter years; took to mesmerism, only think! But our young doctorhere showed him up, I can tell you. "

Sir Philip, who had acknowledged my first introduction to hisacquaintance by the quiet courtesy with which a well-bred man goesthrough a ceremony that custom enables him to endure with equal ease andindifference, now evinced by a slight change of manner how little themayor's reference to my dispute with Dr. Lloyd advanced me in his goodopinion. He turned away with a bow more formal than his first one, andsaid calmly, "I regret to hear that a man so simple-minded and so sensitive as Dr. Lloyd should have provoked an encounter in which I can well conceive himto have been worsted. With your leave, Mr. Mayor, I will look into yourballroom. I may perhaps find there some old acquaintances. "

He walked towards the dancers, and the mayor, linking his arm in mine, followed close behind, saying in his loud hearty tones, --

"Come along, you too, Dr. Fenwick, my girls are there; you have notspoken to them yet. "

Sir Philip, who was then half way across the room, turned roundabruptly, and, looking me full in the face, said, --

"Fenwick, is your name Fenwick, --Allen Fenwick?"

"That is my name, Sir Philip. "

"Then permit me to shake you by the hand; you are no stranger, and nomere acquaintance to me. Mr. Mayor, we will look into your ballroomlater; do not let us keep you now from your other guests. "

The mayor, not in the least offended by being thus summarily dismissed, smiled, walked on, and was soon lost amongst the crowd. 

Sir Philip, still retaining my hand, reseated himself on the sofa, andI took my place by his side. The room was still deserted; now and thena straggler from the ballroom looked in for a moment, and then saunteredback to the central place of attraction. 

"I ain trying to guess, " said I, "how my name should be known to you. Possibly you may, in some visit to the Lakes, have known my father?"

"No; I know none of your name but yourself, --if, indeed, as I doubt not, you are the Allen Fenwick to whom I owe no small obligation. You were amedical student at Edinburgh in the year ----?"

"Yes. "

"So! At that time there was also at Edinburgh a young man, named RichardStrahan. He lodged in a fourth flat in the Old Town. "

"I remember him very well. "

"And you remember, also, that a fire broke out at night in the housein which he lodged; that when it was discovered there seemed no hopeof saving him. The flames wrapped the lower part of the house; thestaircase had given way. A boy, scarcely so old as himself, was the onlyhuman being in the crowd who dared to scale the ladder that even thenscarcely reached the windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes;that boy penetrated into the room, found the inmate almost insensible, rallied, supported, dragged him to the window, got him on theladder, --saved his life then: and his life later, by nursing with awoman's tenderness, through the fever caused by terror and excitement, the fellow-creature he had rescued by a man's daring. The name of thatgallant student was Allen Fenwick, and Richard Strahan is my nearestliving relation. Are we friends now?"

I answered confusedly. I had almost forgotten the circumstances referredto. Richard Strahan had not been one of my more intimate companions, andI bad never seen nor heard of him since leaving college. I inquired whathad become of him. 

"He is at the Scotch Bar, " said Sir Philip, "and of course withoutpractice. I understand that he has fair average abilities, but noapplication. If I am rightly informed, he is, however, a thoroughlyhonourable, upright man, and of an affectionate and gratefuldisposition. "

"I can answer for all you have said in his praise. He had the qualitiesyou name too deeply rooted in youth to have lost them now. "

Sir Philip remained for some moments in a musing silence; and I tookadvantage of that silence to examine him with more minute attention thanI had done before, much as the first sight of him had struck me. 

He was somewhat below the common height, --so delicately formed that onemight call him rather fragile than slight. But in his carriage and airthere was remarkable dignity. His countenance was at direct variancewith his figure; for as delicacy was the attribute of the last, so powerwas unmistakably the characteristic of the first. He looked fullythe age his steward had ascribed to him, --about forty-eight; at asuperficial glance, more, for his hair was prematurely white, --not gray, but white as snow. But his eyebrows were still jet black, and his eyes, equally dark, were serenely bright. His forehead was magnificent, --loftyand spacious, and with only one slight wrinkle between the brows. Hiscomplexion was sunburnt, showing no sign of weak health. The outline ofhis lips was that which I have often remarked in men accustomed togreat dangers, and contracting in such dangers the habit ofself-reliance, --firm and quiet, compressed without an effort. Andthe power of this very noble countenance was not intimidating, notaggressive; it was mild, it was benignant. A man oppressed by someformidable tyranny, and despairing to find a protector, would, on seeingthat face, have said, "Here is one who can protect me, and who will!"

Sir Philip was the first to break the silence. 

"I have so many relations scattered over England, that fortunately notone of them can venture to calculate on my property if I die childless, and therefore not one of them can feel himself injured when, a few weekshence, he shall read in the newspapers that Philip Derval is married. But for Richard Strahan at least, though I never saw him, I must dosomething before the newspapers make that announcement. His sister wasvery dear to me. "

"Your neighbours, Sir Philip, will rejoice at your marriage, since, Ipresume, it may induce you to settle amongst them at Derval Court. "

"At Derval Court! No! I shall not settle there. " Again he paused amoment or so, and then went on: "I have long lived a wandering life, andin it learned much that the wisdom of cities cannot teach. I return tomy native land with a profound conviction that the happiest life is thelife most in common with all. I have gone out of my way to do what Ideemed good, and to avert or mitigate what appeared to me evil. I pausenow and ask myself, whether the most virtuous existence be not thatin which virtue flows spontaneously from the springs of quiet everydayaction; when a man does good without restlessly seeking it, does goodunconsciously, simply because he is good and he lives. Better, perhaps, for me, if I had thought so long ago! And now I come back to Englandwith the intention of marrying, late in life though it be, and with suchhopes of happiness as any matter-of-fact man may form. But my hope willnot be at Derval Court. I shall reside either in London or its immediateneighbourhood, and seek to gather round me minds by which I can correct, if I cannot confide to them, the knowledge I myself have acquired. "

"Nay, if, as I have accidentally heard, you are fond of scientificpursuits, I cannot wonder, that after so long an absence from England, you should feel interest in learning what new discoveries have beenmade, what new ideas are unfolding the germs of discoveries yet to be. But, pardon me, if in answer to your concluding remark, I venture to saythat no man can hope to correct any error in his own knowledge, unlesshe has the courage to confide the error to those who can correct. LaPlace has said, 'Tout se tient dans le chaine immense des verites;'and the mistake we make in some science we have specially cultivated isoften only to be seen by the light of a separate science as speciallycultivated by another. Thus, in the investigation of truth, frankexposition to congenial minds is essential to the earnest seeker. "

"I am pleased with what you say, " said Sir Philip, "and I shall be stillmore pleased to find in you the very confidant I require. But what wasyour controversy with my old friend, Dr. Lloyd? Do I understand our hostrightly, that it related to what in Europe has of late days obtained thename of mesmerism?"

I had conceived a strong desire to conciliate the good opinion of a manwho had treated me with so singular and so familiar a kindness, and itwas sincerely that I expressed my regret at the acerbity with which Ihad assailed Dr. Lloyd; but of his theories and pretensions I could notdisguise my contempt. I enlarged on the extravagant fallacies involvedin a fabulous "clairvoyance, " which always failed when put to plain testby sober-minded examiners. I did not deny the effects of imagination oncertain nervous constitutions. "Mesmerism could cure nobody; credulitycould cure many. There was the well-known story of the old woman triedas a witch; she cured agues by a charm. She owned the impeachment, andwas ready to endure gibbet or stake for the truth of her talisman, --morethan a mesmerist would for the truth of his passes! And the charm was ascroll of gibberish sewn in an old bag and given to the woman in a freakby the judge himself when a young scamp on the circuit. But the charmcured? Certainly; just as mesmerism cures. Fools believed in it. Faith, that moves mountains, may well cure agues. "

Thus I ran on, supporting my views with anecdote and facts, to which SirPhilip listened with placid gravity. 

When I had come to an end he said: "Of mesmerism, as practised inEurope, I know nothing except by report. I can well understand thatmedical men may hesitate to admit it amongst the legitimate resources oforthodox pathology; because, as I gather from what you and others sayof its practice, it must, at the best, be far too uncertain in itsapplication to satisfy the requirements of science. Yet an examinationof its pretensions may enable you to perceive the truth that lies hidin the powers ascribed to witchcraft; benevolence is but a weak agencycompared to malignity; magnetism perverted to evil may solve half theriddles of sorcery. On this, however, I say no more at present. Butas to that which you appear to reject as the most preposterous andincredible pretension of the mesmerists, and which you designate bythe word 'clairvoyance, ' it is clear to me that you have never yourselfwitnessed even those very imperfect exhibitions which you decide at onceto be imposture. I say imperfect, because it is only a limited number ofpersons whom the eye or the passes of the mesmerist can effect; andby such means, unaided by other means, it is rarely indeed that themagnetic sleep advances beyond the first vague shadowy twilight-dawn ofthat condition to which only in its fuller developments I would applythe name of 'trance. ' But still trance is as essential a condition ofbeing as sleep or as waking, having privileges peculiar to itself. Bymeans within the range of the science that explores its nature and itslaws, trance, unlike the clairvoyance you describe, is producible inevery human being, however unimpressible to mere mesmerism. "

"Producible in every human being! Pardon me if I say that I will giveany enchanter his own terms who will produce that effect upon me. "

"Will you? You consent to have the experiment tried on yourself?"

"Consent most readily. "

"I will remember that promise. But to return to the subject. By theword 'trance' I do not mean exclusively the spiritual trance of theAlexandrian Platonists. There is one kind of trance, --that to which allhuman beings are susceptible, --in which the soul has no share: for ofthis kind of trance, and it was of this I spoke, some of the inferioranimals are susceptible; and, therefore, trance is no more a proof ofsoul than is the clairvoyance of the mesmerists, or the dream of ourordinary sleep, which last has been called a proof of soul, though anyman who has kept a dog must have observed that dogs dream as vividly aswe do. But in this trance there is an extraordinary cerebral activity, aprojectile force given to the mind, distinct from the soul, by whichit sends forth its own emanations to a distance in spite of materialobstacles, just as a flower, in an altered condition of atmosphere, sends forth the particles of its aroma. This should not surprise you. Your thought travels over land and sea in your waking state; thought, too, can travel in trance, and in trance may acquire an intensifiedforce. There is, however, another kind of trance which is truly calledspiritual, a trance much more rare, and in which the soul entirelysupersedes the mere action of the mind. "

"Stay!" said I; "you speak of the soul as something distinct from themind. What the soul may be, I cannot pretend to conjecture; but I cannotseparate it from the intelligence!"

"Can you not? A blow on the brain can destroy the intelligence! Do youthink it can destroy the soul?

 'From Marlbro's eyes the tears of dotage flow, And Swift expires, a driveller and a show. '

"Towards the close of his life even Kant's giant intellect left him. Do you suppose that in these various archetypes of intellectual manthe soul was worn out by the years that loosened the strings, or madetuneless the keys, of the perishing instrument on which the mindmust rely for all notes of its music? If you cannot distinguish theoperations of the mind from the essence of the soul, I know not bywhat rational inductions you arrive at the conclusion that the soul isimperishable. "

I remained silent. Sir Philip fixed on me his dark eyes quietly andsearchingly, and, after a short pause, said, --

"Almost every known body in nature is susceptible of three severalstates of existence, --the solid, the liquid, the aeriform. Theseconditions depend on the quantity of heat they contain. The same objectat one moment may be liquid; at the next moment solid; at the nextaeriform. The water that flows before your gaze may stop consolidatedinto ice, or ascend into air as a vapour. Thus is man susceptible ofthree states of existence, --the animal, the mental, the spiritual; andaccording as he is brought into relation or affinity with that occultagency of the whole natural world, which we familiarly call heat, andwhich no science has yet explained, which no scale can weigh, and no eyediscern, one or the other of these three states of being prevails, or issubjected. "

I still continued silent, for I was unwilling discourteously to say to astranger so much older than myself, that he seemed to me to reverseall the maxims of the philosophy to which he made pretence, in foundingspeculations audacious and abstruse upon unanalogous comparisons thatwould have been fantastic even in a poet. And Sir Philip, after anotherpause, resumed with a half smile, --

"After what I have said, it will perhaps not very much surprise youwhen I add that but for my belief in the powers I ascribe to trance, weshould not be known to each other at this moment. "

"How? Pray explain!"

"Certain circumstances, which I trust to relate to you in detailhereafter, have imposed on me the duty to discover, and to bring humanlaws to bear upon, a creature armed with terrible powers of evil. Thismonster, for without metaphor, monster it is, not man like ourselves, has, by arts superior to those of ordinary fugitives, however dexterousin concealment, hitherto for years eluded my research. Through thetrance of an Arab child, who, in her waking state, never heard of hisexistence, I have learned that this being is in England, is in L----. Iam here to encounter him. I expect to do so this very night, and underthis very roof. "

"Sir Philip!"

"And if you wonder, as you well may, why I have been talking to you withthis startling unreserve, know that the same Arab child, on whom I thusimplicitly rely, informs me that your life is mixed up with that of thebeing I seek to unmask and disarm, --to be destroyed by his arts or hisagents, or to combine in the causes by which the destroyer himself shallbe brought to destruction. "

"My life!--your Arab child named me, Allen Fenwick?"

"My Arab child told me that the person in whom I should thus naturallyseek an ally was he who had saved the life of the man whom I then meantfor my heir, if I died unmarried and childless. She told me that Ishould not be many hours in this town, which she described minutely, before you would be made known to me. She described this house, withyonder lights, and yon dancers. In her trance she saw us sittingtogether, as we now sit. I accepted the invitation of our host, when hesuddenly accosted me on entering the town, confident that I shouldmeet you here, without even asking whether a person of your name were aresident in the place; and now you know why I have so freely unbosomedmyself of much that might well make you, a physician, doubt thesoundness of my understanding. The same infant, whose vision has beenrealized up to this moment, has warned me also that I am here at greatperil. What that peril may be I have declined to learn, as I have everdeclined to ask from the future what affects only my own life on thisearth. That life I regard with supreme indifference, conscious thatI have only to discharge, while it lasts, the duties for which it isbestowed on me, to the best of my imperfect power; and aware that mindsthe strongest and souls the purest may fall into the sloth habitual topredestinarians, if they suffer the action due to the present hour to beawed and paralyzed by some grim shadow on the future! It is only where, irrespectively of aught that can menace myself, a light not struck outof my own reason can guide me to disarm evil or minister to good, thatI feel privileged to avail myself of those mirrors on which things, near and far, reflect themselves calm and distinct as the banks and themountain peak are reflected in the glass of a lake. Here, then, underthis roof, and by your side, I shall behold him who--Lo! the moment hascome, --I behold him now!"

As he spoke these last words, Sir Philip had risen, and, startled byhis action and voice, I involuntarily rose too. Resting one hand onmy shoulder, he pointed with the other towards the threshold of theballroom. There, the prominent figure of a gay group--the sole maleamidst a fluttering circle of silks and lawn, of flowery wreaths, of female loveliness and female frippery--stood the radiant image ofMargrave. His eyes were not turned towards us. He was looking down, andhis light laugh came soft, yet ringing, through the general murmur. 

I turned my astonished gaze back to Sir Philip; yes, unmistakably it wason Margrave that his look was fixed. Impossible to associate crime withthe image of that fair youth! Eccentric notions, fantastic speculations, vivacious egotism, defective benevolence, --yes. But crime! No!impossible!

"Impossible, " I said aloud. As I spoke, the group had moved on. Margravewas no longer in sight. At the same moment some other guests came fromthe ballroom, and seated themselves near us. 

Sir Philip looked round, and, observing the deserted museum at the endof the corridor, drew me into it. 

When we were alone, he said in a voice quick and low, but decided, --

"It is of importance that I should convince you at once of the natureof that prodigy which is more hostile to mankind than the wolf is to thesheepfold. No words of mine could at present suffice to clear yoursight from the deception which cheats it. I must enable you to judge foryourself. It must be now and here. He will learn this night, if he hasnot learned already, that I am in the town. Dim and confused though hismemories of myself may be, they are memories still; and he well knowswhat cause he has to dread me. I must put another in possession of hissecret. Another, and at once! For all his arts will be brought to bearagainst me, and I cannot foretell their issue. Go, then; enter thatgiddy crowd, select that seeming young man, bring him hither. Take careonly not to mention my name; and when here, turn the key in the door, soas to prevent interruption, --five minutes will suffice. "

"Am I sure that I guess whom you mean? The young light-hearted man, known in this place under the name of Margrave? The young man with theradiant eyes, and the curls of a Grecian statue?"

"The same; him whom I pointed out. Quick, bring him hither. "

My curiosity was too much roused to disobey. Had I conceived thatMargrave, in the heat of youth, had committed some offence which placedhim in danger of the law and in the power of Sir Philip Derval, Ipossessed enough of the old borderer's black-mail loyalty to have giventhe man whose hand I had familiarly clasped a hint and a help to escape. But all Sir Philip's talk had been so out of the reach of common-sense, that I rather expected to see him confounded by some egregious illusionthan Margrave exposed to any well-grounded accusation. All, then, thatI felt as I walked into the ballroom and approached Margrave was thatcuriosity which, I think, any one of my readers will acknowledge that, in my position, he himself would have felt. 

Margrave was standing near the dancers, not joining them, but talkingwith a young couple in the ring. I drew him aside. 

"Come with me for a few minutes into the museum; I wish to talk to you. "

"What about, --an experiment?"

"Yes, an experiment. "

"Then I am at your service. "

In a minute more, he had followed me into the desolate dead museum. Ilooked round, but did not see Sir Philip. 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

MARGRAVE threw himself on a seat just under the great anaconda; I closedand locked the door. When I had done so, my eye fell on the young man'sface, and I was surprised to see that it had lost its colour; thatit showed great anxiety, great distress; that his hands were visiblytrembling. 

"What is this?" he said in feeble tones, and raising himself half fromhis seat as if with great effort. "Help me up! come away! Something inthis room is hostile to me, hostile, overpowering! What can it be?"

"Truth and my presence, " answered a stern, low voice; and Sir PhilipDerval, whose slight form the huge bulk of the dead elephant had beforeobscured from my view, came suddenly out from the shadow into the fullrays of the lamps which lit up, as if for Man's revel, that mockingcatacomb for the playmates of Nature which he enslaves for his serviceor slays for his sport. As Sir Philip spoke and advanced, Margrave sankback into his seat, shrinking, collapsing, nerveless; terror the mostabject expressed in his staring eyes and parted lips. On the other hand, the simple dignity of Sir Philip Derval's bearing, and the mild power ofhis countenance, were alike inconceivably heightened. A change had comeover the whole man, the more impressive because wholly undefinable. 

Halting opposite Margrave he uttered some words in a language unknown tome, and stretched one hand over the young man's head. Margrave at oncebecame stiff and rigid, as if turned to stone. Sir Philip said to me, --

"Place one of those lamps on the floor, --there, by his feet. "

I took down one of the coloured lamps from the mimic tree round whichthe huge anaconda coiled its spires, and placed it as I was told. 

"Take the seat opposite to him, and watch. "

I obeyed. 

Meanwhile, Sir Philip had drawn from his breast-pocket a smallsteel casket, and I observed, as he opened it, that the interior wassubdivided into several compartments, each with its separate lid; fromone of these he took and sprinkled over the flame of the lamp a fewgrains of a powder, colourless and sparkling as diamond dust. In asecond or so, a delicate perfume, wholly unfamiliar to my sense, rosefrom the lamp. 

"You would test the condition of trance; test it, and in the spirit. "

And, as he spoke, his hand rested lightly on my head. Hitherto, amidsta surprise not unmixed with awe, I had preserved a certain defiance, acertain distrust. I had been, as it were, on my guard. 

But as those words were spoken, as that hand rested on my head, as thatperfume arose from the lamp, all power of will deserted me. My firstsensation was that of passive subjugation; but soon I was aware of astrange intoxicating effect from the odour of the lamp, round whichthere now played a dazzling vapour. The room swam before me. Like a manoppressed by a nightmare, I tried to move, to cry out, feeling that todo so would suffice to burst the thrall that bound me: in vain. 

A time that seemed to me inexorably long, but which, as I foundafterwards, could only have occupied a few seconds, elapsed in thispreliminary state, which, however powerless, was not without a vagueluxurious sense of delight. And then suddenly came pain, --pain, that inrapid gradations passed into a rending agony. Every bone, sinew, nerve, fibre of the body, seemed as if wrenched open, and as if some hithertounconjectured Presence in the vital organization were forcing itselfto light with all the pangs of travail. The veins seemed swollen tobursting, the heart labouring to maintain its action by fierce spasms. Ifeel in this description how language fails me. Enough that the anguishI then endured surpassed all that I have ever experienced of physicalpain. This dreadful interval subsided as suddenly as it had commenced. I felt as if a something undefinable by any name had rushed from me, and in that rush that a struggle was over. I was sensible of the passivebliss which attends the release from torture, and then there grew onme a wonderful calm, and, in that calm, a consciousness of some loftyintelligence immeasurably beyond that which human memory gathers fromearthly knowledge. I saw before me the still rigid form of Margrave, andmy sight seemed, with ease, to penetrate through its covering of flesh, and to survey the mechanism of the whole interior being. 

"View that tenement of clay which now seems so fair, as it was when Ilast beheld it, three years ago, in the house of Haroun of Aleppo!"

I looked, and gradually, and as shade after shade falls on the mountainside, while the clouds gather, and the sun vanishes at last, so the formand face on which I looked changed from exuberant youth into infirm oldage, --the discoloured wrinkled skin, the bleared dim eye, the flaccidmuscles, the brittle sapless bones. Nor was the change that of agealone; the expression of the countenance had passed into gloomydiscontent, and in every furrow a passion or a vice had sown the seedsof grief. 

And the brain now opened on my sight, with all its labyrinth of cells. Iseemed to have the clew to every winding in the maze. 

I saw therein a moral world, charred and ruined, as, in some fable Ihave read, the world of the moon is described to be; yet withal it wasa brain of magnificent formation. The powers abused to evil had beenoriginally of rare order, --imagination, and scope, the energies thatdare, the faculties that discover. But the moral part of the brain hadfailed to dominate the mental, --defective veneration of what is goodor great; cynical disdain of what is right and just; in fine, a greatintellect first misguided, then perverted, and now falling with thedecay of the body into ghastly but imposing ruins, --such was the worldof that brain as it had been three years ago. And still continuing togaze thereon, I observed three separate emanations of light, --the one ofa pale red hue, the second of a pale azure, the third a silvery spark. 

The red light, which grew paler and paler as I looked, undulated fromthe brain along the arteries, the veins, the nerves. And I murmured tomyself, "Is this the principle of animal life?"

The azure light equally permeated the frame, crossing and uniting withthe red, but in a separate and distinct ray, exactly as, in the outerworld, a ray of light crosses or unites with a ray of heat, though initself a separate individual agency. And again I murmured to myself, "Isthis the principle of intellectual being, directing or influencing thatof animal life; with it, yet not of it?"

But the silvery spark! What was that? Its centre seemed the brain; butI could fix it to no single organ. Nay, wherever I looked through thesystem, it reflected itself as a star reflects itself upon water. And Iobserved that while the red light was growing feebler and feebler, andthe azure light was confused, irregular, --now obstructed, now hurrying, now almost lost, --the silvery spark was unaltered, un disturbed. Soindependent was it of all which agitated and vexed the frame, that Ibecame strangely aware that if the heart stopped in its action, and thered light died out; if the brain were paralyzed, that energetic mindsmitten into idiotcy, and the azure light wandering objectless as ameteor wanders over the morass, --still that silver spark would shinethe same, indestructible by aught that shattered its tabernacle. AndI murmured to myself, "Can that starry spark speak the presence of thesoul? Does the silver light shine within creatures to which no lifeimmortal has been promised by Divine Revelation?"

Involuntarily I turned my sight towards the dead forms in the motleycollection, and lo, in my trance or my vision, life returned to themall!--to the elephant and the serpent; to the tiger, the vulture, thebeetle, the moth; to the fish and the polypus, and to yon mockery of manin the giant ape. 

I seemed to see each as it lived in its native realm of earth, or ofair, or of water; and the red light played more or less warm through thestructure of each, and the azure light, though duller of hue, seemed toshoot through the red, and communicate to the creatures an intelligencefar inferior indeed to that of man, but sufficing to conduct the currentof their will, and influence the cunning of their instincts. But innone, from the elephant to the moth, from the bird in which brain wasthe largest to the hybrid in which life seemed to live as in plants, --innone was visible the starry silver spark. I turned my eyes from thecreatures around, back again to the form cowering under the hugeanaconda, and in terror at the animation which the carcasses took inthe awful illusions of that marvellous trance; for the tiger moved asif scenting blood, and to the eyes of the serpent the dread fascinationseemed slowly returning. 

Again I gazed on the starry spark in the form of the man. And I murmuredto myself, "But if this be the soul, why is it so undisturbed andundarkened by the sins which have left such trace and such ravage in theworld of the brain?" And gazing yet more intently on the spark, I becamevaguely aware that it was not the soul, but the halo around the soul, as the star we see in heaven is not the star itself, but its circle ofrays; and if the light itself was undisturbed and undarkened, it wasbecause no sins done in the body could annihilate its essence, noraffect the eternity of its duration. The light was clear within theruins of its lodgment, because it might pass away, but could not beextinguished. 

But the soul itself in the heart of the light reflected back on my ownsoul within me its ineffable trouble, humiliation, and sorrow; forthose ghastly wrecks of power placed at its sovereign command it wasresponsible, and, appalled by its own sublime fate of duration, wasabout to carry into eternity the account of its mission in time. Yetit seemed that while the soul was still there, though so forlorn and soguilty, even the wrecks around it were majestic. And the soul, whateversentence it might merit, was not among the hopelessly lost; for in itsremorse and its shame, it might still have retained what could servefor redemption. And I saw that the mind was storming the soul, in someterrible rebellious war, --all of thought, of passion, of desire, throughwhich the azure light poured its restless flow, were surging up roundthe starry spark, as in siege. And I could not comprehend the war, norguess what it was that the mind demanded the soul to yield. Only thedistinction between the two was made intelligible by their antagonism. And I saw that the soul, sorely tempted, looked afar for escape fromthe subjects it had ever so ill controlled, and who sought to reduce totheir vassal the power which had lost authority as their king. I couldfeel its terror in the sympathy of my own terror, the keenness of my ownsupplicating pity. I knew that it was imploring release from the perilsit confessed its want of strength to encounter. And suddenly the starryspark rose from the ruins and the tumult around it, --rose into space andvanished; and where my soul had recognized the presence of soul, therewas a void. But the red light burned still, becoming more and morevivid; and as it thus repaired and recruited its lustre, the wholeanimal form, which had been so decrepit, grew restored from decay, grewinto vigour and youth: and I saw Alargrave as I had seen him in thewaking world, the radiant image of animal life in the beauty of itsfairest bloom. 

And over this rich vitality and this symmetric mechanism now reignedonly, with the animal life, the mind. The starry light fled and the soulvanished, still was left visible the mind, --mind, by which sensationsconvey and cumulate ideas, and muscles obey volition; mind, as in thoseanimals that have more than the elementary, instincts; mind, as it mightbe in men, were men not immortal. As my eyes, in the Vision, followedthe azure light, undulating as before, through the cells of the brain, and crossing the red amidst the labyrinth of the nerves, I perceivedthat the essence of that azure light had undergone a change: it had lostthat faculty of continuous and concentred power by which man improves onthe works of the past, and weaves schemes to be developed in the futureof remote generations; it had lost all sympathy in the past, becauseit had lost all conception of a future beyond the grave; it had lostconscience, it had lost remorse; the being it informed was no longeraccountable through eternity for the employment of time. The azure lightwas even more vivid in certain organs useful to the conservation ofexistence, as in those organs I had observed it more vivid among some ofthe inferior animals than it is in man, --secretiveness, destructiveness, and the ready perception of things immediate to the wants of the day;and the azure light was brilliant in cerebral cells, where before it hadbeen dark, such as those which harbour mirthfulness and hope, forthere the light was recruited by the exuberant health of the joyousanimal-being. But it was lead-like, or dim, in the great social organs, through which man subordinates his own interest to that of his species, and utterly lost in those through which man is reminded of his duties tothe throne of his Maker. 

In that marvellous penetration with which the Vision endowed me, Iperceived that in this mind, though in energy far superior to many;though retaining, from memories of the former existence, the relics of aculture wide and in some things profound; though sharpened and quickenedinto formidable, if desultory, force whenever it schemed or aimed at theanimal self-conservation which now made its master--impulse or instinct;and though among the reminiscences of its state before its changewere arts which I could not comprehend, but which I felt were darkand terrible, lending to a will never checked by remorse arms that nohealthful philosophy has placed in the arsenal of disciplined genius;though the mind in itself had an ally in a body as perfect in strengthand elasticity as man can take from the favour of nature, --still, I say, I felt that the mind wanted the something without which men never couldfound cities, frame laws, bind together, beautify, exalt the elementsof this world, by creeds that habitually subject them to a reference toanother. The ant and the bee and the beaver congregate and construct;but they do not improve. Man improves because the future impels onwardthat which is not found in the ant, the bee, and the beaver, --that whichwas gone from the being before me. 

I shrank appalled into myself, covered my face with my hands, andgroaned aloud: "Have I ever then doubted that soul is distinct frommind?"

A hand here again touched my forehead, the light in the lamp wasextinguished, I became insensible; and when I recovered I found myselfback in the room in which I had first conversed with Sir Philip Derval, and seated, as before, on the sofa, by his side. 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 

My recollections of all which I have just attempted to describe weredistinct and vivid; except with respect to time, it seemed to me asif many hours must have elapsed since I had entered the museum withMargrave; but the clock on the mantelpiece met my eyes as I turned themwistfully round the room; and I was indeed amazed to perceive that fiveminutes had sufficed for all which it has taken me so long to narrate, and which in their transit had hurried me through ideas and emotions soremote from anterior experience. 

To my astonishment now succeeded shame and indignation, --shame thatI, who had scoffed at the possibility of the comparatively credibleinfluences of mesmeric action, should have been so helpless a puppetunder the hand of the slight fellow-man beside me, and so morbidlyimpressed by phantasmagorieal illusions; indignation that, by some fumeswhich had special potency over the brain, I had thus been, as it were, conjured out of my senses; and looking full into the calm face at myside, I said, with a smile to which I sought to convey disdain, --

"I congratulate you, Sir Philip Derval, on having learned in yourtravels in the East so expert a familiarity with the tricks of itsjugglers. "

"The East has a proverb, " answered Sir Philip, quietly, "that thejuggler may learn much from the dervish, but the dervish can learnnothing from the juggler. You will pardon me, however, for the effectproduced on you for a few minutes, whatever the cause of it may be, since it may serve to guard your whole life from calamities, to whichit might otherwise have been exposed. And however you may consider thatwhich you have just experienced to be a mere optical illusion, or thefigment of a brain super-excited by the fumes of a vapour, look withinyourself, and tell me if you do not feel an inward and unanswerableconviction that there is more reason to shun and to fear the creatureyou left asleep under the dead jaws of the giant serpent, than therewould be in the serpent itself, could hunger again move its coils, andvenom again arm its fangs. "

I was silent, for I could not deny that that conviction had come to me. 

"Henceforth, when you recover from the confusion or anger whichnow disturbs your impressions, you will be prepared to listen to myexplanations and my recital in a spirit far different from that withwhich you would have received them before you were subjected to theexperiment, which, allow me to remind you, you invited and defied. Youwill now, I trust, be fitted to become my confidant and my assistant;you will advise with me how, for the sake of humanity, we should acttogether against the incarnate lie, the anomalous prodigy which glidesthrough the crowd in the image of joyous beauty. For the present I quityou. I have an engagement, on worldly affairs, in the town this night. I am staying at L----, which I shall leave for Derval Court tomorrowevening. Come to me there the day after to-morrow, at any hour that maysuit you the best. Adieu!"

Here Sir Philip Derval rose and left the room. I made no effort todetain him. My mind was too occupied in striving to recompose itself andaccount for the phenomena that had scared it, and for the strength ofthe impressions it still retained. 

I sought to find natural and accountable causes for effects so abnormal. 

Lord Bacon suggests that the ointments with which witches anointedthemselves might have had the effect of stopping the pores andcongesting the rain, and thus impressing the sleep of the unhappy dupesof their own imagination with dreams so vivid that, on waking, they werefirmly convinced that they had been borne through the air to the Sabbat. 

I remember also having heard a distinguished French traveller--whoseveracity was unquestionable--say, that he had witnessed extraordinaryeffects produced on the sensorium by certain fumigations used by anAfrican pretender to magic. A person, of however healthy a brain;subjected to the influence of these fumigations, was induced to believethat he saw the most frightful apparitions. 

However extraordinary such effects, they were not incredible, --not atvariance with our notions of the known laws of nature. And to the vapouror the odours which a powder applied to a lamp had called forth, I was, therefore, prepared to ascribe properties similar to those which Bacon'sconjecture ascribed to the witches' ointment, and the French travellerto the fumigations of the African conjuror. 

But, as I came to that conclusion, I was seized with an intensecuriosity to examine for myself those chemical agencies with whichSir Philip Derval appeared so familiar; to test the contents in thatmysterious casket of steel. I also felt a curiosity no less eager, butmore, in spite of myself, intermingled with fear, to learn all that SirPhilip had to communicate of the past history of Margrave. I could butsuppose that the young man must indeed be a terrible criminal, for aperson of years so grave, and station so high, to intimate accusationsso vaguely dark, and to use means so extraordinary, in order to enlistmy imagination rather than my reason against a youth in whom thereappeared none of the signs which suspicion interprets into guilt. 

While thus musing, I lifted my eyes and saw Margrave himself thereat the threshold of the ballroom, --there, where Sir Philip had firstpointed him out as the criminal he had come to L---- to seek and disarm;and now, as then, Margrave was the radiant centre of a joyous group. Notthe young boy-god Iacchus, amidst his nymphs, could, in Grecian friezeor picture, have seemed more the type of the sportive, hilariousvitality of sensuous nature. He must have passed unobserved by me, in mypreoccupation of thought, from the museum and across the room in whichI sat; and now there was as little trace in that animated countenance ofthe terror it had exhibited at Sir Philip's approach, as of the changeit had undergone in my trance or my fantasy. 

But he caught sight of me, left his young companions, came gayly to myside. 

"Did you not ask me to go with you into that museum about half an hourago, or did I dream that I went with you?"

"Yes; you went with me into that museum. "

"Then pray what dull theme did you select to set me asleep there?"

I looked hard at him, and made no reply. Somewhat to my relief, I nowheard my host's voice, --

"Why, Fenwick, what has become of Sir Philip Derval?"

"He has left; he had business. " And, as I spoke, again I looked hard onMargrave. 

His countenance now showed a change; not surprise, not dismay, but rather a play of the lip, a flash of the eye, that indicatedcomplacency, --even triumph. 

"So! Sir Philip Derval! He is in L----; he has been here to-night? So!as I expected. "

"Did you expect it?" said our host. "No one else did. Who could havetold you?"

"The movements of men so distinguished need never take us by surprise. I knew he was in Paris the other day. It is natural eno' that he shouldcome here. I was prepared for his coming. "

Margrave here turned away towards the window, which he threw open andlooked out. 

"There is a storm in the air, " said he, as he continued to gaze into thenight. 

Was it possible that Margrave was so wholly unconscious of what hadpassed in the museum as to include in oblivion even the remembrance ofSir Philip Derval's presence before he had been rendered insensible, orlaid asleep? Was it now only for the first time that he learned ofSir Philip's arrival in L----, and visit to that house? Was there anyintimation of menace in his words and his aspect?

I felt that the trouble of my thoughts communicated itself to mycountenance and manner; and, longing for solitude and fresh air, Iquitted the house. When I found myself in the street I turned round andsaw Margrave still standing at the open window, but he did not appear tonotice me; his eyes seemed fixed abstractedly on space. 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

I walked on slowly and with the downcast brow of a man absorbed inmeditation. I had gained the broad place in which the main streets ofthe town converged, when I was overtaken by a violent storm of rain. Isought shelter under the dark archway of that entrance to the districtof Abbey Hill which was still called Monk's Gate. The shadow withinthe arch was so deep that I was not aware that I had a companion tillI beard my own name, close at my side. I recognized the voice before Icould distinguish the form of Sir Philip Derval. 

"The storm will soon be over, " said he, quietly. "I saw it coming on intime. I fear you neglected the first warning of those sable clouds, andmust be already drenched. "

I made no reply, but moved involuntarily away towards the mouth of thearch. 

"I see that you cherish a grudge against me!" resumed Sir Philip. "Areyou, then, by nature vindictive?"

Somewhat softened by the friendly tone of this reproach, I answered, half in jest, half in earnest, --

"You must own, Sir Philip, that I have some little reason for theuncharitable anger your question imputes to me. But I can forgive you, on one condition. "

"What is that?"

"The possession for half an hour of that mysterious steel casket whichyou carry about with you, and full permission to analyze and test itscontents. "

"Your analysis of the contents, " returned Sir Philip, dryly, "wouldleave you as ignorant as before of the uses to which they can beapplied; but I will own to you frankly, that it is my intention toselect some confidant among men of science, to whom I may safelycommunicate the wonderful properties which certain essences in thatcasket possess. I invite your acquaintance, nay, your friendship, in thehope that I may find such a confidant in you. But the casket containsother combinations, which, if wasted, could not be resupplied, --at leastby any process which the great Master from whom I received them placedwithin reach of my knowledge. In this they resemble the diamond; whenthe chemist has found that the diamond affords no other substance byits combustion than pure carbonic-acid gas, and that the only chemicaldifference between the costliest diamond and a lump of pure charcoal isa proportion of hydrogen less than 1/100000 part of the weight of thesubstance, can the chemist make you a diamond?

"These, then, the more potent, but also the more perilous of thecasket's contents, shall be explored by no science, submitted to notest. They are the keys to masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, whichno mortal can pass through without rousing dread sentries never seenupon this side her wall. The powers they confer are secrets locked inmy breast, to be lost in my grave; as the casket which lies on my breastshall not be transferred to the hands of another, till all the restof my earthly possessions pass away with my last breath in life and myfirst in eternity. "

"Sir Philip Derval, " said I, struggling against the appeals to fancyor to awe, made in words so strange, uttered in a tone of earnestconviction, and heard amidst the glare of the lightning, the howl of thewinds, and the roll of the thunder, --"Sir Philip Derval, you accostme in a language which, but for my experience of the powers at yourcommand, I should hear with the contempt that is due to the vaunts of amountebank, or the pity we give to the morbid beliefs of his dupe. As itis, I decline the confidence with which you would favour me, subject tothe conditions which it seems you would impose. My profession abandonsto quacks all drugs which may not be analyzed, all secrets which may notbe fearlessly told. I cannot visit you at Derval Court. I cannot trustmyself, voluntarily, again in the power of a man, who has arts of whichI may not examine the nature, by which he can impose on my imaginationand steal away my reason. "

"Reflect well before you decide, " said Sir Philip, with a solemnitythat was stern. "If you refuse to be warned and to be armed by me, yourreason and your imagination will alike be subjected to influenceswhich I can only explain by telling you that there is truth in thoseimmemorial legends which depose to the existence of magic. "

"Magic!"

"There is magic of two kinds, --the dark and evil, appertaining towitchcraft or necromancy; the pure and beneficent, which is butphilosophy, applied to certain mysteries in Nature remote from thebeaten tracks of science, but which deepened the wisdom of ancientsages, and can yet unriddle the myths of departed races. "

"Sir Philip, " I said, with impatient and angry interruption, "if youthink that a jargon of this kind be worthy a man of your acquirementsand station, it is at least a waste of time to address it to me. I amled to conclude that you desire to make use of me for some purpose whichI have a right to suppose honest and blameless, because all you know ofme is, that I rendered to your relation services which can not lower mycharacter in your eyes. If your object be, as you have intimated, to aidyou in exposing and disabling man whose antecedents have been those ofguilt, and who threatens with danger the society which receives him, you must give me proofs that are not reducible to magic; and you mustprepossess me against the person you accuse, not by powders and fumesthat disorder the brain, but by substantial statements, such as justifyone man in condemning another. And, since you have thought fit toconvince me that there are chemical means at your disposal, by which theimagination can be so affected as to accept, temporarily, illusions forrealities, so I again demand, and now still more decidedly than before, that while you address yourself to my reason, whether to explain yourobject or to vindicate your charges against a man whom I have admittedto my acquaintance, you will divest yourself of all means and agenciesto warp my judgment so illicit and fraudulent as those which youown yourself to possess. Let the casket, with all its contents, betransferred to my hands, and pledge me your word that, in giving thatcasket, you reserve to yourself no other means by which chemistry can beabused to those influences over physical organization, which ignoranceor imposture may ascribe to--magic. "

"I accept no conditions for my confidence, though I think the better ofyou for attempting to make them. If I live, you will seek me yourself, and implore my aid. Meanwhile, listen to me, and--"

"No; I prefer the rain and the thunder to the whispers that steal to myear in the dark from one of whom I have reason to beware. "

So saying, I stepped forth, and at that moment the lightning flashedthrough the arch, and brought into full view the face of the man besideme. Seen by that glare, it was pale as the face of a corpse, but itsexpression was compassionate and serene. 

I hesitated, for the expression of that hueless countenance touched me;it was not the face which inspires distrust or fear. 

"Come, " said I, gently; "grant my demand. The casket--"

"It is no scruple of distrust that now makes that demand; it is acuriosity which in itself is a fearful tempter. Did you now possess whatat this moment you desire, how bitterly you would repent!"

"Do you still refuse my demand?"

"I refuse. "

"If then you really need me, it is you who will repent. "

I passed from the arch into the open space. The rain had passed, thethunder was more distant. I looked back when I had gained the oppositeside of the way, at the angle of a street which led to my own house. As I did so, again the skies lightened, but the flash was comparativelyslight and evanescent; it did not penetrate the gloom of the arch; itdid not bring the form of Sir Philip into view; but, just under the baseof the outer buttress to the gateway, I descried the outline of adark figure, cowering down, huddled up for shelter, the outline soindistinct, and so soon lost to sight as the flash faded, that Icould not distinguish if it were man or brute. If it were some chancepasser-by, who had sought refuge from the rain, and overheard any partof our strange talk, "the listener, " thought I with a half-smile, "musthave been mightily perplexed. "

CHAPTER XXXV. 

On reaching my own home, I found my servant sitting up for me with theinformation that my attendance was immediately required. The little boywhom Margrave's carelessness had so injured, and for whose injury he hadshown so little feeling, had been weakened by the confinement whichthe nature of the injury required, and for the last few days had beengenerally ailing. The father had come to my house a few minutes beforeI reached it, in great distress of mind, saying that his child had beenseized with fever, and had become delirious. Hearing that I was at themayor's house, he had hurried thither in search of me. 

I felt as if it were almost a relief to the troubled and hauntingthoughts which tormented me, to be summoned to the exercise of afamiliar knowledge. I hastened to the bedside of the little sufferer, and soon forgot all else in the anxious struggle for a human life. Thestruggle promised to be successful; the worst symptoms began to yieldto remedies prompt and energetic, if simple. I remained at the house, rather to comfort and support the parents, than because my continuedattendance was absolutely needed, till the night was well-nigh gone; andall cause of immediate danger having subsided, I then found myself oncemore in the streets. An atmosphere palely clear in the gray of dawn hadsucceeded to the thunder-clouds of the stormy night; the streetlamps, here and there, burned wan and still. I was walking slowly and wearily, so tired out that I was scarcely conscious of my own thoughts, when, ina narrow lane, my feet stopped almost mechanically before a human formstretched at full length in the centre of the road right in my path. Theform was dark in the shadow thrown from the neighbouring houses. "Somepoor drunkard, " thought I, and the humanity inseparable from my callingnot allowing me to leave a fellow-creature thus exposed to the riskof being run over by the first drowsy wagoner who might pass alongthe thoroughfare, I stooped to rouse and to lift the form. What wasmy horror when my eyes met the rigid stare of a dead man's. I started, looked again; it was the face of Sir Philip Derval! He was lying onhis back, the countenance upturned, a dark stream oozing from thebreast, --murdered by two ghastly wounds, murdered not long since, theblood was still warm. Stunned and terror-stricken, I stood bending overthe body. Suddenly I was touched on the shoulder. 

"Hollo! what is this?" said a gruff voice. 

"Murder!" I answered in hollow accents, which sounded strangely to myown ear. 

"Murder! so it seems. " And the policeman who had thus accosted me liftedthe body. 

"A gentleman by his dress. How did this happen? How did you come here?"and the policeman glanced suspiciously at me. 

At this moment, however, there came up another policeman, in whom Irecognized the young man whose sister I had attended and cured. 

"Dr. Fenwick, " said the last, lifting his hat respectfully, and at thesound of my name his fellow-policeman changed his manner and muttered anapology. 

I now collected myself sufficiently to state the name and rank of themurdered man. The policemen bore the body to their station, to which Iaccompanied them. I then returned to my own house, and had scarcely sunkon my bed when sleep came over me. But what a sleep! Never till then hadI known how awfully distinct dreams can be. The phantasmagoria of thenaturalist's collection revived. Life again awoke in the serpent and thetiger, the scorpion moved, and the vulture flapped its wings. And therewas Margrave, and there Sir Philip; but their position of power wasreversed, and Margrave's foot was on the breast of the dead man. StillI slept on till I was roused by the summons to attend on Mr. Vigors, themagistrate to whom the police had reported the murder. 

I dressed hastily and went forth. As I passed through the street, Ifound that the dismal news had already spread. I was accosted on my wayto the magistrate by a hundred eager, tremulous, inquiring tongues. 

The scanty evidence I could impart was soon given. 

My introduction to Sir Philip at the mayor's house, our accidentalmeeting under the arch, my discovery of the corpse some hours afterwardson my return from my patient, my professional belief that the deed musthave been done a very short time, perhaps but a few minutes, before Ichanced upon its victim. But, in that case, how account for the longinterval that had elapsed between the time in which I had left SirPhilip under the arch and the time in which the murder must have beencommitted? Sir Philip could not have been wandering through the streetsall those hours. This doubt, how ever, was easily and speedily clearedup. A Mr. Jeeves, who was one of the principal solicitors in the town, stated that he had acted as Sir Philip's legal agent and adviserever since Sir Philip came of age, and was charged with the exclusivemanagement of some valuable house-property which the deceased hadpossessed in L----; that when Sir Philip had arrived in the town late inthe afternoon of the previous day, he had sent for Mr. Jeeves; informedhim that he, Sir Philip, was engaged to be married; that he wished tohave full and minute information as to the details of his house property(which had greatly increased in value since his absence from England), in connection with the settlements his marriage would render necessary;and that this information was also required by him in respect to acodicil he desired to add to his will. 

He had, accordingly, requested Mr. Jeeves to have all the books andstatements concerning the property ready for his inspection that night, when he would call, after leaving the ball which he had promised themayor, whom he had accidentally met on entering the town, to attend. Sir Philip had also asked Mr. Jeeves to detain one of his clerks in hisoffice, in order to serve, conjointly with Mr. Jeeves, as a witness tothe codicil he desired to add to his will. Sir Philip had accordinglycome to Mr. Jeeves's house a little before midnight; had gone carefullythrough all the statements prepared for him, and had executed the freshcodicil to his testament, which testament he had in their previousinterview given to Mr. Jeeves's care, sealed up. Mr. Jeeves stated thatSir Philip, though a man of remarkable talents and great acquirements, was extremely eccentric, and of a very peremptory temper, and that theimportance attached to a promptitude for which there seemed no pressingoccasion did not surprise him in Sir Philip as it might have done in anordinary client. Sir Philip said, indeed, that he should devote thenext morning to the draft for his wedding settlements, according to theinformation of his property which he had acquired; and after a visit ofvery brief duration to Derval Court, should quit the neighbourhood andreturn to Paris, where his intended bride then was, and in which city ithad been settled that the marriage ceremony should take place. 

Mr. Jeeves had, however, observed to him, that if he were so soon tobe married, it was better to postpone any revision of testamentarybequests, since after marriage he would have to make a new willaltogether. 

And Sir Philip had simply answered, --

"Life is uncertain; who can be sure of the morrow?"

Sir Philip's visit to Mr. Jeeves's house had lasted some hours, forthe conversation between them had branched off from actual businessto various topics. Mr. Jeeves had not noticed the hour when Sir Philipwent; he could only say that as he attended him to the street-door, heobserved, rather to his own surprise, that it was close upon daybreak. 

Sir Philip's body had been found not many yards distant from the hotelat which he had put up, and to which, therefore, he was evidentlyreturning when he left Mr. Jeeves, --an old-fashioned hotel, which hadbeen the principal one at L---- when Sir Philip left England, though nowoutrivalled by the new and more central establishment in which Margravewas domiciled. 

The primary and natural supposition was that Sir Philip had beenmurdered for the sake of plunder; and this supposition was borne out bythe fact to which his valet deposed, namely, --

That Sir Philip had about his person, on going to the mayor's house, apurse containing notes and sovereigns; and this purse was now missing. 

The valet, who, though an Albanian, spoke English fluently, said thatthe purse had a gold clasp, on which Sir Philip's crest and initialswere engraved. Sir Philip's watch was, however, not taken. 

And now, it was not without a quick beat of the heart that I heardthe valet declare that a steel casket, to which Sir Philip attachedextraordinary value, and always carried about with him, was alsomissing. 

The Albanian described this casket as of ancient Byzantine workmanship, opening with a peculiar spring, only known to Sir Philip, in whosepossession it had been, so far as the servant knew, about three years:when, after a visit to Aleppo, in which the servant had not accompaniedhim, he had first observed it in his master's hands. He was asked ifthis casket contained articles to account for the value Sir Philip seton it, --such as jewels, bank-notes, letters of credit, etc. The manreplied that it might possibly do so; he had never been allowed theopportunity of examining its contents; but that he was certain thecasket held medicines, for he had seen Sir Philip take from it somesmall phials, by which he had performed great cures in the East, andespecially during a pestilence which had visited Damascus, just afterSir Philip had arrived at that city on quitting Aleppo. Almost everyEuropean traveller is supposed to be a physician; and Sir Philip was aman of great benevolence, and the servant firmly believed him also to beof great medical skill. After this statement, it was very naturallyand generally conjectured that Sir Philip was an amateur disciple ofhomoeopathy, and that the casket contained the phials or globules in useamong homoeopathists. 

Whether or not Mr. Vigors enjoyed a vindictive triumph in making me feelthe weight of his authority, or whether his temper was ruffled in theexcitement of so grave a case, I cannot say, but his manner was sternand his tone discourteous in the questions which he addressed to me. Nor did the questions themselves seem very pertinent to the object ofinvestigation. 

"Pray, Dr. Fenwick, " said he, knitting his brows, and fixing his eyes onme rudely, "did Sir Philip Derval in his conversation with you mentionthe steel casket which it seems he carried about with him?"

I felt my countenance change slightly as I answered, "Yes. "

"Did he tell you what it contained?"

"He said it contained secrets. "

"Secrets of what nature, --medicinal or chemical? Secrets which aphysician might be curious to learn and covetous to possess?"

This question seemed to me so offensively significant that it roused myindignation, and I answered haughtily, that "a physician of any degreeof merited reputation did not much believe in, and still less covet, those secrets in his art which were the boast of quacks and pretenders. "

"My question need not offend you, Dr. Fenwick. I put it in anothershape: Did Sir Philip Derval so boast of the secrets contained in hiscasket that a quack or pretender might deem such secrets of use to him?"

"Possibly he might, if he believed in such a boast. "

"Humph!--he might if he so believed. I have no more questions to put toyou at present, Dr. Fenwick. "

Little of any importance in connection with the deceased or his murdertranspired in the course of that day's examination and inquiries. 

The next day, a gentleman distantly related to the young lady to whomSir Philip was engaged, and who had been for some time in correspondencewith the deceased, arrived at L----. He had been sent for at thesuggestion of the Albanian servant, who said that Sir Philip had stayeda day at this gentleman's house in London, on his way to L----, fromDover. 

The new comer, whose name was Danvers, gave a more touching pathos tothe horror which the murder had excited. It seemed that the motiveswhich had swayed Sir Philip in the choice of his betrothed weresingularly pure and noble. The young lady's father--an intimate collegefriend--had been visited by a sudden reverse of fortune, which hadbrought on a fever that proved mortal. He had died some years ago, leaving his only child penniless, and had bequeathed her to the care andguardianship of Sir Philip. 

The orphan received her education at a convent near Paris; and whenSir Philip, a few weeks since, arrived in that city from the East, heoffered her his hand and fortune. 

"I know, " said Mr. Danvers, "from the conversation I held with himwhen he came to me in London, that he was induced to this offer by theconscientious desire to discharge the trust consigned to him by his oldfriend. Sir Philip was still of an age that could not permit him to takeunder his own roof a female ward of eighteen, without injury to hergood name. He could only get over that difficulty by making the wardhis wife. 'She will be safer and happier with the man she will love andhonour for her father's sake, ' said the chivalrous gentleman, 'than shewill be under any other roof I could find for her. '"

And now there arrived another stranger to L----, sent for by Mr. Jeeves, the lawyer, --a stranger to L----, but not to me; my old Edinburghacquaintance, Richard Strahan. 

The will in Mr. Jeeves's keeping, with its recent codicil, was openedand read. The will itself bore date about six years anterior to thetestator's tragic death: it was very short, and, with the exception ofa few legacies, of which the most important was L10, 000 to his ward, thewhole of his property was left to Richard Strahan, on the condition thathe took the name and arms of Derval within a year from the date of SirPhilip's decease. The codicil, added to the will the night before hisdeath, increased the legacy to the young lady from L10, 000 to L30, 000, and bequeathed an annuity of L100 a year to his Albanian servant. Accompanying the will, and within the same envelope, was a sealedletter, addressed to Richard Strahan, and dated at Paris two weeks before Sir Philip's decease. Strahan brought that letter to me. It ranthus:--

 "Richard Strahan, I advise you to pull down the house called Derval Court, and to build another on a better site, the plans of which, to be modified according to your own taste and requirements, will be found among my papers. This is a recommendation, not a command. But I strictly enjoin you entirely to demolish the more ancient part, which was chiefly occupied by myself, and to destroy by fire, without perusal, all the books and manuscripts found in the safes in my study. I have appointed you my sole executor, as well as my heir, because I have no personal friends in whom I can confide as I trust I may do in the man I have never seen, simply because he will bear my name and represent my lineage. There will be found in my writing-desk, which always accompanies me in my travels, an autobiographical work, a record of my own life, comprising discoveries, or hints at discovery, in science, through means little cultivated in our age. You will not be surprised that before selecting you as my heir and executor, from a crowd of relations not more distant, I should have made inquiries in order to justify my selection. The result of those inquiries informs me that you have not yourself the peculiar knowledge nor the habits of mind that could enable you to judge of matters which demand the attainments and the practice of science; but that you are of an honest, affectionate nature, and will regard as sacred the last injunctions of a benefactor. I enjoin you, then, to submit the aforesaid manuscript memoir to some man on whose character for humanity and honour you can place confidential reliance, and who is accustomed to the study of the positive sciences, more especially chemistry, in connection with electricity and magnetism. My desire is that he shall edit and arrange this memoir for publication; and that, wherever he feels a conscientious doubt whether any discovery, or hint of discovery, therein contained would not prove more dangerous than useful to mankind, he shall consult with any other three men of science whose names are a guarantee for probity and knowledge, and according to the best of his judgment, after such consultation, suppress or publish the passage of which he has so doubted. I own the ambition which first directed me towards studies of a very unusual character, and which has encouraged me in their pursuit through many years of voluntary exile, in lands where they could be best facilitated or aided, --the ambition of leaving behind me the renown of a bold discoverer in those recesses of nature which philosophy has hitherto abandoned to superstition. But I feel, at the moment in which I trace these lines, a fear lest, in the absorbing interest of researches which tend to increase to a marvellous degree the power of man over all matter, animate or inanimate, I may have blunted my own moral perceptions; and that there may be much in the knowledge which I sought and acquired from the pure desire of investigating hidden truths, that could be more abused to purposes of tremendous evil than be likely to conduce to benignant good. And of this a mind disciplined to severe reasoning, and uninfluenced by the enthusiasm which has probably obscured my own judgment, should be the unprejudiced arbiter. Much as I have coveted and still do covet that fame which makes the memory of one man the common inheritance of all, I would infinitely rather that my name should pass away with my breath, than that I should transmit to my fellowmen any portion of a knowledge which the good might forbear to exercise and the bad might unscrupulously pervert. I bear about with me, wherever I wander, a certain steel casket. I received this casket, with its contents, from a man whose memory I hold in profound veneration. Should I live to find a person whom, after minute and intimate trial of his character, I should deem worthy of such confidence, it is my intention to communicate to him the secret how to prepare and how to use such of the powders and essences stored within that casket as I myself have ventured to employ. Others I have never tested, nor do I know how they could be resupplied if lost or wasted. But as the contents of this casket, in the hands of any one not duly instructed as to the mode of applying them, would either be useless, or conduce, through inadvertent and ignorant misapplication, to the most dangerous consequences; so, if I die without having found, and in writing named, such a confidant as I have described above, I command you immediately to empty all the powders and essences found therein into any running stream of water, which will at once harmlessly dissolve them. On no account must they be cast into fire!

 "This letter, Richard Strahan, will only come under your eyes in case the plans and the hopes which I have formed for my earthly future should be frustrated by the death on which I do not calculate, but against the chances of which this will and this letter provide. I am about to revisit England, in defiance of a warning that I shall be there subjected to some peril which I refused to have defined, because I am unwilling that any mean apprehension of personal danger should enfeeble my nerves in the discharge of a stern and solemn duty. If I overcome that peril, you will not be my heir; my testament will be remodelled; this letter will be recalled and destroyed. I shall form ties which promise me the happiness I have never hitherto found, though it is common to all men, --the affections of home, the caresses of children, among whom I may find one to whom hereafter I may bequeath, in my knowledge, a far nobler heritage than my lands. In that case, however, my first care would be to assure your own fortunes. And the sum which this codicil assures to my betrothed would be transferred to yourself on my wedding-day. Do you know why, never having seen you, I thus select you for preference to all my other kindred; why my heart, in writing thus, warms to your image? Richard Strahan, your only sister, many years older than yourself--you were then a child--was the object of my first love. We were to have been wedded, for her parents deceived me into the belief that she returned my affection. With a rare and nobler candour, she herself informed me that her heart was given to another, who possessed not my worldly gifts of wealth and station. In resigning my claims to her hand, I succeeded in propitiating her parents to her own choice. I obtained for her husband the living which he held, and I settled on your sister the dower which, at her death, passed to you as the brother to whom she had shown a mother's love, and the interest of which has secured you a modest independence. 

 "If these lines ever reach you, recognize my title to reverential obedience to commands which may seem to you wild, perhaps irrational; and repay, as if a debt due froth your own lost sister, the affection I have borne to you for her sake. "

While I read this long and strange letter, Strahan sat by my side, covering his face with his hands, and weeping with honest tears for theman whose death had made him powerful and rich. 

"You will undertake the trust ordained to me in this letter, " said he, struggling to compose himself. "You will read and edit this memoir;you are the very man he himself would have selected. Of your honour andhumanity there can be no doubt, and you have studied with success thesciences which he specifies as requisite for the discharge of the taskhe commands. "

At this request, though I could not be wholly unprepared for it, myfirst impulse was that of a vague terror. It seemed to me as if I werebecoming more and more entangled in a mysterious and fatal web. But thisimpulse soon faded in the eager yearnings of an ardent and irresistiblecuriosity. 

I promised to read the manuscript, and in order that I might fully imbuemy mind with the object and wish of the deceased, I asked leave to makea copy of the letter I had just read. To this Strahan readily assented, and that copy I have transcribed in the preceding pages. 

I asked Strahan if he had yet found the manuscript. He said, "No, hehad not yet had the heart to inspect the papers left by the deceased. He would now do so. He should go in a day or two to Derval Court, andreside there till the murderer was discovered, as doubtless he soon mustbe through the vigilance of the police. Not till that discovery was madeshould Sir Philip's remains, though already placed in their coffin, beconsigned to the family vault. "

Strahan seemed to have some superstitious notion that the murderer mightbe more secure from justice if his victim were thrust unavenged into thetomb. 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

The belief prevalent in the town ascribed the murder of Sir Philip tothe violence of some vulgar robber, probably not an inhabitant of L----. Mr. Vigors did not favour that belief. He intimated an opinion, whichseemed extravagant and groundless, that Sir Philip had been murdered, for the sake not of the missing purse, but of the missing casket. It wascurrently believed that the solemn magistrate had consulted one ofhis pretended clairvoyants, and that this impostor had gulled himwith assurances, to which he attached a credit that perverted intoegregiously absurd directions his characteristic activity and zeal. 

Be that as it may, the coroner's inquest closed without casting anylight on so mysterious a tragedy. 

What were my own conjectures I scarcely dared to admit, --I certainlycould not venture to utter them; but my suspicions centred uponMargrave. That for some reason or other he had cause to dread SirPhilip's presence in L---- was clear, even to my reason. And how couldmy reason reject all the influences which had been brought to bear on myimagination, whether by the scene in the museum or my conversationwith the deceased? But it was impossible to act on suchsuspicions, --impossible even to confide them. Could I have told to anyman the effect produced on me in the museum, he would have consideredme a liar or a madman. And in Sir Philip's accusations against Margrave, there was nothing tangible, --nothing that could bear repetition. Thoseaccusations, if analyzed, vanished into air. What did they imply?--thatMargrave was a magician, a monstrous prodigy, a creature exceptional tothe ordinary conditions of humanity. Would the most reckless of mortalshave ventured to bring against the worst of characters such a charge, on the authority of a deceased witness, and to found on evidence sofantastic the awful accusation of murder? But of all men, certainly I--asober, practical physician--was the last whom the public could excusefor such incredible implications; and certainly, of all men, the lastagainst whom any suspicion of heinous crime would be readily entertainedwas that joyous youth in whose sunny aspect life and conscience alikeseemed to keep careless holiday. But I could not overcome, nor did Iattempt to reason against, the horror akin to detestation, that hadsucceeded to the fascinating attraction by which Margrave had beforeconciliated a liking founded rather on admiration than esteem. 

In order to avoid his visits I kept away from the study in which I hadhabitually spent my mornings, and to which he had been accustomed toso ready an access; and if he called at the front door, I directedmy servant to tell him that I was either from home or engaged. Hedid attempt for the first few days to visit me as before, but when myintention to shun him became thus manifest, desisted naturally enough, as any other man so pointedly repelled would have done. 

I abstained from all those houses in which I was likely to meet him, and went my professional round of visits in a close carriage, so that Imight not be accosted by him in his walks. 

One morning, a very few days after Strahan had shown me Sir PhilipDerval's letter, I received a note from my old college acquaintance, stating that he was going to Derval Court that afternoon; that he shouldtake with him the memoir which he had found, and begging me to visithim at his new home the next day, and commence my inspection of themanuscript. I consented eagerly. 

That morning, on going my round, my carriage passed by another drawn upto the pavement, and I recognized the figure of Margrave standing besidethe vehicle, and talking to some one seated within it. I looked back, as my own carriage whirled rapidly by, and saw with uneasiness andalarm that it was Richard Strahan to whom Margrave was thus familiarlyaddressing himself. How had the two made acquaintance?

Was it not an outrage on Sir Philip Derval's memory, that the heir hehad selected should be thus apparently intimate with the man whom he hadso sternly denounced? I became still more impatient to read the memoir:in all probability it would give such explanations with respect toMargrave's antecedents, as, if not sufficing to criminate him of legaloffences, would at least effectually terminate any acquaintance betweenSir Philip's successor and himself. 

All my thoughts were, however, diverted to channels of far deeperinterest even than those in which my mind had of late been sotumultuously whirled along, when, on returning home, I found a note fromMrs. Ashleigh. She and Lilian had just come back to L----, sooner thanshe had led me to anticipate. Lilian had not seemed quite well the lastday or two, and had been anxious to return. 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 

Let me recall it--softly, --softly! Let me recall that evening spentwith her!--that evening, the last before darkness rose between us like asolid wall. 

It was evening, at the close of summer. The sun had set, the twilightwas lingering still. We were in the old monastic garden, --garden soquiet, so cool, so fragrant. She was seated on a bench under the onegreat cedar-tree that rose sombre in the midst of the grassy lawn withits little paradise of flowers. I had thrown myself on the sward ather feet; her hand so confidingly lay in the clasp of mine. I see herstill, --how young, how fair, how innocent!

Strange, strange! So inexpressibly English; so thoroughly the creatureof our sober, homely life! The pretty delicate white robe that I touchso timorously, and the ribbon-knots of blue that so well become thesoft colour of the fair cheek, the wavy silk of the brown hair! She ismurmuring low her answer to my trembling question. 

"As well as when last we parted? Do you love me as well still?"

"There is no 'still' written here, " said she, softly pressing her handto her heart. "Yesterday is as to-morrow in the Forever. "

"Ah, Lilian! if I could reply to you in words as akin to poetry as yourown!"

"Fie! you who affect not to care for poetry!"

"That was before you went away; before I missed you from my eyes, frommy life; before I was quite conscious how precious you were to me, moreprecious than common words can tell! Yes, there is one period in lovewhen all men are poets, however the penury of their language may beliethe luxuriance of their fancies. What would become of me if you ceasedto love me?"

"Or of me, if you could cease to love?"

"And somehow it seems to me this evening as if my heart drew nearer toyou, --nearer as if for shelter. "

"It is sympathy, " said she, with tremulous eagerness, --"that sort ofmysterious sympathy which I have often heard you deny or deride; for I, too, feel drawn nearer to you, as if there were a storm at hand. I wasoppressed by an indescribable terror in returning home, and the moment Isaw you there came a sense of protection. "

Her head sank on my shoulder: we were silent some moments; then we bothrose by the same involuntary impulse, and round her slight form I twinedmy strong arm of man. And now we are winding slow under the lilacs andacacias that belt the lawn. Lilian has not yet heard of the murder, which forms the one topic of the town, for all tales of violence andblood affected her as they affect a fearful child. Mrs. Ashleigh, therefore, had judiciously concealed from her the letters and thejournals by which the dismal news had been carried to herself. I needscarcely say that the grim subject was not broached by me. In fact, my own mind escaped from the events which had of late so perplexedand tormented it; the tranquillity of the scene, the bliss of Lilian'spresence, had begun to chase away even that melancholy foreboding whichhad overshadowed me in the first moments of our reunion. So we camegradually to converse of the future, --of the day, not far distant, whenwe two should be as one. We planned our bridal excursion. We would visitthe scenes endeared to her by song, to me by childhood, --the banksand waves of my native Windermere, --our one brief holiday before lifereturned to labour, and hearts now so disquieted by hope and joy settleddown to the calm serenity of home. 

As we thus talked, the moon, nearly rounded to her full, rose amidstskies without a cloud. We paused to gaze on her solemn haunting beauty, as where are the lovers who have not paused to gaze? We were then on theterrace walk, which commanded a view of the town below. Before us wasa parapet wall, low on the garden side, but inaccessible on the outerside, forming part of a straggling irregular street that made one ofthe boundaries dividing Abbey Hill from Low Town. The lamps of thethoroughfares, in many a line and row beneath us, stretched far away, obscured, here and there, by intervening roofs and tall church towers. The hum of the city came to our ears, low and mellowed into a lullingsound. It was not displeasing to be reminded that there was a worldwithout, as close and closer we drew each to each, --worlds to oneanother! Suddenly there carolled forth the song of a human voice, --awild, irregular, half-savage melody, foreign, uncomprehended words, --airand words not new to me. I recognized the voice and chant of Margrave. Istarted, and uttered an angry exclamation. 

"Hush!" whispered Lilian, and I felt her frame shiver within myencircling arm. "Hush! listen! Yes; I have heard that voice before--lastnight--"

"Last night! you were not here; you were more than a hundred milesaway. "

"I heard it in a dream! Hush, hush!"

The song rose louder; impossible to describe its effect, in the midstof the tranquil night, chiming over the serried rooftops, and underthe solitary moon. It was not like the artful song of man, for it wasdefective in the methodical harmony of tune; it was not like the song ofthe wild-bird, for it had no monotony in its sweetness: it was wanderingand various as the sounds from an AEolian harp. But it affected thesenses to a powerful degree, as in remote lands and in vast solitudes Ihave since found the note of the mocking-bird, suddenly heard, affectsthe listener half with delight, half with awe, as if some demon creatureof the desert were mimicking man for its own merriment. The chant nowhad changed into an air of defying glee, of menacing exultation; itmight have been the triumphant war-song of some antique barbarian race. The note was sinister; a shadow passed through me, and Lilian had closedher eyes, and was sighing heavily; then with a rapid change, sweet asthe coo with which an Arab mother lulls her babe to sleep, the melodydied away. "There, there, look, " murmured Lilian, moving from me, "thesame I saw last night in sleep; the same I saw in the space above, onthe evening I first knew you!"

Her eyes were fixed, her hand raised; my look followed hers, and restedon the face and form of Margrave. The moon shone full upon him, so fullas if concentrating all its light upon his image. The place on whichhe stood (a balcony to the upper story of a house about fifty yardsdistant) was considerably above the level of the terrace from which wegazed on him. His arms were folded on his breast, and he appeared to belooking straight towards us. Even at that distance, the lustrous youthof his countenance appeared to me terribly distinct, and the light ofhis wondrous eye seemed to rest upon us in one lengthened, steady raythrough the limpid moonshine. Involuntarily I seized Lilian's hand, anddrew her away almost by force, for she was unwilling to move, and asI led her back, she turned her head to look round; I, too, turned injealous rage! I breathed more freely. Margrave had disappeared!

"How came he there? It is not his hotel. Whose house is it?" I saidaloud, though speaking to myself. 

Lilian remained silent, her eyes fixed upon the ground as if in deeprevery. I took her band; it did not return my pressure. I felt cut tothe heart when she drew coldly from me that hand, till then so franklycordial. I stopped short: "Lilian, what is this? you are chilled towardsme. Can the mere sound of that man's voice, the mere glimpse of thatman's face, have--" I paused; I did not dare to complete my question. 

Lilian lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw at once in those eyes achange. Their look was cold; not haughty, but abstracted. "I do notunderstand you, " she said, in a weary, listless accent. "It is growinglate; I must go in. "

So we walked on moodily, no longer arm in arm, nor hand in hand. Then itoccurred to me that, the next day, Lilian would be in that narrow worldof society; that there she could scarcely fail to hear of Margrave, tomeet, to know him. Jealousy seized me with all its imaginary terrors, and amidst that jealousy, a nobler, purer apprehension for herself. Had I been Lilian's brother instead of her betrothed, I should not havetrembled less to foresee the shadow of Margrave's mysterious influencepassing over a mind so predisposed to the charm which Mystery itselfhas for those whose thoughts fuse their outlines in fancies, whose worldmelts away into Dreamland. Therefore I spoke. 

"Lilian, at the risk of offending you-alas! I have never done so beforethis night--I must address to you a prayer which I implore you not toregard as the dictate of a suspicion unworthy you and myself. The personwhom you have just heard and seen is, at present, much courted in thecircles of this town. I entreat you not to permit any one to introducehim to you. I entreat you not to know him. I cannot tell you all myreasons for this petition; enough that I pledge you my honour that thosereasons are grave. Trust, then, in my truth, as I trust in yours. Beassured that I stretch not the rights which your heart has bestowedupon mine in the promise I ask, as I shall be freed from all fear by apromise which I know will be sacred when once it is given. "

"What promise?" asked Lilian, absently, as if she had not heard mywords. 

"What promise? Why, to refuse all acquaintance with that man; his nameis Margrave. Promise me, dearest, promise me. "

"Why is your voice so changed?" said Lilian. "Its tone jars on my ear, "she added, with a peevishness so unlike her, that it startled me morethan it offended; and without a word further, she quickened her pace, and entered the house. 

For the rest of the evening we were both taciturn and distant towardseach other. In vain Mrs. Ashleigh kindly sought to break down our mutualreserve. I felt that I had the right to be resentful, and I clung tothat right the more because Lilian made no attempt at reconciliation. This, too, was wholly unlike herself, for her temper was ordinarilysweet, --sweet to the extreme of meekness; saddened if the slightestmisunderstanding between us had ever vexed me, and yearning to askforgiveness if a look or a word had pained me. I was in hopes that, before I went away, peace between us would be restored. But long ere herusual hour for retiring to rest, she rose abruptly, and, complainingof fatigue and headache, wished me "good-night, " and avoided the hand Isorrowfully held out to her as I opened the door. 

"You must have been very unkind to poor Lilian, " said Mrs. Ashleigh, between jest and earnest, "for I never saw her so cross to you before. And the first day of her return, too!"

"The fault is not mine, " said I, somewhat sullenly; "I did but askLilian, and that as a humble prayer, not to make the acquaintance ofa stranger in this town against whom I have reasons for distrust andaversion. I know not why that prayer should displease her. "

"Nor I. Who is the stranger?"

"A person who calls himself Margrave. Let me at least entreat you toavoid him!"

"Oh, I have no desire to make acquaintance with strangers. But, nowLilian is gone, do tell me all about this dreadful murder. The servantsare full of it, and I cannot keep it long concealed from Lilian. I wasin hopes that you would have broken it to her. "

I rose impatiently; I could not bear to talk thus of an event thetragedy of which was associated in my mind with circumstances somysterious. I became agitated and even angry when Mrs. Ashleighpersisted in rambling woman-like inquiries, --"Who was suspected ofthe deed? Who did I think had committed it? What sort of a man was SirPhilip? What was that strange story about a casket?" Breaking from suchinterrogations, to which I could give but abrupt and evasive answers, Iseized my hat and took my departure. 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Letter from Allen Fenwick to Lilian Ashleigh. 

 "I have promised to go to Derval Court to-day, and shall not return till to-morrow. I cannot bear the thought that so many hours should pass away with one feeling less kind than usual resting like a cloud upon you and me. Lilian, if I offended you, forgive me! Send me one line to say so!--one line which I can place next to my heart and cover with grateful kisses till we meet again!"

Reply. 

 "I scarcely know what you mean, nor do I quite understand my own state of mind at this moment. It cannot be that I love you less--and yet--but I will not write more now. I feel glad that we shall not meet for the next day or so, and then I hope to be quite recovered. I am not well at this moment. Do not ask me to forgive you; but if it is I who am in fault, forgive me, oh, forgive me, Allen!"

And with this unsatisfactory note, not worn next to my heart, notcovered with kisses, but thrust crumpled into my desk like a creditor'sunwelcome bill, I flung myself on my horse and rode to Derval Court. I am naturally proud; my pride came now to my aid. I felt bitterlyindignant against Lilian, so indignant that I resolved on my return tosay to her, "If in those words, 'And yet, ' you implied a doubt whetheryou loved me less, I cancel your vows, I give you back your freedom. "And I could have passed from her threshold with a firm foot, though withthe certainty that I should never smile again. 

Does her note seem to you who may read these pages to justify suchresentment? Perhaps not. But there is an atmosphere in the lettersof the one we love which we alone--we who love--can feel, and in theatmosphere of that letter I felt the chill of the coming winter. 

I reached the park lodge of Derval Court late in the day. I had occasionto visit some patients whose houses lay scattered many miles apart, and for that reason, as well as from the desire for some quick bodilyexercise which is so natural an effect of irritable perturbation ofmind, I had made the journey on horseback instead of using a carriagethat I could not have got through the lanes and field-paths by whichalone the work set to myself could be accomplished in time. 

Just as I entered the park, an uneasy thought seized hold of me withthe strength which is ascribed to presentiments. I had passed throughmy study (which has been so elaborately described) to my stables, asI generally did when I wanted my saddle-horse, and, in so doing, haddoubtless left open the gate to the iron palisade, and probably thewindow of the study itself. I had been in this careless habit forseveral years, without ever once having cause for self-reproach. As Ibefore said, there was nothing in my study to tempt a thief; thestudy was shut out from the body of the house, and the servant sure atnightfall both to close the window and lock the gate; yet now, for thefirst time, I felt an impulse, urgent, keen, and disquieting, to rideback to the town, and see those precautions taken. I could not guesswhy, but something whispered to me that my neglect had exposed me tosome great danger. I even checked my horse and looked at my watch; toolate!--already just on the stroke of Strahan's dinner-hour as fixed inhis note; my horse, too, was fatigued and spent: besides, what folly!what bearded man can believe in the warnings of a "presentiment"? Ipushed on, and soon halted before the old-fashioned flight of stairsthat led up to the Hall. Here I was accosted by the old steward; he hadjust descended the stairs, and as I dismounted he thrust his arm intomine unceremoniously, and drew me a little aside. 

"Doctor, I was right; it was his ghost that I saw by the iron door ofthe mausoleum. I saw it again at the same place last night, but I had nofit then. Justice on his murderer! Blood for blood!"

"Ay!" said I, sternly; for if I suspected Margrave before, I feltconvinced now that the inexpiable deed was his. Wherefore convinced?Simply because I now hated him more, and hate is so easily convinced!"Lilian! Lilian!" I murmured to myself that name; the flame of my hatewas fed by my jealousy. "Ay!" said I, sternly, "murder will out. "

"What are the police about?" said the old man, querulously; "days passon days, and no nearer the truth. But what does the new owner care? Hehas the rents and acres; what does he care for the dead? I will neverserve another master. I have just told Mr. Strahan so. How do I knowwhether he did not do the deed? Who else had an interest in it?"

"Hush, hush!" I cried; "you do not know how wildly you are talking. "

The old man stared at me, shook his head, released my arm, and strodeaway. 

A labouring man came out of the garden, and having unbuckled thesaddle-bags, which contained the few things required for so short avisit, I consigned my horse to his care, and ascended the perron. The old housekeeper met me in the hall, and conducted me up the greatstaircase, showed me into a bedroom prepared for me, and told me thatMr. Strahan was already waiting dinner for me. I should find him in thestudy. I hastened to join him. He began apologizing, very unnecessarily, for the state of his establishment. He had as yet engaged no newservants. The housekeeper with the help of a housemaid did all the work. 

Richard Strahan at college had been as little distinguishable from otheryoung men as a youth neither rich nor poor, neither clever nor stupid, neither handsome nor ugly, neither audacious sinner nor formal saint, possibly could be. 

Yet, to those who understood him well, he was not without some of thosemoral qualities by which a youth of mediocre intellect often maturesinto a superior man. 

He was, as Sir Philip had been rightly informed, thoroughly honestand upright. But with a strong sense of duty, there was also a certainlatent hardness. He was not indulgent. He had outward frankness withacquaintances, but was easily roused to suspicion. He had much of thethriftiness and self-denial of the North countryman, and I have no doubtthat he had lived with calm content and systematic economy on an incomewhich made him, as a bachelor, independent of his nominal profession, but would not have sufficed, in itself, for the fitting maintenance of awife and family. He was, therefore, still single. 

It seems to me even during the few minutes in which we conversed beforedinner was announced, that his character showed a new phase with his newfortunes. He talked in a grandiose style of the duties of station andthe woes of wealth. He seemed to be very much afraid of spending, andstill more appalled at the idea of being cheated. His temper, too, wasruffled; the steward had given him notice to quit. Mr. Jeeves, who hadspent the morning with him, had said the steward would be a great loss, and a steward at once sharp and honest was not to be easily found. 

What trifles can embitter the possession of great goods! Strahan hadtaken a fancy to the old house; it was conformable to his notions, bothof comfort and pomp, and Sir Philip had expressed a desire that the oldhouse should be pulled down. Strahan had inspected the plans for the newmansion to which Sir Philip had referred, and the plans did not pleasehim; on the contrary, they terrified. 

"Jeeves says that I could not build such a house under L70, 000 orL80, 000, and then it will require twice the establishment which willsuffice for this. I shall be ruined, " cried the man who had just comeinto possession of at least ten thousand a year. 

"Sir Philip did not enjoin you to pull down the old house; he onlyadvised you to do so. Perhaps he thought the site less healthy thanthat which he proposes for a new building, or was aware of some otherdrawback to the house, which you may discover later. Wait a little andsee before deciding. "

"But, at all events, I suppose I must pull down this curious oldroom, --the nicest part of the old house!"

Strahan, as he spoke, looked wistfully round at the quaint oakchimneypiece; the carved ceiling; the well-built solid walls, withthe large mullion casement, opening so pleasantly on the sequesteredgardens. He had ensconced himself in Sir Philip's study, the chamber inwhich the once famous mystic, Forman, had found a refuge. 

"So cozey a room for a single man!" sighed Strahan. "Near the stablesand dog-kennels, too! But I suppose I must pull it down. I am not boundto do so legally; it is no condition of the will. But in honour andgratitude I ought not to disobey poor Sir Philip's positive injunction. "

"Of that, " said I, gravely, "there cannot be a doubt. " Here ourconversation was interrupted by Mrs. Gates, who informed us that dinnerwas served in the library. Wine of great age was brought from the longneglected cellars; Strahan filled and re-filled his glass, and, warmedinto hilarity, began to talk of bringing old college friends around himin the winter season, and making the roof-tree ring with laughter andsong once more. 

Time wore away, and night had long set in, when Strahan at last rosefrom the table, his speech thick and his tongue unsteady. We returned tothe study, and I reminded my host of the special object of my visit tohim, --namely, the inspection of Sir Philip's manuscript. 

"It is tough reading, " said Strahan; "better put it off till tomorrow. You will stay here two or three days. "

"No; I must return to L---- to-morrow. I cannot absent myself frommy patients. And it is the more desirable that no time should be lostbefore examining the contents of the manuscript, because probably theymay give some clew to the detection of the murderer. "

"Why do you think that?" cried Strahan, startled from the drowsinessthat was creeping over him. 

"Because the manuscript may show that Sir Philip had some enemy, and whobut an enemy could have had a motive for such a crime? Come, bring forththe book. You of all men are bound to be alert in every researchthat may guide the retribution of justice to the assassin of yourbenefactor. "

"Yes, yes. I will offer a reward of L5, 000 for the discovery. Allen, that wretched old steward had the insolence to tell me that I was theonly man in the world who could have an interest in the death of hismaster; and he looked at me as if he thought that I had committedthe crime. You are right; it becomes me, of all men, to be alert. Theassassin must be found. He must hang. "

While thus speaking, Strahan had risen, unlocked a desk, which stood onone of the safes, and drawn forth a thick volume, the contents of whichwere protected by a clasp and lock. Strahan proceeded to open this lockby one of a bunch of keys, which he said had been found on Sir Philip'sperson. 

"There, Allen, this is the memoir. I need not tell you what store Iplace on it, --not, between you and me, that I expect it will warrantpoor Sir Philip's high opinion of his own scientific discoveries; thatpart of his letter seems to me very queer, and very flighty. But heevidently set his heart on the publication of his work, in part ifnot in whole; and, naturally, I must desire to comply with a wish sodistinctly intimated by one to whom I owe so much. I be, you, therefore, not to be too fastidious. Some valuable hints in medicine, I have reasonto believe, the manuscript will contain, and those may help you in yourprofession, Allen. "

"You have reason to believe! Why?"

"Oh, a charming young fellow, who, with most of the other gentryresident at L----, called on me at my hotel, told me that he hadtravelled in the East, and had there heard much of Sir Philip'sknowledge of chemistry, and the cures it had enabled him to perform. "

"You speak of Mr. Margrave. He called on you?"

"Yes. "

"You did not, I trust, mention to him the existence of Sir Philip'smanuscript. "

"Indeed I did; and I said you had promised to examine it. He seemeddelighted at that, and spoke most highly of your peculiar fitness forthe task. "

"Give me the manuscript, " said I, abruptly, "and after I have looked atit to-night, I may have something to say to you tomorrow in reference toMr. Margrave. "

"There is the book, " said Strahan; "I have just glanced at it, and findmuch of it written in Latin; and I am ashamed to say that I have soneglected the little Latin I learned in our college days that I couldnot construe what I looked at. "

I sat down and placed the book before me; Strahan fell into a doze, fromwhich he was wakened by the housekeeper, who brought in the tea-things. 

"Well, " said Strahan, languidly, "do you find much in the book thatexplains the many puzzling riddles in poor Sir Philip's eccentric lifeand pursuits?"

"Yes, " said I. "Do not interrupt me. "

Strahan again began to doze, and the housekeeper asked if we should wantanything more that night, and if I thought I could find my way to mybedroom. 

I dismissed her impatiently, and continued to read. Strahan woke upagain as the clock struck eleven, and finding me still absorbed in themanuscript, and disinclined to converse, lighted his candle, and tellingme to replace the manuscript in the desk when I had done with it, and besure to lock the desk and take charge of the key, which he took off thebunch and gave me, went upstairs, yawning. 

I was alone in the wizard Forman's chamber, and bending over a strangerrecord than had ever excited my infant wonder, or, in later years, provoked my sceptic smile. 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The Manuscript was written in a small and peculiar handwriting, which, though evidently by the same person whose letter to Strahan I had read, was, whether from haste or some imperfection in the ink, much more hardto decipher. Those parts of the Memoir which related to experiments, oralleged secrets in Nature, that the writer intimated a desire to submitexclusively to scholars or men of science, were in Latin, --and Latinwhich, though grammatically correct, was frequently obscure. But allthat detained the eye and attention on the page necessarily served toimpress the contents more deeply on remembrance. 

The narrative commenced with the writer's sketch of his childhood. Bothhis parents had died before he attained his seventh year. The orphanbad been sent by his guardians to a private school, and his holidays hadbeen passed at Derval Court. Here his earliest reminiscences were thoseof the quaint old room, in which I now sat, and of his childish wonderat the inscription on the chimneypiece--who and what was the SimonForman who had there found a refuge from persecution? Of what naturewere the studies he had cultivated, and the discoveries he boasted tohave made?

When he was about sixteen, Philip Derval had begun to read the manymystic books which the library contained; but without other resulton his mind than the sentiment of disappointment and disgust. Theimpressions produced on the credulous imagination of childhood vanished. He went to the University; was sent abroad to travel: and on his returntook that place in the circles of London which is so readily conceded toa young idler of birth and fortune. He passed quickly over that periodof his life, as one of extravagance and dissipation, from which he wasfirst drawn by the attachment for his cousin to which his letter toStrahan referred. Disappointed in the hopes which that affection hadconceived, and his fortune impaired, partly by some years of recklessprofusion, and partly by the pecuniary sacrifices at which he hadeffected his cousin's marriage with another, he retired to Derval Court, to live there in solitude and seclusion. On searching for some oldtitle-deeds required for a mortgage, he chanced upon a collection ofmanuscripts much discoloured, and, in part, eaten away by moth or damp. These, on examination, proved to be the writings of Forman. Some ofthem were astrological observations and predictions; some were upon thenature of the Cabbala; some upon the invocation of spirits and the magicof the dark ages. All had a certain interest, for they were interspersedwith personal remarks, anecdotes of eminent actors in a very stirringtime, and were composed as Colloquies, in imitation of Erasmus, --thesecond person in the dialogue being Sir Miles Derval, the patron andpupil; the first person being Forman, the philosopher and expounder. 

But along with these shadowy lucubrations were treatises of a moreuncommon and a more startling character, --discussions on various occultlaws of nature, and detailed accounts of analytical experiments. Theseopened a new, and what seemed to Sir Philip a practical, field ofinquiry, --a true border-land between natural science and imaginativespeculation. Sir Philip had cultivated philosophical science at theUniversity; he resumed the study, and tested himself the truth ofvarious experiments suggested by Forman. Some, to his surprise, provedsuccessful, some wholly failed. These lucubrations first tempted thewriter of the memoir towards the studies in which the remainder of hislife had been consumed. But he spoke of the lucubrations themselvesas valuable only where suggestive of some truths which Forman hadaccidentally approached, without being aware of their true nature andimportance. They were debased by absurd puerilities, and vitiated by thevain and presumptuous ignorance which characterized the astrology of themiddle ages. For these reasons the writer intimated his intention (ifhe lived to return to England) to destroy Forman's manuscripts, togetherwith sundry other books, and a few commentaries of his own upon studieswhich had for a while misled him, --all now deposited in the safes of theroom in which I sat. 

After some years passed in the retirement of Derval Court, Sir Philipwas seized with the desire to travel, and the taste he had imbibed foroccult studies led him towards those Eastern lands in which they tooktheir origin, and still retain their professors. 

Several pages of the manuscript were now occupied with minute statementsof the writer's earlier disappointment in the objects of his singularresearch. The so-called magicians, accessible to the curiosity ofEuropean travellers, were either but ingenious jugglers, or producedeffects that perplexed him by practices they had mechanically learned, but of the rationale of which they were as ignorant as himself. It wasnot till he had resided some considerable time in the East, and acquireda familiar knowledge of its current languages and the social habits ofits various populations, that he became acquainted with men in whom herecognized earnest cultivators of the lore which tradition ascribes tothe colleges and priesthoods of the ancient world, --men generally livingremote from others, and seldom to be bribed by money to exhibit theirmarvels or divulge their secrets. In his intercourse with these sages, Sir Philip arrived at the conviction that there does exist an art ofmagic, distinct from the guile of the conjuror, and applying to certainlatent powers and affinities in nature, --a philosophy akin to that whichwe receive in our acknowledged schools, inasmuch as it is equally basedon experiment, and produces from definite causes definite results. Insupport of this startling proposition, Sir Philip now devoted more thanhalf his volume to the details of various experiments, to the processand result of which he pledged his guarantee as the actual operator. Asmost of these alleged experiments appeared to me wholly incredible, andas all of them were unfamiliar to my practical experience, andcould only be verified or falsified by tests that would require noinconsiderable amount of time and care, I passed with little heed overthe pages in which they were set forth. I was impatient to arrive atthat part of the manuscript which might throw light on the mystery inwhich my interest was the keenest. What were the links which connectedthe existence of Margrave with the history of Sir Philip Derval? Thushurrying on, page after page, I suddenly, towards the end of the volume, came upon a name that arrested all my attention, --Haroun of Aleppo. Hewho has read the words addressed to mee in my trance may well conceivethe thrill that shot through my heart when I came upon that name, andwill readily understand how much more vividly my memory retains thatpart of the manuscript to which I now proceed, than all which had gonebefore. 

 "It was, " wrote Sir Philip, "in an obscure suburb of Aleppo that I at length met with the wonderful man from whom I have acquired a knowledge immeasurably more profound and occult than that which may be tested in the experiments to which I have devoted so large a share of this memoir. Haroun of Aleppo had, indeed, mastered every secret in nature which the nobler, or theurgic, magic seeks to fathom. 

 "He had discovered the great Principle of Animal Life, which had hitherto baffled the subtlest anatomist. Provided only that the great organs were not irreparably destroyed, there was no disease that he could not cure; no decrepitude to which he could not restore vigour: yet his science was based on the same theory as that espoused by the best professional practitioner of medicine, namely, that the true art of healing is to assist nature to throw off the disease; to summon, as it were, the whole system to eject the enemy that has fastened on a part. And thus his processes, though occasionally varying in the means employed, all combined in this, --namely, the re-invigourating and recruiting of the principle of life. "

No one knew the birth or origin of Haroun; no one knew his age. Inoutward appearance he was in the strength and prime of mature manhood;but, according to testimonies in which the writer of the memoirexpressed a belief that, I need scarcely say, appeared to me egregiouslycredulous, Haroun's existence under the same name, and known by the samerepute, could be traced back to more than a hundred years. He told SirPhilip that he had thrice renewed his own life, and had resolved to doso no more; he had grown weary of living on. With all his gifts, Harounowned himself to be consumed by a profound melancholy. He complainedthat there was nothing new to him under the sun; he said that, whilehe had at his command unlimited wealth, wealth had ceased to bestowenjoyment, and he preferred living as simply as a peasant; he had tiredout all the affections and all the passions of the human heart; he wasin the universe as in a solitude. In a word, Haroun would often repeat, with mournful solemnity: "'The soul is not meant to inhabit this earthand in fleshy tabernacle for more than the period usually assigned tomortals; and when by art in repairing the walls of the body we so retainit, the soul repines, becomes inert or dejected. He only, " said Haroun, "would feel continued joy in continued existence who could preserve inperfection the sensual part of man, with such mind or reason as maybe independent of the spiritual essence, but whom soul itself hasquitted!--man, in short, as the grandest of the animals, but without thesublime discontent of earth, which is the peculiar attribute of soul. "

One evening Sir Philip was surprised to find at Haroun's house anotherEuropean. He paused in his narrative to describe this man. He saidthat for three or four years previously he had heard frequent mention, amongst the cultivators of magic, of an orientalized Englishman engagedin researches similar to his own, and to whom was ascribed a terribleknowledge in those branches of the art which, even in the East, arecondemned as instrumental to evil. Sir Philip here distinguished atlength, as he had so briefly distinguished in his conversation with me, between the two kinds of magic, --that which he alleged to be as purefrom sin as any other species of experimental knowledge, and that bywhich the agencies of witchcraft are invoked for the purposes of guilt. 

The Englishman, to whom the culture of this latter and darker kind ofmagic was ascribed, Sir Philip Derval had never hitherto come across. Henow met him at the house of Haroun; decrepit, emaciated, bowed down withinfirmities, and racked with pain. Though little more than sixty, hisaspect was that of extreme old age; but still on his face there wereseen the ruins of a once singular beauty, and still, in his mind, therewas a force that contrasted the decay of the body. Sir Philip had nevermet with an intellect more powerful and more corrupt. The son of anotorious usurer, heir to immense wealth, and endowed with the talentswhich justify ambition, he had entered upon life burdened with theodium of his father's name. A duel, to which he had been provoked byan ungenerous taunt on his origin, but in which a temperament fiercelyvindictive had led him to violate the usages prescribed by the sociallaws that regulate such encounters, had subjected him to a trial inwhich he escaped conviction either by a flaw in the technicalities oflegal procedure, or by the compassion of the jury;(1) but the moralpresumptions against him were sufficiently strong to set an indeliblebrand on his honour, and an insurmountable barrier to the hopes whichhis early ambition had conceived. After this trial he had quitted hiscountry, to return to it no more. Thenceforth, much of his life had beenpassed out of sight or conjecture of civilized men in remote regions andamongst barbarous tribes. At intervals, however, he had reappeared inEuropean capitals; shunned by and shunning his equals, surrounded byparasites, amongst whom were always to be found men of considerablelearning, whom avarice or poverty subjected to the influences ofhis wealth. For the last nine or ten years he had settled in Persia, purchased extensive lands, maintained the retinue, and exercised morethan the power of an Oriental prince. Such was the man who, prematurelyworn out, and assured by physicians that he had not six weeks of life, had come to Aleppo with the gaudy escort of an Eastern satrap, hadcaused himself to be borne in his litter to the mud-hut of Haroun theSage, and now called on the magician, in whose art was his last hope, toreprieve him from the--grave. 

He turned round to Sir Philip, when the latter entered the room, andexclaimed in English, "I am here because you are. Your intimacy withthis man was known to me. I took your character as the guarantee of hisown. Tell me that I am no credulous dupe. Tell him that I, Louis Grayle, am no needy petitioner. Tell me of his wisdom; assure him of my wealth. "

Sir Philip looked inquiringly at Haroun, who remained seated on hiscarpet in profound silence. 

"What is it you ask of Haroun?"

"To live on--to live on! For every year of life he can give me, I willload these floors with gold. "

"Gold will not tempt Haroun. "

"What will?"

"Ask him yourself; you speak his language. "

"I have asked him; he vouchsafes me no answer. "

Haroun here suddenly roused himself as from a revery. He drew from underhis robe a small phial, from which he let fall a single drop into acup of water, and said, "Drink this; send to me tomorrow for suchmedicaments as I may prescribe. Return hither yourself in three days;not before!"

When Grayle was gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, asked Haroun if, indeed, it were within the compass of his art to preserve life in aframe that appeared so thoroughly exhausted. Haroun answered, "Afever may so waste the lamp of life that one ruder gust of air couldextinguish the flame, yet the sick man recovers. This sick man'sexistence has been one long fever; this sick man can recover. "

"You will aid him to do so?"

"Three days hence I will tell you. "

On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun's request, Sir Philip came also. Grayle declared that he had already derivedunspeakable relief from the remedies administered; he was lavish inexpressions of gratitude; pressed large gifts on Haroun, and seemedpained when they were refused. This time Haroun conversed freely, drawing forth Grayle's own irregular, perverted, stormy, but powerfulintellect. 

I can best convey the general nature of Grayle's share in the dialoguebetween himself, Haroun, and Derval--recorded in the narrative in wordswhich I cannot trust my memory to repeat in detail--by stating theeffect it produced on my own mind. It seemed, while I read, as ifthere passed before me some convulsion of Nature, --a storm, anearthquake, --outcries of rage, of scorn, of despair, a despot'svehemence of will, a rebel's scoff at authority; yet, ever and anon, some swell of lofty thought, some burst of passionate genius, --abruptvariations from the vaunt of superb defiance to the wail of intenseremorse. 

The whole had in it, I know not what of uncouth but colossal, --like thechant, in the old lyrical tragedy, of one of those mythical giants, who, proud of descent from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements, while still crude and conflicting, to be crushed under the rocks, upheaved in their struggle, as Order and Harmony subjected a brighteningCreation to the milder influences throned in Olympus. But it was nottill the later passages of the dialogue in which my interest was nowabsorbed, that the language ascribed to this sinister personage losta gloomy pathos not the less impressive for the awe with which it wasmingled. For, till then, it seemed to me as if in that tempestuousnature there were still broken glimpses of starry light; that acharacter originally lofty, if irregular and fierce, had been embitteredby early and continuous war with the social world, and had, in thatwar, become maimed and distorted; that, under happier circumstances, itsfiery strength might have been disciplined to good; that even now, where remorse was so evidently poignant, evil could not be irredeemablyconfirmed. 

At length all the dreary compassion previously inspired vanished in oneunqualified abhorrence. 

The subjects discussed changed from those which, relating to the commonworld of men, were within the scope of my reason. Haroun led hiswild guest to boast of his own proficiency in magic, and, despite myincredulity, I could not overcome the shudder with which fictions, however extravagant, that deal with that dark Unknown abandoned to thechimeras of poets, will, at night and in solitude, send through theveins of men the least accessible to imaginary terrors. 

Grayle spoke of the power he had exercised through the agency of evilspirits, --a power to fascinate and to destroy. He spoke of the aidrevealed to him, now too late, which such direful allies could afford, not only to a private revenge, but to a kingly ambition. Had he acquiredthe knowledge he declared himself to possess before the feebleness ofthe decaying body made it valueless, how he could have triumphed overthat world which had expelled his youth from its pale! He spoke of meansby which his influence could work undetected on the minds of others, control agencies that could never betray, and baffle the justice thatcould never discover. He spoke vaguely of a power by which a spectralreflection of the material body could be cast, like a shadow, to adistance; glide through the walls of a prison, elude the sentinels ofa camp, --a power that he asserted to be when enforced by concentratedwill, and acting on the mind, where in each individual temptationfound mind the weakest--almost infallible in its effect to seduce or toappall. And he closed these and similar boasts of demoniacal arts, whichI remember too obscurely to repeat, with a tumultuous imprecation ontheir nothingness to avail against the gripe of death. All this lore hewould communicate to Haroun, in return for what? A boon shared by themeanest peasant, --life, common life; to breathe yet a while the air, feel yet a while the sun. 

Then Haroun replied. He said, with a quiet disdain, that the dark art towhich Grayle made such boastful pretence was the meanest of all abusesof knowledge, rightly abandoned, in all ages, to the vilest natures. Andthen, suddenly changing his tone, he spoke, so far as I can remember thewords assigned to him in the manuscript, to this effect, --

"Fallen and unhappy wretch, and you ask me for prolonged life!--aprolonged curse to the world and to yourself. Shall I employ spells tolengthen the term of the Pestilence, or profane the secrets of Nature torestore vigour and youth to the failing energies of Crime?"

Grayle, as if stunned by the rebuke, fell on his knees with despairingentreaties that strangely contrasted his previous arrogance. "And itwas, " he said, "because his life had been evil that he dreaded death. Iflife could be renewed he would repent, he would change; he retracted hisvaunts, he would forsake the arts he had boasted, he would re-enter theworld as its benefactor. "

"So ever the wicked man lies to himself when appalled by the shadow ofdeath, " answered Haroun. "But know, by the remorse which preys on thysoul, that it is not thy soul that addresses this prayer to me. Couldstthou hear, through the storms of the Mind, the Soul's melancholywhisper, it would dissuade thee from a wish to live on. While I speak, I behold it, that Soul, --sad for the stains on its essence, awed by theaccount it must render, but dreading, as the direst calamity, a renewalof years below, darker stains and yet heavier accounts! Whatever thesentence it may now undergo, it has a hope for mercy in the remorsewhich the mind vainly struggles to quell. But darker its doom if longerretained to earth, yoked to the mind that corrupts it, and enslaved tothe senses which thou bidst me restore to their tyrannous forces. "

And Grayle bowed his head and covered his face with his hands in silenceand in trembling. 

Then Sir Philip, seized with compassion, pleaded for him. "At least, could not the soul have longer time on earth for repentance?" And whileSir Philip was so pleading, Grayle fell prostrate in a swoon like thatof death. When he recovered, his head was leaning on Haroun's knee, andhis opening eyes fixed on the glittering phial which Haroun held, andfrom which his lips had been moistened. 

"Wondrous!" he murmured: "how I feel life flowing back to me. And that, then, is the elixir! it is no fable!"

His hands stretched greedily as to seize the phial, and he criedimploringly, "More, more!" Haroun replaced the vessel in the folds ofhis robe, and answered, --

"I will not renew thy youth, but I will release thee from bodilysuffering: I will leave the mind and the soul free from the pangs ofthe flesh, to reconcile, if yet possible, their long war. My skill mayafford thee months yet for repentance; Seek, in that interval, toatone for the evil of sixty years; apply thy wealth where it may mostcompensate for injury done, most relieve the indigent, and most aid thevirtuous. Listen to thy remorse; humble thyself in prayer. "

Grayle departed, sighing heavily and muttering to himself. The next dayHaroun summoned Sir Philip Derval, and said to him, --

"Depart to Damascus. In that city the Pestilence has appeared. Gothither thou, to heal and to save. In this casket are stored the surestantidotes to the poison of the plague. Of that essence, undiluted andpure, which tempts to the undue prolongation of soul in the prison offlesh, this casket contains not a drop. I curse not my friend with somournful a boon. Thou hast learned enough of my art to know by whatsimples the health of the temperate is easily restored to its balance, and their path to the grave smoothed from pain. Not more should Mancovet from Nature for the solace and weal of the body. Nobler gifts farthan aught for the body this casket contains. Herein are the essenceswhich quicken the life of those duplicate senses that lie dormantand coiled in their chrysalis web, awaiting the wings of a futuredevelopment, --the senses by which we can see, though not with the eye, and hear, but not by the ear. Herein are the links between Man's mindand Nature's; herein are secrets more precious even than these, --thoseextracts of light which enable the Soul to distinguish itself from theMind, and discriminate the spiritual life, not more from life carnalthan life intellectual. Where thou seest some noble intellect, studiousof Nature, intent upon Truth, yet ignoring the fact that all animal lifehas a mind and Man alone on the earth ever asked, and has asked, fromthe hour his step trod the earth, and his eye sought the Heaven, 'HaveI not a soul; can it perish?'--there, such aids to the soul, in theinnermost vision vouchsafed to the mind, thou mayst lawfully use. Butthe treasures contained in this casket are like all which a mortal canwin from the mines he explores, --good or ill in their uses as they passto the hands of the good or the evil. Thou wilt never confide them butto those who will not abuse! and even then, thou art an adept too versedin the mysteries of Nature not to discriminate between the powers thatmay serve the good to good ends, and the powers that may tempt thegood--where less wise than experience has made thee and me--to the endsthat are evil; and not even to thy friend the most virtuous--if lessproof against passion than thou and I have become--wilt thou confidesuch contents of the casket as may work on the fancy, to deafen theconscience and imperil the soul. "

Sir Philip took the casket, and with it directions for use, which he didnot detail. He then spoke to Haroun about Louis Grayle, who had inspiredhim with a mingled sentiment of admiration and abhorrence, of pity andterror. And Haroun answered thus, repeating the words ascribed tohim, so far as I can trust, in regard to them--as to all else in thismarvellous narrative--to a memory habitually tenacious even in ordinarymatters, and strained to the utmost extent of its power, by thestrangeness of the ideas presented to it, and the intensity of mypersonal interest in whatever admitted a ray into that cloud which, gathering fast over my reason, now threatened storm to my affections, --

"When the mortal deliberately allies himself to the spirits of evil, he surrenders the citadel of his being to the guard of its enemies; andthose who look from without can only dimly guess what passes withinthe precincts abandoned to Powers whose very nature we shrink tocontemplate, lest our mere gaze should invite them. This man, whom thoupitiest, is not yet everlastingly consigned to the fiends, becausehis soul still struggles against them. His life has been one long warbetween his intellect, which is mighty, and his spirit, which is feeble. The intellect, armed and winged by the passions, has besieged andoppressed the soul; but the soul has never ceased to repine and torepent. And at moments it has gained its inherent ascendancy, persuadedrevenge to drop the prey it had seized, turned the mind astray fromhatred and wrath into unwonted paths of charity and love. In the longdesert of guilt, there have been green spots and fountains of good. Thefiends have occupied the intellect which invoked them, but they havenever yet thoroughly mastered the soul which their presence appalls. Inthe struggle that now passes within that breast, amidst the flickers ofwaning mortality, only Allah, whose eye never slumbers, can aid. "

Haroun then continued, in words yet more strange and yet more deeplygraved in my memory, --

"There have been men (thou mayst have known such), who, after an illnessin which life itself seemed suspended, have arisen, as out of a sleep, with characters wholly changed. Before, perhaps, gentle and good andtruthful, they now become bitter, malignant, and false. To the personsand the things they had before loved, they evince repugnance andloathing. Sometimes this change is so marked and irrational that theirkindred ascribe it to madness, --not the madness which affects them inthe ordinary business of life, but that which turns into harshness anddiscord the moral harmony that results from natures whole and complete. But there are dervishes who hold that in that illness, which had for itstime the likeness of death, the soul itself has passed away, and an evilgenius has fixed itself into the body and the brain, thus left void oftheir former tenant, and animates them in the unaccountable change fromthe past to the present existence. Such mysteries have formed no partof my study, and I tell you the conjecture received in the East withouthazarding a comment whether of incredulity or belief. But if, in thiswar between the mind which the fiends have seized, and the soul whichimplores refuge of Allah; if, while the mind of yon traveller nowcovets life lengthened on earth for the enjoyments it had pervertedits faculties to seek and to find in sin, and covets so eagerly that itwould shrink from no crime and revolt from no fiend that could promisethe gift, the soul shudderingly implores to be saved from new guilt, and would rather abide by the judgment of Allah on the sins that havedarkened it than pass forever irredeemably away to the demons, --if thisbe so, what if the soul's petition be heard; what if it rise from theruins around it; what if the ruins be left to the witchcraft that seeksto rebuild them? There, if demons might enter, that which they soughtas their prize has escaped them; that which they find would mock them byits own incompleteness even in evil. In vain might animal life the mostperfect be given to the machine of the flesh; in vain might the mind, freed from the check of the soul, be left to roam at will through abrain stored with memories of knowledge and skilled in the command ofits faculties; in vain, in addition to all that body and brain bestow onthe normal condition of man, might unhallowed reminiscences gather allthe arts and the charms of the sorcery by which the fiends tempted thesoul, before it fled, through the passions of flesh and the cravings ofmind: the Thing, thus devoid of a soul, would be an instrument of evil, doubtless, --but an instrument that of itself could not design, invent, and complete. The demons themselves could have no permanent hold onthe perishable materials. They might enter it for some gloomy end whichAllah permits in his inscrutable wisdom; but they could leave it notrace when they pass from it, because there is no conscience wheresoul is wanting. The human animal without soul, but otherwise madefelicitously perfect in its mere vital organization, might ravage anddestroy, as the tiger and the serpent may destroy and ravage, and, the moment after, would sport in the sunlight harmless and rejoicing, because, like the serpent and the tiger, it is incapable of remorse. "

"Why startle my wonder, " said Derval, "with so fantastic an image?"

"Because, possibly, the image may come into palpable form! I know, whileI speak to thee, that this miserable man is calling to his aid the evilsorcery over which he boasts his control. To gain the end he desires, hemust pass through a crime. Sorcery whispers to him how to passthrough it, secure from the detection of man. The soul resists, butin resisting, is weak against the tyranny of the mind to which it hassubmitted so long. Question me no more. But if I vanish from thine eyes, if thou hear that the death which, to my sorrow and in my foolishness Ihave failed to recognize as the merciful minister of Heaven, has removedme at last from the earth, believe that the pale Visitant was welcome, and that I humbly accept as a blessed release the lot of our commonhumanity. "

Sir Philip went to Damascus. There he found the pestilence raging, therehe devoted himself to the cure of the afflicted; in no single instance, so at least he declared, did the antidotes stored in the casket fail intheir effect. The pestilence had passed, his medicaments were exhausted, when the news reached him that Haroun was no more. The Sage had beenfound, one morning, lifeless in his solitary home, and, according topopular rumour, marks on his throat betrayed the murderous hand of thestrangler. Simultaneously, Louis Grayle had disappeared from the city, and was supposed to have shared the fate of Haroun, and been secretlyburied by the assassins who had deprived him of life. Sir Philiphastened to Aleppo. There he ascertained that on the night in whichHaroun died, Grayle did not disappear alone; with him were also missingtwo of his numerous suite, --the one, an Arab woman, named Ayesha, whohad for some years been his constant companion, his pupil and associatein the mystic practices to which his intellect had been debased, and whowas said to have acquired a singular influence over him, partly byher beauty and partly by the tenderness with which she had nursed himthrough his long decline; the other, an Indian, specially assignedto her service, of whom all the wild retainers of Grayle spoke withdetestation and terror. He was believed by them to belong to thatmurderous sect of fanatics whose existence as a community has onlyrecently been made known to Europe, and who strangle their unsuspectingvictim in the firm belief that they thereby propitiate the favour of thegoddess they serve. The current opinion at Aleppo was, that if thosetwo persons had conspired to murder Haroun, perhaps for the sake of thetreasures he was said to possess, it was still more certain that theyhad made away with their own English lord, whether for the sake of thejewels he wore about him, or for the sake of treasures less doubtfulthan those imputed to Haroun, and of which the hiding-place would be tothem much better known. 

 "I did not share that opinion, " wrote the narrator, "for I assured myself that Ayesha sincerely loved her awful master; and that love need excite no wonder, for Louis Grayle was one whom if a woman, and especially a woman of the East, had once loved, before old age and infirmity fell on him, she would love and cherish still more devotedly when it became her task to protect the being who, in his day of power and command, had exalted his slave into the rank of his pupil and companion. And the Indian whom Grayle had assigned to her service was allowed to have that brute kind of fidelity which, though it recoils from no crime for a master, refuses all crime against him. 

 "I came to the conclusion that Haroun had been murdered by order of Louis Grayle, --for the sake of the elixir of life, --murdered by Juma the Strangler; and that Grayle himself had been aided in his flight from Aleppo, and tended, through the effects of the life-giving drug thus murderously obtained, by the womanly love of the Arab woman Ayesha. These convictions (since I could not, without being ridiculed as the wildest of dupes, even hint at the vital elixir) I failed to impress on the Eastern officials, or even on a countryman of my own whom I chanced to find at Aleppo. They only arrived at what seemed the common-sense verdict, --namely, that Haroun might have been strangled, or might have died in a fit (the body, little examined, was buried long before I came to Aleppo); and that Louis Grayle was murdered by his own treacherous dependents. But all trace of the fugitives was lost. 

 "And now, " wrote Sir Philip, "I will state by what means I discovered that Louis Grayle still lived, --changed from age into youth; a new form, a new being; realizing, I verily believe, the image which Haroun's words had raised up, in what then seemed to me the metaphysics of fantasy, ---criminal, without consciousness of crime; the dreadest of the mere animal race; an incarnation of the blind powers of Nature, --beautiful and joyous, wanton and terrible and destroying! Such as ancient myths have personified in the idols of Oriental creeds; such as Nature, of herself, might form man in her moments of favour, if man were wholly the animal, and spirit were no longer the essential distinction between himself and the races to which by superior formation and subtler perceptions he would still be the king. 

 "But this being is yet more dire and portentous than the mere animal man, for in him are not only the fragmentary memories of a pristine intelligence which no mind, unaided by the presence of soul, could have originally compassed, but amidst that intelligence are the secrets of the magic which is learned through the agencies of spirits the most hostile to our race. And who shall say whether the fiends do not enter at their will this void and deserted temple whence the soul has departed, and use as their tools, passive and unconscious, all the faculties which, skilful in sorcery, still place a mind at the control of their malice?

 "It, was in the interest excited in me by the strange and terrible fate that befell an Armenian family with which I was slightly acquainted, that I first traced--in the creature I am now about to describe, and whose course I devote myself to watch, and trust to bring to a close--the murderer of Haroun for the sake of the elixir of youth. 

 "In this Armenian family there were three daughters; one of them--"

I had just read thus far when a dim shadow fell over the page, and acold air seemed to breathe on me, --cold, so cold, that my blood haltedin my veins as if suddenly frozen! Involuntarily I started, and lookedup, sure that some ghastly presence was in the room. And then, on theopposite side of the wall, I beheld an unsubstantial likeness of a humanform. Shadow I call it, but the word is not strictly correct, for it wasluminous, though with a pale shine. In some exhibition in Londonthere is shown a curious instance of optical illusion; at the end ofa corridor you see, apparently in strong light, a human skull. You areconvinced it is there as you approach; it is, however, only a reflectionfrom a skull at a distance. The image before me was less vivid, lessseemingly prominent than is the illusion I speak of. I was not deceived. I felt it was a spectrum, a phantasm; but I felt no less surely that itwas a reflection from an animate form, --the form and face of Margrave;it was there, distinct, unmistakable. Conceiving that he himself mustbe behind me, I sought to rise, to turn round, to examine. I could notmove: limb and muscle were overmastered by some incomprehensiblespell. Gradually my senses forsook me; I became unconscious as well asmotionless. When I recovered, I heard the clock strike three. I musthave been nearly two hours insensible! The candles before me wereburning low. My eyes rested on the table; the dead man's manuscript wasgone!

(1) The reader will here observe a discrepancy between Mrs. Poyntz'saccount and Sir Philip Derval's narrative. According to the former, Louis Grayle was tried in his absence from England, and sentencedto three years' imprisonment, which his flight enabled him to evade. According to the latter, Louis Grayle stood his trial, and obtained anacquittal. Sir Philip's account must, at least, be nearer the truth thanthe lady's, because Louis Grayle could not, according to English law, have been tried on a capital charge without being present in court. Mrs. Poyntz tells her story as a woman generally does tell a story, --sure tomake a mistake when she touches on a question of law; and--unconsciouslyperhaps to herself--the woman of the World warps the facts in hernarrative so as to save the personal dignity of the hero, who hascaptivated her interest, not from the moral odium of a great crime, butthe debasing position of a prisoner at the bar. Allen Fenwick, no doubt, purposely omits to notice the discrepancy between these two statements, or to animadvert on the mistake which, in the eyes of a lawyer, woulddiscredit Mrs. Poyntz's. It is consistent with some of the objects forwhich Allen Fenwick makes public his Strange Story, to invite the readerto draw his own inferences from the contradictions by which, even in themost commonplace matters (and how much more in any tale of wonder!), afact stated by one person is made to differ from the same fact stated byanother. The rapidity with which a truth becomes transformed into fable, when it is once sent on its travels from lip to lip, is illustratedby an amusement at this moment in fashion. The amusement is this: In aparty of eight or ten persons, let one whisper to another an accountof some supposed transaction, or a piece of invented gossip relating toabsent persons, dead or alive; let the person, who thus first hears thestory, proceed to whisper it, as exactly as he can remember what he hasjust heard, to the next; the next does the same to his neighbour, and soon, till the tale has run the round of the party. Each narrator, as soonas he has whispered his version of the tale, writes down what he haswhispered. And though, in this game, no one has had any interest tomisrepresent, but, on the contrary, each for his own credit's sakestrives to repeat what he has heard as faithfully as he can, it willbe almost invariably found that the story told by the first person hasreceived the most material alterations before it has reached theeighth or the tenth. Sometimes the most important feature of the wholenarrative is altogether omitted; sometimes a feature altogether new andpreposterously absurd has been added. At the close of the experiment oneis tempted to exclaim, "How, after this, can any of those portions ofhistory which the chronicler took from hearsay be believed?" But, aboveall, does not every anecdote of scandal which has passed, not throughten lips, but perhaps through ten thousand, before it has reached us, become quite as perplexing to him who would get at the truth, as themarvels he recounts are to the bewildered reason of Fenwick the Sceptic?

CHAPTER XL. 

The dead man's manuscript was gone. But how? A phantom might delude myeye, a human will, though exerted at a distance, might, if the talesof mesmerism be true, deprive me of movement and of consciousness; butneither phantom nor mesmeric will could surely remove from the tablebefore me the material substance of the book that had vanished! Was I toseek explanation in the arts of sorcery ascribed to Louis Grayle in thenarrative? I would not pursue that conjecture. Against it my reason roseup half alarmed, half disdainful. Some one must have entered the room, some one have removed the manuscript. I looked round. The windows wereclosed, the curtains partly drawn over the shutters, as they were beforemy consciousness had left me: all seemed undisturbed. Snatching up oneof the candles, fast dying out, I went into the adjoining library, thedesolate state-rooms, into the entrance-hall, and examined the outerdoor, barred and locked! The robber had left no vestige of his stealthypresence. 

I resolved to go at once to Strahan's room and tell him of the losssustained. A deposit had been confided to me, and I felt as if therewere a slur on my honour every moment in which I kept its abstractionconcealed from him to whom I was responsible for the trust. I hastilyascended the great staircase, grim with faded portraits, and foundmyself in a long corridor opening on my own bedroom; no doubt also onStrahan's. Which was his? I knew not. I opened rapidly door after door, peered into empty chambers, went blundering on, when to the right, down a narrow passage. I recognized the signs of my host'swhereabouts, --signs familiarly commonplace and vulgar; signs bywhich the inmate of any chamber in lodging-house or inn makes himselfknown, --a chair before a doorway, clothes negligently thrown on it, beside it a pair of shoes. And so ludicrous did such testimony of commonevery-day life, of the habits which Strahan would necessarily havecontracted in his desultory unluxurious bachelor's existence, --soludicrous, I say, did these homely details seem to me, so grotesquely atvariance with the wonders of which I had been reading, with the wondersyet more incredible of which I myself had been witness and victim, thatas I turned down the passage, I heard my own unconscious half-hystericallaugh; and, startled by the sound of that laugh as if it came from someone else, I paused, my hand on the door, and asked myself: "Do I dream?Am I awake? And if awake what am I to say to the common place mortal Iam about to rouse? Speak to him of a phantom! Speak to him of some weirdspell over this strong frame! Speak to him of a mystic trance in whichhas been stolen what he confided to me, without my knowledge! What willhe say? What should I have said a few days ago to any man who told sucha tale to me?" I did not wait to resolve these questions. I entered theroom. There was Strahan sound asleep on his bed. I shook him roughly. Hestarted up, rubbed his eyes. "You, Allen, --you! What the deuce?--what 'sthe matter?"

"Strahan, I have been robbed!--robbed of the manuscript you lent me. Icould not rest till I had told you. "

"Robbed, robbed! Are you serious?"

By this time Strahan had thrown off the bed-clothes, and sat upright, staring at me. 

And then those questions which my mind had suggested while I wasstanding at his door repeated themselves with double force. Tell thisman, this unimaginative, hard-headed, raw-boned, sandy-haired Northcountryman, --tell this man a story which the most credulous school-girlwould have rejected as a fable! Impossible!

"I fell asleep, " said I, colouring and stammering, for the slightestdeviation from truth was painful to me, "and-and--when I awoke--themanuscript was gone. Some one must have entered and committed thetheft--"

"Some one entered the house at this hour of the night and then onlystolen a manuscript which could be of no value to him! Absurd! Ifthieves have come in it must be for other objects, --for plate, formoney. I will dress; we will see!"

Strahan hurried on his clothes, muttering to himself and avoiding myeye. He was embarrassed. He did not like to say to an old friend whatwas on his mind; but I saw at once that he suspected I had resolved todeprive him of the manuscript, and had invented a wild tale in order toconceal my own dishonesty. 

Nevertheless, he proceeded to search the house. I followed him insilence, oppressed with my own thoughts, and longing for solitude inmy own chamber. We found no one, no trace of any one, nothing toexcite suspicion. There were but two female servants sleeping in thehouse, --the old housekeeper, and a country girl who assisted her. It wasnot possible to suspect either of these persons; but in the course ofour search we opened the doors of their rooms. We saw that they wereboth in bed, both seemingly asleep: it seemed idle to wake and questionthem. When the formality of our futile investigation was concluded, Strahan stopped at the door of my bedroom, and for the first time fixinghis eyes on me steadily, said, --

"Allen Fenwick, I would have given half the fortune I have comeinto rather than this had happened. The manuscript, as you know, wasbequeathed to me as a sacred trust by a benefactor whose slightest wishit is my duty to observe religiously. If it contained aught valuable toa man of your knowledge and profession, why, you were free to use itscontents. Let me hope, Allen, that the book will reappear to-morrow. "

He said no more, drew himself away from the hand I involuntarilyextended, and walked quickly back towards his own room. 

Alone once more, I sank on a seat, buried my face in my hands, andstrove in vain to collect into some definite shape my own tumultuousand disordered thoughts. Could I attach serious credit to the marvellousnarrative I had read? Were there, indeed, such powers given to man, suchinfluences latent in the calm routine of Nature? I could not believeit; I must have some morbid affection of the brain; I must be under anhallucination. Hallucination? The phantom, yes; the trance, yes. Butstill, how came the book gone? That, at least, was not hallucination. 

I left my room the next morning with a vague hope that I should find themanuscript somewhere in the study; that, in my own trance, I mighthave secreted it, as sleep-walkers are said to secrete things, withoutremembrance of their acts in their waking state. 

I searched minutely in every conceivable place. Strahan found me stillemployed in that hopeless task. He had breakfasted in his own room, andit was past eleven o'clock when he joined me. His manner was now hard, cold, and distant, and his suspicion so bluntly shown that my distressgave way to resentment. 

"Is it possible, " I cried indignantly, "that you, who have known meso well, can suspect me of an act so base, and so gratuitously base?Purloin, conceal a book confided to me, with full power to copy from itwhatever I might desire, use its contents in any way that might seem tome serviceable to science, or useful to me in my own calling!"

"I have not accused you, " answered Strahan, sullenly. "But what arewe to say to Mr. Jeeves; to all others who know that this manuscriptexisted? Will they believe what you tell me?"

"Mr. Jeeves, " I said, "cannot suspect a fellow-townsman, whose characteris as high as mine, of untruth and theft. And to whom else have youcommunicated the facts connected with a memoir and a request of soextraordinary a nature?"

"To young Margrave; I told you so!"

"True, true. We need not go farther to find the thief. Margrave has beenin this house more than once. He knows the position of the rooms. Youhave named the robber!"

"Tut! what on earth could a gay young fellow like Margrave want witha work of such dry and recondite nature as I presume my poor kinsman'smemoir must be?"

I was about to answer, when the door was abruptly opened, and theservant-girl entered, followed by two men, in whom I recognized thesuperintendent of the L---- police and the same subordinate who hadfound me by Sir Philip's corpse. 

The superintendent came up to me with a grave face, and whispered in myear. I did not at first comprehend him. "Come with you, " I said, "and toMr. Vigors, the magistrate? I thought my deposition was closed. "

The superintendent shook his head. "I have the authority here, Dr. Fenwick. "

"Well, I will come, of course. Has anything new transpired?"

The superintendent turned to the servant-girl, who was standing withgaping mouth and staring eyes. 

"Show us Dr. Fenwick's room. You had better put up, sir, whatever thingsyou have brought here. I will go upstairs with you, " he whispered again. "Come, Dr. Fenwick, I am in the discharge of my duty. "

Something in the man's manner was so sinister and menacing that I feltat once that some new and strange calamity had befallen me. I turnedtowards Strahan. He was at the threshold, speaking in a low voice tothe subordinate policeman, and there was an expression of amazement andhorror in his countenance. As I came towards him he darted away withouta word. 

I went up the stairs, entered my bedroom, the superintendent closebehind me. As I took up mechanically the few things I had broughtwith me, the police-officer drew them from me with an abruptness thatappeared insolent, and deliberately searched the pockets of the coatwhich I had worn the evening before, then opened the drawers in theroom, and even pried into the bed. 

"What do you mean?" I asked haughtily. 

"Excuse me, sir. Duty. You are-"

"Well, I am what?"

"My prisoner; here is the warrant. "

"Warrant! on what charge?"

"The murder of Sir Philip Derval. "

"I--I! Murder!" I could say no more. 

I must hurry over this awful passage in my marvellous record. It istorture to dwell on the details; and indeed I have so sought to chasethem from my recollection, that they only come back to me in hideousfragments, like the incoherent remains of a horrible dream. 

All that I need state is as follows: Early on the very morning on whichI had been arrested, a man, a stranger in the town, had privately soughtMr. Vigors, and deposed that on the night of the murder, he had beentaking refuge from a sudden storm under shelter of the eaves andbuttresses of a wall adjoining an old archway; that he had heard mentalking within the archway; had heard one say to the other, "You stillbear me a grudge. " The other had replied, "I can forgive you on onecondition. " That he then lost much of the conversation that ensued, which was in a lower voice; but he gathered enough to know that thecondition demanded by the one was the possession of a casket which theother carried about with him; that there seemed an altercation on thismatter between the two men, which, to judge by the tones of voice, wasangry on the part of the man demanding the casket; that, finally, thisman said in a loud key, "Do you still refuse?" and on receiving theanswer, which the witness did not overhear, exclaimed threateningly, "Itis you who will repent, " and then stepped forth from the arch into thestreet. The rain had then ceased, but by a broad flash of lightningthe witness saw distinctly the figure of the person thus quitting theshelter of the arch, --a man of tall stature, powerful frame, erectcarriage. A little time afterwards, witness saw a slighter and older mancome forth from the arch, whom he could only examine by the flickeringray of the gas-lamp near the wall, the lightning having ceased, but whomhe fully believed to be the person he afterwards discovered to be SirPhilip Derval. 

He said that he himself had only arrived at the town a few hours before;a stranger to L----, and indeed to England, having come from the UnitedStates of America, where he had passed his life from childhood. He hadjourneyed on foot to L----, in the hope of finding there some distantrelatives. He had put up at a small inn, after which he had strolledthrough the town, when the storm had driven him to seek shelter. He hadthen failed to find his way back to the inn, and after wandering aboutin vain, and seeing no one at that late hour of night of whom he couldask the way, lie had crept under a portico and slept for two or threehours. Waking towards the dawn, he had then got up, and again sought tofind his way to the inn, when he saw, in a narrow street before him, two men, one of whom he recognized as the taller of the two to whoseconversation he had listened under the arch; the other he did notrecognize at the moment. The taller man seemed angry and agitated, andhe heard him say, "The casket; I will have it. " There then seemed to bea struggle between these two persons, when the taller one struck downthe shorter, knelt on his breast, and he caught distinctly the gleam ofsome steel instrument. That he was so frightened that he could not stirfrom the place, and that though he cried out, he believed his voice wasnot heard. He then saw the taller man rise, the other resting on thepavement motionless; and a minute or so afterwards beheld policemencoming to the place, on which he, the witness, walked away. He did notknow that a murder had been committed; it might be only an assault; itwas no business of his, he was a stranger. He thought it best not tointerfere, the police having cognizance of the affair. He found out hisinn; for the next few days he was absent from L---- in search of hisrelations, who had left the town, many years ago, to fix their residencein one of the neighbouring villages. 

He was, however, disappointed; none of these relations now survived. Hehad now returned to L----, heard of the murder, was in doubt what todo, might get himself into trouble if, a mere stranger, he gavean unsupported testimony. But, on the day before the evidence wasvolunteered, as he was lounging in the streets, he had seen a gentlemanpass by on horseback, in whom he immediately recognized the man who, in his belief, was the murderer of Sir Philip Derval. He inquired of abystander the name of the gentleman; the answer was "Dr. Fenwick. " That, the rest of the day, he felt much disturbed in his mind, not liking tovolunteer such a charge against a man of apparent respectability andstation; but that his conscience would not let him sleep that night, and he had resolved at morning to go to the magistrate and make a cleanbreast of it. 

The story was in itself so improbable that any other magistrate butMr. Vigors would perhaps have dismissed it in contempt. But Mr. Vigors, already so bitterly prejudiced against me, and not sorry, perhaps, to subject me to the humiliation of so horrible a charge, immediatelyissued his warrant to search my house. I was absent at Derval Court; thehouse was searched. In the bureau in my favourite study, which was leftunlocked, the steel casket was discovered, and a large case-knife, onthe blade of which the stains of blood were still perceptible. Onthis discovery I was apprehended; and on these evidences, and on thedeposition of this vagrant stranger, I was not, indeed, committed totake my trial for murder, but placed in confinement, all bail for myappearance refused, and the examination adjourned to give time forfurther evidence and inquiries. I had requested the professional aid ofMr. Jeeves. To my surprise and dismay, Mr. Jeeves begged me to excusehim. He said he was pre-engaged by Mr. Strahan to detect and prosecutethe murderer of Sir P. Derval, and could not assist one accused of themurder. I gathered from the little he said that Strahan had already beento him that morning and told him of the missing manuscript, that Strahanhad ceased to be my friend. I engaged another solicitor, a young man ofability, and who professed personal esteem for me. Mr. Stanton (suchwas the lawyer's name) believed in my innocence; but he warned me thatappearances were grave, he implored me to be perfectly frank with him. Had I held conversation with Sir Philip under the archway as reported bythe witness? Had I used such or similar words? Had the deceased said, "Ihad a grudge against him"? Had I demanded the casket? Had I threatenedSir Philip that he would repent? And of what, --his refusal?

I felt myself grow pale, as I answered, "Yes; I thought such or similarexpressions had occurred in my conversation with the deceased. "

"What was the reason of the grudge? What was the nature of this casket, that I should so desire its possession?"

There, I became terribly embarrassed. What could I say to a keen, sensible, worldly man of law, --tell him of the powder and the fumes, ofthe scene in the museum, of Sir Philip's tale, of the implied identityof the youthful Margrave with the aged Grayle, of the elixir of life, and of magic arts? I--I tell such a romance! I, --the noted adversary ofall pretended mysticism; I, --I a sceptical practitioner of medicine! Hadthat manuscript of Sir Philip's been available, --a substantial recordof marvellous events by a man of repute for intellect and learning, --Imight perhaps have ventured to startle the solicitor of I--with myrevelations. But the sole proof that all which the solicitor urged meto confide was not a monstrous fiction or an insane delusion haddisappeared; and its disappearance was a part of the terrible mysterythat enveloped the whole. I answered therefore, as composedly as Icould, that "I could have no serious grudge against Sir Philip, whom Ihad never seen before that evening; that the words which applied tomy supposed grudge were lightly said by Sir Philip, in reference to aphysiological dispute on matters connected with mesmerical phenomena;that the deceased had declared his casket, which he had shown me at themayor's house, contained drugs of great potency in medicine; that I hadasked permission to test those drugs myself; and that when I said hewould repent of his refusal, I merely meant that he would repent ofhis reliance on drugs not warranted by the experiments of professionalscience. "

My replies seemed to satisfy the lawyer so far, but "how could I accountfor the casket and the knife being found in my room?"

"In no way but this; the window of my study is a door-window opening onthe lane, from which any one might enter the room. I was in the habit, not only of going out myself that way, but of admitting through thatdoor any more familiar private acquaintance. "

"Whom, for instance?"

I hesitated a moment, and then said, with a significance I could notforbear, "Mr. Margrave! He would know the locale perfectly; he wouldknow that the door was rarely bolted from within during the daytime:he could enter at all hours; he could place, or instruct any one todeposit, the knife and casket in my bureau, which he knew I never keptlocked; it contained no secrets, no private correspondence, --chieflysurgical implements, or such things as I might want for professionalexperiments. "

"Mr. Margrave! But you cannot suspect him--a lively, charming young man, against whose character not a whisper was ever heard--of connivance withsuch a charge against you, --a connivance that would implicate him in themurder itself; for if you are accused wrongfully, he who accuses you iseither the criminal or the criminal's accomplice, his instigator or histool. "

"Mr. Stanton, " I said firmly, after a moment's pause, "I do suspectMr. Margrave of a hand in this crime. Sir Philip, on seeing him at themayor's house, expressed a strong abhorrence of him, more than hintedat crimes he had committed, appointed me to come to Derval Court theday after that on which the murder was committed. Sir Philip had knownsomething of this Margrave in the East; Margrave might dread exposure, revelations--of what I know not; but, strange as it may seem to you, it is my conviction that this young man, apparently so gay and sothoughtless, is the real criminal, and in some way which I cannotconjecture has employed this lying vagabond in the fabrication of acharge against myself. Reflect: of Mr. Margrave's antecedents we knownothing; of them nothing was known even by the young gentleman who firstintroduced him to the society of this town. If you would serve andsave me, it is to that quarter that you will direct your vigilant andunrelaxing researches. "

I had scarcely so said when I repented my candour, for I observed in theface of Mr. Stanton a sudden revulsion of feeling, an utter incredulityof the accusation I had thus hazarded, and for the first time a doubt ofmy own innocence. The fascination exercised by Margrave was universal;nor was it to be wondered at: for besides the charm of his joyouspresence, he seemed so singularly free from even the errors commonenough with the young, --so gay and boon a companion, yet a shunner ofwine; so dazzling in aspect, so more than beautiful, so courted, soidolized by women, yet no tale of seduction, of profligacy, attachedto his name! As to his antecedents, he had so frankly owned himselfa natural son, a nobody, a traveller, an idler; his expenses, thoughlavish, were so unostentatious, so regularly defrayed; he was so whollythe reverse of the character assigned to criminals, that it seemed asabsurd to bring a charge of homicide against a butterfly or a goldfinchas against this seemingly innocent and delightful favourite of humanityand nature. 

However, Mr. Stanton said little or nothing, and shortly afterwards leftme, with a dry expression of hope that my innocence would be clearedin spite of evidence that, he was bound to say, was of the most seriouscharacter. 

I was exhausted. I fell into a profound sleep early that night; it mightbe a little after twelve when I woke, and woke as fully, as completely, as much restored to life and consciousness, as it was then my habit tobe at the break of day. And so waking, I saw, on the wall oppositemy bed, the same luminous phantom I had seen in the wizard's studyat Derval Court. I have read in Scandinavian legends of an apparitioncalled the Scin-Laeca, or shining corpse. It is supposed in the northernsuperstition, sometimes to haunt sepulchres, sometimes to foretell doom. It is the spectre of a human body seen in a phosphoric light; andso exactly did this phantom correspond to the description of such anapparition in Scandinavian fable that I knew not how to give it a bettername than that of Scin-Laeca, --the shining corpse. 

There it was before me, corpse-like, yet not dead; there, as in thehaunted study of the wizard Forman!--the form and the face of Margrave. Constitutionally, my nerves are strong, and my temper hardy, and nowI was resolved to battle against any impression which my senses mightreceive from my own deluding fancies. Things that witnessed for thefirst time daunt us witnessed for the second time lose their terror. I rose from my bed with a bold aspect, I approached the phantom with afirm step; but when within two paces of it, and my hand outstretched totouch it, my arm became fixed in air, my feet locked to the ground. Idid not experience fear; I felt that my heart beat regularly, but aninvincible something opposed itself to me. I stood as if turned tostone. And then from the lips of this phantom there came a voice, but avoice which seemed borne from a great distance, --very low, muffled, andyet distinct; I could not even be sure that my ear heard it, or whetherthe sound was not conveyed to me by an inner sense. 

"I, and I alone, can save and deliver you, " said the voice. "I will doso; and the conditions I ask, in return, are simple and easy. "

"Fiend or spectre, or mere delusion of my own brain, " cried I, "therecan be no compact between thee and me. I despise thy malice, I rejectthy services; I accept no conditions to escape from the one or to obtainthe other. "

"You may give a different answer when I ask again. "

The Scin-Laeca slowly waned, and, fading first into a paler shadow, thenvanished. I rejoiced at the reply I had given. Two days elapsed beforeMr. Stanton again came to me; in the interval the Scin-Laeca did notreappear. I had mustered all my courage, all my common-sense, noted downall the weak points of the false evidence against me, and felt calm andsupported by the strength of my innocence. 

The first few words of the solicitor dashed all my courage to theground; for I was anxious to hear news of Lilian, anxious to havesome message from her that might cheer and strengthen me, and my firstquestion was this, --

"Mr. Stanton, you are aware that I am engaged in marriage to MissAshleigh. Your family are not unacquainted with her. What says, whatthinks she of this monstrous charge against her betrothed?"

"I was for two hours at Mrs. Ashleigh's house last evening, " repliedthe lawyer; "she was naturally anxious to see me as employed in yourdefence. Who do you think was there? Who, eager to defend you, toexpress his persuasion of your innocence, to declare his convictionthat the real criminal would be soon discovered, --who but that same Mr. Margrave; whom, pardon me my frankness, you so rashly and groundlesslysuspected. "

"Heavens! Do you say that he is received in that house; that he--he isfamiliarly admitted to her presence?"

"My good sir, why these unjust prepossessions against a true friend? Itwas as your friend that, as soon as the charge against you amazedand shocked the town of L----, Mr. Margrave called on Mrs. Ashleigh, presented to her by Miss Brabazon, and was so cheering and hopefulthat--"

"Enough!" I exclaimed, --"enough!"

I paced the room in a state of excitement and rage, which the lawyer invain endeavoured to calm, until at length I halted abruptly: "Well, andyou saw Miss Ashleigh? What message does she send to me--her betrothed?"

Mr. Stanton looked confused. "Message! Consider, sir, Miss Ashleigh'ssituation--the delicacy--and--and--"

"I understand, no message, no word, from a young lady so respectable toa man accused of murder. "

Mr. Stanton was silent for some moments, and then said quietly, "Let uschange this subject; let us think of what more immediately presses. Isee you have been making some notes: may I look at them?"

I composed myself and sat down. "This accuser! Have inquiries reallybeen made as to himself, and his statement of his own proceedings? Hecomes, he says, from America: in what ship? At what port did he land? Isthere any evidence to corroborate his story of the relations he tried todiscover; of the inn at which he first put up, and to which he could notfind his way?"

"Your suggestions are sensible, Dr. Fenwick. I have forestalled them. Itis true that the man lodged at a small inn, --the Rising Sun; truethat lie made inquiries about some relations of the name of Walls, whoformerly resided at L----, and afterwards removed to a village tenmiles distant, --two brothers, tradesmen of small means but respectablecharacter. He at first refused to say at what seaport he landed, in whatship he sailed. I suspect that he has now told a falsehood as to thesematters. I sent my clerk to Southampton, for it is there he said thathe was put on shore; we shall see: the man himself is detained in closecustody. I hear that his manner is strange and excitable; but that hepreserves silence as much as possible. It is generally believed thathe is a bad character, perhaps a returned convict, and that this is thetrue reason why he so long delayed giving evidence, and has been sinceso reluctant to account for himself. But even if his testimony shouldbe impugned, should break down, still we should have to account for thefact that the casket and the case-knife were found in your bureau; for, granting that a person could, in your absence, have entered your studyand placed the articles in your bureau, it is clear that such a personmust have been well acquainted with your house, and this stranger toL---- could not have possessed that knowledge. "

"Of course not. Mr. Margrave did possess it!"

"Mr. Margrave again! oh, sir!"

I arose and moved away with an impatient gesture. I could not trustmyself to speak. That night I did not sleep; I watched impatiently, gazing on the opposite wall for the gleam of the Scin-Laeca. But thenight passed away, and the spectre did not appear. 

CHAPTER XLI. 

The lawyer came the next day, and with something like a smile on hislips. He brought me a few lines in pencil from Mrs. Ashleigh; they werekindly expressed, bade me be of good cheer; "she never for a momentbelieved in my guilt; Lilian bore up wonderfully under so terrible atrial; it was an unspeakable comfort to both to receive the visits of afriend so attached to me, and so confident of a triumphant refutation ofthe hideous calumny under which I now suffered as Mr. Margrave!"

The lawyer had seen Margrave again, --seen him in that house. Margraveseemed almost domiciled there!

I remained sullen and taciturn during this visit. I longed again for thenight. Night came. I heard the distant clock strike twelve, when againthe icy wind passed through my hair, and against the wall stood theluminous Shadow. 

"Have you considered?" whispered the voice, still as from afar. "Irepeat it, --I alone can save you. "

"Is it among the conditions which you ask, in return, that I shallresign to you the woman I love?"

"No. "

"Is it one of the conditions that I should commit some crime, --a crimeperhaps heinous as that of which I am accused?"

"No. "

"With such reservations, I accept the conditions you may name, providedI, in my turn, may demand one condition from yourself. "

"Name it. "

"I ask you to quit this town. I ask you, meanwhile, to cease your visitsto the house that holds the woman betrothed to me. "

"I will cease those visits. And before many days are over, I will quitthis town. "

"Now, then, say what you ask from me. I am prepared to concede it. Andnot from fear for myself, but because I fear for the pure and innocentbeing who is under the spell of your deadly fascination. This is yourpower over me. You command me through my love for another. Speak. "

"My conditions are simple. You will pledge yourself to desist from allcharges of insinuation against myself, of what nature soever. You willnot, when you meet me in the flesh, refer to what you have known of mylikeness in the Shadow. You will be invited to the house at which I maybe also a guest; you will come; you will meet and converse with me asguest speaks with guest in the house of a host. "

"Is that all?"

"It is all. "

"Then I pledge you my faith; keep your own. "

"Fear not; sleep secure in the certainty that you will soon be releasedfrom these walls. "

The Shadow waned and faded. Darkness settled back, and a sleep, profoundand calm, fell over me. 

The next day Mr. Stanton again visited me. He had received that morninga note from Mr. Margrave, stating that he had left L---- to pursue, inperson, an investigation which he had already commenced through another, affecting the man who had given evidence against me, and that, if hishope should prove well founded, he trusted to establish my innocence, and convict the real murderer of Sir Philip Derval. In the research hethus volunteered, he had asked for, and obtained, the assistance of thepoliceman Waby, who, grateful to me for saving the life of his sister, had expressed a strong desire to be employed in my service. 

Meanwhile, my most cruel assailant was my old college friend, RichardStrahan. For Jeeves had spread abroad Strahan's charge of purloining thememoir which had been entrusted to me; and that accusation had done megreat injury in public opinion, because it seemed to give probability tothe only motive which ingenuity could ascribe to the foul deed imputedto me. That motive had been first suggested by Mr. Vigors. Cases areon record of men whose life had been previously blameless, who havecommitted a crime which seemed to belie their nature, in the monomaniaof some intense desire. In Spain, a scholar reputed of austeremorals murdered and robbed a traveller for money in order to purchasebooks, --books written, too, by Fathers of his Church! He was intent onsolving some problem of theological casuistry. In France, an antiquary, esteemed not more for his learning than for amiable and gentlequalities, murdered his most intimate friend for the possession ofa medal, without which his own collection was incomplete. These, andsimilar anecdotes, tending to prove how fatally any vehement desire, morbidly cherished, may suspend the normal operations of reason andconscience, were whispered about by Dr. Lloyd's vindictive partisan;and the inference drawn from them and applied to the assumptions againstmyself was the more credulously received, because of that over-refiningspeculation on motive and act which the shallow accept, in theireagerness to show how readily they understand the profound. 

I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of chemicalexperiments; to be eager in testing the truth of any novel invention. Strahan, catching hold of the magistrate's fantastic hypothesis, wentabout repeating anecdotes of the absorbing passion for analysis anddiscovery which had characterized me in youth as a medical student, andto which, indeed, I owed the precocious reputation I had obtained. 

Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but to the directtestimony of his servant, had acquired in the course of his travels manysecrets in natural science, especially as connected with the healingart, --his servant had deposed to the remarkable cures he had effectedby the medicinals stored in the stolen casket. Doubtless Sir Philip, in boasting of these medicinals in the course of our conversation, had excited my curiosity, inflamed my imagination; and thus when Iafterwards suddenly met him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse hadacted on a brain heated into madness by curiosity and covetous desire. 

All these suppositions, reduced into system, were corroborated byStrahan's charge that I had made away with the manuscript supposed tocontain the explanations of the medical agencies employed by Sir Philip, and had sought to shelter my theft by a tale so improbable, that a manof my reputed talent could not have hazarded it if in his soundsenses. I saw the web that had thus been spread around me by hostileprepossessions and ignorant gossip: how could the arts of Margravescatter that web to the winds? I knew not, but I felt confidence in hispromise and his power. Still, so great had been my alarm for Lilian, that the hope of clearing my own innocence was almost lost in my joythat Margrave, at least, was no longer in her presence, and that I hadreceived his pledge to quit the town in which she lived. 

Thus, hours rolled on hours, till, I think, on the third day from thatnight in which I had last beheld the mysterious Shadow, my doorwas hastily thrown open, a confused crowd presented itself at thethreshold, --the governor of the prison, the police superintendent, Mr. Stanton, and other familiar faces shut out from me since myimprisonment. I knew at the first glance that I was no longer an outlawbeyond the pale of human friendship. And proudly, sternly, as I hadsupported myself hitherto in solitude and suspense, when I felt warmhands clasping mine, heard joyous voices proffering congratulations, sawin the eyes of all that my innocence had been cleared, the revulsion ofemotion was too strong for me, --the room reeled on my sight, I fainted. I pass, as quickly as I can, over the explanations that crowded on mewhen I recovered, and that were publicly given in evidence in court nextmorning. I had owed all to Margrave. It seems that he had construedto my favour the very supposition which had been bruited abroad to myprejudice. "For, " said he, "it is conjectured that Fenwick committed thecrime of which he is accused in the impulse of a disordered reason. Thatconjecture is based upon the probability that a madman alone could havecommitted a crime without adequate motive. But it seems quite clear thatthe accused is not mad; and I see cause to suspect that the accuser is. "Grounding this assumption on the current reports of the witness'smanner and bearing since he had been placed under official surveillance, Margrave had commissioned the policeman Waby to make inquiries inthe village to which the accuser asserted he had gone in quest of hisrelations, and Waby had there found persons who remembered to have heardthat the two brothers named Walls lived less by the gains of the pettyshop which they kept than by the proceeds of some property consigned tothem as the nearest of kin to a lunatic who had once been tried forhis life. Margrave had then examined the advertisements in the dailynewspapers. One of them, warning the public against a dangerous maniac, who had effected his escape from an asylum in the west of England, caught his attention. To that asylum he had repaired. 

There he learned that the patient advertised was one whose propensitywas homicide, consigned for life to the asylum on account of a murder, for which he had been tried. The description of this person exactlytallied with that of the pretended American. The medical superintendentof the asylum, hearing all particulars from Margrave, expressed a strongpersuasion that the witness was his missing patient, and had himselfcommitted the crime of which he had accused another. If so, thesuperintendent undertook to coax from him the full confession of allthe circumstances. Like many other madmen, and not least those whosepropensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac was exceedingly cunning, treacherous, secret, and habituated to trick and stratagem, --more subtlethan even the astute in possession of all their faculties, whether toachieve his purpose or to conceal it, and fabricate appearances againstanother. But while, in ordinary conversation, he seemed rational enoughto those who were not accustomed to study him, he had one hallucinationwhich, when humoured, led him always, not only to betray himself, but toglory in any crime proposed or committed. He was under the belief thathe had made a bargain with Satan, who, in return for implicit obedience, would bear him harmless through all the consequences of such submission, and finally raise him to great power and authority. It is no unfrequentillusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are under the influenceof the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon. Murderers have assigned as theonly reason they themselves could give for their crime, that "the Devilgot into them, " and urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, noattribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. Themaniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in his hairand calls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance characterizemental aberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I havedetected, in that infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, longbefore the brain had made its disease manifest even to the most familiarkindred. 

Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the dreadful illusion by whichthe man I now speak of was possessed. He was proud to be the protectedagent of the Fallen Angel. And if that self-esteem were artfullyappealed to, he would exult superbly in the evil he held himself orderedto perform, as if a special prerogative, an official rank and privilege;then, he would be led on to boast gleefully of thoughts which the mostcynical of criminals in whom intelligence was not ruined would shrinkfrom owning; then, he would reveal himself in all his deformity with ascomplacent and frank a self-glorying as some vain good man displays inparading his amiable sentiments and his beneficent deeds. 

"If, " said the superintendent, "this be the patient who has escaped fromme, and if his propensity to homicide has been, in some way, directedtowards the person who has been murdered, I shall not be with him aquarter of an hour before he will inform me how it happened, and detailthe arts he employed in shifting his crime upon another; all will betold as minutely as a child tells the tale of some school-boy exploit, in which he counts on your sympathy, and feels sure of your applause. "

Margrave brought this gentleman back to L----, took him to the mayor, who was one of my warmest supporters: the mayor had sufficient influenceto dictate and arrange the rest. The superintendent was introduced tothe room in which the pretended American was lodged. At his own desirea select number of witnesses were admitted with him. Margrave excusedhimself; he said candidly that he was too intimate a friend of mine tobe an impartial listener to aught that concerned me so nearly. 

The superintendent proved right in his suspicions, and verified hispromises. My false accuser was his missing patient; the man recognizedDr. ---- with no apparent terror, rather with an air of condescension, and in a very few minutes was led to tell his own tale, with a gloatingcomplacency both at the agency by which he deemed himself exalted, andat the dexterous cunning with which he had acquitted himself of thetask, that increased the horror of his narrative. 

He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was extremely ingenious, butof which the details, long in themselves, did not interest me, andI understood them too imperfectly to repeat. He had encountered asea-faring traveller on the road, whom he had knocked down with a stone, and robbed of his glazed hat and pea-jacket, as well as of a smallsum in coin, which last enabled him to pay his fare in a railway thatconveyed him eighty miles away from the asylum. Some trifling remnantof this money still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot along thehigh-road till he came to a town about twenty miles distant from L----;there he had stayed a day or two, and there he said "that the Devil hadtold him to buy a case-knife, which he did. " "He knew by that order thatthe Devil meant him to do something great. " "His Master, " as he calledthe fiend, then directed him the road he should take. He came to L----, put up, as he had correctly stated before, at a small inn, wandered atnight about the town, was surprised by the sudden storm, took shelterunder the convent arch, overheard somewhat more of my conversation withSir Philip than he had previously deposed, --heard enough to excite hiscuriosity as to the casket: "While he listened his Master told him hemust get possession of that casket. " Sir Philip had quitted the archwayalmost immediately after I had done so, and he would then have attackedhim if he had not caught sight of a policeman going his rounds. He hadfollowed Sir Philip to a house (Mr. Jeeves's). "His Master told himto wait and watch. " He did so. When Sir Philip came forth, towards thedawn, he followed him, saw him enter a narrow street, came up to him, seized him by the arm, demanded all he had about him. Sir Philip triedto shake him off, --struck at him. What follows I spare the reader. Thedeed was done. He robbed the dead man both of the casket and thepurse that he found in the pockets; had scarcely done so when he heardfootsteps. He had just time to get behind the portico of a detachedhouse at angles with the street when I came up. He witnessed, from hishiding-place, the brief conference between myself and the policemen, and when they moved on, bearing the body, stole unobserved away. He wasgoing back towards the inn, when it occurred to him that it would besafer if the casket and purse were not about his person; that he askedhis Master to direct him how to dispose of them: that his Master guidedhim to an open yard (a stone-mason's) at a very little distance fromthe inn; that in this yard there stood an old wych-elm tree, from thegnarled roots of which the earth was worn away, leaving chinks andhollows, in one of which he placed the casket and purse, taking from thelatter only two sovereigns and some silver, and then heaping loose mouldover the hiding-place. That he then repaired to his inn, and leftit late in the morning, on the pretence of seeking for hisrelations, --persons, indeed, who really had been related to him, butof whose death years ago he was aware. He returned to L---- a few daysafterwards, and in the dead of the night went to take up the casket andthe money. He found the purse with its contents undisturbed; but thelid of the casket was unclosed. From the hasty glance he had taken of itbefore burying it, it had seemed to him firmly locked, --he was alarmedlest some one had been to the spot. But his Master whispered to him notto mind, told him that he might now take the casket, and would be guidedwhat to do with it; that he did so, and, opening the lid, found thecasket empty-; that he took the rest of the money out of the purse, butthat he did not take the purse itself, for it had a crest and initialson it, which might lead to the discovery of what had been done; thathe therefore left it in the hollow amongst the roots, heaping the mouldover it as before; that in the course of the day he heard the people atthe inn talk of the murder, and that his own first impulse was to getout of the town immediately, but that his Master "made him too wise forthat, " and bade him stay; that passing through the streets, he saw mecome out of the sash-window door, go to a stable-yard on the other sideof the house, mount on horseback and ride away; that he observed thesash-door was left partially open; that he walked by it and saw theroom empty; there was only a dead wall opposite; the place was solitary, unobserved; that his Master directed him to lift up the sash gently, enter the room, and deposit the knife and the casket in a largewalnut-tree bureau which stood unlocked near the window. All thatfollowed--his visit to Mr. Vigors, his accusation against myself, hiswhole tale--was, he said, dictated by his Master, who was highly pleasedwith him, and promised to bring him safely through. And here he turnedround with a hideous smile, as if for approbation of his notablecleverness and respect for his high employ. 

Mr. Jeeves had the curiosity to request the keeper to inquire how, inwhat form, or in what manner, the Fiend appeared to the narrator, orconveyed his infernal dictates. The man at first refused to say; butit was gradually drawn from him that the Demon had no certain andinvariable form: sometimes it appeared to him in the form of a rat;sometimes even of a leaf, or a fragment of wood, or a rusty nail; butthat his Master's voice always came to him distinctly, whatever shape heappeared in; only, he said, with an air of great importance, his Master, this time, had graciously condescended, ever since he left the asylum, to communicate with him in a much more pleasing and imposing aspect thanhe had ever done before, --in the form of a beautiful youth, or, rather, like a bright rose-coloured shadow, in which the features of a youngman were visible, and that he had heard the voice more distinctly thanusual, though in a milder tone, and seeming to come to him from a greatdistance. 

After these revelations the man became suddenly disturbed. He shook fromlimb to limb, he seemed convulsed with terror; he cried out that he hadbetrayed the secret of his Master, who had warned him not to describehis appearance and mode of communication, or he would surrender hisservant to the tormentors. Then the maniac's terror gave way to fury;his more direful propensity made itself declared; he sprang into themidst of his frightened listeners, seized Mr. Vigors by the throat, andwould have strangled him but for the prompt rush of the superintendentand his satellites. Foaming at the mouth, and horribly raving, he wasthen manacled, a strait-waistcoat thrust upon him, and the group soleft him in charge of his captors. Inquiries were immediately directedtowards such circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details hehad so minutely set forth. The purse, recognized as Sir Philip's, by thevalet of the deceased, was found buried under the wych-elm. A policemandespatched, express, to the town in which the maniac declared the knifeto have been purchased, brought back word that a cutler in the placeremembered perfectly to have sold such a knife to a seafaring man, andidentified the instrument when it was shown to him. From the chink of adoor ajar, in the wall opposite my sash-window, a maid-servant, watchingfor her sweetheart (a journeyman carpenter, who habitually passed thatway on going home to dine), had, though unobserved by the murderer, seenhim come out of my window at a time that corresponded with the dates ofhis own story, though she had thought nothing of it at the moment. Hemight be a patient, or have called on business; she did not know thatI was from home. The only point of importance not cleared up was thatwhich related to the opening of the casket, --the disappearance of thecontents; the lock had been unquestionably forced. No one, however, could suppose that some third person had discovered the hiding-place andforced open the casket to abstract its contents and then rebury it. Theonly probable supposition was that the man himself had forced it open, and, deeming the contents of no value, had thrown them away before hehad hidden the casket and purse, and, in the chaos of his reason, hadforgotten that he had so done. Who could expect that every link in amadman's tale would be found integral and perfect? In short, littleimportance was attached to this solitary doubt. Crowds accompanied meto my door, when I was set free, in open court, stainless; it wasa triumphal procession. The popularity I had previously enjoyed, superseded for a moment by so horrible a charge, came back to me tenfoldas with the reaction of generous repentance for a momentary doubt. One man shared the public favour, --the young man whose acuteness haddelivered me from the peril, and cleared the truth from so awful amystery; but Margrave had escaped from congratulation and compliment; hehad gone on a visit to Strahan, at Derval Court. 

Alone, at last, in the welcome sanctuary of my own home, what were mythoughts? Prominent amongst them all was that assertion of the madman, which had made me shudder when repeated to me: he had been guided to themurder and to all the subsequent proceedings by the luminous shadow ofthe beautiful youth, --the Scin-Laeca to which I had pledged myself. IfSir Philip Derval could be believed, Margrave was possessed of powers, derived from fragmentary recollections of a knowledge acquired in aformer state of being, which would render his remorseless intelligenceinfinitely dire and frustrate the endeavours of a reason, unassistedby similar powers, to thwart his designs or bring the law against hiscrimes. Had he then the arts that could thus influence the minds ofothers to serve his fell purposes, and achieve securely his own evilends through agencies that could not be traced home to himself?

But for what conceivable purpose had I been subjected as a victim toinfluences as much beyond my control as the Fate or Demoniac Necessityof a Greek Myth? In the legends of the classic world some augustsufferer is oppressed by powers more than mortal, but with an ethicalif gloomy vindication of his chastisement, --he pays the penalty of crimecommitted by his ancestors or himself, or he has braved, by arrogatingequality with the gods, the mysterious calamity which the gods alone caninflict. But I, no descendant of Pelops, no OEdipus boastful of a wisdomwhich could interpret the enigmas of the Sphynx, while ignorant even ofhis own birth--what had I done to be singled out from the herd of menfor trials and visitations from the Shadowland of ghosts and sorcerers?It would be ludicrously absurd to suppose that Dr. Lloyd's dyingimprecation could have had a prophetic effect upon my destiny; tobelieve that the pretences of mesmerizers were specially favoured byProvidence, and that to question their assumptions was an offence ofprofanation to be punished by exposure to preternatural agencies. Therewas not even that congruity between cause and effect which fable seeksin excuse for its inventions. Of all men living, I, unimaginativedisciple of austere science, should be the last to become the sportof that witchcraft which even imagination reluctantly allows to themachinery of poets, and science casts aside into the mouldy lumber-roomof obsolete superstition. 

Rousing my mind from enigmas impossible to solve, it was with intenseand yet most melancholy satisfaction that I turned to the image ofLilian, rejoicing, though with a thrill of awe, that the promiseso mysteriously conveyed to my senses had, hereto, been alreadyfulfilled, --Margrave had left the town; Lilian was no longer subjectedto his evil fascination. But an instinct told me that that fascinationhad already produced an effect adverse to all hope of happiness for me. Lilian's love for myself was gone. Impossible otherwise that she--inwhose nature I had always admired that generous devotion which ismore or less inseparable from the romance of youth--should have neverconveyed to me one word of consolation in the hour of my agony andtrial; that she, who, till the last evening we had met, had ever beenso docile, in the sweetness of a nature femininely submissive to myslightest wish, should have disregarded my solemn injunction, andadmitted Margrave to acquaintance, nay, to familiar intimacy, --atthe very time, too, when to disobey my injunctions was to embitter myordeal, and add her own contempt to the degradation imposed upon myhonour! No, her heart must be wholly gone from me; her very naturewholly warped. A union between us had become impossible. My love forher remained unshattered; the more tender, perhaps, for a sentiment ofcompassion. But my pride was shocked, my heart was wounded. My love wasnot mean and servile. Enough for me to think that she would be atleast saved from Margrave. Her life associated with his!--contemplationhorrible and ghastly!--from that fate she was saved. Later, she wouldrecover the effect of an influence happily so brief. She might form somenew attachment, some new tie; but love once withdrawn is never to berestored--and her love was withdrawn from me. I had but to release her, with my own lips, from our engagement, --she would welcome that release. Mournful but firm in these thoughts and these resolutions, I sought Mrs. Ashleigh's house. 

CHAPTER XLII. 

It was twilight when I entered, unannounced (as had been my wont in ourfamiliar intercourse), the quiet sitting-room in which I expected tofind mother and child. But Lilian was there alone, seated by the openwindow, her hands crossed and drooping on her knee, her eye fixed uponthe darkening summer skies, in which the evening star had just stolenforth, bright and steadfast, near the pale sickle of a half-moon thatwas dimly visible, but gave as yet no light. 

Let any lover imagine the reception he would expect to meet from hisbetrothed coming into her presence after he had passed triumphantthrough a terrible peril to life and fame--and conceive what ice frozemy blood, what anguish weighed down my heart, when Lilian, turningtowards me, rose not, spoke not, gazed at me heedlessly as if at someindifferent stranger--and--and--But no matter. I cannot bear to recallit even now, at the distance of years! I sat down beside her, and tookher hand, without pressing it; it rested languidly, passively in mine, one moment; I dropped it then, with a bitter sigh. 

"Lilian, " I said quietly, "you love me no longer. Is it not so?"

She raised her eyes to mine, looked at me wistfully, and pressed herhand on her forehead; then said, in a strange voice, "Did I ever loveyou? What do you mean?"

"Lilian, Lilian, rouse yourself; are you not, while you speak, undersome spell, some influence which you cannot describe nor account for?"

She paused a moment before she answered, calmly, "No! Again I ask whatdo you mean?"

"What do I mean? Do you forget that we are betrothed? Do you forget howoften, and how recently, our vows of affection and constancy have beenexchanged?"

"No, I do not forget; but I must have deceived you and myself--"

"It is true, then, that you love me no more?"

"I suppose so. "

"But, oh, Lilian, is it that your heart is only closed to me; oris it--oh, answer truthfully--is it given to another, --to him--tohim--against whom I warned you, whom I implored you not to receive? Tellme, at least, that your love is not gone to Margrave--"

"To him! love to him! Oh, no--no--"

"What, then, is your feeling towards him?"

Lilian's face grew visibly paler, even in that dim light. "I know not, "she said, almost in a whisper; "but it is partly awe--partly--"

"What?"

"Abhorrence!" she said almost fiercely, and rose to her feet, with awild defying start. 

"If that be so, " I said gently, "you would not grieve were you neveragain to see him--"

"But I shall see him again, " she murmured in a tone of weary sadness, and sank back once more into her chair. 

"I think not, " said I, "and I hope not. And now hear me and heed me, Lilian. It is enough for me, no matter what your feelings towardsanother, to learn from yourself that the affection you once professedfor me is gone. I release you from your troth. If folks ask why we twohenceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, ifyou please, that you could not give your hand to a man who had known thetaint of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to youan ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness, --happiness to hearthat you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnlythan before! Will you not give me your hand in parting--and have I notspoken your own wish?"

She turned away her face, and resigned her hand to me in silence. Silently I held it in mine, and my emotions nearly stifled me. Onesymptom of regret, of reluctance, on her part, and I should have fallenat her feet, and cried, "Do not let us break a tie which our vows shouldhave made indisoluble; heed not my offers, wrung from a tortured heart!You cannot have ceased to love me!" But no such symptom of relentingshowed itself in her, and with a groan I left the room. 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

I was just outside the garden door, when I felt an arm thrown round me, my cheek kissed and wetted with tears. Could it be Lilian? Alas, no!It was her mother's voice, that, between laughing and crying, exclaimedhysterically: "This is joy, to see you again, and on these thresholds. Ihave just come from your house; I went there on purpose to congratulateyou, and to talk to you about Lilian. But you have seen her?"

"Yes; I have but this moment left her. Come this way. " I drew Mrs. Ashleigh back into the garden, along the old winding walk, which theshrubs concealed from view of the house. We sat down on a rustic seatwhere I had often sat with Lilian, midway between the house and theMonks' Well. I told the mother what had passed between me and herdaughter; I made no complaint of Lilian's coldness and change; I did nothint at its cause. "Girls of her age will change, " said I, "and allthat now remains is for us two to agree on such a tale to our curiousneighbours as may rest the whole blame on me. Man's name is of robustfibre; it could not push its way to a place in the world, if it couldnot bear, without sinking, the load idle tongues may lay on it. Not soWoman's Name: what is but gossip against Man, is scandal against Woman. "

"Do not be rash, my dear Allen, " said Mrs. Ashleigh, in great distress. "I feel for you, I understand you; in your case I might act as you do. Icannot blame you. Lilian is changed, --changed unaccountably. Yet sureI am that the change is only on the surface, that her heart is reallyyours, as entirely and as faithfully as ever it was; and that later, when she recovers from the strange, dreamy kind of torpor which appearsto have come over all her faculties and all her affections, she wouldawake with a despair which you cannot conjecture to the knowledge thatyou had renounced her. "

"I have not renounced her, " said I, impatiently; "I did but restore herfreedom of choice. But pass by this now, and explain to me more fullythe change in your daughter, which I gather from your words is notconfined to me. "

"I wished to speak of it before you saw her, and for that reason came toyour house. It was on the morning in which we left her aunt's to returnhither that I first noticed some thing peculiar in her look and manner. She seemed absorbed and absent, so much so that I asked her severaltimes to tell me what made her so grave; but I could only get from herthat she had had a confused dream which she could not recall distinctlyenough to relate, but that she was sure it boded evil. During thejourney she became gradually more herself, and began to look forwardwith delight to the idea of seeing you again. Well, you came thatevening. What passed between you and her you know best. You complainedthat she slighted your request to shun all acquaintance with Mr. Margrave. I was surprised that, whether your wish were reasonable ornot, she could have hesitated to comply with it. I spoke to her about itafter you had gone, and she wept bitterly at thinking she had displeasedyou. "

"She wept! You amaze me. Yet the next day what a note she returned tomine!"

"The next day the change in her became very visible to me. She told me, in an excited manner, that she was convinced she ought not to marry you. Then came, the following day, the news of your committal. I heard ofit, but dared not break it to her. I went to our friend the mayor, toconsult with him what to say, what to do; and to learn more distinctlythan I had done from terrified, incoherent servants, the rights of sodreadful a story. When I returned, I found, to my amazement, a youngstranger in the drawing-room; it was Mr. Margrave, --Miss Brabazonhad brought him at his request. Lilian was in the room, too, and myastonishment was increased, when she said to me with a singular smile, vague but tranquil: 'I know all about Allen Fenwick; Mr. Margrave hastold me all. He is a friend of Allen's. He says there is no causefor fear. ' Mr. Margrave then apologized to me for his intrusion in acaressing, kindly manner, as if one of the family. He said he was sointimate with you that he felt that he could best break to Miss Ashleighinformation she might receive elsewhere, for that he was the only manin the town who treated the charge with ridicule. You know the wonderfulcharm of this young man's manner. I cannot explain to you how it was, but in a few moments I was as much at home with him as if he had beenyour brother. To be brief, having once come, he came constantly. Hehad moved, two days before you went to Derval Court, from his hotel toapartments in Mr. ----'s house, just opposite. We could see him on hisbalcony from our terrace; he would smile to us and come across. I didwrong in slighting your injunction, and suffering Lilian to do so. Icould not help it, he was such a comfort to me, --to her, too--in hertribulation. He alone had no doleful words, wore no long face; he alonewas invariably cheerful. 'Everything, ' he said, 'would come right in aday or two. '"

"And Lilian could not but admire this young man, he is so beautiful. "

"Beautiful? Well, perhaps. But if you have a jealous feeling, you werenever more mistaken. Lilian, I am convinced, does more than dislike him;he has inspired her with repugnance, with terror. And much as I own Ilike him, in his wild, joyous, careless, harmless way, do not think Iflatter you if I say that Mr. Margrave is not the man to make any girluntrue to you, --untrue to a lover with infinitely less advantages thanyou may pretend to. He would be a universal favourite, I grant; butthere is something in him, or a something wanting in him, which makesliking and admiration stop short of love. I know not why; perhaps, because, with all his good humour, he is so absorbed in himself, sointensely egotistical, so light; were he less clever, I should say sofrivolous. He could not make love, he could not say in the serious toneof a man in earnest, 'I love you. ' He owned as much to me, and owned, too, that he knew not even what love was. As to myself, Mr. Margraveappears rich; no whisper against his character or his honour everreached me. Yet were you out of the question, and were there no stain onhis birth, nay, were he as high in rank and wealth as he is favoured byNature in personal advantages, I confess I could never consent to trusthim with my daughter's fate. A voice at my heart would cry, 'No!' Itmay be an unreasonable prejudice, but I could not bear to see him touchLilian's hand!"

"Did she never, then--never suffer him even to take her hand?"

"Never. Do not think so meanly of her as to suppose that she could becaught by a fair face, a graceful manner. Reflect: just before she hadrefused, for your sake, Ashleigh Sumner, whom Lady Haughton said 'nogirl in her senses could refuse;' and this change in Lilian really beganbefore we returned to L----, --before she had even seen Mr. Margrave. I am convinced it is something in the reach of your skill asphysician, --it is on the nerves, the system. I will give you a proofof what I say, only do not betray me to her. It was during yourimprisonment, the night before your release, that I was awakened by hercoming to my bedside. She was sobbing as if her heart would break. 'Omother, mother!' she cried, 'pity me, help me! I am so wretched. ' 'Whatis the matter, darling?' 'I have been so cruel to Allen, and I know Ishall be so again. I cannot help it. Do not question me; only if we areseparated, if he cast me off, or I reject him, tell him some day perhapswhen I am in my grave--not to believe appearances; and that I, in myheart of hearts, never ceased to love him!'"

"She said that! You are not deceiving me?"

"Oh, no! how can you think so?"

"There is hope still, " I murmured; and I bowed my head upon my hands, hot tears forcing their way through the clasped fingers. 

"One word more, " said I; "you tell me that Lilian has a repugnance tothis Margrave, and yet that she found comfort in his visits, --a comfortthat could not be wholly ascribed to cheering words he might say aboutmyself, since it is all but certain that I was not, at that time, uppermost in her mind. Can you explain this apparent contradiction?"

"I cannot, otherwise than by a conjecture which you would ridicule. "

"I can ridicule nothing now. What is your conjecture?"

"I know how much you disbelieve in the stories one hears of animalmagnetism and electro-biology, otherwise--"

"You think that Margrave exercises some power of that kind over Lilian?Has he spoken of such a power?"

"Not exactly; but he said that he was sure Lilian possessed a facultythat he called by some hard name, not clairvoyance, but a faculty, whichhe said, when I asked him to explain, was akin to prevision, --to secondsight. Then he talked of the Priestesses who had administered theancient oracles. Lilian, he said, reminded him of them, with her deepeyes and mysterious smile. "

"And Lilian heard him? What said she?"

"Nothing; she seemed in fear while she listened. "

"He did not offer to try any of those arts practised by professionalmesmerists and other charlatans?"

"I thought he was about to do so, but I forestalled him, saying I neverwould consent to any experiment of that kind, either on myself or mydaughter. "

"And he replied--"

"With his gay laugh, 'that I was very foolish; that a person possessedof such a faculty as he attributed to Lilian would, if the faculty weredeveloped, be an invaluable adviser. ' He would have said more, but Ibegged him to desist. Still I fancy at times--do not be angry--that hedoes somehow or other bewitch her, unconsciously to herself; for shealways knows when he is coming. Indeed, I am not sure that he does notbewitch myself, for I by no means justify my conduct in admitting himto an intimacy so familiar, and in spite of your wish; I have reproachedmyself, resolved to shut my door on him, or to show by my manner thathis visits were unwelcome; yet when Lilian has said, in the drowsylethargic tone which has come into her voice (her voice naturallyearnest and impressive, though always low), 'Mother, he will be here intwo minutes; I wish to leave the room and cannot, ' I, too, have feltas if something constrained me against my will; as if, in short, I wereunder that influence which Mr. Vigors--whom I will never forgive for hisconduct to you--would ascribe to mesmerism. But will you not come in andsee Lilian again?"

"No, not to-night; but watch and heed her, and if you see aught to makeyou honestly believe that she regrets the rupture of the old tic fromwhich I have released her--why, you know, Mrs. Ashleigh, that--that--"My voice failed; I wrung the good woman's hand, and went my way. 

I had always till then considered Mrs. Ashleigh--if not as Mrs. Poyntzdescribed her--"commonplace weak"--still of an intelligence somewhatbelow mediocrity. I now regarded her with respect as well as gratefultenderness; her plain sense had divined what all my boasted knowledgehad failed to detect in my earlier intimacy with Margrave, --namely, that in him there was a something present, or a something wanting, whichforbade love and excited fear. Young, beautiful, wealthy, seeminglyblameless in life as he was, she would not have given her daughter'shand to him!

CHAPTER XLIV. 

The next day my house was filled with visitors. I had no notion that Ihad so many friends. Mr. Vigors wrote me a generous and handsome letter, owning his prejudices against me on account of his sympathy with poorDr. Lloyd, and begging my pardon for what he now felt to have beenharshness, if not distorted justice. But what most moved me was theentrance of Strahan, who rushed up to me with the heartiness of oldcollege days. "Oh, my dear Allen, can you ever forgive me; that I shouldhave disbelieved your word, --should have suspected you of abstracting mypoor cousin's memoir?"

"Is it found, then?"

"Oh, yes; you must thank Margrave. He, clever fellow, you know, cameto me on a visit yesterday. He put me at once on the right scent. Onlyguess; but you never can! It was that wretched old housekeeper whopurloined the manuscript. You remember she came into the room while youwere looking at the memoir. She heard us talk about it; her curiositywas roused; she longed to know the history of her old master, under hisown hand; she could not sleep; she heard me go up to bed; she thoughtyou might leave the book on the table when you, too, went to rest. Shestole downstairs, peeped through the keyhole of the library, saw youasleep, the book lying before you, entered, took away the book softly, meant to glance at its contents and to return it. You were sleeping sosoundly she thought you would not wake for an hour; she carried it intothe library, leaving the door open, and there began to pore over it. Shestumbled first on one of the passages in Latin; she hoped to find somepart in plain English, turned over the leaves, putting her candle closeto them, for the old woman's eyes were dim, when she heard you make somesound in your sleep. Alarmed, she looked round; you were moving uneasilyin your seat, and muttering to yourself. From watching you she was soondiverted by the consequences of her own confounded curiosity and folly. In moving, she had unconsciously brought the poor manuscript close tothe candle; the leaves caught the flame; her own cap and hand burningfirst made her aware of the mischief done. She threw down the book; hersleeve was in flames; she had first to tear off the sleeve, whichwas, luckily for her, not sewn to her dress. By the time she recoveredpresence of mind to attend to the book, half its leaves were reduced totinder. She did not dare then to replace what was left of the manuscripton your table; returned with it to her room, hid it, and resolved tokeep her own secret. I should never have guessed it; I had nevereven spoken to her of the occurrence; but when I talked over thedisappearance of the book to Margrave last night, and expressed mydisbelief of your story, he said, in his merry way: 'But do you thinkthat Fenwick is the only person curious about your cousin's odd waysand strange history? Why, every servant in the household would have beenequally curious. You have examined your servants, of course?' 'No, Inever thought of it. ' 'Examine them now, then. Examine especially thatold housekeeper. I observe a great change in her manner since I camehere, weeks ago, to look over the house. She has something on hermind, --I see it in her eyes. ' Then it occurred to me, too, that thewoman's manner had altered, and that she seemed always in a tremble anda fidget. I went at once to her room, and charged her with stealing thebook. She fell on her knees, and told the whole story as I have toldit to you, and as I shall take care to tell it to all to whom I have sofoolishly blabbed my yet more foolish suspicions of yourself. But canyou forgive me, old friend?"

"Heartily, heartily! And the book is burned?"

"See;" and he produced a mutilated manuscript. Strange, the partburned--reduced, indeed, to tinder--was the concluding part that relatedto Haroun, --to Grayle: no vestige of that part was left; the earlierportions were scorched and mutilated, though in some places stilldecipherable; but as my eye hastily ran over those places, I saw onlymangled sentences of the experimental problems which the writer had sominutely elaborated. 

"Will you keep the manuscript as it is, and as long as you like?" saidStrahan. 

"No, no; I will have nothing more to do with it. Consult some otherman of science. And so this is the old woman's whole story? Noaccomplice, --none? No one else shared her curiosity and her task?"

"No. Oddly enough, though, she made much the same excuse for her pitifulfolly that the madman made for his terrible crime; she said, 'the Devilput it into her head. ' Of course he did, as he puts everything wronginto any one's head. That does not mend the matter. "

"How! did she, too, say she saw a Shadow and heard a voice?"

"No; not such a liar as that, and not mad enough for such a lie. Butshe said that when she was in bed, thinking over the book, somethingirresistible urged her to get up and go down into the study; swore shefelt something lead her by the hand; swore, too, that when she firstdiscovered the manuscript was not in English, something whispered in herear to turn over the leaves and approach them to the candle. But I hadno patience to listen to all this rubbish. I sent her out of thehouse, bag and baggage. But, alas! is this to be the end of all my wisecousin's grand discoveries?"

True, of labours that aspired to bring into the chart of science newworlds, of which even the traditionary rumour was but a voice from theland of fable--nought left but broken vestiges of a daring footstep! Thehope of a name imperishable amidst the loftiest hierarchy of Nature'ssecret temple, with all the pomp of recorded experiment, that applied tothe mysteries of Egypt and Chaldwa the inductions of Bacon, the testsof Liebig--was there nothing left of this but what, here and there, some puzzled student might extract, garbled, mutilated, perhapsunintelligible, from shreds of sentences, wrecks of problems! O mind ofman, can the works, on which thou wouldst found immortality below, beannulled into smoke and tinder by an inch of candle in the hand of anold woman!

When Strahan left me, I went out, but not yet to visit patients. I stolethrough by-paths into the fields; I needed solitude to bring my thoughtsinto shape and order. What was delusion, and what not? Was I right orthe Public? Was Margrave really the most innocent and serviceable ofhuman beings, kindly affectionate, employing a wonderful acuteness forbenignant ends? Was I, in truth, indebted to him for the greatestboon one man can bestow on another, --for life rescued, for fair namejustified? Or had he, by some demoniac sorcery, guided the hand of themurderer against the life of the person who alone could imperil his own?Had he, by the same dark spells, urged the woman to the act that haddestroyed the only record of his monstrous being, --the only evidencethat I was not the sport of an illusion in the horror with which heinspired me?

But if the latter supposition could be admissible, did he use hisagents only to betray them afterwards to exposure, and that, without anypossible clew to his own detection as the instigator? Then, there cameover me confused recollections of tales of mediaeval witchcraft, whichI had read in boyhood. Were there not on judicial record attestation andevidence, solemn and circumstantial, of powers analogous to thosenow exercised by Margrave, --of sorcerers instigating to sin throughinfluences ascribed to Demons; making their apparitions glide throughguarded walls, their voices heard from afar in the solitude of dungeonsor monastic cells; subjugating victims to their will, by means whichno vigilance could have detected, if the victims themselves had notconfessed the witchcraft that had ensnared, courting a sure and infamousdeath in that confession, preferring such death to a life so haunted?Were stories so gravely set forth in the pomp of judicial evidence, and in the history of times comparatively recent, indeed to be massed, pell-mell together, as a moles indigesta of senseless superstition, --allthe witnesses to be deemed liars; all the victims and tools of thesorcerers, lunatics; all the examiners or judges, with their solemngradations--lay and clerical--from Commissions of Inquiry to Courts ofAppeal, --to be despised for credulity, loathed for cruelty; or, amidstrecords so numerous, so imposingly attested, were there the fragments ofa terrible truth? And had our ancestors been so unwise in those laws wenow deem so savage, by which the world was rid of scourges more awfuland more potent than the felon with his candid dagger? Fell instigatorsof the evil in men's secret hearts, shaping into action the vague, half-formed desire, and guiding with agencies impalpable, unseen, theirspell-bound instruments of calamity and death. 

Such were the gloomy questions that I--by repute, the sternest advocateof common-sense against fantastic errors; by profession, the searcherinto flesh and blood, and tissue and nerve and sinew, for the causesof all that disease the mechanism of the universal human frame; I, self-boasting physician, sceptic, philosopher, materialist--revolved, not amidst gloomy pines, under grim winter skies, but as I paced slowthrough laughing meadows, and by the banks of merry streams, in theripeness of the golden August: the hum of insects in the fragrant grass, the flutter of birds amid the delicate green of boughs checkered byplayful sunbeams and gentle shadows, and ever in sight of the resorts ofbusy workday man, --walls, roof-tops, church-spires rising high; there, white and modern, the handwriting of our race, in this practicalnineteenth century, on its square plain masonry and Doric shafts, theTown-Hall, central in the animated marketplace. And I--I--prying intolong-neglected corners and dust-holes of memory for what my reason hadflung there as worthless rubbish; reviving the jargon of French law, inthe proces verbal, against a Gille de Retz, or an Urbain Grandier, andsifting the equity of sentences on witchcraft!

Bursting the links of this ghastly soliloquy with a laugh at my ownfolly, I struck into a narrow path that led back towards the city, bya quiet and rural suburb; the path wound on through a wide and solitarychurchyard, at the base of the Abbey-hill. Many of the former dwellerson that eminence now slept in the lowly burial-ground at its foot; andthe place, mournfully decorated with the tombs which still jealouslymark distinctions of rank amidst the levelling democracy of the grave, was kept trim with the care which comes half from piety, and half frompride. 

I seated myself on a bench, placed between the clipped yew-trees thatbordered the path from the entrance to the church porch, deeming vaguelythat my own perplexing thoughts might imbibe a quiet from the quiet ofthe place. 

"And oh, " I murmured to myself, "oh that I had one bosom friend towhom I might freely confide all these torturing riddles which I cannotsolve, --one who could read my heart, light up its darkness, exorcise itsspectres; one in whose wisdom I could welcome a guide through the Naturewhich now suddenly changes her aspect, opening out from the walls withwhich I had fenced and enclosed her as mine own formal garden;--all herpathways, therein, trimmed to my footstep; all her blooms grouped andharmonized to my own taste in colour; all her groves, all her caverns, but the soothing retreats of a Muse or a Science; opening out--openingout, desert on desert, into clewless and measureless space! Gone is thegarden! Were its confines too narrow for Nature? Be it so! The Desertreplaces the garden, but where ends the Desert? Reft from my senses arethe laws which gave order and place to their old questionless realm. Istand lost and appalled amidst Chaos. Did my Mind misconstrue the lawsit deemed fixed and immutable? Be it so! But still Nature cannot belawless; Creation is not a Chaos. If my senses deceive me in somethings, they are still unerring in others; if thus, in some things, fallacious, still, in other things, truthful. Are there within me sensesfiner than those I have cultured, or without me vistas of knowledgewhich instincts, apart from my senses, divine? So long as I dealwith the Finite alone, my senses suffice me; but when the Infinite isobtruded upon me there, are my senses faithless deserters? If so, isthere aught else in my royal resources of Man--whose ambition it is, from the first dawn of his glory as Thinker, to invade and to subjugateNature, --is there aught else to supply the place of those traitors, thesenses, who report to my Reason, their judge and their sovereign, astruths seen and heard tales which my Reason forfeits her sceptre if shedoes not disdain as lies? Oh, for a friend! oh, for a guide!"

And as I so murmured, my eye fell upon the form of a kneeling child, --atthe farther end of the burial-ground, beside a grave with its newheadstone gleaming white amidst the older moss-grown tombs, a femalechild, her head bowed, her hands clasped. I could see but the outlineof her small form in its sable dress, --an infant beside the dead. My eyeand my thoughts were turned from that silent figure, too absorbed in myown restless tumult of doubt and dread, for sympathy with the grief orthe consolation of a kneeling child. And yet I should have rememberedthat tomb! Again I murmured with a fierce impatience, "Oh, for a friend!oh, for a guide!"

I heard steps on the walk under the yews; and an old man came in sight, slightly bent, with long gray hair, but still with enough of vigour foryears to come, in his tread, firm, though slow, in the unshrunken muscleof his limbs and the steady light of his clear blue eye. I started. Was it possible? That countenance, marked, indeed, with the lines oflaborious thought, but sweet in the mildness of humanity, and serenein the peace of conscience! I could not be mistaken. Julius Faber wasbefore me, --the profound pathologist, to whom my own proud self-esteemacknowledged inferiority, without humiliation; the generous benefactorto whom I owed my own smooth entrance into the arduous road of fameand fortune. I had longed for a friend, a guide; what I sought stoodsuddenly at my side. 

CHAPTER XLV. 

Explanation on Faber's part was short and simple. The nephew whom hedesigned as the heir to his wealth had largely outstripped the liberalallowance made to him, had incurred heavy debts; and in order toextricate himself from the debts, had plunged into ruinous speculations. Faber had come back to England to save his heir from prison or outlawry, at the expense of more than three-fourths of the destined inheritance. To add to all, the young man had married a young lady without fortune;the uncle only heard of this marriage on arriving in England. The spendthrift was hiding from his creditors in the house of hisfather-in-law, in one of the western counties. Faber there soughthim; and on becoming acquainted with his wife, grew reconciled to themarriage, and formed hopes of his nephew's future redemption. Hespoke, indeed, of the young wife with great affection. She was good andsensible; willing and anxious to encounter any privation by which herhusband might reprieve the effects of his folly. "So, " said Faber, "onconsultation with this excellent creature--for my poor nephew is sobroken down by repentance, that others must think for him how to exaltrepentance into reform--my plans were determined. I shall remove myprodigal from all scenes of temptation. He has youth, strength, plentyof energy, hitherto misdirected. I shall take him from the Old Worldinto the New. I have decided on Australia. The fortune still left to me, small here, will be ample capital there. It is not enough to maintain usseparately, so we must all live together. Besides, I feel that, thoughI have neither the strength or the experience which could best serve ayoung settler on a strange soil, still, under my eye, my poor boy willbe at once more prudent and more persevering. We sail next week. "

Faber spoke so cheerfully that I knew not how to express compassion;yet, at his age, after a career of such prolonged and distinguishedlabour, to resign the ease and comforts of the civilized state forthe hardships and rudeness of an infant colony, seemed to me a drearyprospect; and, as delicately, as tenderly as I could to one whom I lovedand honoured as a father, I placed at his disposal the fortune which, ingreat part, I owed to him, --pressing him at least to take from it enoughto secure to himself, in his own country, a home suited to his yearsand worthy of his station. He rejected all my offers, however earnestlyurged on him, with his usual modest and gentle dignity; and assuring methat he looked forward with great interest to a residence in lands newto his experience, and affording ample scope for the hardy enjoymentswhich had always most allured his tastes, he hastened to change thesubject. 

"And who, think you, is the admirable helpmate my scape-grace has hadthe saving good luck to find? A daughter of the worthy man who undertookthe care of poor Dr. Lloyd's orphans, --the orphans who owed so much toyour generous exertions to secure a provision for them; and that child, now just risen from her father's grave, is my pet companion, my darlingewe lamb, --Dr. Lloyd's daughter Amy. "

Here the child joined us, quickening her pace as she recognized the oldman, and nestling to his side as she glanced wistfully towards myself. A winning, candid, lovable child's face, somewhat melancholy, somewhatmore thoughtful than is common to the face of childhood, but calm, intelligent, and ineffably mild. Presently she stole from the old man, and put her hand in mine. 

"Are you not the kind gentleman who came to see him that night when hepassed away from us, and who, they all say at home, was so good to mybrothers and me? Yes, I recollect you now. " And she put her pure face tomine, wooing me to kiss it. 

I kind! I good! I--I! Alas! she little knew, little guessed, thewrathful imprecation her father had bequeathed to me that fatal night!

I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd's orphan daughter, but my tears fellover her hand. She took them as signs of pity, and, in her infantthankfulness, silently kissed me. 

"Oh, my friend!" I murmured to Faber, "I have much that I yearn to sayto you--alone--alone! Come to my house with me, be at least my guest aslong as you stay in this town. "

"Willingly, " said Faber, looking at me more intently than he had donebefore, and with the true eye of the practised Healer, at once soft andpenetrating. 

He rose, took my arm, and whispering a word in the ear of the littlegirl, she went on before us, turning her head, as she gained the gate, for another look at her father's grave. As we walked to my house, JuliusFaber spoke to me much of this child. Her brothers were all at school;she was greatly attached to his nephew's wife; she had become yet moreattached to Faber himself, though on so short an acquaintance; it badbeen settled that she was to accompany the emigrants to Australia. 

"There, " said he, "the sum, that some munificent, but unknown friendof her father has settled on her, will provide her no mean dower for acolonist's wife, when the time comes for her to bring a blessing tosome other hearth than ours. " He went on to say that she had wishedto accompany him to L----, in order to visit her father's grave beforecrossing the wide seas; "and she has taken such fond care of me all theway, that you might fancy I were the child of the two. I come back tothis town, partly to dispose of a few poor houses in it which stillbelong to me, principally to bid you farewell before quitting the OldWorld, no doubt forever. So, on arriving to-day, I left Amy by herselfin the churchyard while I went to your house, but you were from home. And now I must congratulate you on the reputation you have so rapidlyacquired, which has even surpassed my predictions. "

"You are aware, " said I, falteringly, "of the extraordinary charge fromwhich that part of my reputation dearest to all men has just emerged!"

He had but seen a short account in a weekly journal, written after myrelease. He asked details, which I postponed. 

Reaching my home, I hastened to provide for the comfort of my twounexpected guests; strove to rally myself, to be cheerful. Not tillnight, when Julius Faber and I were alone together, did I touch onwhat was weighing at my heart. Then, drawing to his side, I told himall, --all of which the substance is herein written, from the deathscenein Dr. Lloyd's chamber to the hour in which I had seen Dr. Lloyd's childat her father's grave. Some of the incidents and conversations which hadmost impressed me I had already committed to writing, in the fearthat, otherwise, my fancy might forge for its own thraldom the linksof reminiscence which my memory might let fall from its chain. Faberlistened with a silence only interrupted by short pertinent questions;and when I had done, he remained thoughtful for some moments; then thegreat physician replied thus:--

"I take for granted your conviction of the reality of all you tellme, even of the Luminous Shadow, of the bodiless Voice; but, beforeadmitting the reality itself, we must abide by the old maxim, not toaccept as cause to effect those agencies which belong to theMarvellous, when causes less improbable for the effect can be rationallyconjectured. In this case are there not such causes? Certainly thereare--"

"There are?"

"Listen; you are one of those men who attempt to stifle their ownimagination. But in all completed intellect, imagination exists, andwill force its way; deny it healthful vents, and it may stray intomorbid channels. The death-room of Dr. Lloyd deeply impressed yourheart, far more than your pride would own. This is clear from thepains you took to exonerate your conscience, in your generosity to theorphans. As the heart was moved, so was the imagination stirred; and, unaware to yourself, prepared for much that subsequently appealed toit. Your sudden love, conceived in the very grounds of the house soassociated with recollections in themselves strange and romantic;the peculiar temperament and nature of the girl to whom your love wasattracted; her own visionary beliefs, and the keen anxiety which infusedinto your love a deeper poetry of sentiment, --all insensibly tended toinduce the imagination to dwell on the Wonderful; and, in overstrivingto reconcile each rarer phenomenon to the most positive laws of Nature, your very intellect could discover no solution but in the Preternatural. 

"You visit a man who tells you he has seen Sir Philip Derval's ghost; onthat very evening, you hear a strange story, in which Sir Philip's nameis mixed up with a tale of murder, implicating two mysterious pretendersto magic, --Louis Grayle and the Sage of Aleppo. The tale so interestsyour fancy that even the glaring impossibility of a not unimportant partof it escapes your notice, --namely, the account of a criminal trial inwhich the circumstantial evidence was more easily attainable than in allthe rest of the narrative, but which could not legally have taken placeas told. Thus it is whenever the mind begins, unconsciously, to admitthe shadow of the Supernatural; the Obvious is lost to the eye thatplunges its gaze into the Obscure. Almost immediately afterwards youbecome acquainted with a young stranger, whose traits of characterinterest and perplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time you areengaged in a physiological work which severely tasks the brain, and inwhich you examine the intricate question of soul distinct from mind. 

"And, here, I can conceive a cause deep-hid amongst what metaphysicianswould call latent associations, for a train of thought which disposedyou to accept the fantastic impressions afterwards made on you bythe scene in the Museum and the visionary talk of Sir Philip Derval. Doubtless, when at college you first studied metaphysical speculationyou would have glanced over Beattie's 'Essay on Truth' as one of theworks written in opposition to your favourite, David Hume. "

"Yes, I read the book, but I have long since forgotten its arguments. "

"Well in that essay, Beattie(1) cites the extraordinary instance ofSimon Browne, a learned and pious clergyman, who seriously disbelievedthe existence of his own soul; and imagined that, by interposition ofDivine power, his soul was annulled, and nothing left but a principle ofanimal life, which he held in common with the brutes! When, years ago, athoughtful imaginative student, you came on that story, probably enoughyou would have paused, revolved in your own mind and fancy what kindof a creature a man might be, if, retaining human life and merelyhuman understanding, he was deprived of the powers and properties whichreasoners have ascribed to the existence of soul. Something in thisyoung man, unconsciously to yourself, revives that forgotten train ofmeditative ideas. His dread of death as the final cessation of being, his brute-like want of sympathy with his kind, his incapacity tocomprehend the motives which carry man on to scheme and to build for afuture that extends beyond his grave, --all start up before you at thevery moment your reason is overtasked, your imagination fevered, inseeking the solution of problems which, to a philosophy based upon yoursystem, must always remain insoluble. The young man's conversation notonly thus excites your fancies, --it disturbs your affections. He speaksnot only of drugs that renew youth, but of charms that secure love. Youtremble for your Lilian while you hear him! And the brain thus tasked, the imagination thus inflamed, the heart thus agitated, you arepresented to Sir Philip Derval, whose ghost your patient had supposed hesaw weeks ago. 

"This person, a seeker after an occult philosophy, which had possiblyacquainted him with some secrets in nature beyond the pale of ourconventional experience, though, when analyzed, they might prove to bequite reconcilable with sober science, startles you with an undefinedmysterious charge against the young man who had previously seemed to youdifferent from ordinary mortals. In a room stored with the dead thingsof the brute soulless world, your brain becomes intoxicated withthe fumes of some vapour which produces effects not uncommon in thesuperstitious practices of the East; your brain, thus excited, bringsdistinctly before you the vague impressions it had before received. Margrave becomes identified with the Louis Grayle of whom you hadpreviously heard an obscure and, legendary tale, and all the anomaliesin his character are explained by his being that which you hadcontended, in your physiological work, it was quite possible for manto be, --namely, mind and body without soul! You were startled by themonster which man would be were your own theory possible; and in orderto reconcile the contradictions in this very monster, you accountfor knowledge, and for powers that mind without soul could not haveattained, by ascribing to this prodigy broken memories of a formerexistence, demon attributes from former proficiency in evil magic. My friend, there is nothing here which your own study of morbididiosyncracies should not suffice to solve. "

"So, then, " said I, "you would reduce all that have affected my sensesas realities into the deceit of illusions? But, " I added, in a whisper, terrified by my own question, "do not physiologists agree in this:namely, that though illusory phantasms may haunt the sane as well as theinsane, the sane know that they are only illusions, and the insane donot. "

"Such a distinction, " answered Faber, "is far too arbitrary and rigidfor more than a very general and qualified acceptance. Muller, indeed, who is perhaps the highest authority on such a subject, says, withprudent reserve, 'When a person who is not insane sees spectresand believes, them to be real, his intellect must be imperfectlyexercised. '(2) He would, indeed, be a bold physician who maintained thatevery man who believed he had really seen a ghost was of unsound mind. In Dr. Abercrombie's interesting account of spectral illusions, he tellsus of a servant-girl who believed she saw, at the foot of her bed, the apparition of Curran, in a sailor's jacket and an immense pair ofwhiskers. (3) No doubt the spectre was an illusion, and Dr. Abercrombievery ingeniously suggests the association of ideas by which theapparition was conjured up with the grotesque adjuncts of the jacketand the whiskers; but the servant-girl, in believing the reality of theapparition, was certainly not insane. When I read in the Americanpublic journals(4) of 'spirit manifestations, ' in which large numbers ofpersons, of at least the average degree of education, declare that theyhave actually witnessed various phantasms, much more extraordinarythan all which you have confided to me, and arrive, at once, at theconclusion that they are thus put into direct communication withdeparted souls, I must assume that they are under an illusion; but Ishould be utterly unwarranted in supposing that, because they creditedthat illusion, they were insane. I should only say with Muller, that intheir reasoning on the phenomena presented to them, 'their intellect wasimperfectly exercised. ' And an impression made on the senses, being initself sufficiently rare to excite our wonder, may be strengthened tillit takes the form of a positive fact, by various coincidences whichare accepted as corroborative testimony, yet which are, nevertheless, nothing more than coincidences found in every day matters of business, but only emphatically noticed when we can exclaim, 'How astonishing!'In your case such coincidences have been, indeed, very signal, and mightwell aggravate the perplexities into which your reason was thrown. SirPhilip Derval's murder, the missing casket, the exciting nature of themanuscript, in which a superstitious interest is already enlisted byyour expectation to find in it the key to the narrator's boasted powers, and his reasons for the astounding denunciation of the man whom yoususpect to be his murderer, --in all this there is much to confirm, nay, to cause, an illusion; and for that very reason, when examined by strictlaws of evidence, in all this there is but additional proof that theillusion was--only illusion. Your affections contribute to strengthenyour fancy in its war on your reason. The girl you so passionately lovedevelops, to your disquietude and terror, the visionary temperamentwhich, at her age, is ever liable to fantastic caprices. She hearsMargrave's song, which you say has a wildness of charm that affectsand thrills even you. Who does not know the power of music? and of allmusic, there is none so potential as that of the human voice. Thus, insome languages, charm and song are identical expressions; and even whena critic, in our own sober newspapers, extols a Malibran or a Grisi, youmay be sure that he will call her 'enchantress. ' Well, this lady, yourbetrothed, in whom the nervous system is extremely impressionable, hearsa voice which, even to your ear, is strangely melodious, and sees a formand face which, even to your eye, are endowed with a singular characterof beauty. Her fancy is impressed by what she thus hears and sees; andimpressed the more because, by a coincidence not very uncommon, a facelike that which she beholds has before been presented to her in a dreamor a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that would seemto you a treason, you accept the chimera of 'magical fascination. 'In this frame of mind you sit down to read the memoir of a mysticalenthusiast. Do you begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? Adream! And a dream no less because your eyes were open and you believedyourself awake. The diseased imagination resembles those mirrors which, being themselves distorted, represent distorted pictures as correct. 

"And even this Memoir of Sir Philip Derval's--can you be quite sure thatyou actually read the part which relates to Haroun and Louis Grayle? Yousay that, while perusing the manuscript, you saw the Luminous Shadow, and became insensible. The old woman says you were fast asleep. May younot really have fallen into a slumber, and in that slumber have dreamedthe parts of the tale that relate to Grayle, --dreamed that you beheldthe Shadow? Do you remember what is said so well by Dr. Abercrombie, to authorize the explanation I suggest to you: 'A person under theinfluence of some strong mental impression falls asleep for a fewseconds, perhaps without being sensible of it: some scene or personappears in a dream, and he starts up under the conviction that it was aspectral appearance. '" (5)

"But, " said I, "the apparition was seen by me again, and when, certainly, I was not sleeping. "

"True; and who should know better than a physician so well read asyourself that a spectral illusion once beheld is always apt to returnagain in the same form? Thus, Goethe was long haunted by one image, --thephantom of a flower unfolding itself, and developing new flowers. (6)Thus, one of our most distinguished philosophers tells us of a ladyknown to himself, who would see her husband, hear him move and speak, when he was not even in the house. (7) But instances of the facility withwhich phantasms, once admitted, repeat themselves to the senses, arenumberless. Many are recorded by Hibbert and Abercrombie, andevery physician in extensive practice can add largely, from his ownexperience, to the list. Intense self-concentration is, in itself, amighty magician. The magicians of the East inculcate the necessityof fast, solitude, and meditation for the due development of theirimaginary powers. And I have no doubt with effect; because fast, solitude, and meditation--in other words, thought or fancy intenselyconcentred--will both raise apparitions and produce the invoker's beliefin them. Spinello, striving to conceive the image of Lucifer for hispicture of the Fallen Angels, was at last actually haunted by the Shadowof the Fiend. Newton himself has been subjected to a phantom, thoughto him, Son of Light, the spectre presented was that of the sun! Youremember the account that Newton gives to Locke of this visionaryappearance. He says that 'though he had looked at the sun with hisright eye only, and not with the left, yet his fancy began to make animpression upon his left eye as well as his right; for if he shut hisright and looked upon the clouds, or a book, or any bright object withhis left eye, he could see the sun almost as plain as with the right, ifhe did but intend his fancy a little while on it;' nay, 'for some monthsafter, as often as he began to meditate on the phenomena, the spectrumof the sun began to return, even though he lay in bed at midnight, withhis curtains drawn!' Seeing, then, how any vivid impression once madewill recur, what wonder that you should behold in your prison theShining Shadow that had first startled you in a wizard's chamber whenporing over the records of a murdered visionary? The more minutelyyou analyze your own hallucinations--pardon me the word--the more theyassume the usual characteristics of a dream; contradictory, illogical, even in the marvels they represent. Can any two persons be more totallyunlike each other, not merely as to form and years, but as to all theelements of character, than the Grayle of whom you read, or believeyou read, and the Margrave in whom you evidently think that Grayle isexistent still? The one represented, you say, as gloomy, saturnine, withvehement passions, but with an original grandeur of thought and will, consumed by an internal remorse; the other you paint to me as a joyousand wayward darling of Nature, acute yet frivolous, free from eventhe ordinary passions of youth, taking delight in innocent amusements, incapable of continuous study, without a single pang of repentancefor the crimes you so fancifully impute to him. And now, when yoursuspicions, so romantically conceived, are dispelled by positive facts, now, when it is clear that Margrave neither murdered Sir Philip Dervalnor abstracted the memoir, you still, unconsciously to yourself, drawon your imagination in order to excuse the suspicion your pride ofintellect declines to banish, and suppose that this youthful sorcerertempted the madman to the murder, the woman to the theft--"

"But you forget the madman said 'that he was led on by the LuminousShadow of a beautiful youth, ' that the woman said also that she wasimpelled by some mysterious agency. "

"I do not forget those coincidences; but how your learning would dismissthem as nugatory were your imagination not disposed to exaggerate them!When you read the authentic histories of any popular illusion, suchas the spurious inspirations of the Jansenist Convulsionaries, theapparitions that invaded convents, as deposed in the trial of UrbainGrandier, the confessions of witches and wizards in places themost remote from each other, or, at this day, the tales of'spirit-manifestation' recorded in half the towns and villages ofAmerica, --do not all the superstitious impressions of a particular timehave a common family likeness? What one sees, another sees, though therehas been no communication between the two. I cannot tell you why thesephantasms thus partake of the nature of an atmospheric epidemic; thefact remains incontestable. And strange as may be the coincidencebetween your impressions of a mystic agency and those of some otherbrains not cognizant of the chimeras of your own, still, is it notsimpler philosophy to say, 'They are coincidences of the same naturewhich made witches in the same epoch all tell much the same story ofthe broomsticks they rode and the sabbats at which they danced to thefiend's piping, ' and there leave the matter, as in science we must leavemany of the most elementary and familiar phenomena inexplicable as totheir causes, --is not this, I say, more philosophical than to insistupon an explanation which accepts the supernatural rather than leave theextraordinary unaccounted for?"

"As you speak, " said I, resting my downcast face upon my hand, "I shouldspeak to any patient who had confided to me the tale I have told toyou. "

"And yet the explanation does not wholly satisfy you? Very likely: tosome phenomena there is, as yet, no explanation. Perhaps Newton himselfcould not explain quite to his own satisfaction why he was haunted atmidnight by the spectrum of a sun; though I have no doubt that somelater philosopher whose ingenuity has been stimulated by Newton'saccount, has, by this time, suggested a rational solution ofthat enigma. (8) To return to your own case. I have offered suchinterpretations of the mysteries that confound you as appear to meauthorized by physiological science. Should you adduce other facts whichphysiological science wants the data to resolve into phenomena alwaysnatural, however rare, still hold fast to that simple saying of Goethe:'Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. ' And if all which physiologicalscience comprehends in its experience wholly fails us, I may thenhazard certain conjectures in which, by acknowledging ignorance, one iscompelled to recognize the Marvellous (for as where knowledge enters, the Marvellous recedes, so where knowledge falters, the Marvellousadvances); yet still, even in those conjectures, I will distinguish theMarvellous from the Supernatural. But, for the present, I advise you toaccept the guess that may best quiet the fevered imagination which anybolder guess would only more excite. "

"You are right, " said I, rising proudly to the full height of mystature, my head erect and my heart defying. "And so let this subjectbe renewed no more between us. I will brood over it no more myself. I regain the unclouded realm of my human intelligence; and, in thatintelligence, I mock the sorcerer and disdain the spectre. "

(1) Beattie's "Essay on Truth, " part i. C. Ii. 3. The story of SimonBrowne is to be found in "The Adventurer. "

(2) Miller's Physiology of the Senses, p. 394. 

(3) Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 281. (15th edition. )

(4) At the date of Faber's conversation with Allen Fenwick, the(so-called) spirit manifestations had not spread from America overEurope. But if they had, Faber's views would, no doubt, have remainedthe same. 

(5) Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 278. (15th edition. )

This author, not more to be admired for his intelligence than hiscandour, and who is entitled to praise for a higher degree of originalthought than that to which he modestly pretends, relates a curiousanecdote illustrating "the analogy between dreaming and spectralillusion, which he received from the gentleman to which it occurred, --aneminent medical friend:" "Having sat up late one evening, underconsiderable anxiety for one of his children, who was ill, he fellasleep in his chair, and had a frightful dream, in which the prominentfigure was an immense baboon. He awoke with the fright, got upinstantly, and walked to a table which was in the middle of the room. He was then quite awake, and quite conscious of the articles around him;but close by the wall in the end of the apartment he distinctly saw thebaboon making the same grimaces which he had seen in his dreams; andthis spectre continued visible for about half a minute. " Now, a manwho saw only a baboon would be quite ready to admit that it was but anoptical illusion; but if, instead of a baboon, he had seen an intimatefriend, and that friend, by some coincidence of time, had died aboutthat date, he would be a very strong-minded man if he admitted for themystery of seeing his friend the same natural solution which he wouldreadily admit for seeing a baboon. 

(6) See Muller's observations on this phenomenon, "Physiology of theSenses, " Baley's translation, p. 1395. 

(7) Sir David Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic, p. 39. 

(8) Newton's explanation is as follows: "This story I tell you to letyou understand, that in the observation related by Mr. Boyle, the man'sfancy probably concurred with the impression made by the sun's lightto produce that phantasm of the sun which he constantly saw in brightobjects, and so your question about the cause of this phantasm involvesanother about the power of the fancy, which I must confess is too hard aknot for me to untie. To place this effect in a constant motion is hard, because the sun ought then to appear perpetually. It seems ratherto consist in a disposition of the sensorium to move the imaginationstrongly, and to be easily moved both by the imagination and by thelight as often as bright objects are looked upon. "--Letter from Sir I. Newton to Locke, Lord Kinq's Life of Locke, vol. I. Pp. 405-408. 

Dr. Roget (Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference toNatural Theology, "Bridgewater Treatise, " pp. 524, 525) thus refers tothis phenomenon, which he states "all of us may experience ":--

"When the impressions are very vivid" (Dr. Roget is speaking of visualimpressions), "another phenomenon often takes place, --namely, their_subsequent recurrence after a certain interval, during which they arenot felt, and quite independently of any renewed application of thecause which had originally excited them. "_ (I mark by italics the wordswhich more precisely coincide with Julius Faber's explanations. ) "If, for example, we look steadfastly at the sun for a second or two, andthen immediately close our eyes, the image, or spectrum, of the sunremains for a long time present to the mind, as if the light were stillacting on the retina. It then gradually fades and disappears; but ifwe continue to keep the eyes shut, the same impression will, aftera certain time, recur, and again vanish: and this phenomenon will berepeated at intervals, the sensation becoming fainter at each renewal. It is probable that these reappearances of the image, after thelight which produced the original impression has been withdrawn, areoccasioned by spontaneous affections of the retina itself which areconveyed to the sensorium. In other cases, where the impressions areless strong, the physical changes producing these changes are perhapsconfined to the sensorium. "

It may be said that there is this difference between the spectrum of thesun and such a phantom as that which perplexed Allen Fenwick, --namely, that the sun has been actually beheld before its visionary appearancecan be reproduced, and that Allen Fenwick only imagines he has seen theapparition which repeats itself to his fancy. "But there are grounds forthe suspicion" (says Dr. Hibbert, "Philosophy of Apparitions, " p. 250), "that when ideas of vision are vivified to the height of sensation, acorresponding affection of the optic nerve accompanies the illusion. "Muller ("Physiology of the Senses, " p. 1392, Baley's translation) statesthe same opinion still more strongly; and Sir David Brewster, quotedby Dr. Hibbert (p. 251) says: "In examining these mental impressions, Ihave found that they follow the motions of the eyeball exactly like thespectral impressions of luminous objects, and that they resemble themalso in their apparent immobility when the eye is displaced by anexternal force. If this result (which I state with much diffidence, fromhaving only my own experience in its favour) shall be found generallytrue by others, it will follow that the objects of mental contemplationmay be seen as distinctly as external objects, and will occupy the samelocal position in the axis of vision, as if they had been formed by theagency of light. " Hence the impression of an image once conveyed to thesenses, no matter how, whether by actual or illusory vision, is liableto renewal, "independently of any renewed application of the cause whichhad originally excited it, " and the image can be seen in that renewal"as distinctly as external objects, " for indeed "the revival of thefantastic figure really does affect those points of the retina which hadbeen previously impressed. "

CHAPTER XLVI. 

Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd stayed in my house three day, I and in theirpresence I felt a healthful sense of security and peace. Amy wished tovisit her father's house, and I asked Faber, in taking her there, toseize the occasion to see Lilian, that he might communicate to me hisimpression of a case so peculiar. I prepared Mrs. Ashleigh for thisvisit by a previous note. When the old man and the child came back, bothbrought me comfort. Amy was charmed with Lilian, who had received herwith the sweetness natural to her real character, and I loved to hearLilian's praise from those innocent lips. 

Faber's report was still more calculated to console me. 

"I have seen, I have conversed with her long and familiarly. You werequite right, --there is no tendency to consumption in that exquisite, ifdelicate, organization; nor do I see cause for the fear to which yourstatement had pre-inclined me. That head is too nobly formed for anyconstitutional cerebral infirmity. In its organization, ideality, wonder, veneration, are large, it is true, but they are balanced byother organs, now perhaps almost dormant, but which will come intoplay as life passes from romance into duty. Something at this momentevidently oppresses her mind. In conversing with her, I observeabstraction, listlessness; but I am so convinced of her truthfulness, that if she has once told you she returned your affection, and pledgedto you her faith, I should, in your place, rest perfectly satisfied thatwhatever be the cloud that now rests on her imagination, and for thetime obscures the idea of yourself, it will pass away. "

Faber was a believer in the main divisions of phrenology, though he didnot accept all the dogmas of Gall and Spurzheim; while, to my mind, the refutation of phrenology in its fundamental propositions had beentriumphantly established by the lucid arguments of Sir W. Hamilton. (1)But when Faber rested on phrenological observations assurances in honourof Lilian, I forgot Sir W. Hamilton, and believed in phrenology. Asiron girders and pillars expand and contract with the mere variationsof temperature, so will the strongest conviction on which the humanintellect rests its judgment vary with the changes of the human heart;and the building is only safe where these variations are foreseen andallowed for by a wisdom intent on self-knowledge. (2)

There was much in the affection that had sprung up between Julius Faberand Amy Lloyd which touched my heart and softened all its emotions. Thisman, unblessed, like myself, by conjugal and parental ties, had, in hissolitary age, turned for solace to the love of a child, as I, in thepride of manhood, had turned to the love of woman. But his love waswithout fear, without jealousy, without trouble. My sunshine came tome in a fitful ray, through clouds that had gathered over my noon; hissunshine covered all his landscape, hallowed and hallowing by the calmof declining day. 

And Amy was no common child. She had no exuberant imagination; she washaunted by no whispers from Afar; she was a creature fitted for theearth, --to accept its duties and to gladden its cares. Her tenderobservation, fine and tranquil, was alive to all the important householdtrifles by which, at the earliest age, man's allotted soother assertsher privilege to tend and to comfort. It was pleasant to see hermoving so noiselessly through the rooms I had devoted to her venerableprotector, knowing all his simple wants, and providing for them as if bythe mechanism of a heart exquisitely moulded to the loving uses of life. Sometimes when I saw her setting his chair by the window (knowing, asI did, how much he habitually loved to be near the light) and smoothinghis papers (in which he was apt to be unmethodical), placing the markin his book when he ceased to read, divining, almost without his glance, some wish passing through his mind, and then seating herself at hisfeet, often with her work--which was always destined for him or for oneof her absent brothers, --now and then with the one small book thatshe had carried with her, a selection of Bible stories compiled forchildren, --sometimes when I saw her thus, how I wished that Lilian, too, could have seen her, and have compared her own ideal fantasies withthose young developments of the natural heavenly Woman!

But was there nothing in that sight from which I, proud of my aridreason even in its perplexities, might have taken lessons for myself?

On the second evening of Faber's visit I brought to him the draft ofdeeds for the sale of his property. He had never been a man of businessout of his profession; he was impatient to sell his property, anddisposed to accept an offer at half its value. I insisted on takingon myself the task of negotiator; perhaps, too, in this office I wasegotistically anxious to prove to the great physician that which hebelieved to be my "hallucination" had in no way obscured my common-sensein the daily affairs of life. So I concluded, and in a few hours, terms for his property that were only just, but were infinitely moreadvantageous than had appeared to himself to be possible. But as Iapproached him with the papers, he put his finger to his lips. Amy wasstanding by him with her little book in her hand, and his own Bible layopen on the table. He was reading to her from the Sacred Volume itself, and impressing on her the force and beauty of one of the Parables, theadaptation of which had perplexed her; when he had done, she kissed him, bade him goodnight, and went away to rest. Then said Faber thoughtfully, and as if to himself more than me, --

"What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is religion! Howintuitively the child begins with prayer and worship on entering life, and how intuitively on quitting life the old man turns back to prayerand worship, putting himself again side by side with the infant!"

I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of fines and freeholds, title-deeds and money; and when the business on hand was concluded, asked my learned guest if, before he departed, he would deign to lookover the pages of my ambitious Physiological Work. There were parts ofit on which I much desired his opinion, touching on subjects in whichhis special studies made him an authority as high as our land possessed. 

He made me bring him the manuscript, and devoted much of that night andthe next day to its perusal. 

When he gave it me back, which was not till the morning of hisdeparture, he commenced with eulogies on the scope of its design, andthe manner of its execution, which flattered my vanity so much thatI could not help exclaiming, "Then, at least, there is no trace of'hallucination' here!"

"Alas, my poor Allen! here, perhaps, hallucination, or self-deception, is more apparent than in all the strange tales you confided to me. Forhere is the hallucination of the man seated on the shores of Nature, and who would say to its measureless sea, 'So far shalt thou go and nofarther;' here is the hallucination of the creature, who, not contentwith exploring the laws of the Creator, ends with submitting to hisinterpretation of some three or four laws, in the midst of a code ofwhich all the rest are in a language unknown to him, the powers andfree-will of the Lawgiver Himself; here is the hallucination by whichNature is left Godless, because Man is left soulless. What would matterall our speculations on a Deity who would cease to exist for us when weare in the grave? Why mete out, like Archytas, the earth and the sea, and number the sands on the shore that divides them, if the end of thiswisdom be a handful of dust sprinkled over a skull!

 "'Nec quidquam tibi prodest Aerias tentasse dornos, animoque rotundum Percurrisse polum naorituro. '

"Your book is a proof of the soul that you fail to discover. Without asoul, no man would work for a Future that begins for his fame when thebreath is gone from his body. Do you remember how you saw that littlechild praying at the grave of her father? Shall I tell you that in hersimple orisons she prayed for the benefactor, --who had cared forthe orphan; who had reared over dust that tomb which, in a Christianburial-ground, is a mute but perceptible memorial of Christian hopes;that the child prayed, haughty man, for you? And you sat by, knowingnought of this; sat by, amongst the graves, troubled and tortured withghastly doubts, vain of a reason that was sceptical of eternity, and yetshaken like a reed by a moment's marvel. Shall I tell the child to prayfor you no more; that you disbelieve in a soul? If you do so, what isthe efficacy of prayer? Speak, shall I tell her this? Shall the infantpray for you never more?"

I was silent; I was thrilled. 

"Has it never occurred to you, who, in denying all innate perceptionsas well as ideas, have passed on to deductions from which poor Locke, humble Christian that he was, would have shrunk in dismay, --has it neveroccurred to you as a wonderful fact, that the easiest thing in theworld to teach a child is that which seems to metaphysical schoolmen theabstrusest of all problems? Read all those philosophers wrangling abouta First Cause, deciding on what are miracles, and then again decidingthat such miracles cannot be; and when one has answered another, andleft in the crucible of wisdom a caput mortuum of ignorance, then turnyour eyes, and look at the infant praying to the invisible God at hismother's knees. This idea, so miraculously abstract, of a Power theinfant has never seen, that cannot be symbolled forth and explained tohim by the most erudite sage, --a Power, nevertheless, that watchesover him, that hears him, that sees him, that will carry him across thegrave, that will enable him to live on forever, --this double mysteryof a Divinity and of a Soul, the infant learns with the most facilereadiness, at the first glimpse of his reasoning faculty. Before you canteach him a rule in addition, before you can venture to drill him intohis horn-book, he leaps, with one intuitive spring of all his ideas, to the comprehension of the truths which are only incomprehensible toblundering sages! And you, as you stand before me, dare not say, 'Letthe child pray for me no more!' But will the Creator accept the child'sprayer for the man who refuses prayer for himself? Take my advice, pray!And in this counsel I do not overstep my province. I speak not as apreacher, but as a physician. For health is a word that comprehendsour whole organization, and a just equilibrium of all faculties andfunctions is the condition of health. As in your Lilian the equilibriumis deranged by the over-indulgence of a spiritual mysticism whichwithdraws from the nutriment of duty the essential pabulum of sobersense, so in you the resolute negation of disciplined spiritualcommunion between Thought and Divinity robs imagination of its noblestand safest vent. Thus, from opposite extremes, you and your Lilian meetin the same region of mist and cloud, losing sight of each other and ofthe true ends of life, as her eyes only gaze on the stars and yours onlybend to the earth. Were I advising her, I should say: 'Your Creator hasplaced the scene of your trial below, and not in the stars. ' Advisingyou, I say: 'But in the trial below, man should recognize education forheaven. ' In a word, I would draw somewhat more downward her fancy, raise somewhat more upward your reason. Take my advice then, --Pray. Your mental system needs the support of prayer in order to preserve itsbalance. In the embarrassment and confusion of your senses, clearnessof perception will come with habitual and tranquil confidence in Him whoalike rules the universe and reads the heart. I only say here whathas been said much better before by a reasoner in whom all Students ofNature recognize a guide. I see on your table the very volume of Baconwhich contains the passage I commend to your reflection. Here it is. Listen: 'Take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity andcourage he will put on when he finds himself maintained by a man who, tohim, is instead of a God, or melior natura, which courage is manifestlysuch as that creature, without that confidence of a better naturethan his own, could never attain. So man, when he resteth and assurethhimself upon Divine protection and favour, gathereth a force and faithwhich human nature could not obtain. '(3) You are silent, but yourgesture tells me your doubt, --a doubt which your heart, so femininelytender, will not speak aloud lest you should rob the old man of a hopewith which your strength of manhood dispenses, --you doubt the efficacyof prayer! Pause and reflect, bold but candid inquirer into the lawsof that guide you call Nature. If there were no efficacy in prayer;if prayer were as mere an illusion of superstitious fantasy as aughtagainst which your reason now struggles, do you think that Natureherself would have made it amongst the most common and facile of allher dictates? Do you believe that if there really did not exist thattie between Man and his Maker--that link between life here and lifehereafter which is found in what we call Soul alone--that wherever youlook through the universe, you would behold a child at Prayer? Natureinculcates nothing that is superfluous. Nature does not impel theleviathan or the lion, the eagle or the moth, to pray; she impels onlyman. Why? Because man only has soul, and Soul seeks to commune with theEverlasting, as a fountain struggles up to its source. Burn your book. It would found you a reputation for learning and intellect and courage, I allow; but learning and intellect and courage wasted against a truth, like spray against a rock! A truth valuable to the world, the world willnever part with. You will not injure the truth, but you will misleadand may destroy many, whose best security is in the truth which you soeruditely insinuate to be a fable. Soul and Hereafter are the heritageof all men; the humblest, journeyman in those streets, the pettiesttrader behind those counters, have in those beliefs their prerogativesof royalty. You would dethrone and embrute the lords of the earth byyour theories. For my part, having given the greater part of my lifeto the study and analysis of facts, I would rather be the author of thetritest homily, or the baldest poem, that inculcated that imperishableessence of the soul to which I have neither scalpel nor probe, than bethe founder of the subtlest school, or the framer of the loftiest verse, that robbed my fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes thedissecting-knife, --in a being that escapes the grave-digger. Burn yourbook! Accept This Book instead; Read and Pray. "

He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me, and, an hour afterwards, the old man and the child left my hearth solitary once more. 

(1) The summary of this distinguished lecturer's objections tophrenology is to be found in the Appendix to vol i. Of "Lectures onMetaphysics, " p. 404, et seq. Edition 1859. 

(2) The change of length of iron girders caused by variation oftemperature has not unfrequently brought down the whole edifice intowhich they were admitted. Good engineers and architects allow for suchchanges produced by temperature. In the tubular bridge across the MenaiStraits, a self-acting record of the daily amount of its contraction andexpansion is ingeniously Contrived. 

(3) Bacon's "Essay on Atheism. " This quotation is made with admirablefelicity and force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatiseon Astronomy and General Physics considered with reference to NaturalTheology. 

CHAPTER XLVII. 

That night, as I sat in my study, very thoughtful and very mournful, Iresolved all that Julius Faber had said; and the impression his wordshad produced became gradually weaker and weaker, as my reason, naturallycombative, rose up with all the replies which my philosophy suggested. No; if my imagination had really seduced and betrayed me into monstrouscredulities, it was clear that the best remedy to such morbid tendenciestowards the Superstitious was in the severe exercise of the facultiesmost opposed to Superstition, --in the culture of pure reasoning, in thescience of absolute fact. Accordingly, I placed before me the very bookwhich Julius Faber had advised me to burn; I forced all my powers ofmind to go again over the passages which contained the doctrines thathis admonition had censured; and before daybreak, I had stated thesubstance of his argument, and the logical reply to it, in an elaborateaddition to my chapter on "Sentimental Philosophers. " While thusrejecting the purport of his parting counsels, I embodied in anotherportion of my work his views on my own "illusions;" and as here mycommonsense was in concord with his, I disposed of all my own previousdoubts in an addition to my favourite chapter "On the Cheats of theImagination. " And when the pen dropped from my hand, and the day-stargleamed through the window, my heart escaped from the labour of my mind, and flew back to the image of Lilian. The pride of the philosopher diedout of me, the sorrow of the man reigned supreme, and I shrank from thecoming of the sun, despondent. 

CHAPTER XLVIII. 

Not till the law had completed its proceedings, and satisfied the publicmind as to the murder of Sir Philip Derval, were the remains of thedeceased consigned to the family mausoleum. The funeral was, as may besupposed, strictly private, and when it was over, the excitement causedby an event so tragical and singular subsided. New topics engaged thepublic talk, and--in my presence, at least--the delicate considerationdue to one whose name had been so painfully mixed up in the dismalstory forbore a topic which I could not be expected to hear withoutdistressful emotion. Mrs. Ashleigh I saw frequently at my own house;she honestly confessed that Lilian had not shown that grief at thecancelling of our engagement which would alone justify Mrs. Ashleigh inasking me again to see her daughter, and retract my conclusions againstour union. She said that Lilian was quiet, not uncheerful, never spokeof me nor of Margrave, but seemed absent and pre-occupied as before, taking pleasure in nothing that had been wont to please her; not inmusic, nor books, nor that tranquil pastime which women call work, andin which they find excuse to meditate, in idleness, their own fancies. She rarely stirred out, even in the garden; when she did, her eyesseemed to avoid the house in which Margrave had lodged, and her stepsthe old favourite haunt by the Monks' Well. She would remain silent forlong hours together, but the silence did not appear melancholy. Forthe rest, her health was more than usually good. Still Mrs. Ashleighpersisted in her belief that, sooner or later, Lilian would return toher former self, her former sentiments for me; and she entreated me not, as yet, to let the world know that our engagement was broken off. "Forif, " she said, with good sense, "if it should prove not to be brokenoff, only suspended, and afterwards happily renewed, there will be twostories to tell when no story be needed. Besides, I should dread theeffect on Lilian, if offensive gossips babbled to her on a matter thatwould excite so much curiosity as the rupture of a union in which ourneighbours have taken so general an interest. "

I had no reason to refuse acquiescence in Mrs. Ashleigh's request, butI did not share in her hopes; I felt that the fair prospects of my lifewere blasted; I could never love another, never wed another; I resignedmyself to a solitary hearth, rejoiced, at least, that Margrave had notrevisited at Mrs. Ashleigh's, --had not, indeed, reappeared in thetown. He was still staying with Strahan, who told me that his guesthad ensconced himself in Forman's old study, and amused himself withreading--though not for long at a time--the curious old books andmanuscripts found in the library, or climbing trees like a schoolboy, and familiarizing himself with the deer and the cattle, which wouldgroup round him quite tame, and feed from his hand. Was this thedescription of a criminal? But if Sir Philip's assertion were reallytrue; if the criminal were man without soul; if without soul, man wouldhave no conscience, never be troubled by repentance, and the vague dreadof a future world, --why, then, should not the criminal be gay despitehis crimes, as the white bear gambols as friskly after his meal onhuman flesh? These questions would haunt me, despite my determination toaccept as the right solution of all marvels the construction put on mynarrative by Julius Faber. 

Days passed; I saw and heard nothing of Margrave. I began half tohope that, in the desultory and rapid changes of mood and mind whichcharacterized his restless nature, he had forgotten my existence. 

One morning I went out early on my rounds, when I met Strabanunexpectedly. 

"I was in search of you, " he said, "for more than one person has told methat you are looking ill and jaded. So you are! And the town now is hotand unhealthy. You must come to Derval Court for a week or so. You canride into town every day to see your patients. Don't refuse. Margrave, who is still with me, sends all kind messages, and bade me say that heentreats you to come to the house at which he also is a guest!"

I started. What had the Scin-Laeca required of me, and obtained to thatcondition my promise? "If you are asked to the house at which I alsoam a guest, you will come; you will meet and converse with me asguest speaks to guest in the house of a host!" Was this one of thecoincidences which my reason was bound to accept as coincidences, andnothing more? Tut, tut! Was I returning again to my "hallucinations"?Granting that Faber and common-sense were in the right, what was thisMargrave? A man to whose friendship, acuteness, and energy I was underthe deepest obligations, --to whom I was indebted for active servicesthat had saved my life from a serious danger, acquitted my honour of ahorrible suspicion. "I thank you, " I said to Strahan, "I will come; not, indeed, for a week, but, at all events, for a day or two. "

"That's right; I will call for you in the carriage at six o'clock. Youwill have done your day's work by then?"

"Yes; I will so arrange. "

On our way to Derval Court that evening, Strahan talked much aboutMargrave, of whom, nevertheless, he seemed to be growing weary. 

"His high spirits are too much for one, " said he; "and then sorestless, --so incapable of sustained quiet conversation. And, cleverthough he is, he can't help me in the least about the new house I shallbuild. He has no notion of construction. I don't think he could build abarn. "

"I thought you did not like to demolish the old house, and would contentyourself with pulling down the more ancient part of it?"

"True. At first it seemed a pity to destroy so handsome a mansion; butyou see, since poor Sir Philip's manuscript, on which he set such store, has been too mutilated, I fear, to allow me to effect his wish withregard to it, I think I ought at least scrupulously to obey his otherwhims. And, besides, I don't know, there are odd noises about the oldhouse. I don't believe in haunted houses; still there is somethingdreary in strange sounds at the dead of night, even if made by rats, orwinds through decaying rafters. You, I remember at college, had a tastefor architecture, and can draw plans. I wish to follow out Sir Philip'sdesign, but on a smaller scale, and with more attention to comfort. "

Thus he continued to run on, satisfied to find me a silent and attentivelistener. We arrived at the mansion an hour before sunset, the westeringlight shining full against the many windows cased in moulderingpilasters, and making the general dilapidation of the old place yet moremournfully evident. 

It was but a few minutes to the dinner-hour. I went up at once to theroom appropriated to me, --not the one I had before occupied. Strahanhad already got together a new establishment. I was glad to find inthe servant who attended me an old acquaintance. He had been in my ownemploy when I first settled at L----, and left me to get married. He andhis wife were now both in Strahan's service. He spoke warmly of hisnew master and his contentment with his situation, while he unpacked mycarpet-bag and assisted me to change my dress. But the chief object ofhis talk and his praise was Mr. Margrave. 

"Such a bright young gentleman, like the first fine day in May!"

When I entered the drawing-room, Margrave and Strahan were both there. The former was blithe and genial, as usual, in his welcome. At dinner, and during the whole evening till we retired severally to our own rooms, he was the principal talker, --recounting incidents of travel, alwaysvery loosely strung together, jesting, good-humouredly enough, atStrahan's sudden hobby for building, then putting questions to me aboutmutual acquaintances, but never waiting for an answer; and every nowand then, as if at random, startling us with some brilliant aphorism, orsome suggestion drawn from abstract science or unfamiliar erudition. Thewhole effect was sparkling, but I could well understand that, if longcontinued, it would become oppressive. The soul has need of pauses ofrepose, --intervals of escape, not only from the flesh, but even from themind. A man of the loftiest intellect will experience times whenmere intellect not only fatigues him, but amidst its most originalconceptions, amidst its proudest triumphs, has a something trite andcommonplace compared with one of those vague intimations of a spiritualdestiny which are not within the ordinary domain of reason; and, gazingabstractedly into space, will leave suspended some problem of severestthought, or uncompleted some golden palace of imperial poetry, toindulge in hazy reveries, that do not differ from those of an innocent, quiet child! The soul has a long road to travel--from time througheternity. It demands its halting hours of contemplation. Contemplationis serene. But with such wants of an immortal immaterial spirit, Margrave had no fellowship, no sympathy; and for myself, I need scarcelyadd that the lines I have just traced I should not have written at thedate at which my narrative has now arrived. 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

I had no case that necessitated my return to L---- the following day. The earlier hours of the forenoon I devoted to Strahan and his buildingplans. Margrave flitted in and out of the room fitfully as an Aprilsunbeam, sometimes flinging himself on a sofa, and reading for a fewminutes one of the volumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip'slibrary was so rich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read thatcrabbed and difficult Greek with a fluency that surprised me. "I pickedup the ancient Greek, " said he, "years ago, in learning the modern. "But the book soon tired him; then he would come and disturb us, archlyenjoying Strahan's peevishness at interruption; then he would throw openthe window and leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs; andin another moment he was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broadlime-tree, amidst the antlers of deer that gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my host was called away to attend some visitors ofimportance, and I found myself on the sward before the house, right inview of the mausoleum and alone with Margrave. 

I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein rested the corpseof the last lord of the soil, so strangely murdered, with a strongdesire to speak out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself thattortured me. But--setting aside the promise to the contrary, which I hadgiven, or dreamed I had given, to the Luminous Shadow--to fulfil thatdesire would have been impossible, --impossible to any one gazing on thatradiant youthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him then: a whitedoe, that even my presence could not scare away from him, clung lovinglyto his side, looking up at him with her soft eyes. He stood there likethe incarnate principle of mythological sensuous life. I have beforeapplied to him that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned. Impossible, I repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, "Artthou the master of demoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?"As if from redundant happiness within himself, he was humming, or rathercooing, a strain of music, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike themusic one hears from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my handover my forehead in bewilderment and awe. 

"Are there, " I said unconsciously, --"are there, indeed, such prodigiesin Nature?"

"Nature!" he cried, catching up the word; "talk to me of Nature! Talk ofher, the wondrous blissful mother! Mother I may well call her. I am herspoiled child, her darling! But oh, to die, ever to die, ever to losesight of Nature!--to rot senseless, whether under these turfs or withinthose dead walls--"

I could not resist the answer, --

"Like yon murdered man! murdered, and by whom?"

"By whom? I thought that was clearly proved. "

"The hand was proved; what influence moved the hand?"

"Tush! the poor wretch spoke of a Demon. Who can tell? Nature herselfis a grand destroyer. See that pretty bird, in its beak a writhing worm!All Nature's children live to take life; none, indeed, so lavishly asman. What hecatombs slaughtered, not to satisfy the irresistible stingof hunger, but for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he mayscarcely taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying! Wespeak with dread of the beasts of prey: what beast of prey is so direa ravager as man, --so cruel and so treacherous? Look at yon flockof sheep, bred and fattened for the shambles; and this hind that Icaress, --if I were the park-keeper, and her time for my bullet had come, would you think her life was the safer because, in my own idle whim, Ihad tamed her to trust to the hand raised to slay her?"

"It is true, " said I, --"a grim truth. Nature, on the surface so lovingand so gentle, is full of terror in her deeps when our thought descendsinto their abyss!"

Strahan now joined us with a party of country visitors. "Margrave isthe man to show you the beauties of this park, " said he. "Margrave knowsevery bosk and dingle, twisted old thorn-tree, or opening glade, in itsintricate, undulating ground. "

Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition; and as he led us throughthe park, though the way was long, though the sun was fierce, no oneseemed fatigued. For the pleasure he felt in pointing out detachedbeauties which escaped an ordinary eye was contagious. He did not talkas talks the poet or the painter; but at some lovely effect of lightamongst the tremulous leaves, some sudden glimpse of a sportive rivuletbelow, he would halt, point it out to us in silence, and with a kindof childlike ecstasy in his own bright face, that seemed to reflect thelife and the bliss of the blithe summer day itself. 

Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret nature faded away, --all myhorror, all my hate; it was impossible to resist the charm that breathedround him, not to feel a tender, affectionate yearning towards him as tosome fair happy child. Well might he call himself the Darling of Nature. Was he not the mysterious likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful asApollo in one aspect, direful as Typhon in another?

CHAPTER L. 

"What a strange-looking cane you have, sir!" said a little girl, who wasone of the party, and who had entwined her arm round Margrave's. "Let melook at it. "

"Yes, " said Strahan, "that cane, or rather walking-staff, is worthlooking at. Margrave bought it in Egypt, and declares that it is veryancient. "

This staff seemed constructed from a reed: looked at, it seemed light, in the hand it felt heavy; it was of a pale, faded yellow, wroughtwith black rings at equal distances, and graven with half obliteratedcharacters that seemed hieroglyphic. I remembered to have seen Margravewith it before, but I had never noticed it with any attention until now, when it was passed from hand to hand. At the head of the cane there wasa large unpolished stone of a dark blue. 

"Is this a pebble or a jewel?" asked one of the party. 

"I cannot tell you its name or nature, " said Margrave; "but it is saidto cure the bite of serpents(1), and has other supposed virtues, --atalisman, in short. "

He here placed the staff in my hands, and bade me look at it with care. Then he changed the conversation and renewed the way, leaving thestaff with me, till suddenly I forced it back on him. I could not haveexplained why, but its touch, as it warmed in my clasp, seemed to sendthrough my whole frame a singular thrill, and a sensation as if I nolonger felt my own weight, --as if I walked on air. 

Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went away; I re-entered thehouse through the sash-window of Forman's study. Margrave threw his hatand staff on the table, and amused himself with examining minutely thetracery on the mantelpiece. Strahan and myself left him thus occupied, and, going into the adjoining library, resumed our task of examining theplans for the new house. I continued to draw outlines and sketchesof various alterations, tending to simplify and contract Sir Philip'sgeneral design. Margrave soon joined us, and this time took his seatpatiently beside our table, watching me use ruler and compass withunwonted attention. 

"I wish I could draw, " he said; "but I can do nothing useful. "

"Rich men like you, " said Strahan, peevishly, "can engage others, and are better employed in rewarding good artists than in making baddrawings themselves. "

"Yes, I can employ others; and--Fenwick, when you have finished withStrahan I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; thetask I would impose will not take you a minute. "

He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall into a doze. 

The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans, --indeed, they werenow pretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our hostleft the room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in theroom, placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointingto an old woodcut, said, "I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile ofSolomon's famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it. You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?--thepentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrologicalcharacters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of thedreamer who wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligiblemeaning; it belongs to the only universal language, the language ofsymbol, in which all races that think--around, and above, and belowus--can establish communion of thought. If in the external universe anyone constructive principle can be detected, it is the geometrical;and in every part of the world in which magic pretends to a writtencharacter, I find that its hieroglyphics are geometrical figures. Isit not laughable that the most positive of all the sciences should thuslend its angles and circles to the use of--what shall I call it?--theignorance?--ay, that is the word--the ignorance of dealers in magic?"

He took up the paper, on which I had hastily described the triangles andthe circle, and left the room, chanting the serpent-charmer's song. 

(1) The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as anantidote to the venom of the serpent's bite, was given to me by aneminent scholar and legal functionary in that island:--

DESCRIPTION of THE BLUESTONE. --This stone is of an oval shape 1 2/10 in. Long, 7/10 broad, 3/10 thick, and, having been broken formerly, is nowset in gold. 

When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be openedby a cut of a lancet or razor longways, and the stone applied withintwenty-four hours. The stone then attaches itself firmly on the wound, and when it has done its office falls off; the cure is then complete. The stone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poisonit has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and thestone is then again fit for use. 

This stone has been from time immemorial in the family of Ventura, ofCorfu, a house of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasantsimmediately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been impaired by thefracture. Its nature or composition is unknown. 

In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the stonewas applied to one, who recovered; but the other, for whom it could notbe used, died. 

It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-fourhours. 

Its colour is so dark as not to be distinguished from black. 

 P. M. COLQUHOUN. 

Corfu, 7th Nov. , 1860. 

Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent work on Ceylon, givesan account of "snake stones" apparently similar to the one at Corfu, except that they are "intensely black and highly polished, " and whichare applied, in much the same manner, to the wounds inflicted by thecobra-capella. 

QUERY. -Might it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical propertiesof these stones, and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of venomconveyed by a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to thebite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra-capella?

CHAPTER LI. 

When we separated for the night, which we did at eleven o'clock, Margrave said, --

"Good-night and good-by. I must leave you to-morrow, Strahan, and beforeyour usual hour for rising. I took the liberty of requesting one of yourmen to order me a chaise from L----. Pardon my seeming abruptness, butI always avoid long leave-takings, and I had fixed the date of mydeparture almost as soon as I accepted your invitation. "

"I have no right to complain. The place must be dull indeed to a gayyoung fellow like you. It is dull even to me. I am meditating flightalready. Are you going back to L----?"

"Not even for such things as I left at my lodgings. When I settlesomewhere and can give an address, I shall direct them to be sent to me. There are, I hear, beautiful patches of scenery towards the north, onlyknown to pedestrian tourists. I am a good walker; and you know, Fenwick, that I am also a child of Nature. Adieu to you both; and many thanks toyou, Strahan, for your hospitality. "

He left the room. 

"I am not sorry he is going, " said Strahan, after a pause, and with aquick breath as if of relief. "Do you not feel that he exhausts one? Anexcess of oxygen, as you would say in a lecture. "

I was alone in my own chamber; I felt indisposed for bed and for sleep;the curious conversation I had held with Margrave weighed on me. In thatconversation, we had indirectly touched upon the prodigies which I hadnot brought myself to speak of with frank courage, and certainly nothingin Margrave's manner had betrayed consciousness of my suspicions; on thecontrary, the open frankness with which he evinced his predilection formystic speculation, or uttered his more unamiable sentiments, rathertended to disarm than encourage belief in gloomy secrets or sinisterpowers. And as he was about to quit the neighbourhood, he would notagain see Lilian, not even enter the town of L----. Was I to ascribethis relief from his presence to the promise of the Shadow; or was Inot rather right in battling firmly against any grotesque illusion, andaccepting his departure as a simple proof that my jealous fears had beenamongst my other chimeras, and that as he had really only visitedLilian out of friendship to me, in my peril, so he might, with hischaracteristic acuteness, have guessed my jealousy, and ceased hisvisits from a kindly motive delicately concealed? And might not the samemotive now have dictated the words which were intended to assure methat L---- contained no attractions to tempt him to return to it? Thus, gradually soothed and cheered by the course to which my reflections ledme, I continued to muse for hours. At length, looking at my watch, Iwas surprised to find it was the second hour after midnight. I was justabout to rise from my chair to undress, and secure some hours of sleep, when the well-remembered cold wind passed through the room, stirring theroots of my hair; and before me stood, against the wall, the LuminousShadow. 

"Rise and follow me, " said the voice, sounding much nearer than it hadever done before. 

And at those words I rose mechanically, and like a sleepwalker. 

"Take up the light. "

I took it. The Scin-Laeca glided along the wall towards the threshold, and motioned me to open the door. I did so. The Shadow flitted onthrough the corridor. I followed, with hushed footsteps, down a smallstair into Forman's study. In all my subsequent proceedings, about to benarrated, the Shadow guided me, sometimes by voice, sometimes by sign. I obeyed the guidance, not only unresistingly, but without a desire toresist. I was unconscious either of curiosity or of awe, --only of acalm and passive indifference, neither pleasurable nor painful. In thisobedience, from which all will seemed extracted, I took into my handsthe staff which I had examined the day before, and which lay on thetable, just where Margrave had cast it on re-entering the house. Iunclosed the shutter to the casement, lifted the sash, and, with thelight in my left hand, the staff in my right, stepped forth into thegarden. The night was still; the flame of the candle scarcely trembledin the air; the Shadow moved on before me towards the old paviliondescribed in an earlier part of this narrative, and of which themouldering doors stood wide open. I followed the Shadow into thepavilion, up the crazy stair to the room above, with its four greatblank unglazed windows, or rather arcades, north, south, east, and west. I halted on the middle of the floor: right before my eyes, through thevista made by breathless boughs, stood out from the moonlit air thedreary mausoleum. Then, at the command conveyed to me, I placed thecandle on a wooden settle, touched a spring in the handle of the staff;a lid flew back, and I drew from the hollow, first a lump of some darkbituminous substance, next a smaller slender wand of polished steel, ofwhich the point was tipped with a translucent material, which appearedto me like crystal. Bending down, still obedient to the directionconveyed to me, I described on the floor with the lump of bitumen (ifI may so call it) the figure of the pentacle with the interlacedtriangles, in a circle nine feet in diameter, just as I had drawn itfor Margrave the evening before. The material used made the figureperceptible, in a dark colour of mingled black and red. I applied theflame of the candle to the circle, and immediately it became lambentwith a low steady splendour that rose about an inch from the floor; andgradually front this light there emanated a soft, gray, transparent mistand a faint but exquisite odour. I stood in the midst of the circle, and within the circle also, close by my side, stood the Scin-Laeca, --nolonger reflected on the wall, but apart from it, erect, rounded intomore integral and distinct form, yet impalpable, and from it therebreathed an icy air. Then lifting the wand, the broader end of whichrested in the palm of my hand, the two forefingers closing lightly overit in a line parallel with the point, I directed it towards the wideaperture before me, fronting the mausoleum. I repeated aloud some wordswhispered to me in a language I knew not: those words I would not traceon this paper, could I remember them. As they came to a close, I hearda howl from the watch-dog in the yard, --a dismal, lugubrious howl. Other dogs in the distant village caught up the sound, and bayed ina dirge-like chorus; and the howling went on louder and louder. Againstrange words were whispered to me, and I repeated them in mechanicalsubmission; and when they, too, were ended, I felt the ground tremblebeneath me, and as my eyes looked straight forward down the vista, that, stretching from the casement, was bounded by the solitary mausoleum, vague formless shadows seemed to pass across the moonlight, --below, along the sward, above, in the air; and then suddenly a terror, notbefore conceived, came upon me. 

And a third time words were whispered; but though I knew no more oftheir meaning than I did of those that had preceded them, I felt arepugnance to utter them aloud. Mutely I turned towards the Scin-Laeca, and the expression of its face was menacing and terrible; my will becameyet more compelled to the control imposed upon it, and my lips commencedthe formula again whispered into my ear, when I heard distinctly a voiceof warning and of anguish, that murmured "Hold!" I knew the voice; itwas Lilian's. I paused; I turned towards the quarter from which thevoice had come, and in the space afar I saw the features, the formof Lilian. Her arms were stretched towards me in supplication, hercountenance was deadly pale, and anxious with unutterable distress. Thewhole image seemed in unison with the voice, --the look, the attitude, the gesture of one who sees another in deadly peril, and cries, "Beware!"

This apparition vanished in a moment; but that moment sufficed to freemy mind from the constraint which had before enslaved it. I dashed thewand to the ground, sprang from the circle, rushed from the place. HowI got into my own room I can remember not, --I know not; I have avague reminiscence of some intervening wandering, of giant trees, ofshroud-like moonlight, of the Shining Shadow and its angry aspect, ofthe blind walls and the iron door of the House of the Dead, of spectralimages, --a confused and dreary phantasmagoria. But all I can recall withdistinctness is the sight of my own hueless face in the mirror in myown still room, by the light of the white moon through the window; and, sinking down, I said to myself, "This, at least, is an hallucination ora dream!"

CHAPTER LII. 

A heavy sleep came over me at daybreak, but I did not undress nor go tobed. The sun was high in the heavens when, on waking, I saw the servantwho had attended me bustling about the room. 

"I beg your pardon, sir, I am afraid I disturbed you; but I have beenthree times to see if you were not coming down, and I found you sosoundly asleep I did not like to wake you. Mr. Strahan has finishedbreakfast, and gone out riding; Mr. Margrave has left, --left before sixo'clock. "

"Ah, he said he was going early. "

"Yes, sir; and he seemed so cross when he went. I could never havesupposed so pleasant a gentleman could put himself into such a passion!"

"What was the matter?"

"Why, his walking-stick could not be found; it was not in the hall. Hesaid he had left it in the study; we could not find it there. At last hefound it himself in the old summerhouse, and said--I beg pardon--he saidhe was sure you had taken it there: that some one, at all events, hadbeen meddling with it. However, I am very glad it was found, since heseems to set such store on it. "

"Did Mr. Margrave go himself into the summer-house to look for it?"

"Yes, sir; no one else would have thought of such a place; no one likesto go there, even in the daytime. "

"Why?"

"Why, sir, they say it is haunted since poor Sir Philip's death; and, indeed, there are strange noises in every part of the house. I amafraid you had a bad night, sir, " continued the servant, with evidentcuriosity, glancing towards the bed, which I had not pressed, andtowards the evening-dress which, while he spoke, I was rapidly changingfor that which I habitually wore in the morning. "I hope you did notfeel yourself ill?"

"No! but it seems I fell asleep in my chair. "

"Did you hear, sir, how the dogs howled about two o'clock in themorning? They woke me. Very frightful!"

"The moon was at her full. Dogs will bay at the moon. "

I felt relieved to think that I should not find Strahan in thebreakfast-room; and hastening through the ceremony of a meal which Iscarcely touched, I went out into the park unobserved, and creepinground the copses and into the neglected gardens, made my way to thepavilion. I mounted the stairs; I looked on the floor of the upper room;yes, there still was the black figure of the pentacle, the circle. So, then, it was not a dream! Till then I had doubted. Or might it not stillbe so far a dream that I had walked in my sleep, and with an imaginationpreoccupied by my conversations with Margrave, --by the hieroglyphicson the staff I had handled, by the very figure associated withsuperstitious practices which I had copied from some weird book athis request, by all the strange impressions previously stamped on mymind, --might I not, in truth, have carried thither in sleep the staff, described the circle, and all the rest been but visionary delusion?Surely, surely, so common-sense, and so Julius Faber would interpret theriddles that perplexed me! Be that as it may, my first thought was toefface the marks on the floor. I found this easier than I had venturedto hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle away from the boards withthe sole of my foot, leaving but an undistinguishable smudge behind. Iknow not why, but I felt the more nervously anxious to remove all suchevidences of my nocturnal visit to that room, because Margrave had soopenly gone thither to seek for the staff, and had so rudely named me tothe servant as having meddled with it. Might he not awake some suspicionagainst me? Suspicion, what of? I knew not, but I feared!

The healthful air of day gradually nerved my spirits and relieved mythoughts. But the place had become hateful to me. I resolved not to waitfor Strahan's return, but to walk back to L----, and leave a message formy host. It was sufficient excuse that I could not longer absent myselffrom my patients; accordingly I gave directions to have the few thingswhich I had brought with me sent to my house by any servant who mightbe going to L----, and was soon pleased to find myself outside thepark-gates and on the high-road. 

I had not gone a mile before I met Strahan on horseback. He receivedmy apologies for not waiting his return to bid him farewell withoutobservation, and, dismounting, led his horse and walked beside me onmy road. I saw that there was something on his mind; at last he said, looking down, --

"Did you hear the dogs howl last night?"

"Yes! the full moon!"

"You were awake, then, at the time. Did you hear any other sound? Didyou see anything?"

"What should I hear or see?"

Strahan was silent for some moments; then he said, with greatseriousness, --

"I could not sleep when I went to bed last night; I felt feverish andrestless. Somehow or other, Margrave got into my head, mixed up in somestrange way with Sir Philip Derval. I heard the dogs howl, and atthe same time, or rather a few minutes later, I felt the whole housetremble, as a frail corner-house in London seems to tremble at nightwhen a carriage is driven past it. The howling had then ceased, andceased as suddenly as it had begun. I felt a vague, superstitious alarm;I got up, and went to my window, which was unclosed (it is my habitto sleep with my windows open); the moon was very bright, and I saw, Ideclare I saw along the green alley that leads from the old part ofthe house to the mausoleum--No, I will not say what I saw or believed Isaw, --you would ridicule me, and justly. But, whatever it might be, onthe earth without or in the fancy within my brain, I was so terrified, that I rushed back to my bed, and buried my face in my pillow. I wouldhave come to you; but I did not dare to stir. I have been riding hardall the morning in order to recover my nerves. But I dread sleepingagain under that roof, and now that you and Margrave leave me, I shallgo this very day to London. I hope all that I have told you is no badsign of any coming disease; blood to the head, eh?"

"No; but imagination overstrained can produce wondrous effects. You doright to change the scene. Go to London at once, amuse yourself, and--"

"Not return, till the old house is razed to the ground. That is myresolve. You approve? That's well. All success to you, Fenwick. I willcanter back and get my portmanteau ready and the carriage out, in timefor the five o'clock train. "

So then he, too, had seen--what? I did not dare and I did not desireto ask him. But he, at least, was not walking in his sleep! Did we bothdream, or neither?

CHAPTER LIII. 

There is an instance of the absorbing tyranny of every-day life whichmust have struck all such of my readers as have ever experienced one ofthose portents which are so at variance with every-day life, that theordinary epithet bestowed on them is "supernatural. "

And be my readers few or many, there will be no small proportion of themto whom once, at least, in the course of their existence, a somethingstrange and eerie has occurred, --a something which perplexed andbaffled rational conjecture, and struck on those chords which vibrate tosuperstition. It may have been only a dream unaccountably verified, --anundefinable presentiment or forewarning; but up from such slighter andvaguer tokens of the realm of marvel, up to the portents of ghostlyapparitions or haunted chambers, I believe that the greater number ofpersons arrived at middle age, however instructed the class, howevercivilized the land, however sceptical the period, to which they belong, have either in themselves experienced, or heard recorded by intimateassociates whose veracity they accept as indisputable in all ordinarytransactions of life, phenomena which are not to be solved by the witthat mocks them, nor, perhaps, always and entirely, to the contentmentof the reason or the philosophy that explains them away. Such phenomena, I say, are infinitely more numerous than would appear from the instancescurrently quoted and dismissed with a jest; for few of those who havewitnessed them are disposed to own it, and they who only hear of themthrough others, however trustworthy, would not impugn their characterfor common-sense by professing a belief to which common-sense is amerciless persecutor. But he who reads my assertion in the quiet of hisown room, will perhaps pause, ransack his memory, and find there, insome dark corner which he excludes from "the babbling and remorselessday, " a pale recollection that proves the assertion not untrue. 

And it is, I say, an instance of the absorbing tyranny of everyday life, that whenever some such startling incident disturbs its regular tenor ofthought and occupation, that same every-day life hastens to bury in itssands the object which has troubled its surface; the more unaccountable, the more prodigious, has been the phenomenon which has scared andastounded us, the more, with involuntary effort, the mind seeks to riditself of an enigma which might disease the reason that tries to solveit. We go about our mundane business with renewed avidity; we feel thenecessity of proving to ourselves that we are still sober, practicalmen, and refuse to be unfitted for the world which we know, byunsolicited visitations from worlds into which every glimpse is soonlost amid shadows. And it amazes us to think how soon such incidents, though not actually forgotten, though they can be recalled--and recalledtoo vividly for health--at our will, are nevertheless thrust, as itwere, out of the mind's sight as we cast into lumber-rooms the crutchesand splints that remind us of a broken limb which has recovered itsstrength and tone. It is a felicitous peculiarity in our organization, which all members of my profession will have noticed, how soon, whena bodily pain is once passed, it becomes erased from therecollection, --how soon and how invariably the mind refuses to lingerover and recall it. No man freed an hour before from a raging toothache, the rack of a neuralgia, seats himself in his armchair to recollect andponder upon the anguish he has undergone. It is the same with certainafflictions of the mind, --not with those that strike on our affections, or blast our fortunes, overshadowing our whole future with a sense ofloss; but where a trouble or calamity has been an accident, an episodein our wonted life, where it affects ourselves alone, where it isattended with a sense of shame and humiliation, where the painof recalling it seems idle, and if indulged would almost maddenus, --agonies of that kind we do not brood over as we do over the deathor falsehood of beloved friends, or the train of events by which we arereduced from wealth to penury. No one, for instance, who has escapedfrom a shipwreck, from the brink of a precipice, from the jaws ofa tiger, spends his days and nights in reviving his terrors past, re-imagining dangers not to occur again, or, if they do occur, fromwhich the experience undergone can suggest no additional safeguards. Thecurrent of our life, indeed, like that of the rivers, is most rapid inthe midmost channel, where all streams are alike comparatively slow inthe depth and along the shores in which each life, as each river, has acharacter peculiar to itself. And hence, those who would sail with thetide of the world, as those who sail with the tide of a river, hastento take the middle of the stream, as those who sail against the tideare found clinging to the shore. I returned to my habitual duties andavocations with renewed energy; I did not suffer my thoughts to dwell onthe dreary wonders that had haunted me, from the evening I first metSir Philip Derval to the morning on which I had quitted the house ofhis heir; whether realities or hallucinations, no guess of mine couldunravel such marvels, and no prudence of mine guard me against theirrepetition. But I had no fear that they would be repeated, any more thanthe man who had gone through shipwreck, or the hairbreadth escape froma fall down a glacier, fears again to be found in a similar peril. Margrave had departed, whither I knew not, and, with his departure, ceased all sense of his influence. A certain calm within me, atranquillizing feeling of relief, seemed to me like a pledge ofpermanent delivery. 

But that which did accompany and haunt me, through all my occupationsand pursuits, was the melancholy remembrance of the love I had lost inLilian. I heard from Mrs. Ashleigh, who still frequently visitedme, that her daughter seemed much in the same quiet state ofmind, --perfectly reconciled to our separation, seldom mentioning myname, if mentioning it, with indifference; the only thing remarkable inher state was her aversion to all society, and a kind of lethargy thatwould come over her, often in the daytime. She would suddenly fall intosleep and so remain for hours, but a sleep that seemed very serene andtranquil, and from which she woke of herself. She kept much within herown room, and always retired to it when visitors were announced. 

Mrs. Ashleigh began reluctantly to relinquish the persuasion she had solong and so obstinately maintained, that this state of feeling towardsmyself--and, indeed, this general change in Lilian--was but temporaryand abnormal; she began to allow that it was best to drop all thoughtsofa renewed engagement, --a future union. I proposed to see Lilian in herpresence and in my professional capacity; perhaps some physical cause, especially for this lethargy, might be detected and removed. Mrs. Ashleigh owned to me that the idea had occurred to herself: she hadsounded Lilian upon it: but her daughter had so resolutely opposedit, --had said with so quiet a firmness "that all being over between us, a visit from me would be unwelcome and painful, "--that Mrs. Ashleighfelt that an interview thus deprecated would only confirm estrangement. One day, in calling, she asked my advice whether it would not be betterto try the effect of change of air and scene, and, in some other place, some other medical opinion might be taken? I approved of this suggestionwith unspeakable sadness. 

"And, " said Mrs. Ashleigh, shedding tears, "if that experiment proveunsuccessful, I will write and let you know; and we must then considerwhat to say to the world as a reason why the marriage is broken off. Ican render this more easy by staying away. I will not return to L----till the matter has ceased to be the topic of talk, and at a distanceany excuse will be less questioned and seem more natural. Butstill--still--let us hope still. "

"Have you one ground for hope?"

"Perhaps so; but you will think it very frail and fallacious. "

"Name it, and let me judge. "

"One night--in which you were on a visit to Derval Court--"

"Ay, that night. "

"Lilian woke me by a loud cry (she sleeps in the next room to me, andthe door was left open); I hastened to her bedside in alarm; she wasasleep, but appeared extremely agitated and convulsed. She kept callingon your name in a tone of passionate fondness, but as if in greatterror. She cried, 'Do not go, Allen--do not go--you know not what youbrave!--what you do!' Then she rose in her bed, clasping her hands. Herface was set and rigid; I tried to awake her, but could not. After alittle time, she breathed a deep sigh, and murmured, 'Allen, Allen!dear love! did you not hear, did you not see me? What could thus bafflematter and traverse space but love and soul? Can you still doubt me, Allen?--doubt that I love you now, shall love you evermore?--yonder, yonder, as here below?' She then sank back on her pillow, weeping, andthen I woke her. "

"And what did she say on waking?"

"She did not remember what she had dreamed, except that she had passedthrough some great terror; but added, with a vague smile, 'It is over, and I feel happy now. ' Then she turned round and fell asleep again, butquietly as a child, the tears dried, the smile resting. "

"Go, my dear friend, go; take Lilian away from this place as soon as youcan; divert her mind with fresh scenes. I hope!--I do hope! Let me knowwhere you fix yourself. I will seize a holiday, --I need one; I willarrange as to my patients; I will come to the same place; she need notknow of it, but I must be by to watch, to hear your news of her. Heavenbless you for what you have said! I hope!--I do hope!"

CHAPTER LIV. 

Some days after, I received a few lines from Mrs. Ashleigh. Herarrangements for departure were made. They were to start the nextmorning. She had fixed on going into the north of Devonshire, andstaying some weeks either at Ilfracombe or Lynton, whichever placeLilian preferred. She would write as soon as they were settled. 

I was up at my usual early hour the next morning. I resolved to go outtowards Mrs. Ashleigh's house, and watch, unnoticed, where I might, perhaps, catch a glimpse of Lilian as the carriage that would convey herto the railway passed my hiding-place. 

I was looking impatiently at the clock; it was yet two hours before thetrain by which Mrs. Ashleigh proposed to leave. A loud ring at my bell!I opened the door. Mrs. Ashleigh rushed in, falling on my breast. 

"Lilian! Lilian!"

"Heavens! What has happened?"

"She has left! she is gone, --gone away! Oh, Allen, how?--whither? Adviseme. What is to be done?"

"Come in--compose yourself--tell me all, --clearly, quickly. Liliangone, --gone away? Impossible! She must be hid somewhere in thehouse, --the garden; she, perhaps, did not like the journey. She mayhave crept away to some young friend's house. But I talk when you shouldtalk: tell me all. "

Little enough to tell! Lilian had seemed unusually cheerful the nightbefore, and pleased at the thought of the excursion. Mother and daughterretired to rest early: Mrs. Ashleigh saw Lilian sleeping quietly beforeshe herself went to bed. She woke betimes in the morning, dressedherself, went into the next room to call Lilian--Lilian was not there. No suspicion of flight occurred to her. Perhaps her daughter might beup already, and gone downstairs, remembering something she might wishto pack and take with her on the journey. Mrs. Ashleigh was confirmedin this idea when she noticed that her own room door was left open. Shewent downstairs, met a maidservant in the hall, who told her, with alarmand surprise, that both the street and garden doors were found unclosed. No one had seen Lilian. Mrs. Ashleigh now became seriously uneasy. On remounting to her daughter's room, she missed Lilian's bonnet andmantle. The house and garden were both searched in vain. There could beno doubt that Lilian had gone, --must have stolen noiselessly at nightthrough her mother's room, and let herself out of the house and throughthe garden. 

"Do you think she could have received any letter, any message, anyvisitor unknown to you?"

"I cannot think it. Why do you ask? Oh, Allen, you do not believe thereis any accomplice in this disappearance! No, you do not believe it. Butmy child's honour! What will the world think?"

Not for the world cared I at that moment. I could think only of Lilian, and without one suspicion that imputed blame to her. 

"Be quiet, be silent; perhaps she has gone on some visit and willreturn. Meanwhile, leave inquiry to me. "

CHAPTER LV. 

It seemed incredible that Lilian could wander far without beingobserved. I soon ascertained that she had not gone away by therailway--by any public conveyance--had hired no carriage; she musttherefore be still in the town, or have left it on foot. The greaterpart of the day was consumed in unsuccessful inquiries, and faint hopesthat she would return; meanwhile the news of her disappearance hadspread: how could such news fail to do so?

An acquaintance of mine met me under the archway of Monks' Gate. Hewrung my hand and looked at me with great compassion. 

"I fear, " said he, "that we were all deceived in that young Margrave. Heseemed so well conducted, in spite of his lively manners. But--"

"But what?"

"Mrs. Ashleigh was, perhaps, imprudent to admit him into her houseso familiarly. He was certainly very handsome. Young ladies will beromantic. "

"How dare you, sir!" I cried, choked with rage. "And without anycolouring to so calumnious a suggestion! Margrave has not been in thetown for many days. No one knows even where he is. "

"Oh, yes, it is known where he is. He wrote to order the effects whichhe had left here to be sent to Penrith. "

"When?"

"The letter arrived the day before yesterday. I happened to be callingat the house where he last lodged, when at L----, the house oppositeMrs. Ashleigh's garden. No doubt the servants in both houses gossip witheach other. Miss Ashleigh could scarcely fail to hear of Mr. Margrave'saddress from her maid; and since servants will exchange gossip, they mayalso convey letters. Pardon me, you know I am your friend. "

"Not from the moment you breathe a word against my betrothed wife, " saidI, fiercely. 

I wrenched myself from the clasp of the man's hand, but his words stillrang in my ears. I mounted my horse; I rode into the adjoining suburbs, the neighbouring villages; there, however, I learned nothing, till, just at nightfall, in a hamlet about ten miles from L----, a labourerdeclared he had seen a young lady dressed as I described, who passedby him in a path through the fields a little before noon; that he wassurprised to see one so young, so well dressed, and a stranger to theneighbourhood (for he knew by sight the ladies of the few familiesscattered around) walking alone; that as he stepped out of the path tomake way for her, he looked hard into her face, and she did not heedhim, --seemed to gaze right before her, into space. If her expression hadbeen less quiet and gentle, he should have thought, he could scarcelysay why, that she was not quite right in her mind; there was a strangeunconscious stare in her eyes, as if she were walking in her sleep. Herpace was very steady, --neither quick nor slow. He had watched her tillshe passed out of sight, amidst a wood through which the path wound itsway to a village at some distance. 

I followed up this clew. I arrived at the village to which my informantdirected me, but night had set in. Most of the houses were closed, so Icould glean no further information from the cottages or at the inn. Butthe police superintendent of the district lived in the village, and tohim I gave instructions which I had not given, and, indeed, would havebeen disinclined to give, to the police at L----. He was intelligentand kindly; he promised to communicate at once with the differentpolice-stations for miles round, and with all delicacy and privacy. Itwas not probable that Lilian could have wandered in one day much fartherthan the place at which I then was; it was scarcely to be conceived thatshe could baffle my pursuit and the practised skill of the police. Irested but a few hours, at a small public-house, and was on horsebackagain at dawn. A little after sunrise I again heard of the wanderer. Ata lonely cottage, by a brick-kiln, in the midst of a wide common, shehad stopped the previous evening, and asked for a draught of milk. Thewoman who gave it to her inquired if she had lost her way. She said"No;" and, only tarrying a few minutes, had gone across the common; andthe woman supposed she was a visitor at a gentleman's house which was atthe farther end of the waste, for the path she took led to no town, novillage. It occurred to me then that Lilian avoided all high-roads, allplaces, even the humblest, where men congregated together. But wherecould she have passed the night? Not to fatigue the reader with thefruitless result of frequent inquiries, I will but say that at the endof the second day I had succeeded in ascertaining that I was stillon her track; and though I had ridden to and fro nearly double thedistance--coming back again to places I had left behind--it was at thedistance of forty miles from L---- that I last heard of her that secondday. She had been sitting alone by a little brook only an hour before. I was led to the very spot by a woodman--it was at the hour of twilightwhen he beheld her; she was leaning her face on her hand, and seemedweary. He spoke to her; she did not answer, but rose and resumed herway along the banks of the streamlet. That night I put up at no inn; Ifollowed the course of the brook for miles, then struck into every paththat I could conceive her to have taken, --in vain. Thus I consumedthe night on foot, tying my horse to a tree, for he was tired out, andreturning to him at sunrise. At noon, the third day, I again heard ofher, and in a remote, savage part of the country. The features of thelandscape were changed; there was little foliage and little culture, butthe ground was broken into moulds and hollows, and covered with patchesof heath and stunted brushwood. She had been seen by a shepherd, andhe made the same observation as the first who had guided me on hertrack, --she looked to him "like some one walking in her sleep. " An houror two later, in a dell, amongst the furze-bushes, I chanced on aknot of ribbon. I recognized the colour Lilian habitually wore; I feltcertain that the ribbon was hers. Calculating the utmost speed I couldascribe to her, she could not be far off, yet still I failed to discoverher. The scene now was as solitary as a desert. I met no one on my way. At length, a little after sunset, I found myself in view of the sea. A small town nestled below the cliffs, on which I was guiding my wearyhorse. I entered the town, and while my horse was baiting went in searchof the resident policeman. The information I had directed to be sentround the country had reached him; he had acted on it, but withoutresult. I was surprised to hear him address me by name, and looking athim more narrowly, I recognized him for the policeman Waby. This youngman had always expressed so grateful a sense of my attendance on hissister, and had, indeed, so notably evinced his gratitude in prosecutingwith Margrave the inquiries which terminated in the discovery ofSir Philip Derval's murderer, that I confided to him the name of thewanderer, of which he had not been previously informed; but which itwould be, indeed, impossible to conceal from him should the search inwhich his aid was asked prove successful, --as he knew Miss Ashleigh bysight. His face immediately became thoughtful. He paused a minute ortwo, and then said, --

"I think I have it, but I do not like to say; I may pain you, sir. "

"Not by confidence; you pain me by concealment. "

The man hesitated still: I encouraged him, and then he spoke outfrankly. 

"Sir, did you never think it strange that Mr. Margrave should move fromhis handsome rooms in the hotel to a somewhat uncomfortable lodging, from the window of which he could look down on Mrs. Ashleigh's garden? Ihave seen him at night in the balcony of that window, and when I noticedhim going so frequently into Mrs. Ashleigh's house during your unjustdetention, I own, sir, I felt for you--"

"Nonsense! Mr. Margrave went to Mrs. Ashleigh's house as my friend. Hehas left L---- weeks ago. What has all this to do with--"

"Patience, sir; hear me out. I was sent from L---- to this station (onpromotion, sir) a fortnight since last Friday, for there has been agood deal of crime hereabouts; it is a bad neighbourhood, and full ofsmugglers. Some days ago, in watching quietly near a lonely house, ofwhich the owner is a suspicious character down in my books, I saw, to myamazement, Mr. Margrave come out of that house, --come out of a privatedoor in it, which belongs to a part of the building not inhabited by theowner, but which used formerly, when the house was a sort of inn, tobe let to night lodgers of the humblest description. I followed him;he went down to the seashore, walked about, singing to himself; thenreturned to the house, and re-entered by the same door. I soon learnedthat he lodged in the house, --had lodged there for several days. Thenext morning, a fine yacht arrived at a tolerably convenient creek abouta mile from the house, and there anchored. Sailors came ashore, ramblingdown to this town. The yacht belonged to Mr. Margrave; he had purchasedit by commission in London. It is stored for a long voyage. He haddirected it to come to him in this out-of-the-way place, where nogentleman's yacht ever put in before, though the creek or bay is handyenough for such craft. Well, sir, is it not strange that a rich younggentleman should come to this unfrequented seashore, put up withaccommodation that must be of the rudest kind, in the house of a manknown as a desperate smuggler, suspected to be worse; order a yacht tomeet him here; is not all this strange? But would it be strange if hewere waiting for a young lady? And if a young lady has fled at nightfrom her home, and has come secretly along bypaths, which must havebeen very fully explained to her beforehand, and is now near that younggentleman's lodging, if not actually in it--if this be so, why, theaffair is not so very strange after all. And now do you forgive me, sir?"

"Where is this house? Lead me to it. "

"You can hardly get to it except on foot; rough walking, sir, and aboutseven miles off by the shortest cut. "

"Come, and at once; come quickly. We must be there before--before--"

"Before the young lady can get to the place. Well, from what you sayof the spot in which she was last seen, I think, on reflection, we mayeasily do that. I am at your service, sir. But I should warn youthat the owners of the house, man and wife, are both of villanouscharacter, --would do anything for money. Mr. Margrave, no doubt, has money enough; and if the young lady chooses to go away with Mr. Margrave, you know I have no power to help it. "

"Leave all that to me; all I ask of you is to show me the house. "

We were soon out of the town; the night had closed in; it was very dark, in spite of a few stars; the path was rugged and precipitous, sometimesskirting the very brink of perilous cliffs, sometimes delving down tothe seashore--there stopped by rock or wave--and painfully rewinding upthe ascent. 

"It is an ugly path, sir, but it saves four miles; and anyhow the roadis a bad one. "

We came, at last, to a few wretched fishermen's huts. The moon had nowrisen, and revealed the squalor of poverty-stricken ruinous hovels; acouple of boats moored to the shore, a moaning, fretful sea; and at adistance a vessel, with lights on board, lying perfectly still at anchorin a sheltered curve of the bold rude shore. The policeman pointed tothe vessel. 

"The yacht, sir; the wind will be in her favour if she sails tonight. "

We quickened our pace as well as the nature of the path would permit, left the huts behind us, and about a mile farther on came to a solitaryhouse, larger than, from the policeman's description of Margrave'slodgement, I should have presupposed: a house that in the wilder partsof Scotland might be almost a laird's; but even in the moonlight itlooked very dilapidated and desolate. Most of the windows were closed, some with panes broken, stuffed with wisps of straw; there were theremains of a wall round the house; it was broken in some parts (only itsfoundation left). On approaching the house I observed two doors, --oneon the side fronting the sea, one on the other side, facing a patch ofbroken ground that might once have been a garden, and lay waste withinthe enclosure of the ruined wall, encumbered with various litter; heapsof rubbish, a ruined shed, the carcass of a worn-out boat. This latterdoor stood wide open, --the other was closed. The house was still anddark, as if either deserted, or all within it retired to rest. 

"I think that open door leads at once to the rooms Mr. Margrave hires;he can go in and out without disturbing the other inmates. They used tokeep, on the side which they inhabit, a beer-house, but the magistratesshut it up; still, it is a resort for bad characters. Now, sir, whatshall we do?

"Watch separately. You wait within the enclosure of the wall, hid bythose heaps of rubbish, near the door; none can enter but what you willobserve them. If you see her, you will accost and stop her, and callaloud for me; I shall be in hearing. I will go back to the high partof the ground yonder--it seems to me that she must pass that way; andI would desire, if possible, to save her from the humiliation, the--theshame of coming within the precincts of that man's abode. I feel I maytrust you now and hereafter. It is a great thing for the happiness andhonour of this poor young lady and her mother, that I may be able todeclare that I did not take her from that man, from any man--from thathouse, from any house. You comprehend me, and will obey? I speak to youas a confidant, --a friend. "

"I thank you with my whole heart, sir, for so doing. You saved mysister's life, and the least I can do is to keep secret all that wouldpain your life if blabbed abroad. I know what mischief folks' tonguescan make. I will wait by the door, never fear, and will rather lose myplace than not strain all the legal power I possess to keep the younglady back from sorrow. "

This dialogue was interchanged in close hurried whisper behind thebroken wall, and out of all hearing. Waby now crept through a wide gapinto the inclosure, and nestled himself silently amidst the wrecks ofthe broken boat, not six feet from the open door, and close to the wallof the house itself. I went back some thirty yards up the road, to therising ground which I had pointed out to him. According to the bestcalculation I could make--considering the pace at which I had clearedthe precipitous pathway, and reckoning from the place and time at whichLilian had been last seen-she could not possibly have yet entered thathouse. I might presume it would be more than half an hour before shecould arrive; I was in hopes that, during the interval, Margrave mightshow himself, perhaps at the door, or from the windows, or I might evenby some light from the latter be guided to the room in which to findhim. If, after waiting a reasonable time, Lilian should fail to appear, I had formed my plan of action; but it was important for the success ofthat plan that I should not lose myself in the strange house, nor bringits owners to Margrave's aid, --that I should surprise him alone andunawares. Half an hour, three quarters, a whole hour thus passed. Nosign of my poor wanderer; but signs there were of the enemy from whomI resolved, at whatever risk, to free and to save her. A window on theground-floor, to the left of the door, which had long fixed my attentionbecause I had seen light through the chinks of the shutters, slowlyunclosed, the shutters fell back, the casement opened, and I beheldMargrave distinctly; he held something in his hand that gleamed in themoonlight, directed not towards the mound on which I stood, nor towardsthe path I had taken, but towards an open space beyond the ruined wallto the right. Hid by a cluster of stunted shrubs I watched him with aheart that beat with rage, not with terror. He seemed so intent in hisown gaze as to be unheeding or unconscious of all else. I stole from mypost, and, still under cover, sometimes of the broken wall, sometimes ofthe shaggy ridges that skirted the path, crept on, on till I reached theside of the house itself; then, there secure from his eyes, should heturn them, I stepped over the ruined wall, scarcely two feet high inthat place, on--on towards the door. I passed the spot on which thepoliceman had shrouded himself; he was seated, his back against the ribsof the broken boat. I put my hand to his mouth that he might not cry outin surprise, and whispered in his ear; he stirred not. I shook him bythe arm: still he stirred not. A ray of the moon fell on his face. Isaw that he was in a profound slumber. Persuaded that it was no naturalsleep, and that he had become useless to me, I passed him by. I wasat the threshold of the open door, the light from the window close byfalling on the ground; I was in the passage; a glimmer came through thechinks of a door to the left; I turned the handle noiselessly, and, thenext moment, Margrave was locked in my grasp. 

"Call out, " I hissed in his ear, "and I strangle you before any one cancome to your help. "

He did not call out; his eye, fixed on mine as he writhed round, saw, perhaps, his peril if he did. His countenance betrayed fear, but asI tightened my grasp that expression gave way to one of wrath andfierceness; and as, in turn, I felt the grip of his hand, I knew thatthe struggle between us would be that of two strong men, each equallybent on the mastery of the other. 

I was, as I have said before, endowed with an unusual degree of physicalpower, disciplined in early youth by athletic exercise and contest. Inheight and in muscle I had greatly the advantage over my antagonist;but such was the nervous vigour, the elastic energy of his incomparableframe, in which sinews seemed springs of steel, that had our encounterbeen one in which my strength was less heightened by rage, I believethat I could no more have coped with him than the bison can cope withthe boa; but I was animated by that passion which trebles for a timeall our forces, --which makes even the weak man a match for the strong. I felt that if I were worsted, disabled, stricken down, Lilian might belost in losing her sole protector; and on the other hand, Margrave hadbeen taken at the disadvantage of that surprise which will half unnervethe fiercest of the wild beasts; while as we grappled, reeling androcking to and fro in our struggle, I soon observed that his attentionwas distracted, --that his eye was turned towards an object which hehad dropped involuntarily when I first seized him. He sought to drag metowards that object, and when near it stooped to seize. It was a bright, slender, short wand of steel. I remembered when and where I had seen it, whether in my waking state or in vision; and as his hand stole down totake it from the floor, I set on the wand my strong foot. I cannot tellby what rapid process of thought and association I came to the beliefthat the possession of a little piece of blunted steel would decide theconflict in favor of the possessor; but the struggle now was concentredon the attainment of that seemingly idle weapon. I was becomingbreathless and exhausted, while Margrave seemed every moment to gatherup new force, when collecting all my strength for one final effort, Ilifted him suddenly high in the air, and hurled him to the farthest endof the cramped arena to which our contest was confined. He fell, andwith a force by which most men would have been stunned; but he recoveredhimself with a quick rebound, and, as he stood facing me, there wassomething grand as well as terrible in his aspect. His eyes literallyflamed, as those of a tiger; his rich hair, flung back from his knittedforehead, seemed to erect itself as an angry mane; his lips, slightlyparted, showed the glitter of his set teeth; his whole frame seemedlarger in the tension of the muscles, and as, gradually relaxing hisfirst defying and haughty attitude, he crouched as the panther crouchesfor its deadly spring, I felt as if it were a wild beast, whose rushwas coming upon me, --wild beast, but still Man, the king of the animals, fashioned forth from no mixture of humbler races by the slow revolutionsof time, but his royalty stamped on his form when the earth became fitfor his coming. (1)

At that moment I snatched up the wand, directed it towards him, andadvancing with a fearless stride, cried, --

"Down to my feet, miserable sorcerer!"

To my own amaze, the effect was instantaneous. My terrible antagonistdropped to the floor as a dog drops at the word of his master. Themuscles of his frowning countenance relaxed, the glare of his wrathfuleyes grew dull and rayless; his limbs lay prostrate and unnerved, hishead rested against the wall, his arms limp and drooping by his side. I approached him slowly and cautiously; he seemed cast into a profoundslumber. 

"You are at my mercy now!" said I. 

He moved his head as in sign of deprecating submission. 

"You hear and understand me? Speak!"

His lips faintly muttered, "Yes. "

"I command you to answer truly the questions I shall address to you. "

"I must, while yet sensible of the power that has passed to your hand. "

"Is it by some occult magnetic property in this wand that you haveexercised so demoniac an influence over a creature so pure as LilianAshleigh?"

"By that wand and by other arts which you could not comprehend. "

"And for what infamous object, --her seduction, her dishonour?"

"No! I sought in her the aid of a gift which would cease did she ceaseto be pure. At first I but cast my influence upon her that through herI might influence yourself. I needed your help to discover a secret. Circumstances steeled your mind against me. I could no longer hope thatyou would voluntarily lend yourself to my will. Meanwhile, I had foundin her the light of a loftier knowledge than that of your science;through that knowledge, duly heeded and cultivated, I hoped to divinewhat I cannot of myself discover. Therefore I deepened over her mindthe spells I command; therefore I have drawn her hither as the loadstonedraws the steel, and therefore I would have borne her with me to theshores to which I was about this night to sail. I had cast the inmatesof the house and all around it into slumber, in order that none mightwitness her departure; had I not done so, I should have summoned othersto my aid, in spite of your threat. "

"And would Lilian Ashleigh have passively accompanied you, to her ownirretrievable disgrace?"

"She could not have helped it; she would have been unconscious of heracts; she was, and is, in a trance; nor, had she gone with me, wouldshe have waked from that state while she lived; that would not have beenlong. "

"Wretch! and for what object of unhallowed curiosity do you exert aninfluence which withers away the life of its victim?"

"Not curiosity, but the instinct of self-preservation. I count on nolife beyond the grave. I would defy the grave, and live on. "

"And was it to learn, through some ghastly agencies, the secret ofrenewing existence, that you lured me by the shadow of your own image onthe night when we met last?"

The voice of Margrave here became very faint as he answered me, and hiscountenance began to exhibit the signs of an exhaustion almost mortal. 

"Be quick, " he murmured, "or I die. The fluid which emanates from thatwand, in the hand of one who envenoms that fluid with his own hatredand rage, will prove fatal to my life. Lower the wand from my forehead!low--low, --lower still!"

"What was the nature of that rite in which you constrained me to share?"

"I cannot say. You are killing me. Enough that you were saved from agreat danger by the apparition of the protecting image vouchsafed toyour eye; otherwise you would--you would--Oh, release me! Away! away!"

The foam gathered to his lips; his limbs became fearfully convulsed. 

"One question more: where is Lilian at this moment? Answer thatquestion, and I depart. "

He raised his head, made a visible effort to rally his strength, andgasped out, --

"Yonder. Pass through the open space up the cliff, beside a thorn-tree;you will find her there, where she halted when the wand dropped from myhand. But--but--beware! Ha! you will serve me yet, and through her! Theysaid so that night, though you heard them not. They said it!" Here hisface became death-like; he pressed his hand on his heart, and shriekedout, "Away! away! or you are my murderer!"

I retreated to the other end of the room, turning the wand from him, andwhen I gained the door, looked back; his convulsions had ceased, but heseemed locked in a profound swoon. 

I left the room, --the house, --paused by Waby; he was still sleeping. "Awake!" I said, and touched him with the wand. He started up at once, rubbed his eyes, began stammering out excuses. I checked them, and badehim follow me. I took the way up the open ground towards which Margravehad pointed the wand, and there, motionless, beside a gnarled fantasticthorn-tree, stood Lilian. Her arms were folded across her breast; herface, seen by the moonlight, looked so innocent and so infantine, that Ineeded no other evidence to tell me how unconscious she was of the perilto which her steps had been drawn. I took her gently by the hand. "Comewith me, " I said in a whisper, and she obeyed me silently, and with aplacid smile. 

Rough though the way, she seemed unconscious of fatigue. I placed herarm in mine, but she did not lean on it. We got back to the town. Iobtained there an old chaise and a pair of horses. At morning Lilian wasunder her mother's roof. About the noon of that day fever seized her;she became rapidly worse, and, to all appearance, in imminent danger. Delirium set in; I watched beside her night and day, supported by aninward conviction of her recovery, but tortured by the sight of hersufferings. On the third day a change for the better became visible; hersleep was calm, her breathing regular. 

Shortly afterwards she woke out of danger. Her eyes fell at once on me, with all their old ineffable tender sweetness. 

"Oh, Allen, beloved, have I not been very ill? But I am almost wellnow. Do not weep; I shall live for you, --for your sake. " And she bentforward, drawing my hand from my streaming eyes, and kissed me with achild's guileless kiss on my burning forehead. 

(1) And yet, even if we entirely omit the consideration of the soul, that immaterial and immortal principle which is for a time united to hisbody, and view him only in his merely animal character, man is stillthe most excellent of animals. --Dr. Kidd, On the Adaptation of ExternalNature to the Physical Condition of Man (Sect. Iii. P. 18). 

CHAPTER LVI. 

Lilian recovered, but the strange thing was this: all memory of theweeks that had elapsed since her return from visiting her aunt wascompletely obliterated; she seemed in profound ignorance of the chargeon which I had been confined, --perfectly ignorant even of the existenceof Margrave. She had, indeed, a very vague reminiscence of herconversation with me in the garden, --the first conversation which hadever been embittered by a disagreement, --but that disagreement itselfshe did not recollect. Her belief was that she had been ill andlight-headed since that evening. From that evening to the hour of herwaking, conscious and revived, all was a blank. Her love for me wasrestored, as if its thread had never been broken. Some such instances ofoblivion after bodily illness or mental shock are familiar enough to thepractice of all medical men;(1) and I was therefore enabled to appeasethe anxiety and wonder of Mrs. Ashleigh, by quoting various examples ofloss, or suspension, of memory. We agreed that it would be necessaryto break to Lilian, though very cautiously, the story of Sir PhilipDerval's murder, and the charge to which I had been subjected. She couldnot fail to hear of those events from others. How shall I express herwomanly terror, her loving, sympathizing pity, on hearing the tale, which I softened as well as I could?

"And to think that I knew nothing of this!" she cried, clasping my hand;"to think that you were in peril, and that I was not by your side!"

Her mother spoke of Margrave, as a visitor, --an agreeable, livelystranger; Lilian could not even recollect his name, but she seemedshocked to think that any visitor had been admitted while I was incircumstances so awful! Need I say that our engagement was renewed?Renewed! To her knowledge and to her heart it had never been interruptedfor a moment. But oh! the malignity of the wrong world! Oh, that strangelust of mangling reputations, which seizes on hearts the least wantonlycruel! Let two idle tongues utter a tale against some third person, who never offended the babblers, and how the tale spreads, like fire, lighted none know how, in the herbage of an American prairie! Who shallput it out?

What right have we to pry into the secrets of other men's hearths? Trueor false, the tale that is gabbled to us, what concern of ours can itbe? I speak not of cases to which the law has been summoned, whichlaw has sifted, on which law has pronounced. But how, when the law issilent, can we assume its verdicts? How be all judges where there hasbeen no witness-box, no cross-examination, no jury? Yet, every day weput on our ermine, and make ourselves judges, --judges sure to condemn, and on what evidence? That which no court of law will receive. Somebodyhas said something to somebody, which somebody repeats to everybody!

The gossip of L---- had set in full current against Lilian's fairname. No ladies had called or sent to congratulate Mrs. Ashleigh on herreturn, or to inquire after Lilian herself during her struggle betweenlife and death. 

How I missed the Queen of the Hill at this critical moment! How I longedfor aid to crush the slander, with which I knew not how to grapple, --aidin her knowledge of the world and her ascendancy over its judgments! Ihad heard from her once since her absence, briefly but kindly expressingher amazement at the ineffable stupidity which could for a moment havesubjected me to a suspicion of Sir Philip Derval's strange murder, andcongratulating me heartily on my complete vindication from so monstrousa charge. To this letter no address was given. I supposed the omissionto be accidental, but on calling at her house to inquire her direction, I found that the servants did not know it. 

What, then, was my joy when just at this juncture I received a note fromMrs. Poyntz, stating that she had returned the night before, and wouldbe glad to see me. 

I hastened to her house. "Ah, " thought I, as I sprang lightly up theascent to the Hill, "how the tattlers will be silenced by a word fromher imperial lips!" And only just as I approached her door did it strikeme how difficult--nay, how impossible--to explain to her--the hardpositive woman, her who had, less ostensibly but more ruthlessly thanmyself, destroyed Dr. Lloyd for his belief in the comparatively rationalpretensions of clairvoyance--all the mystical excuses for Lilian'sflight from her home? How speak to her--or, indeed, to any one--aboutan occult fascination and a magic wand? No matter: surely it would beenough to say that at the time Lilian had been light-headed, under theinfluence of the fever which had afterwards nearly proved fatal, Theearly friend of Anne Ashleigh would not be a severe critic on any talethat might right the good name of Anne Ashleigh's daughter. So assured, with a light heart and a cheerful face, I followed the servant into thegreat lady's pleasant but decorous presence-chamber. 

(1) Such instances of suspense of memory are recorded in mostphysiological and in some metaphysical works. Dr. Abercrombie noticessome, more or less similar to that related in the text: "A young ladywho was present at a catastrophe in Scotland, in which many people losttheir lives by the fall of the gallery of a church, escaped without anyinjury, but with the complete loss of the recollection of any of thecircumstances; and this extended not only to the accident, but toeverything that had occurred to her for a certain time before going tochurch. A lady whom I attended some years ago in a protracted illness, in which her memory became much impaired, lost the recollection of aperiod of about ten or twelve years, but spoke with perfect consistencyof things as they stood before that time. " Dr. Aberercmbie adds: "As faras I have been able to trace it, the principle in such cases seems tobe, that when the memory is impaired to a certain degree, the loss ofit extends backward to some event or some period by which a particularlydeep impression had been made upon the mind. "--ABERCROMBIE: On theIntellectual Powers, pp. 118, 119 (15th edition). 

CHAPTER LVII. 

Mrs. Poyntz was on her favourite seat by the window, and for a wonder, not knitting--that classic task seemed done; but she was smoothing andfolding the completed work with her white comely hand, and smilingover it, as if in complacent approval, when I entered the room. At thefire-side sat the he-colonel inspecting a newly-invented barometer;at another window, in the farthest recess of the room, stood Miss JanePoyntz, with a young gentleman whom I had never before seen, butwho turned his eyes full upon me with a haughty look as the servantannounced my name. He was tall, well proportioned, decidedly handsome, but with that expression of cold and concentred self-esteem in hisvery attitude, as well as his countenance, which makes a man of meritunpopular, a man without merit ridiculous. 

The he-colonel, always punctiliously civil, rose from his seat, shookhands with me cordially, and said, "Coldish weather to-day; but weshall have rain to-morrow. Rainy seasons come in cycles. We are about tocommence a cycle of them with heavy showers. " He sighed, and returned tohis barometer. 

Miss Jane bowed to me graciously enough, but was evidently a littleconfused, --a circumstance which might well attract my notice, for I hadnever before seen that high-bred young lady deviate a hairsbreadth fromthe even tenor of a manner admirable for a cheerful and courteous ease, which, one felt convinced, would be unaltered to those around her if anearthquake swallowed one up an inch before her feet. 

The young gentleman continued to eye me loftily, as the heir-apparent tosome celestial planet might eye an inferior creature from a half-formednebula suddenly dropped upon his sublime and perfected, star. 

Mrs. Poyntz extended to me two fingers, and said frigidly, "Delighted tosee you again! How kind to attend so soon to my note!"

Motioning me to a seat beside her, she here turned to her husband, andsaid, "Poyntz, since a cycle of rain begins tomorrow, better secure yourride to-day. Take these young people with you. I want to talk with Dr. Fenwick. "

The colonel carefully put away his barometer, and saying to hisdaughter, "Come!" went forth. Jane followed her father; the younggentleman followed Jane. 

The reception I had met chilled and disappointed me. I felt that Mrs. Poyntz was changed, and in her change the whole house seemed changed. The very chairs looked civilly unfriendly, as if preparing to turn theirbacks on me. However, I was not in the false position of an intruder; Ihad been summoned; it was for Mrs. Poyntz to speak first, and I waitedquietly for her to do so. 

She finished the careful folding of her work, and then laid it at restin the drawer of the table at which she sat. Having so done, she turnedto me, and said, --

"By the way, I ought to have introduced to you my young guest, Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. You would like him. He has talents, --not showy, butsolid. He will succeed in public life. "

"So that young man is Mr. Ashleigh Sumner? I do not wonder that MissAshleigh rejected him. "

I said this, for I was nettled, as well as surprised, at the coolnesswith which a lady who had professed a friendship for me mentioned thatfortunate young gentleman, with so complete an oblivion of all theantecedents that had once made his name painful to my ear. 

In turn, my answer seemed to nettle Mrs. Poyntz. 

"I am not so sure that she did reject; perhaps she rather misunderstoodhim; gallant compliments are not always proposals of marriage. Howeverthat be, his spirits were not much damped by Miss Ashleigh's disdain, nor his heart deeply smitten by her charms; for he is now very happy, very much attached to another young lady, to whom he proposed threedays ago, at Lady Delafield's, and not to make a mystery of what all ourlittle world will know before tomorrow, that young lady is my daughterJane. "

"Were I acquainted with Mr. Sumner, I should offer to him my sincerecongratulations. "

Mrs. Poyntz resumed, without heeding a reply more complimentary to MissJane than to the object of her choice, --

"I told you that I meant Jane to marry a rich country gentleman, andAshleigh Sumner is the very country gentleman I had then in my thoughts. He is cleverer and more ambitious than I could have hoped; he will be aminister some day, in right of his talents, and a peer, if he wishes it, in right of his lands. So that matter is settled. "

There was a pause, during which my mind passed rapidly through linksof reminiscence and reasoning, which led me to a mingled sentiment ofadmiration for Mrs. Poyntz as a diplomatist and of distrust for Mrs. Poyntz as a friend. It was now clear why Mrs. Poyntz, before so littledisposed to approve my love, had urged me at once to offer my hand toLilian, in order that she might depart affianced and engaged to thehouse in which she would meet Mr. Ashleigh Sumner. Hence Mrs. Poyntz'sanxiety to obtain all the information I could afford her of the sayingsand doings at Lady Haughton's; hence, the publicity she had so suddenlygiven to my engagement; hence, when Mr. Sumner had gone away a rejectedsuitor, her own departure from L----; she had seized the very momentwhen a vain and proud man, piqued by the mortification received fromone lady, falls the easier prey to the arts which allure his suit toanother. All was so far clear to me. And I--was my self-conceit lessegregious and less readily duped than that of yon glided popinjay's!How skilfully this woman had knitted me into her work with the noiselessturn of her white hands! and yet, forsooth, I must vaunt the superiorscope of my intellect, and plumb all the fountains of Nature, --I, whocould not fathom the little pool of this female schemer's mind!

But that was no time for resentment to her or rebuke to myself. She wasnow the woman who could best protect and save from slander my innocent, beloved Lilian. But how approach that perplexing subject?

Mrs. Poyntz approached it, and with her usual decision of purpose, whichbore so deceitful a likeness to candour of mind. 

"But it was not to talk of my affairs that I asked you to call, AllenFenwick. " As she uttered my name, her voice softened, and her mannertook that maternal, caressing tenderness which had sometimes amused andsometimes misled me. "No, I do not forget that you asked me to be yourfriend, and I take without scruple the license of friendship. What arethese stories that I have heard already about Lilian Ashleigh, to whomyou were once engaged?"

"To whom I am still engaged. "

"Is it possible? Oh, then, of course the stories I have heard are allfalse. Very likely; no fiction in scandal ever surprises me. Poor dearLilian, then, never ran away from her mother's house?"

I smothered the angry pain which this mode of questioning caused me; Iknew how important it was to Lilian to secure to her the countenanceand support of this absolute autocrat; I spoke of Lilian's long previousdistemper of mind; I accounted for it as any intelligent physician, unacquainted with all that I could not reveal, would account. Heavenforgive me for the venial falsehood, but I spoke of the terrible chargeagainst myself as enough to unhinge for a time the intellect of a girlso acutely sensitive as Lilian; I sought to create that impression as tothe origin of all that might otherwise seem strange; and in this stateof cerebral excitement she had wandered from home--but alone. I hadtracked every step of her way; I had found and restored her to her home. A critical delirium had followed, from which she now rose, cured inhealth, unsuspicious that there could be a whisper against her name. Andthen, with all the eloquence I could command, and in words as adapted asI could frame them to soften the heart of a woman, herself a mother, Iimplored Mrs. Poyntz's aid to silence all the cruelties of calumny, andextend her shield over the child of her own early friend. 

When I came to an end, I had taken, with caressing force, Mrs. Poyntz'sreluctant hands in mine. There were tears in my voice, tears in my eyes. And the sound of her voice in reply gave me hope, for it was unusuallygentle. She was evidently moved. The hope was soon quelled. 

"Allen Fenwick, " she said, "you have a noble heart; I grieve to see howit abuses your reason. I cannot aid Lilian Ashleigh in the way you ask. Do not start back so indignantly. Listen to me as patiently as I havelistened to you. That when you brought back the unfortunate youngwoman to her poor mother, her mind was disordered, and became yet moredangerously so, I can well believe; that she is now recovered, andthinks with shame, or refuses to think at all, of her imprudent flight, I can believe also; but I do not believe, the World cannot believe, thatshe did not, knowingly and purposely, quit her mother's roof, and inquest of that young stranger so incautiously, so unfeelingly admittedto her mother's house during the very time you were detained on themost awful of human accusations. Every one in the town knows that Mr. Margrave visited daily at Mrs. Ashleigh's during that painful period;every one in the town knows in what strange out-of-the-way place thisyoung man had niched himself; and that a yacht was bought, and lying inwait there. What for? It is said that the chaise in which you broughtMiss Ashleigh back to her home was hired in a village within an easyreach of Mr. Margrave's lodging--of Mr. Margrave's yacht. I rejoice thatyou saved the poor girl from ruin; but her good name is tarnished; andif Anne Ashleigh, whom I sincerely pity, asks me my advice, I can butgive her this: 'Leave L----, take your daughter abroad; and if sheis not to marry Mr. Margrave, marry her as quietly and as quickly aspossible to some foreigner. '"

"Madam! madam! this, then, is your friendship to her--to me! Oh, shameon you to insult thus an affianced husband! Shame on me ever to havethought you had a heart!"

"A heart, man!" she exclaimed, almost fiercely, springing up, andstartling me with the change in her countenance and voice. "And littleyou would have valued, and pitilessly have crushed this heart, if I hadsuffered myself to show it to you! What right have you to reproach me?I felt a warm interest in your career, an unusual attraction in yourconversation and society. Do you blame me for that, or should I blamemyself? Condemned to live amongst brainless puppets, my dull occupationto pull the strings that moved them, it was a new charm to my lifeto establish friendship and intercourse with intellect and spiritand courage. Ah! I understand that look, half incredulous, halfinquisitive. "

"Inquisitive, no; incredulous, yes! You desired my friendship, and howdoes your harsh judgment of my betrothed wife prove either to me or toher mother, whom you have known from your girlhood, the first duty of afriend, --which is surely not that of leaving a friend's side the momentthat he needs countenance in calumny, succour in trouble!"

"It is a better duty to prevent the calumny and avert the trouble. Leaveaside Anne Ashleigh, a cipher that I can add or abstract from my sumof life as I please. What is my duty to yourself? It is plain. It is totell you that your honour commands you to abandon all thoughts of LilianAshleigh as your wife. Ungrateful that you are! Do you suppose it was nomortification to my pride of woman and friend, that you never approachedme in confidence except to ask my good offices in promoting yourcourtship to another; no shock to the quiet plans I had formed as toour familiar though harmless intimacy, to hear that you were bent on amarriage in which my friend would be lost to me?"

"Not lost! not lost! On the contrary, the regard I must suppose you hadfor Lilian would have been a new link between our homes. "

"Pooh! Between me and that dreamy girl there could have been nosympathy, there could have grown up no regard. You would have beenchained to your fireside, and--and--but no matter. I stifled mydisappointment as soon as I felt it, --stifled it, as all my life Ihave stifled that which either destiny or duty--duty to myself as toothers--forbids me to indulge. Ah, do not fancy me one of the weakcriminals who can suffer a worthy liking to grow into a debasing love! Iwas not in love with you, Allen Fenwick. "

"Do you think I was ever so presumptuous a coxcomb as to fancy it?"

"No, " she said, more softly; "I was not so false to my household tiesand to my own nature. But there are some friendships which are asjealous as love. I could have cheerfully aided you in any choice whichmy sense could have approved for you as wise; I should have been pleasedto have found in such a wife my most intimate companion. But that sillychild!--absurd! Nevertheless, the freshness and enthusiasm of your lovetouched me; you asked my aid, and I gave it. Perhaps I did believethat when you saw more of Lilian Ashleigh you would be cured of a fancyconceived by the eye--I should have known better what dupes the wisestmen can be to the witcheries of a fair face and eighteen! When I foundyour illusion obstinate, I wrenched myself away from a vain regret, turned to my own schemes and my own ambition, and smiled bitterly tothink that, in pressing you to propose so hastily to Lilian, I made yourblind passion an agent in my own plans. Enough of this. I speak thusopenly and boldly to you now, because now I have not a sentiment thatcan interfere with the dispassionate soundness of my counsels. I repeat, you cannot now marry Lilian Ashleigh; I cannot take my daughter to visither; I cannot destroy the social laws that I myself have set in my pettykingdom. "

"Be it as you will. I have pleaded for her while she is still LilianAshleigh. I plead for no one to whom I have once given my name. Beforethe woman whom I have taken from the altar, I can place, as a shieldsufficient, my strong breast of man. Who has so deep an interest inLilian's purity as I have? Who is so fitted to know the exact truthof every whisper against her? Yet when I, whom you admit to have somereputation for shrewd intelligence, --I, who tracked her way, --I, whorestored her to her home, --when I, Allen Fenwick, am so assured of herinviolable innocence in thought as in deed, that I trust my honour toher keeping, --surely, surely, I confute the scandal which you yourselfdo not believe, though you refuse to reject and to annul it?"

"Do not deceive yourself, Allen Fenwick, " said she, still standingbeside me, her countenance now hard and stern. "Look where I stand, I amthe World! The World, not as satirists depreciate, or as optimists extolits immutable properties, its all-persuasive authority. I am the World!And my voice is the World's voice when it thus warns you. Should youmake this marriage, your dignity of character and position would begone! If you look only to lucre and professional success, possibly theymay not ultimately suffer. You have skill, which men need; their needmay still draw patients to your door and pour guineas into your purse. But you have the pride, as well as the birth of a gentleman, and thewounds to that pride will be hourly chafed and never healed. Your strongbreast of man has no shelter to the frail name of woman. The World, inits health, will look down on your wife, though its sick may look upto you. This is not all. The World, in its gentlest mood of indulgence, will say compassionately, 'Poor man! how weak, and how deceived! What anunfortunate marriage!' But the World is not often indulgent, --it looksmost to the motives most seen on the surface. And the World will morefrequently say, 'No; much too clever a man to be duped! Miss Ashleighhad money. A good match to the man who liked gold better than honour. '"

I sprang to my feet, with difficulty suppressing my rage; and, remembering it was a woman who spoke to me, "Farewell, madam, " saidI, through my grinded teeth. "Were you, indeed, the Personation of TheWorld, whose mean notions you mouth so calmly, I could not disdainyou more. " I turned to the door, and left her still standing erect andmenacing, the hard sneer on her resolute lip, the red glitter in herremorseless eye. 

CHAPTER LVIII. 

If ever my heart vowed itself to Lilian, the vow was now the mosttrustful and the most sacred. I had relinquished our engagement before;but then her affection seemed, no matter from what cause; so estrangedfrom me, that though I might be miserable to lose her, I deemed that shewould be unhappy in our union. Then, too, she was the gem and darling ofthe little world in which she lived; no whisper assailed her: now I knewthat she loved me; I knew that her estrangement had been involuntary;I knew that appearances wronged her, and that they never could beexplained. I was in the true position of man to woman: I was the shield, the bulwark, the fearless confiding protector! Resign her now becausethe world babbled, because my career might be impeded, because my goodname might be impeached, --resign her, and, in that resignation, confirmall that was said against her! Could I do so, I should be the mostcraven of gentlemen, the meanest of men!

I went to Mrs. Ashleigh, and entreated her to hasten my union with herdaughter, and fix the marriage-day. 

I found the poor lady dejected and distressed. She was now sufficientlyrelieved from the absorbing anxiety for Lilian to be aware of the changeon the face of that World which the woman I had just quitted personifiedand concentred; she had learned the cause from the bloodless lips ofMiss Brabazon. 

"My child! my poor child!" murmured the mother. "And she soguileless, --so sensitive! Could she know what is said, it would killher. She would never marry you, Allen, --she would never bring shame toyou!"

"She never need learn the barbarous calumny. Give her to me, and atonce; patients, fortune, fame, are not found only at L----. Give herto me at once. But let me name a condition: I have a patrimonialindependence, I have amassed large savings, I have my profession and myrepute. I cannot touch her fortune--I cannot, --never can! Take it whileyou live; when you die, leave it to accumulate for her children, ifchildren she have; not to me; not to her--unless I am dead or ruined!"

"Oh, Allen, what a heart! what a heart! No, not heart, Allen, --that birdin its cage has a heart: soul--what a soul!"

CHAPTER LIX. 

How innocent was Lilian's virgin blush when I knelt to her, and prayedthat she would forestall the date that had been fixed for our union, andbe my bride before the breath of the autumn had withered the pomp ofthe woodland and silenced the song of the birds! Meanwhile, I was sofearfully anxious that she should risk no danger of hearing, evenof surmising, the cruel slander against her--should meet no coldcontemptuous looks, above all, should be safe from the barbed talk ofMrs. Poyntz--that I insisted on the necessity of immediate change of airand scene. I proposed that we should all three depart, the next day, forthe banks of my own beloved and native Windermere. By that pure mountainair, Lilian's health would be soon re-established; in the churchhallowed to me by the graves of my fathers our vows should be plighted. No calumny had ever cast a shadow over those graves. I felt as if mybride would be safer in the neighbourhood of my mother's tomb. 

I carried my point: it was so arranged. Mrs. Ashleigh, however, wasreluctant to leave before she had seen her dear friend, Margaret Poyntz. I had not the courage to tell her what she might expect to hear fromthat dear friend, but, as delicately as I could, I informed her that Ihad already seen the Queen of the Hill, and contradicted the gossip thathad reached her; but that as yet, like other absolute sovereigns, theQueen of the Hill thought it politic to go with the popular stream, reserving all check on its direction till the rush of its torrent mightslacken; and that it would be infinitely wiser in Mrs. Ashleigh topostpone conversation with Mrs. Poyntz until Lilian's return to L----as my wife. Slander by that time would have wearied itself out, and Mrs. Poyntz (assuming her friendship to Mrs. Ashleigh to be sincere) wouldthen be enabled to say with authority to her subjects, "Dr. Fenwickalone knows the facts of the story, and his marriage with Miss Ashleighrefutes all the gossip to her prejudice. "

I made that evening arrangements with a young and rising practitioner tosecure attendance on my patients during my absence. I passed the greaterpart of the night in drawing up memoranda to guide my proxy in eachcase, however humble the sufferer. This task finished, I chanced, insearching for a small microscope, the wonders of which I thoughtmight interest and amuse Lilian, to open a drawer in which I kept themanuscript of my cherished Physiological Work, and, in so doing, my eyefell upon the wand which I had taken from Margrave. I had thrown it intothat drawer on my return home, after restoring Lilian to her mother'shouse, and, in the anxiety which had subsequently preyed upon my mind, had almost forgotten the strange possession I had as strangely acquired. There it now lay, the instrument of agencies over the mechanism ofnature which no doctrine admitted by my philosophy could accept, side byside with the presumptuous work which had analyzed the springs by whichNature is moved, and decided the principles by which reason metes out, from the inch of its knowledge, the plan of the Infinite Unknown. 

I took up the wand and examined it curiously. It was evidently the workof an age far remote from our own, scored over with half-obliteratedcharacters in some Eastern tongue, perhaps no longer extant. I foundthat it was hollow within. A more accurate observation showed, inthe centre of this hollow, an exceedingly fine thread-like wire, theunattached end of which would slightly touch the palm when the wand wastaken into the hand. Was it possible that there might be a natural andeven a simple cause for the effects which this instrument produced?Could it serve to collect, from that great focus of animal heat andnervous energy which is placed in the palm of the human hand, some suchlatent fluid as that which Reichenbach calls the "odic, " and which, according to him, "rushes through and pervades universal Nature"? Afterall, why not? For how many centuries lay unknown all the virtues ofthe loadstone and the amber? It is but as yesterday that the forces ofvapour have become to men genii more powerful than those conjured up byAladdin; that light, at a touch, springs forth from invisible air; thatthought finds a messenger swifter than the wings of the fabled Afrite. As, thus musing, my hand closed over the wand, I felt a wild thrillthrough my frame. I recoiled; I was alarmed lest (according to the plaincommon-sense theory of Julius Faber) I might be preparing my imaginationto form and to credit its own illusions. Hastily I laid down the wand. But then it occurred to me that whatever its properties, it had soserved the purposes of the dread Fascinator from whom it had beentaken, that he might probably seek to repossess himself of it; he mightcontrive to enter my house in my absence; more prudent to guard in myown watchful keeping the incomprehensible instrument of incomprehensiblearts. I resolved, therefore, to take the wand with me, and placed itin my travelling-trunk, with such effects as I selected for use in theexcursion that was to commence with the morrow. I now lay down to rest, but I could not sleep. The recollections of the painful interview withMrs. Poyntz became vivid and haunting. It was clear that the sentimentshe had conceived for me was that of no simple friendship, --somethingmore or something less, but certainly something else; and thisconviction brought before me that proud hard face, disturbed by apang wrestled against but not subdued, and that clear metallic voice, troubled by the quiver of an emotion which, perhaps, she had neveranalyzed to herself. I did not need her own assurance to know that thissentiment was not to be confounded with a love which she would havedespised as a weakness and repelled as a crime; it was an inclinationof the intellect, not a passion of the heart. But still it admitted ajealousy little less keen than that which has love for its cause, --sotrue it is that jealousy is never absent where self-love is alwayspresent. Certainly, it was no susceptibility of sober friendship whichhad made the stern arbitress of a coterie ascribe to her interest inme her pitiless judgment of Lilian. Strangely enough, with the image ofthis archetype of conventional usages and the trite social life, camethat of the mysterious Margrave, surrounded by all the attributes withwhich superstition clothes the being of the shadowy border-land thatlies beyond the chart of our visual world itself. By what link werecreatures so dissimilar riveted together in the metaphysical chain ofassociation? Both had entered into the record of my life when my lifeadmitted its own first romance of love. Through the aid of this cynicalschemer I had been made known to Lilian. At her house I had heard thedark story of that Louis Grayle, with whom, in mocking spite of myreason, conjectures, which that very reason must depose itself beforeit could resolve into distempered fancies, identified the enigmaticalMargrave. And now both she, the representative of the formal world mostopposed to visionary creeds, and he, who gathered round him all theterrors which haunt the realm of fable, stood united against me, --foeswith whom the intellect I had so haughtily cultured knew not how tocope. Whatever assault I might expect from either, I was unableto assail again. Alike, then, in this, are the Slander and thePhantom, --that which appalls us most in their power over us is ourimpotence against them. 

But up rose the sun, chasing the shadows from the earth, and brighteninginsensibly the thoughts of man. After all, Margrave had been baffledand defeated, whatever the arts he had practised and the secrets hepossessed. It was, at least, doubtful whether his evil machinationswould be renewed. He had seemed so incapable of long-sustained fixityof purpose, that it was probable he was already in pursuit of some newagent or victim; and as to this commonplace and conventional spectre, the so-called World, if it is everywhere to him whom it awes, it isnowhere to him who despises it. What was the good or bad word of a Mrs. Poyntz to me? Ay, but to Lilian? There, indeed, I trembled; but still, even in trembling, it was sweet to think that my home would be hershelter, --my choice her vindication. Ah! how unutterably tender andreverential Love becomes when it assumes the duties of the guardian, andhallows its own heart into a sanctuary of refuge for the beloved!

CHAPTER LX. 

The beautiful lake! We two are on its grassy margin, --twilight meltinginto night; the stars stealing forth, one after one. What a wonderfulchange is made within us when we come from our callings amongst men, chafed, wearied, wounded; gnawed by our cares, perplexed by the doubtsof our very wisdom, stung by the adder that dwells in cities, --Slander;nay, even if renowned, fatigued with the burden of the very names thatwe have won! What a change is made within us when suddenly we findourselves transported into the calm solitudes of Nature, --into scenesfamiliar to our happy dreaming childhood; back, back from the dustythoroughfares of our toil-worn manhood to the golden fountain of ouryouth! Blessed is the change, even when we have no companion beside usto whom the heart can whisper its sense of relief and joy. But if theone in whom all our future is garnered up be with us there, instead ofthat weary World which has so magically vanished away from the eye andthe thought, then does the change make one of those rare epochs of lifein which the charm is the stillness. In the pause from all by which ourown turbulent struggles for happiness trouble existence, we feel with arapt amazement how calm a thing it is to be happy. And so as the night, in deepening, brightened, Lilian and I wandered by the starry lake. Conscious of no evil in ourselves, how secure we felt from evil! Afew days more--a few days more, and we two should be as one! And thatthought we uttered in many forms of words, brooding over it in the longintervals of enamoured silence. 

And when we turned back to the quiet inn at which we had taken up ourabode, and her mother, with her soft face, advanced to meet us, I saidto Lilian, --

"Would that in these scenes we could fix our home for life, away andafar from the dull town we have left behind us, with the fret of itswearying cares and the jar of its idle babble!"

"And why not, Allen? Why not? But no, you would not be happy. "

"Not be happy, and with you? Sceptic, by what reasoning do you arrive atthat ungracious conclusion?"

"The heart loves repose and the soul contemplation, but the mind needsaction. Is it not so?"

"Where learned you that aphorism, out of place on such rosy lips?"

"I learned it in studying you, " murmured Lilian, tenderly. 

Here Mrs. Ashleigh joined us. For the first time I slept under the sameroof as Lilian. And I forgot that the universe contained an enigma tosolve or an enemy to fear. 

CHAPTER LXI. 

Twenty days--the happiest my life had ever known--thus glided on. Apartfrom the charm which love bestows on the beloved, there was that inLilian's conversation which made her a delightful companion. Whether itwas that, in this pause from the toils of my career, my mind couldmore pliantly supple itself to her graceful imagination, or that herimagination was less vague and dreamy amidst those rural scenes, whichrealized in their loveliness and grandeur its long-conceived ideals, than it had been in the petty garden-ground neighboured by the stir andhubbub of the busy town, --in much that I had once slighted or contemnedas the vagaries of undisciplined fancy, I now recognized the sparkleand play of an intuitive genius, lighting up many a depth obscure toinstructed thought. It is with some characters as with the subtler andmore ethereal order of poets, --to appreciate them we must suspend thecourse of artificial life; in the city we call them dreamers, on themountain-top we find them interpreters. 

In Lilian, the sympathy with Nature was not, as in Margrave, from thejoyous sense of Nature's lavish vitality; it was refined into exquisiteperception of the diviner spirit by which that vitality is informed. Thus, like the artist, from outward forms of beauty she drew forth thecovert types, lending to things the most familiar exquisite meaningsunconceived before. For it is truly said by a wise critic of old, that"the attribute of Art is to suggest infinitely more than it expresses;"and such suggestions, passing from the artist's innermost thought intothe mind that receives them, open on and on into the Infinite of Ideas, as a moonlit wave struck by a passing oar impels wave upon wave alongone track of light. 

So the days glided by, and brought the eve of our bridal morn. It hadbeen settled that, after the ceremony (which was to be performed bylicense in the village church, at no great distance, which adjoined mypaternal home, now passed away to strangers), we should make a shortexcursion into Scotland, leaving Mrs. Ashleigh to await our return atthe little inn. 

I had retired to my own room to answer some letters from anxiouspatients, and having finished these I looked into my trunk for aGuide-Book to the North, which I had brought with me. My hand came uponMargrave's wand, and remembering that strange thrill which had passedthrough me when I last handled it, I drew it forth, resolved to examinecalmly if I could detect the cause of the sensation. It was not nowthe time of night in which the imagination is most liable to credulousimpressions, nor was I now in the anxious and jaded state of mind inwhich such impressions may be the more readily conceived. The sun wasslowly setting over the delicious landscape; the air cool and serene; mythoughts collected, --heart and conscience alike at peace. I took, then, the wand, and adjusted it to the palm of the hand as I had done before. I felt the slight touch of the delicate wire within, and again thethrill! I did not this time recoil; I continued to grasp the wand, andsought deliberately to analyze my own sensations in the contact. Therecame over me an increased consciousness of vital power; a certainexhilaration, elasticity, vigour, such as a strong cordial may produceon a fainting man. All the forces of my frame seemed refreshed, redoubled; and as such effects on the physical system are ordinarilyaccompanied by correspondent effects on the mind, so I was sensible of aproud elation of spirits, --a kind of defying, superb self-glorying. Allfear seemed blotted out from my thought, as a weakness impossible tothe grandeur and might which belong to Intellectual Man; I felt as ifit were a royal delight to scorn Earth and its opinions, brave Hadesand its spectres. Rapidly this new-born arrogance enlarged itselfinto desires vague but daring. My mind reverted to the wild phenomenaassociated with its memories of Margrave. I said half-aloud, "if acreature so beneath myself in constancy of will and completion ofthought can wrest from Nature favours so marvellous, what could not bewon from her by me, her patient persevering seeker? What if there bespirits around and about, invisible to the common eye, but whom we cansubmit to our control; and what if this rod be charged with some occultfluid, that runs through all creation, and can be so disciplined as toestablish communication wherever life and thought can reach to beingsthat live and think? So would the mystics of old explain what perplexesme. Am I sure that the mystics of old duped them selves or their pupils?This, then, this slight wand, light as a reed in my grasp, this, then, was the instrument by which Margrave sent his irresistible will throughair and space, and by which I smote himself, in the midst of histiger-like wrath, into the helplessness of a sick man's swoon! Can theinstrument at this distance still control him; if now meditating evil, disarm and disable his purpose?" Involuntarily, as I revolved theseideas, I stretched forth the wand, with a concentred energy of desirethat its influence should reach Margrave and command him. And since Iknew not his whereabout, yet was vaguely aware that, according to anyconceivable theory by which the wand could be supposed to carry itsimagined virtues to definite goals in distant space, it should bepointed in the direction of the object it was intended to affect, so Islowly moved the wand as if describing a circle; and thus, in some pointof the circle--east, west, north, or south--the direction could not failto be true. Before I had performed half the circle, the wand of itselfstopped, resisting palpably the movement of my hand to impel it onward. Had it, then, found the point to which my will was guiding it, obeyingmy will by some magnetic sympathy never yet comprehended by anyrecognized science? I know not; but I had not held it thus fixed formany seconds, before a cold air, well remembered, passed by me, stirringthe roots of my hair; and, reflected against the opposite wall, stoodthe hateful Scin-Laeca. The Shadow was dimmer in its light than whenbefore beheld, and the outline of the features was less distinct; stillit was the unmistakable lemur, or image, of Margrave. 

And a voice was conveyed to my senses, saying, as from a great distance, and in weary yet angry accents, "You have summoned me? Wherefore?"

I overcame the startled shudder with which, at first, I beheld theShadow and heard the Voice. 

"I summoned you not, " said I; "I sought but to impose upon you my will, that you should persecute, with your ghastly influences, me and mineno more. And now, by whatever authority this wand bestows on me, I soabjure and command you!"

I thought there was a sneer of disdain on the lip through which theanswer seemed to come, --

"Vain and ignorant, it is but a shadow you command. My body you havecast into a sleep, and it knows not that the shadow is here; nor, whenit wakes, will the brain be aware of one reminiscence of the words thatyou utter or the words that you hear. "

"What, then, is this shadow that simulates the body? Is it that which inpopular language is called the soul?"

"It is not: soul is no shadow. "

"What then?"

"Ask not me. Use the wand to invoke Intelligences higher than mine. "

"And how?"

"I will tell you not. Of yourself you may learn, if you guide the wandby your own pride of will and desire; but in the hands of him who haslearned not the art, the wand has its dangers. Again I say you havesummoned me! Wherefore?"

"Lying shade, I summoned thee not. "

"So wouldst thou say to the demons, did they come in their terriblewrath, when the bungler, who knows not the springs that he moves, callsthem up unawares, and can neither control nor dispel. Less revengefulthan they, I leave thee unharmed, and depart. "

"Stay. If, as thou sayest, no command I address to thee--to thee, whoart only the image or shadow--can have effect on the body and mind ofthe being whose likeness thou art, still thou canst tell me what passesnow in his brain. Does it now harbour schemes against me through thewoman I love? Answer truly. "

"I reply for the sleeper, of whom I am more than a likeness, though onlythe shadow. His thought speaks thus: 'I know, Allen Fenwick, that inthee is the agent I need for achieving the end that I seek. Through thewoman thou lovest, I hope to subject thee. A grief that will harrow thyheart is at hand; when that grief shall befall, thou wilt welcome mycoming. In me alone thy hope will be placed; through me alone wilt thouseek a path out of thy sorrow. I shall ask my conditions: they will makethee my tool and my slave!'"

The shadow waned, --it was gone. I did not seek to detain it, nor, had Isought, could I have known by what process. But a new idea now possessedme. This shadow, then, that had once so appalled and controlled me, was, by its own confession, nothing more than a shadow! It had spoken ofhigher Intelligences; from them I might learn what the Shadow couldnot reveal. As I still held the wand firmer and firmer in my grasp, mythoughts grew haughtier and bolder. Could the wand, then, bring thoseloftier beings thus darkly referred to before me? With that thought, intense and engrossing, I guided the wand towards the space, openingboundless and blue from the casement that let in the skies. The wand nolonger resisted my hand. 

In a few moments I felt the floors of the room vibrate; the air wasdarkened; a vaporous, hazy cloud seemed to rise from the ground withoutthe casement; an awe, infinitely more deep and solemn than that whichthe Scin-Laeca had caused in its earliest apparition, curdled through myveins, and stilled the very beat of my heart. 

At that moment I heard, without, the voice of Lilian, singing a simple, sacred song which I had learned at my mother's knees, and taught to herthe day before: singing low, and as with a warning angel's voice. By anirresistible impulse I dashed the wand to the ground, and bowed my headas I had bowed it when my infant mind comprehended, without an effort, mysteries more solemn than those which perplexed me now. Slowly I raisedmy eyes, and looked round; the vaporous, hazy cloud had passed away, ormelted into the ambient rose-tints amidst which the sun had sunk. 

Then, by one of those common reactions from a period of overstrainedexcitement, there succeeded to that sentiment of arrogance and daringwith which these wild, half-conscious invocations had been fostered andsustained, a profound humility, a warning fear. 

"What!" said I, inly, "have all those sound resolutions, which my reasonfounded on the wise talk of Julius Faber, melted away in the wrack ofhaggard, dissolving fancies! Is this my boasted intellect, my vauntedscience! I--I, Allen Fenwick, not only the credulous believer, but theblundering practitioner, of an evil magic! Grant what may be possible, however uncomprehended, --grant that in this accursed instrument ofantique superstition there be some real powers--chemical, magnetic, nomatter what-by which the imagination can be aroused, inflamed, deluded, so that it shapes the things I have seen, speaks in the tones I haveheard, --grant this, shall I keep ever ready, at the caprice of will, aconstant tempter to steal away my reason and fool my senses? Or if, on the other hand, I force my sense to admit what all sober men mustreject; if I unschool myself to believe that in what I have justexperienced there is no mental illusion; that sorcery is a fact, and ademon world has gates which open to a key that a mortal can forge, --whobut a saint would not shrink from the practice of powers by which eachpassing thought of ill might find in a fiend its abettor? In eithercase--in any case--while I keep this direful relic of obsolete arts, Iam haunted, --cheated out of my senses, unfitted for the uses of life. If, as my ear or my fancy informs me, grief--human grief--is about tobefall me, shall I, in the sting of impatient sorrow, have recourse toan aid which, the same voice declares, will reduce me to a tool anda slave, --tool and slave to a being I dread as a foe? Out on thesenightmares! and away with the thing that bewitches the brain to conceivethem!"

I rose; I took up the wand, holding it so that its hollow should notrest on the palm of the hand. I stole from the house by the back way, in order to avoid Lilian, whose voice I still heard, singing low, onthe lawn in front. I came to a creek, to the bank of which a boatwas moored, undid its chain, rowed on to a deep part of the lake, anddropped the wand into its waves. It sank at once; scarcely a ripplefurrowed the surface, not a bubble arose from the deep. And, as the boatglided on, the star mirrored itself on the spot where the placid watershad closed over the tempter to evil. 

Light at heart, I sprang again on the shore, and hastening to Lilian, where she stood on the silvered, shining sward, clasped her to mybreast. 

"Spirit of my life!" I murmured, "no enchantments for me but thine!Thine are the spells by which creation is beautified, and, in thatbeauty, hallowed. What though we can see not into the measureless futurefrom the verge of the moment; what though sorrow may smite us while weare dreaming of bliss, let the future not rob me of thee, and a balmwill be found for each wound! Love me ever as now, oh, my Lilian; trothto troth, side by side, till the grave!"

"And beyond the grave, " answered Lilian, softly. 

CHAPTER LXII. 

Our vows are exchanged at the altar, the rite which made Lilian my wifeis performed; we are returned from the church amongst the hills, inwhich my fathers had worshipped; the joy-bells that had pealed for mybirth had rung for my marriage. Lilian has gone to her room to preparefor our bridal excursion; while the carriage we have hired is waitingat the door. I am detaining her mother on the lawn, seeking to cheer andcompose her spirits, painfully affected by that sense of change in therelations of child and parent which makes itself suddenly felt by theparent's heart on the day that secures to the child another heart onwhich to lean. 

But Mrs. Ashleigh's was one of those gentle womanly natures which, ifeasily afflicted, are easily consoled. And, already smiling through hertears, she was about to quit me and join her daughter, when one of theinn-servants came to me with some letters, which had just been deliveredby the postman. As I took them from the servant, Mrs. Ashleigh asked ifthere were any for her. She expected one from her housekeeper at L----, who had been taken ill in her absence, and about whom the kind mistressfelt anxious. The servant replied that there was no letter for her, butone directed to Miss Ashleigh, which he had just sent up to the younglady. 

Mrs. Ashleigh did not doubt that her housekeeper had written toLilian, whom she had known from the cradle and to whom she was tenderlyattached, instead of to her mistress; and, saying something to me tothat effect, quickened her steps towards the house. 

I was glancing over my own letters, chiefly from patients, with a rapideye, when a cry of agony, a cry as if of one suddenly stricken to theheart, pierced my ear, --a cry from within the house. "Heavens! was thatLilian's voice?" The same doubt struck Mrs. Ashleigh, who had alreadygained the door. She rushed on, disappearing within the threshold andcalling to me to follow. I bounded forward, passed her on the stairs, was in Lilian's room before her. 

My bride was on the floor prostrate, insensible: so still, socolourless, that my first dreadful thought was that life had gone. Inher hand was a letter, crushed as with a convulsive sudden grasp. 

It was long before the colour came back to her cheek, before the breathwas perceptible on her lip. She woke, but not to health, not to sense. Hours were passed in violent convulsions, in which I momentarily fearedher death. To these succeeded stupor, lethargy, not benignant sleep. That night, my bridal night, I passed as in some chamber to which I hadbeen summoned to save youth from the grave. At length--at length--lifewas rescued, was assured! Life came back, but the mind was gone. Sheknew me not, nor her mother. She spoke little and faintly; in the wordsshe uttered there was no reason. 

I pass hurriedly on; my experience here was in fault, my skillineffectual. Day followed day, and no ray came back to the darkenedbrain. We bore her, by gentle stages, to London. I was sanguine of goodresult from skill more consummate than mine, and more especially devotedto diseases of the mind. I summoned the first advisers. In vain! invain!

CHAPTER LXIII. 

And the cause of this direful shock? Not this time could it be tracedto some evil spell, some phantasmal influence. The cause was clear, andmight have produced effects as sinister on nerves of stronger fibre ifaccompanied by a heart as delicately sensitive, an honour as exquisitelypure. 

The letter found in her hand was without name; it was dated from L----, and bore the postmark of that town. It conveyed to Lilian, in the bitingwords which female malice can make so sharp, the tale we had soughtsedulously to guard from her ear, --her flight, the construction thatscandal put upon it. It affected for my blind infatuation a contemptuouspity; it asked her to pause before she brought on the name I offeredto her an indelible disgrace. If she so decided, she was warned not toreturn to L----, or to prepare there for the sentence that would excludeher from the society of her own sex. I cannot repeat more, I cannotminute down all that the letter expressed or implied, to wither theorange blossoms in a bride's wreath. The heart that took in the venomcast its poison on the brain, and the mind fled before the presence ofa thought so deadly to all the ideas which its innocence had heretoforeconceived. 

I knew not whom to suspect of the malignity of this mean and miserableoutrage, nor did I much care to know. The handwriting, though evidentlydisguised, was that of a woman, and, therefore, had I discovered theauthor, my manhood would have forbidden me the idle solace of revenge. Mrs. Poyntz, however resolute and pitiless her hostility when oncearoused, was not without a certain largeness of nature irreconcilablewith the most dastardly of all the weapons that envy or hatred cansupply to the vile. She had too lofty a self-esteem and too decorous aregard for the moral sentiment of the world that she typified, to do, or connive at, an act which degrades the gentlewoman. Putting her aside, what other female enemy had Lilian provoked? No matter! What other womanat L---- was worth the condescension of a conjecture?

After listening to all that the ablest of my professional brethrenin the metropolis could suggest to guide me, and trying in vain theirremedies, I brought back my charge to L----. Retaining my formerresidence for the visits of patients, I engaged, for the privacy of myhome, a house two miles from the town, secluded in its own grounds, andguarded by high walls. 

Lilian's mother removed to my mournful dwelling-place. Abbot's House, inthe centre of that tattling coterie, had become distasteful to her, andto me it was associated with thoughts of anguish and of terror. I couldnot, without a shudder, have entered its grounds, --could not, without astab at the heart, have seen again the old fairy-land round the Monks'Well, nor the dark cedar-tree under which Lilian's hand had been placedin mine; and a superstitious remembrance, banished while Lilian's angelface had brightened the fatal precincts, now revived in full force. Thedying man's curse--had it not been fulfilled?

A new occupant for the old house was found within a week after Mrs. Ashleigh had written from London to a house-agent at L----, intimatingher desire to dispose of the lease. Shortly before we had gone toWindermere, Miss Brabazon had become enriched by a liberal life-annuitybequeathed to her by her uncle, Sir Phelim. Her means thus enabled herto move from the comparatively humble lodging she had hitherto occupiedto Abbot's House; but just as she had there commenced a series ofostentatious entertainments, implying an ambitious desire to disputewith Mrs. Poyntz the sovereignty of the Hill, she was attacked by somesevere malady which appeared complicated with spinal disease, and aftermy return to L---- I sometimes met her, on the spacious platform of theHill, drawn along slowly in a Bath chair, her livid face peering forthfrom piles of Indian shawls and Siberian furs, and the gaunt figureof Dr. Jones stalking by her side, taciturn and gloomy as some sinceremourner who conducts to the grave the patron on whose life he him selfhad conveniently lived. It was in the dismal month of February that Ireturned to L----, and I took possession of my plighted nuptial home onthe anniversary of the very day in which I had passed through the deaddumb world from the naturalist's gloomy death-room. 

CHAPTER LXIV. 

Lilian's wondrous gentleness of nature did not desert her in thesuspension of her reason. She was habitually calm, --very silent; whenshe spoke it was rarely on earthly things, on things familiar to herpast, things one could comprehend. Her thought seemed to have quittedthe earth, seeking refuge in some imaginary heaven. She spoke ofwanderings with her father as if he were living still; she did not seemto understand the meaning we attach to the word "Death. " She would sitfor hours murmuring to herself: when one sought to catch the words, theyseemed in converse with invisible spirits. We found it cruel to disturbher at such times, for if left unmolested, her face was serene, --moreserenely beautiful than I had seen it even in our happiest hours; butwhen we called her back to the wrecks of her real life, her eye becametroubled, restless, anxious, and she would sigh--oh, so heavily! Attimes, if we did not seem to observe her, she would quietly resume heronce favourite accomplishments, --drawing, music. And in these heryoung excellence was still apparent, only the drawings were strange andfantastic: they had a resemblance to those with which the painter Blake, himself a visionary, illustrated the Poems of the "Night Thoughts" and"The Grave, "--faces of exquisite loveliness, forms of aerial grace, coming forth from the bells of flowers, or floating upwards amidstthe spray of fountains, their outlines melting away in fountain or inflower. So with her music: her mother could not recognize the airs sheplayed, for a while so sweetly and with so ineffable a pathos, thatone could scarcely hear her without weeping; and then would come, asif involuntarily, an abrupt discord, and, starting, she would cease andlook around, disquieted, aghast. 

And still she did not recognize Mrs. Ashleigh nor myself as her mother, her husband; but she had by degrees learned to distinguish us both fromothers. To her mother she gave no name, seemed pleased to see her, butnot sensibly to miss her when away; me she called her brother: if longerabsent than usual, me she missed. When, after the toils of the day, Icame to join her, even if she spoke not, her sweet face brightened. Whenshe sang, she beckoned me to come near to her, and looked at me fixedly, with eyes ever tender, often tearful; when she drew she would pause andglance over her shoulder to see that I was watching her, and point tothe drawings with a smile of strange significance, as if they conveyedin some covert allegory messages meant for me; so, at least, Iinterpreted her smile, and taught myself to say, "Yes, Lilian, Iunderstand!"

And more than once, when I had so answered, she rose, and kissedmy forehead. I thought my heart would have broken when I felt thatspirit-like melancholy kiss. 

And yet how marvellously the human mind teaches itself to extractconsolations from its sorrows. The least wretched of my hours werethose that I had passed in that saddened room, seeking how to establishfragments of intercourse, invent signs, by which each might interpreteach, between the intellect I had so laboriously cultured, so arrogantlyvaunted, and the fancies wandering through the dark, deprived of theirguide in reason. It was something even of joy to feel myself needed forher guardianship, endeared and yearned for still by some unshatteredinstinct of her heart; and when, parting from her for the night, I stolethe moment in which on her soft face seemed resting least of shadow, toask, in a trembling whisper, "Lilian, are the angels watching overyou?" and she would answer "Yes, " sometimes in words, sometimes with amysterious happy smile--then--then I went to my lonely room, comfortedand thankful. 

CHAPTER LXV. 

The blow that had fallen on my hearth effectually, inevitably killedall the slander that might have troubled me in joy. Before the awe of agreat calamity the small passions of a mean malignity slink abashed. Ihad requested Mrs. Ashleigh not to mention the vile letter which Lilianhad received. I would not give a triumph to the unknown calumniator, norwring forth her vain remorse, by the pain of acknowledging an indignityto my darling's honour; yet, somehow or other, the true cause ofLilian's affliction had crept out, --perhaps through the talk ofservants, --and the public shock was universal. By one of those instinctsof justice that lie deep in human hearts, though in ordinary momentsoverlaid by many a worldly layer, all felt (all mothers felt especially)that innocence alone could have been so unprepared for reproach. Theexplanation I had previously given, discredited then, was now acceptedwithout a question. Lilian's present state accounted for all that illnature had before misconstrued. Her good name was restored to its maidenwhiteness, by the fate that had severed the ties of the bride. Theformal dwellers on the Hill vied with the franker, warmer-heartedhouseholds of Low Town in the nameless attentions by which sympathy andrespect are rather delicately indicated than noisily proclaimed. CouldLilian have then recovered and been sensible of its repentant homage, how reverently that petty world would have thronged around her! And, ah!could fortune and man's esteem have atoned for the blight of hopes thathad been planted and cherished on ground beyond their reach, ambitionand pride might have been well contented with the largeness of theexchange that courted their acceptance. Patients on patients crowded onme. Sympathy with my sorrow seemed to create and endear a more trustfulbelief in my skill. But the profession I had once so enthusiasticallyloved became to me wearisome, insipid, distasteful; the kindness heapedon me gave no comfort, --it but brought before me more vividly theconviction that it came too late to avail me: it could not restore to methe mind, the love, the life of my life, which lay dark and shattered inthe brain of my guileless Lilian. Secretly I felt a sullen resentment. I knew that to the crowd the resentment was unjust. The world itself isbut an appearance; who can blame it if appearances guide its laws? Butto those who had been detached from the crowd by the professions offriendship, --those who, when the slander was yet new, and might havebeen awed into silence had they stood by my side, --to the pressure oftheir hands, now, I had no response. 

Against Mrs. Poyntz, above all others, I bore a remembrance ofunrelaxed, unmitigable indignation. Her schemes for her daughter'smarriage had triumphed: Jane was Mrs. Ashleigh Sumner. Her mind was, perhaps, softened now that the object which had sharpened its worldlyfaculties was accomplished: but in vain, on first hearing of myaffliction, had this she-Machiavel owned a humane remorse, and, with allher keen comprehension of each facility that circumstances gave toher will, availed herself of the general compassion to strengthen thepopular reaction in favour of Lilian's assaulted honour; in vain hadshe written to me with a gentleness of sympathy foreign to her habitualcharacteristics; in vain besought me to call on her; in vain waylaidand accosted me with a humility that almost implored forgiveness. Ivouchsafed no reproach, but I could imply no pardon. I put between herand my great sorrow the impenetrable wall of my freezing silence. 

One word of hers at the time that I had so pathetically besought heraid, and the parrot-flock that repeated her very whisper in noisyshrillness would have been as loud to defend as it had been to defame;that vile letter might never have been written. Whoever its writer, itsurely was one of the babblers who took their malice itself from thejest or the nod of their female despot; and the writer might havejustified herself in saying she did but coarsely proclaim what theoracle of worldly opinion, and the early friend of Lilian's own mother, had authorized her to believe. 

By degrees, the bitterness at my heart diffused itself to thecircumference of the circle in which my life went its cheerlessmechanical round. That cordial brotherhood with his patients, which isthe true physician's happiest gift and humanest duty, forsook mybreast. The warning words of Mrs. Poyntz had come true. A patient thatmonopolized my thought awaited me at my own hearth! My conscience becametroubled; I felt that my skill was lessened. I said to myself, "Thephysician who, on entering the sick-room, feels, while there, somethingthat distracts the finest powers of his intellect from the sufferer'scase is unfit for his calling. " A year had scarcely passed since myfatal wedding day, before I had formed a resolution to quit L---- andabandon my profession; and my resolution was confirmed, and my goaldetermined, by a letter I received from Julius Faber. 

I had written at length to him, not many days after the blow that hadfallen on me, stating all circumstances as calmly and clearly as mygrief would allow; for I held his skill at a higher estimate than thatof any living brother of my art, and I was not without hope in theefficacy of his advice. The letter I now received from him had beenbegun, and continued at some length, before my communication reachedhim; and this earlier portion contained animated and cheerfuldescriptions of his Australian life and home, which contrasted with thesorrowful tone of the supplement written in reply to the tidings withwhich I had wrung his friendly and tender heart. In this, the latterpart of his letter, he suggested that if time had wrought no materialchange for the better, it might be advisable to try the effect offoreign travel. Scenes entirely new might stimulate observation, andthe observation of things external withdraw the sense from that broodingover images delusively formed within, which characterized the kind ofmental alienation I had described. "Let any intellect create for itselfa visionary world, and all reasonings built on it are fallacious: thevisionary world vanishes in proportion as we can arouse a predominantinterest in the actual. "

This grand authority, who owed half his consummate skill as apractitioner to the scope of his knowledge as a philosopher, thenproceeded to give me a hope which I had not dared of myself to form. Hesaid:--

 "I distinguish the case you so minutely detail from that insanity which is reason lost; here it seems rather to be reason held in suspense. Where there is hereditary predisposition, where there is organic change of structure in the brain, --nay, where there is that kind of insanity which takes the epithet of moral, whereby the whole character becomes so transformed that the prime element of sound understanding, conscience itself, is either erased or warped into the sanction of what in a healthful state it would most disapprove, --it is only charlatans who promise effectual cure. But here I assume that there is no hereditary taint; here I am convinced, from my own observation, that the nobility of the organs, all fresh as yet in the vigour of youth, would rather submit to death than to the permanent overthrow of their equilibrium in reason; here, where you tell me the character preserves all its moral attributes of gentleness and purity, and but over-indulges its own early habit of estranged contemplation; here, without deceiving you in false kindness, I give you the guarantee of my experience when I bid you 'hope!' I am persuaded that, sooner or later, the mind, thus for a time affected, will right itself; because here, in the cause of the malady, we do but deal with the nervous system. And that, once righted, and the mind once disciplined in those practical duties which conjugal life necessitates, the malady itself will never return; never be transmitted to the children on whom your wife's restoration to health may permit you to count hereafter. If the course of travel I recommend and the prescriptions I conjoin with that course fail you, let me know; and though I would fain close my days in this land, I will come to you. I love you as my son. I will tend your wife as my daughter. "

Foreign travel! The idea smiled on me. Julius Faber's companionship, sympathy, matchless skill! The very thought seemed as a raft to adrowning mariner. I now read more attentively the earlier portions ofhis letter. They described, in glowing colours, the wondrous country inwhich he had fixed his home; the joyous elasticity of its atmosphere;the freshness of its primitive, pastoral life; the strangeness of itsscenery, with a Flora and a Fauna which have no similitudes in theransacked quarters of the Old World. And the strong impulse seized me totransfer to the solitudes of that blithesome and hardy Nature a spiritno longer at home in the civilized haunts of men, and household godsthat shrank from all social eyes, and would fain have found a wildernessfor the desolate hearth, on which they had ceased to be sacred ifunveiled. As if to give practical excuse and reason for the idea thatseized me, Julius Faber mentioned, incidentally, that the house andproperty of a wealthy speculator in his immediate neighbourhood were onsale at a price which seemed to me alluringly trivial, and, according tohis judgment, far below the value they would soon reach in the hands ofa more patient capitalist. He wrote at the period of the agriculturalpanic in the colony which preceded the discovery of its earliestgold-fields. But his geological science had convinced him that stratawithin and around the property now for sale were auriferous, andhis intelligence enabled him to predict how inevitably man would beattracted towards the gold, and how surely the gold would fertilize thesoil and enrich its owners. He described the house thus to be sold--incase I might know of a purchaser. It had been built at a cost unusualin those early times, and by one who clung to English tastes amidstAustralian wilds, so that in this purchase a settler would escape thehardships he had then ordinarily to encounter; it was, in short, a hometo which a man more luxurious than I might bear a bride with wants lesssimple than those which now sufficed for my darling Lilian. 

This communication dwelt on my mind through the avocations of the dayon which I received it, and in the evening I read all, except thesupplement, aloud to Mrs. Ashleigh in her daughter's presence. I desiredto see if Faber's descriptions of the country and its life, which inthemselves were extremely spirited and striking, would arouse Lilian'sinterest. At first she did not seem to heed me while I read; but whenI came to Faber's loving account of little Amy, Lilian turned her eyestowards me, and evidently listened with attention. He wrote how thechild had already become the most useful person in the simple household. How watchful the quickness of the heart had made the service of the eye;all their associations of comfort had grown round her active, noiselessmovements; it was she who bad contrived to monopolize the management, or supervision, of all that added to Home the nameless, interior charm. Under her eyes the rude furniture of the log-house grew inviting withEnglish neatness; she took charge of the dairy; she had made the gardengay with flowers selected from the wild, and suggested the trellisedwalk, already covered with hardy vine. She was their confidant in everyplan of improvement, their comforter in every anxious doubt, their nursein every passing ailment, her very smile a refreshment in the wearinessof daily toil. "How all that is best in womanhood, " wrote the old man, with the enthusiasm which no time had reft from his hearty, healthfulgenius, --"how all that is best in womanhood is here opening fast intoflower from the bud of the infant's soul! The atmosphere seems to suitit, --the child-woman in the child-world!"

I heard Lilian sigh; I looked towards her furtively; tears stood in hersoftened eyes; her lip was quivering. Presently, she began to rub herright hand over the left--over the wedding-ring--at first slowly; thenwith quicker movement. 

"It is not here, " she said impatiently; "it is not here!"

"What is not here?" asked Mrs. Ashleigh, hanging over her. 

Lilian leaned back her head on her mother's bosom, and answeredfaintly, --

"The stain! Some one said there was a stain on this hand. I do not seeit, do you?"

"There is no stain, never was, " said I; "the hand is white as your owninnocence, or the lily from which you take your name. "

"Hush! you do not know my name. I will whisper it. Soft!--my name isNightshade! Do you want to know where the lily is now, brother? I willtell you. There, in that letter. You call her Amy, --she is thelily; take her to your breast, hide her. Hist! what are those bells?Marriage-bells. Do not let her hear them; for there is a cruel wind thatwhispers the bells, and the bells ring out what it whispers, louder andlouder, "'Stain on lily Shame on lily, Wither lily. '

"If she hears what the wind whispers to the bells, she will creep awayinto the dark, and then she, too, will turn to Nightshade. "

"Lilian, look up, awake! You have been in a long, long dream: it ispassing away. Lilian, my beloved, my blessed Lilian!"

Never till then had I heard from her even so vague an allusion to thefatal calumny and its dreadful effect, and while her words now piercedmy heart, it beat, amongst its pangs, with a thrilling hope. 

But, alas! the idea that had gleamed upon her had vanished already. Shemurmured something about Circles of Fire, and a Veiled Woman in blackgarments; became restless, agitated, and unconscious of our presence, and finally sank into a heavy sleep. 

That night (my room was next to hers with the intervening door open)I heard her cry out. I hastened to her side. She was still asleep, butthere was an anxious labouring expression on her young face, and yetnot an expression wholly of pain--for her lips were parted with asmile, --that glad yet troubled smile with which one who has beenrevolving some subject of perplexity or fear greets a sudden thoughtthat seems to solve the riddle, or prompt the escape from danger; andas I softly took her hand she returned my gentle pressure, and incliningtowards me, said, still in sleep, --

"Let us go. "

"Whither?" I answered, under my breath, so as not to awake her; "is itto see the child of whom I read, and the land that is blooming out ofthe earth's childhood?"

"Out of the dark into the light; where the leaves do not change; wherethe night is our day, and the winter our summer. Let us go! let us go!"

"We will go. Dream on undisturbed, my bride. Oh, that the dream couldtell you that my love has not changed in our sorrow, holier and deeperthan on the day in which our vows were exchanged! In you still all myhopes fold their wings; where you are, there still I myself have mydreamland!"

The sweet face grew bright as I spoke; all trouble left the smile;softly she drew her hand from my clasp, and rested it for a moment on mybended head, as if in blessing. 

I rose; stole back to my own room, closing the door, lest the sob Icould not stifle should mar her sleep. 

CHAPTER LXVI. 

I unfolded my new prospects to Mrs. Ashleigh. She was more easilyreconciled to them than I could have supposed, judging by her habits, which were naturally indolent, and averse to all that disturbed theireven tenor. But the great grief which had befallen her had roused upthat strength of devotion which lies dormant in all hearts that arecapable of loving another more than self. With her full consent I wroteto Faber, communicating my intentions, instructing him to purchase theproperty he had so commended, and inclosing my banker's order for theamount, on an Australian firm. I now announced my intention to retirefrom my profession; made prompt arrangements with a successor to mypractice; disposed of my two houses at L----; fixed the day of mydeparture. Vanity was dead within me, or I might have been gratified bythe sensation which the news of my design created. My faults became atonce forgotten; such good qualities as I might possess were exaggerated. The public regret vented and consoled itself in a costly testimonial, to which even the poorest of my patients insisted on the privilege tocontribute, graced with an inscription flattering enough to have servedfor the epitaph on some great man's tomb. No one who has served an artand striven for a name is a stoic to the esteem of others; and sweetindeed would such honours have been to me had not publicity itselfseemed a wrong to the sanctity of that affliction which set Lilian apartfrom the movement and the glories of the world. 

The two persons most active in "getting up" this testimonial were, nominally, Colonel Poyntz--in truth, his wife--and my old disparager, Mr. Vigors! It is long since my narrative has referred to Mr. Vigors. Itis due to him now to state that, in his capacity of magistrate, and inhis own way, he had been both active and delicate in the inquiries seton foot for Lilian during the unhappy time in which she had wandered, spellbound, from her home. He, alone, of all the more influentialmagnates of the town, had upheld her innocence against the gossips thataspersed it; and during the last trying year of my residence at L----, he had sought me, with frank and manly confessions of his regret for hisformer prejudice against me, and assurances of the respect in which hehad held me ever since my marriage--marriage but in rite--with Lilian. He had then, strong in his ruling passion, besought me to consult hisclairvoyants as to her case. I declined this invitation so as not toaffront him, --declined it, not as I should once have done, but with noword nor look of incredulous disdain. The fact was, that I had conceiveda solemn terror of all practices and theories out of the beaten track ofsense and science. Perhaps in my refusal I did wrong. I know not. I wasafraid of my own imagination. He continued not less friendly in spiteof my refusal. And, such are the vicissitudes in human feeling, Iparted from him whom I had regarded as my most bigoted foe with a warmersentiment of kindness than for any of those on whom I had counted onfriendship. He had not deserted Lilian. It was not so with Mrs. Poyntz. I would have paid tenfold the value of the testimonial to have erased, from the list of those who subscribed to it, her husband's name. 

The day before I quitted L----, and some weeks after I had, in fact, renounced my practice, I received an urgent entreaty from Miss Brabazonto call on her. She wrote in lines so blurred that I could withdifficulty decipher them, that she was very ill, given over by Dr. Jones, who had been attending her. She implored my opinion. 

CHAPTER LXVII. 

On reaching the house, a formal man-servant, with indifferent face, transferred me to the guidance of a hired nurse, who led me up thestairs, and, before I was well aware of it, into the room in which Dr. Lloyd had died. Widely different, indeed, the aspect of the walls, thecharacter of the furniture! The dingy paperhangings were replaced byairy muslins, showing a rose-coloured ground through their fancifulopenwork; luxurious fauteuils, gilded wardrobes, full-length mirrors, atoilet-table tricked out with lace and ribbons; and glittering with anarray of silver gewgaws and jewelled trinkets, --all transformed the sickchamber of the simple man of science to a boudoir of death for the vaincoquette. But the room itself, in its high lattice and heavy ceiling, was the same--as the coffin itself has the same confines, whether it berich in velvets and bright with blazoning, or rude as a pauper's shell. 

And the bed, with its silken coverlet, and its pillows edged with thethread-work of Louvain, stood in the same sharp angle as that over whichhad flickered the frowning smoke-reek above the dying, resentful foe. As I approached, a man, who was seated beside the sufferer, turned roundhis face, and gave me a silent kindly nod of recognition. He was Mr. C----, one of the clergy of the town, the one with whom I had the mostfrequently come into contact wherever the physician resigns to thepriest the language that bids man hope. Mr. C-----, as a preacher, was renowned for his touching eloquence; as a pastor, revered for hisbenignant piety; as friend and neighbour, beloved for a sweetness ofnature which seemed to regulate all the movements of a mind eminentlymasculine by the beat of a heart tender as the gentlest woman's. 

This good man; then whispering something to the sufferer which I didnot overhear, stole towards me, took me by the hand, and said, also ina whisper, "Be merciful as Christians are. " He led me to the bedside, there left me, went out, and closed the door. 

"Do you think I am really dying, Dr. Fenwick?" said a feeble voice. "Ifear Dr. Jones has misunderstood my case. I wish I had called you in atthe first, but--but I could not--I could not! Will you feel my pulse?Don't you think you could do me good?"

I had no need to feel the pulse in that skeleton wrist; the aspect ofthe face sufficed to tell me that death was drawing near. 

Mechanically, however, I went through the hackneyed formulae ofprofessional questions. This vain ceremony done, as gently anddelicately as I could, I implied the expediency of concluding, if notyet settled, those affairs which relate to this world. 

"This duty, " I said, "in relieving the mind from care for others to whomwe owe the forethought of affection, often relieves the body alsoof many a gnawing pain, and sometimes, to the surprise of the mostexperienced physician, prolongs life itself. "

"Ah, " said the old maid, peevishly, "I understand! But it is not my willthat troubles me. I should not be left to a nurse from a hospital if myrelations did not know that my annuity dies with me; and I forestalledit in furnishing this house, Dr. Fenwick, and all these pretty thingswill be sold to pay those horrid tradesmen!--very hard!--so hard!--justas I got things about me in the way I always said I would have them ifI could ever afford it! I always said I would have my bedroom hungwith muslin, like dear Lady L----'s; and the drawing-room ingeranium-coloured silk: so pretty. You have not seen it: you would notknow the house, Dr. Fenwick. And just when all is finished, to be takenaway and thrust into the grave. It is so cruel!" And she began to weep. Her emotion brought on a violent paroxysm, which, when she recoveredfrom it, had produced one of those startling changes of mind that aresometimes witnessed before death, --changes whereby the whole characterof a life seems to undergo solemn transformation. The hard will becomesgentle, the proud meek, the frivolous earnest. That awful moment whenthe things of earth pass away like dissolving scenes, leaving deathvisible on the background by the glare that shoots up in the lastflicker of life's lamp. 

And when she lifted her haggard face from my shoulder, and heard mypitying, soothing voice, it was not the grief of a trifler at the lossof fondled toys that spoke in the fallen lines of her lip, in the woe ofher pleading eyes. 

"So this is death, " she said. "I feel it hurrying on. I must speak. I promised Mr. C---- that I would. Forgive me, can you--can you? Thatletter--that letter to Lilian Ashleigh, I wrote it! Oh, do not lookat me so terribly; I never thought it could do such evil! And am I notpunished enough? I truly believed when I wrote that Miss Ashleigh wasdeceiving you, and once I was silly enough to fancy that you might haveliked me. But I had another motive; I had been so poor all my life--Ihad become rich unexpectedly; I set my heart on this house--I had alwaysfancied it--and I thought if I could prevent Miss Ashleigh marrying you, and scare her and her mother from coming back to L----, I could get thehouse. And I did get it. What for?--to die. I had not been here aweek before I got the hurt that is killing me--a fall down thestairs, --coming out of this very room; the stairs had been polished. IfI had stayed in my old lodging, it would not have happened. Oh, say youforgive me! Say, say it, even if you do not feel you can! Say it!" Andthe miserable woman grasped me by the arm as Dr. Lloyd had grasped me. 

I shaded my averted face with my hands; my heart heaved with the agonyof my suppressed passion. A wrong, however deep, only to myself, I couldhave pardoned without effort; such a wrong to Lilian, --no! I could notsay "I forgive. "

The dying wretch was perhaps more appalled by my silence than she wouldhave been by my reproach. Her voice grew shrill in her despair. 

"You will not pardon me! I shall die with your curse on my head! Mercy!mercy! That good man, Mr. C----, assured me you would be merciful. Haveyou never wronged another? Has the Evil One never tempted you?"

Then I spoke in broken accents: "Me! Oh, had it been I whom youdefamed--but a young creature so harmless, so unoffending, and for somiserable a motive!"

"But I tell you, I swear to you, I never dreamed I could cause suchsorrow; and that young man, that Margrave, put it into my head!"

"Margrave! He had left L---- long before that letter was written!"

"But he came back for a day just before I wrote: it was the very day. I met him in the lane yonder. He asked after you, --after Miss Ashleigh;and when he spoke he laughed, and I said, 'Miss Ashleigh had been ill, and was gone away;' and he laughed again. And I thought he knew morethan he would tell me, so I asked him if he supposed Mrs. Ashleigh wouldcome back, and said how much I should like to take this house if she didnot; and again he laughed, and said, 'Birds never stay in the nest afterthe young ones are hurt, ' and went away singing. When I got home, hislaugh and his song haunted me. I thought I saw him still in my room, prompting me to write, and I sat down and wrote. Oh, pardon, pardon me!I have been a foolish poor creature, but never meant to do such harm. The Evil One tempted me! There he is, near me now! I see him yonder!there, at the doorway. He comes to claim me! As you hope for mercyyourself, free me from him! Forgive me!"

I made an effort over myself. In naming Margrave as her tempter, thewoman had suggested an excuse, echoed from that innermost cell of mymind, which I recoiled from gazing into, for there I should behold hisimage. Inexpiable though the injury she had wrought against me and mine, still the woman was human--fellow-creature-like myself;--but he?

I took the pale hand that still pressed my arm, and said, with firmvoice, --

"Be comforted. In the name of Lilian, my wife, I forgive you for her andfor me as freely and as fully as we are enjoined by Him, against whoseprecepts the best of us daily sin, to forgive--we children of wrath--toforgive one another!"

"Heaven bless you!--oh, bless you!" she murmured, sinking back upon herpillow. 

"Ah!" thought I, "what if the pardon I grant for a wrong far deeper thanI inflicted on him whose imprecation smote me in this chamber, shouldindeed be received as atonement, and this blessing on the lips of thedying annul the dark curse that the dead has left on my path through theValley of the Shadow!"

I left my patient sleeping quietly, --the sleep that precedes the last. As I went down the stairs into the hall, I saw Mrs. Poyntz standing atthe threshold, speaking to the man-servant and the nurse. 

I would have passed her with a formal bow, but she stopped me. 

"I came to inquire after poor Miss Brabazon, " said she. 

"You can tell me more than the servants can: is there no hope?"

"Let the nurse go up and watch beside her. She may pass away in thesleep into which she has fallen. "

"Allen Fenwick, I must speak with you--nay, but for a few minutes. Ihear that you leave L---- to-morrow. It is scarcely among the chancesof life that we should meet again. " While thus saying, she drew me alongthe lawn down the path that led towards her own home. "I wish, " saidshe, earnestly, "that you could part with a kindlier feeling towards me;but I can scarcely expect it. Could I put myself in your place, and bemoved by your feelings, I know that I should be implacable; but I--"

"But you, madam, are The World! and the World governs itself, anddictates to others, by laws which seem harsh to those who ask from itsfavour the services which the World cannot tender, for the World admitsfavourites, but ignores friends. You did but act to me as the World everacts to those who mistake its favour for its friendship. "

"It is true, " said Mrs. Poyntz, with blunt candour; and we continued towalk on silently. At length she said abruptly, "But do you not rashlydeprive yourself of your only consolation in sorrow? When the heartsuffers, does your skill admit any remedy like occupation to the mind?Yet you abandon that occupation to which your mind is most accustomed;you desert your career; you turn aside, in the midst of the race, fromthe fame which awaits at the goal; you go back from civilization itself, and dream that all your intellectual cravings can find content in thelife of a herdsman, amidst the monotony of a wild! No, you will repent, for you are untrue to your mind!"

"I am sick of the word 'mind'!" said I, bitterly. And therewith Irelapsed into musing. 

The enigmas which had foiled my intelligence in the unravelled SibylBook of Nature were mysteries strange to every man's normal practiceof thought, even if reducible to the fraudulent impressions of outwardsense; for illusions in a brain otherwise healthy suggest problems inour human organization which the colleges that record them rather guessat than solve. But the blow which had shattered my life had been dealtby the hand of a fool. Here, there were no mystic enchantments. Motivesthe most commonplace and paltry, suggested to a brain as trivial andshallow as ever made the frivolity of woman a theme for the satire ofpoets, had sufficed, in devastating the field of my affections, to blastthe uses for which I had cultured my mind; and had my intellect been asgreat as heaven ever gave to man, it would have been as vain a shield asmine against the shaft that bad lodged in my heart. While I had, indeed, been preparing my reason and my fortitude to meet such perils, weird andmarvellous, as those by which tales round the winter fireside scare thecredulous child, a contrivance--so vulgar and hackneyed that not a daypasses but what some hearth is vexed by an anonymous libel--hadwrought a calamity more dread than aught which my dark guess into theShadow-Land unpierced by Philosophy could trace to the prompting ofmalignant witchcraft. So, ever this truth runs through all legends ofghost and demon--through the uniform records of what wonder accreditsand science rejects as the supernatural--lo! the dread machinery whosewheels roll through Hades! What need such awful engines for such meanresults? The first blockhead we meet in our walk to our grocer's cantell us more than the ghost tells us; the poorest envy we ever arousedhurts us more than the demon. How true an interpreter is Genius to Hellas to Earth! The Fiend comes to Faust, the tired seeker of knowledge;Heaven and Hell stake their cause in the Mortal's temptation. And whatdoes the Fiend to astonish the Mortal? Turn wine into fire, turn loveinto crime. We need no Mephistopheles to accomplish these marvels everyday!

Thus silently thinking, I walked by the side of the world-wise woman;and when she next spoke, I looked up, and saw that we were at the Monks'Well, where I had first seen Lilian gazing into heaven!

Mrs. Poyntz had, as we walked, placed her hand on my arm; and, turningabruptly from the path into the glade, I found myself standing by herside in the scene where a new sense of being had first disclosed to mysight the hues with which Love, the passionate beautifier, turns intopurple and gold the gray of the common air. Thus, when romance has endedin sorrow, and the Beautiful fades from the landscape, the trite andpositive forms of life, banished for a time, reappear, and deepen ourmournful remembrance of the glories they replace. And the Woman of theWorld, finding how little I was induced to respond to her when shehad talked of myself, began to speak, in her habitual clear, ringingaccents, of her own social schemes and devices, --

"I shall miss you when you are gone, Allen Fenwick; for though, duringthe last year or so, all actual intercourse between us has ceased, yet my interest in you gave some occupation to my thoughts when I satalone, --having lost my main object of ambition in settling my daughter, and having no longer any one in the house with whom I could talk of thefuture, or for whom I could form a project. It is so wearisome to countthe changes which pass within us, that we take interest in the changesthat pass without. Poyntz still has his weather-glass; I have no longermy Jane. "

"I cannot linger with you on this spot, " said I, impatiently turningback into the path; she followed, treading over fallen leaves. Andunheeding my interruption, she thus continued her hard talk, --

"But I am not sick of my mind, as you seem to be of yours; I am onlysomewhat tired of the little cage in which, since it has been alone, itruffles its plumes against the flimsy wires that confine it from widerspace. I shall take up my home for a time with the new-married couple:they want me. Ashleigh Sumner has come into parliament. He means toattend regularly and work hard, but he does not like Jane to go intothe world by herself, and he wishes her to go into the world, because hewants a wife to display his wealth for the improvement of his position. In Ashleigh Sumner's house I shall have ample scope for my energies, such as they are. I have a curiosity to see the few that perch on thewheels of the State and say, 'It is we who move the wheels!' It willamuse me to learn if I can maintain in a capital the authority Ihave won in a country town; if not, I can but return to my smallprincipality. Wherever I live I must sway, not serve. If I succeed--as Iought, for in Jane's beauty and Ashleigh's fortune I have materialsfor the woof of ambition, wanting which here, I fall asleep over myknitting--if I succeed, there will be enough to occupy the rest of mylife. Ashleigh Sumner must be a power; the power will be represented andenjoyed by my child, and created and maintained by me! Allen Fenwick, do as I do. Be world with the world, and it will only be in moments ofspleen and chagrin that you will sigh to think that the heart may bevoid when the mind is full. Confess you envy me while you listen. "

"Not so; all that to you seems so great appears to me so small! Naturealone is always grand, in her terrors as well as her charms. The Worldfor you, Nature for me. Farewell!"

"Nature!" said Mrs. Poyntz, compassionately. "Poor Allen Fenwick! Natureindeed, --intellectual suicide! Nay, shake hands, then, if for the lasttime. "

So we shook hands and parted, where the wicket-gate and the stone stairsseparated my blighted fairy-land from the common thoroughfare. 

CHAPTER LXVIII. 

That night as I was employed in collecting the books and manuscriptswhich I proposed to take with me, including my long-suspendedphysiological work, and such standard authorities as I might want toconsult or refer to in the portions yet incompleted, my servant enteredto inform me, in answer to the inquiries I had sent him to make, thatMiss Brabazon had peacefully breathed her last an hour before. Well!my pardon had perhaps soothed her last moments; but how unavailing herdeath-bed repentance to undo the wrong she had done!

I turned from that thought, and, glancing at the work into which Ihad thrown all my learning, methodized into system with all my art, Irecalled the pity which Mrs. Poyntz had expressed for my meditated wasteof mind. The tone of superiority which this incarnation of common-senseaccompanied by uncommon will assumed over all that was too deep or toohigh for her comprehension had sometimes amused me; thinking over itnow, it piqued. I said to myself, "After all, I shall bear with me suchsolace as intellectual occupation can afford. I shall have leisure tocomplete this labour; and a record that I have lived and thought mayoutlast all the honours which worldly ambition may bestow upon AshleighSummer!" And, as I so murmured, my hand, mechanically selecting thebooks I needed, fell on the Bible that Julius Faber had given to me. 

It opened at the Second Book of Esdras, which our Church places amongstthe Apocrypha, and is generally considered by scholars to have beenwritten in the first or second century of the Christian era, (1)--but inwhich the questions raised by man in the remotest ages, to which we cantrace back his desire "to comprehend the ways of the Most High, " areinvested with a grandeur of thought and sublimity of word to which Iknow of no parallel in writers we call profane. 

My eye fell on this passage in the lofty argument between the Angelwhose name was Uriel, and the Prophet, perplexed by his own cravings forknowledge:--

 "He (the Angel) answered me, and said, I went into a forest, into a plain, and the trees took counsel, "And said, Come, let us go and make war against the sea, that it may depart away before us, and that we may make us more woods. 

 "The floods of the sea also in like manner took counsel, and said, Come, let us go up and subdue the woods of the plain, that there also we may make us another country. 

 "The thought of the wood was in vain, for the fire came and consumed it. 

 "The thought of the floods of the sea came likewise to nought, for the sand stood up and stopped them. 

 "If thou went judge now betwixt these two, whom wouldst thou begin to justify; or whom wouldst thou condemn?

 "I answered and said, Verily it is a foolish thought that they both have devised; for the ground is given unto the wood, and the sea also hath his place to bear his floods. 

 "Then answered he me, and said, Thou halt given a right judgment; but why judgest thou not thyself also?

 "For like as the ground is given unto the wood, and the sea to his floods, even so they that dwell upon the earth may understand nothing but that which is upon the earth; and He that dwelleth above the heavens may only understand the things that are above the height of the heavens. "

I paused at those words, and, closing the Sacred Volume, fell into deep, unquiet thought. 

(1) Such is the supposition of Jahn. Dr. Lee, however, is of opinionthat the author was contemporary, and, indeed, identical, with theauthor of the Book of Enoch. 

CHAPTER LXIX. 

I had hoped that the voyage would produce some beneficial effect uponLilian; but no effect, good or bad, was perceptible, except, perhaps, a deeper silence, a gentler calm. She loved to sit on the deck when thenights were fair, and the stars mirrored on the deep. And once thus, asI stood beside her, bending over the rail of the vessel, and gazing onthe long wake of light which the moon made amidst the darkness of anocean to which no shore could be seen, I said to myself, "Where ismy track of light through the measureless future? Would that I couldbelieve as I did when a child! Woe is me, that all the reasonings I takefrom my knowledge should lead me away from the comfort which the peasantwho mourns finds in faith! Why should riddles so dark have been thrustupon me, --me, no fond child of fancy; me, sober pupil of schools theseverest? Yet what marvel--the strangest my senses have witnessed orfeigned in the fraud they have palmed on me--is greater than thatby which a simple affection, that all men profess to have known, haschanged the courses of life prearranged by my hopes and confirmed by myjudgment? How calmly before I knew love I have anatomized its mechanism, as the tyro who dissects the web-work of tissues and nerves in the dead!Lo! it lives, lives in me; and, in living, escapes from my scalpel, andmocks all my knowledge. Can love be reduced to the realm of the senses?No; what nun is more barred by her grate from the realm of the sensesthan my bride by her solemn affliction? Is love, then, the union ofkindred, harmonious minds? No, my beloved one sits by my side, and Iguess not her thoughts, and my mind is to her a sealed fountain. Yet Ilove her more--oh, ineffably more!--for the doom which destroys the twocauses philosophy assigns to love--in the form, in the mind! How can Inow, in my vain physiology, say what is love, what is not? Is it lovewhich must tell me that man has a soul, and that in soul will be foundthe solution of problems never to be solved in body or mind alone?"

My self-questionings halted here as Lilian's hand touched my shoulder. She had risen from her seat, and had come to me. 

"Are not the stars very far from earth?" she said. 

"Very far. "

"Are they seen for the first time to-night?"

"They were seen, I presume, as we see them, by the fathers of all humanraces!"

"Yet close below us they shine reflected in the waters; and yet, see, wave flows on wave before we can count it!"

"Lilian, by what sympathy do you read and answer my thought?"

Her reply was incoherent and meaningless. If a gleam of intelligence hadmysteriously lighted my heart to her view, it was gone. But drawing hernearer towards me, my eye long followed wistfully the path of light, dividing the darkness on either hand, till it closed in the slopinghorizon. 

CHAPTER LXX. 

The voyage is over. At the seaport at which we landed I found a letterfrom Faber. My instructions had reached him in time to effect thepurchase on which his descriptions had fixed my desire. The stock, theimplements of husbandry, the furniture of the house, were included inthe purchase. All was prepared for my arrival, and I hastened fromthe then miserable village, which may some day rise into one of themightiest capitals of the world, to my lodge in the wilderness. 

It was the burst of the Australian spring, which commences in our autumnmonth of October. The air was loaded with the perfume of the acacias. Amidst the glades of the open forest land, or climbing the craggy banksof winding silvery creeks, (1) creepers and flowers of dazzling huecontrasted the olive-green of the surrounding foliage. The exhilaratingeffect of the climate in that season heightens the charm of thestrange scenery. In the brilliancy of the sky, in the lightness of theatmosphere, the sense of life is wondrously quickened. With the verybreath the Adventurer draws in from the racy air, he feels as ifinhaling hope. 

We have reached our home, we are settled in it; the early unfamiliarimpressions are worn away. We have learned to dispense with much that weat first missed, and are reconciled to much that at first disappointedor displeased. 

The house is built but of logs; the late proprietor had commenced, upona rising ground, a mile distant, a more imposing edifice of stone, butit is not half finished. 

This log-house is commodious, and much has been done, within andwithout, to conceal or adorn its primitive rudeness. It is of irregular, picturesque form, with verandas round three sides of it, to which thegrape-vine has been trained, with glossy leaves that clamber up to thegable roof. There is a large garden in front, in which many Englishfruit-trees have been set, and grow fast amongst the plants of thetropics and the orange-trees of Southern Europe. Beyond stretch undulouspastures, studded not only with sheep, but with herds of cattle, whichmy speculative predecessor had bred from parents of famous stock, andimported from England at mighty cost; but as yet the herds had been oflittle profit, and they range their luxuriant expanse of pasture withas little heed. To the left soar up, in long range, the many-colouredhills; to the right meanders a creek, belted by feathery trees; andon its opposite bank a forest opens, through frequent breaks, intopark-like glades and alleys. The territory, of which I so suddenly findmyself the lord, is vast, even for a colonial capitalist. 

It had been originally purchased as "a special survey, " comprisingtwenty thousand acres, with the privilege of pasture over forty thousandmore. In very little of this land, though it includes some of themost fertile districts in the known world, has cultivation been evencommenced. At the time I entered into possession, even sheep were barelyprofitable; labour was scarce and costly. Regarded as a speculation, Icould not wonder that my predecessor fled in fear from his domain. HadI invested the bulk of my capital in this lordly purchase, I shouldhave deemed myself a ruined man; but a villa near London, with a hundredacres, would have cost me as much to buy, and thrice as much to keepup. I could afford the investment I had made. I found a Scotch bailiffalready on the estate, and I was contented to escape from ruraloccupations, to which I brought no experience, by making it worth hiswhile to serve me with zeal. Two domestics of my own, and two whohad been for many years with Mrs. Ashleigh, had accompanied us: theyremained faithful and seemed contented. So the clockwork of our merehousehold arrangements went on much the same as in our native home. Lilian was not subjected to the ordinary privations and discomforts thatawait the wife even of the wealthy emigrant. Alas! would she have heededthem if she had been?

The change of scene wrought a decided change for the better in herhealth and spirits, but not such as implied a dawn of reviving reason. But her countenance was now more rarely overcast. Its usual aspect wasglad with a soft mysterious smile. She would murmur snatches of songs, that were partly borrowed from English poets, and partly glided awayinto what seemed spontaneous additions of her own, --wanting intelligiblemeaning, but never melody nor rhyme. Strange, that memory andimitation--the two earliest parents of all inventive knowledge--shouldstill be so active, and judgment--the after faculty, that combines therest into purpose and method-be annulled!

Julius Faber I see continually, though his residence is a few milesdistant. He is sanguine as to Lilian's ultimate recovery; and, to myamazement and to my envy, he has contrived, by some art which I cannotattain, to establish between her and himself intelligible communion. Shecomprehends his questions, when mine, though the simplest, seem to herin unknown language; and he construes into sense her words, that to meare meaningless riddles. 

"I was right, " he said to me one day, leaving her seated in the gardenbeside her quiet, patient mother, and joining me where I lay--listlessyet fretful--under the shadeless gum-trees, gazing not on the flocksand fields that I could call my own, but on the far mountain range, fromwhich the arch of the horizon seemed to spring, --"I was right, " said thegreat physician; "this is reason suspended, not reason lost. Your wifewill recover; but--"

"But what?"

"Give me your arm as I walk homeward, and I will tell you the conclusionto which I have come. "

I rose, the old man leaned on me, and we went down the valley along thecraggy ridges of the winding creek. The woodland on the opposite bankwas vocal with the chirp and croak and chatter of Australian birds, --allmirthful, all songless, save that sweetest of warblers, which some earlyirreverent emigrant degraded to the name of magpie, but whose note issweeter than the nightingale's, and trills through the lucent air witha distinct ecstatic melody of joy that dominates all the discords, soravishing the sense, that, while it sings, the ear scarcely heeds thescream of the parrots. 

(1) Creek is the name given by Australian colonists to precarious waterCourses and tributary streams. 

CHAPTER LXXI. 

"You may remember, " said Julius Faber, "Sir Humphry Davy's eloquentdescription of the effect produced on him by the inhalation of nitrousoxide. He states that he began to lose the perception of externalthings; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through his mind, and were connected with words in such a manner as to produce perceptionsperfectly novel. 'I existed, ' he said, 'in a world of newly-connectedand newly-modified ideas. ' When he recovered, he exclaimed: 'Nothingexists but thoughts; the universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures, and pains!'

"Now observe, that thus a cultivator of positive science, endowed withone of the healthiest of human brains, is, by the inhalation of a gas, abstracted from all external life, --enters into a new world, whichconsists of images he himself creates and animates so vividly that, onwaking, he resolves the universe itself into thoughts. "

"Well, " said I, "but what inference do you draw from that voluntaryexperiment, applicable to the malady of which you bid me hope the cure?"

"Simply this: that the effect produced on a healthful brain by thenitrous oxide may be produced also by moral causes operating on theblood, or on the nerves. There is a degree of mental excitement in whichideas are more vivid than sensations, and then the world of externalthings gives way to the world within the brain. (1) But this, though asuspension of that reason which comprehends accuracy of judgment, isno more a permanent aberration of reason than were Sir Humphry Davy'svisionary ecstasies under the influence of the gas. The differencebetween the two states of suspension is that of time, and it is but anaffair of time with our beloved patient. Yet prepare yourself. I fearthat the mind will not recover without some critical malady of thebody!"

"Critical! but not dangerous?--say not dangerous! I can endure the pauseof her reason; I could not endure the void in the universe if her lifewere to fade from the earth. "

"Poor friend! would not you yourself rather lose life than reason?"

"I--yes! But we men are taught to set cheap value on our own lives; wedo not estimate at the same rate the lives of those we love. Did we doso, Humanity would lose its virtues. "

"What, then! Love teaches that there is something of nobler value thanmere mind? Yet surely it cannot be the mere body? What is it, ifnot that continuance of being which your philosophy declines toacknowledge, --namely, soul? If you fear so painfully that your Lilianshould die, is it not that you fear to lose her forever?"

"Oh, cease, cease!" I cried impatiently. "I cannot now argue onmetaphysics. What is it that you anticipate of harm to her life? Herhealth has been stronger ever since her affliction. She never seems toknow ailment now. Do you not perceive that her cheek has a more hardybloom, her frame a more rounded symmetry, than when you saw her inEngland?"

"Unquestionably. Her physical forces have been silently recruitingthemselves in the dreams which half lull, half amuse her imagination. Imagination! that faculty, the most glorious which is bestowed on thehuman mind, because it is the faculty which enables thought to create, is of all others the most exhausting to life when unduly stimulated andconsciously reasoning on its own creations. I think it probable thathad this sorrow not befallen you, you would have known a sorrow yetgraver, --you would have long survived your Lilian. As it is now, whenshe recovers, her whole organization, physical and mental, will haveundergone a beneficent change. But, I repeat my prediction, --some severemalady of the body will precede the restoration of the mind; and itis my hope that the present suspense or aberration of the more wearingpowers of the mind may fit the body to endure and surmount the physicalcrisis. I remember a case, within my own professional experience, in many respects similar to this, but in other respects it was lesshopeful. I was consulted by a young student of a very delicate physicalframe, of great mental energies, and consumed by an intense ambition. He was reading for university honours. He would not listen to me when Ientreated him to rest his mind. I thought that he was certain to obtainthe distinction for which he toiled, and equally certain to die a fewmonths after obtaining it. He falsified both my prognostics. He sooverworked himself that, on the day of examination, his nerves wereagitated, his memory failed him; he passed, not without a certaincredit, but fell far short of the rank amongst his fellow competitorsto which he aspired. Here, then, the irritated mind acted on thedisappointed heart, and raised a new train of emotions. He was firstvisited by spectral illusions; then he sank into a state in which theexternal world seemed quite blotted out. He heeded nothing that was saidto him; seemed to see nothing that was placed before his eyes, --in aword, sensations became dormant, ideas preconceived usurped their place, and those ideas gave him pleasure. He believed that his genius wasrecognized, and lived amongst its supposed creations enjoying animaginary fame. So it went on for two years, during which suspense ofhis reason, his frail form became robust and vigorous. At the end ofthat time he was seized with a fever, which would have swept him inthree days to the grave had it occurred when I was first called in toattend him. He conquered the fever, and, in recovering, acquired thefull possession of the intellectual faculties so long suspended. When Ilast saw him, many years afterwards, he was in perfect health, and theobject of his young ambition was realized; the body had supported themind, --he had achieved distinction. Now what had so, for a time, laidthis strong intellect into visionary sleep? The most agonizing of humanemotions in a noble spirit, --shame! What has so stricken down yourLilian? You have told me the story: shame!--the shame of a naturepre-eminently pure. But observe that, in his case as in hers, the shockinflicted does not produce a succession of painful illusions: onthe contrary, in both, the illusions are generally pleasing. Had theillusions been painful, the body would have suffered, the patient died. Why did a painful shock produce pleasing illusions? Because, no matterhow a shock on the nerves may originate, if it affects the reason, itdoes but make more vivid than impressions from actual external objectsthe ideas previously most cherished. Such ideas in the young studentwere ideas of earthly fame; such ideas in the young maiden are ideasof angel comforters and heavenly Edens. You miss her mind on the earth, and, while we speak, it is in paradise. "

"Much that you say, my friend, is authorized by the speculations ofgreat writers, with whom I am not unfamiliar; but in none of thosewriters, nor in your encouraging words, do I find a solution formuch that has no precedents in my experience, --much, indeed, that hasanalogies in my reading, but analogies which I have hitherto despisedas old wives' fables. I have bared to your searching eye the weirdmysteries of my life. How do you account for facts which you cannotresolve into illusions, --for the influence which that strange being, Margrave, exercised over Lilian's mind or fancy, so that for a time herlove for me was as dormant as is her reason now; so that he could drawher--her whose nature you admit to be singularly pure and modest--fromher mother's home? The magic wand; the trance into which that wand threwMargrave himself; the apparition which it conjured up in my ownquiet chamber when my mind was without a care and my health withouta flaw, --how account for all this: as you endeavoured, and perhapssuccessfully, to account for all my impressions of the Vision in theMuseum, of the luminous, haunting shadow in its earlier apparitions, when my fancy was heated, my heart tormented, and, it might be, even thephysical forces of this strong frame disordered?"

"Allen, " said the old pathologist, "here we approach a ground which fewphysicians have dared to examine. Honour to those who, like our boldcontemporary, Elliotson, have braved scoff and sacrificed dross inseeking to extract what is practical in uses, what can be tested byexperiment, from those exceptional phenomena on which magic sought tofound a philosophy, and to which philosophy tracks the origin of magic. "

"What! do I understand you? Is it you, Julius Faber, who attach faithto the wonders attributed to animal magnetism and electro-biology, orsubscribe to the doctrines which their practitioners teach?"

"I have not examined into those doctrines, nor seen with my own eyes thewonders recorded, upon evidence too respectable, nevertheless, to permitme peremptorily to deny what I have not witnessed. (2) But wherever Ilook through the History of Mankind in all ages and all races, I find aconcurrence in certain beliefs which seem to countenance the theory thatthere is in some peculiar and rare temperaments a power over forms ofanimated organization, with which they establish some unaccountableaffinity; and even, though much more rarely, a power over inanimatematter. You are familiar with the theory of Descartes, 'that thoseparticles of the blood which penetrate to the brain do not only serve tonourish and sustain its substance, but to produce there a certain verysubtle Aura, or rather a flame very vivid and pure, that obtains thename of the Animal Spirits;'(3) and at the close of his great fragmentupon Man, he asserts that 'this flame is of no other nature than all thefires which are in inanimate bodies. '(4) This notion does but forestallthe more recent doctrine that electricity is more or less in all, ornearly all, known matter. Now, whether in the electric fluid or someother fluid akin to it of which we know still less, thus equallypervading all matter, there may be a certain magnetic property moreactive, more operative upon sympathy in some human constitutions than inothers, and which can account for the mysterious power I have spoken of, is a query I might suggest, but not an opinion I would hazard. For anopinion I must have that basis of experience or authority which I do notneed when I submit a query to the experience and authority of others. Still, the supposition conveyed in the query is so far worthy ofnotice, that the ecstatic temperament (in which phrase I comprehend allconstitutional mystics) is peculiarly sensitive to electric atmosphericinfluences. This is a fact which most medical observers will haveremarked in the range of their practice. Accordingly, I was preparedto find Mr. Hare Townshend, in his interesting work, (5) state that hehimself was of 'the electric temperament, ' sparks flying from his hairwhen combed in the dark, etc. That accomplished writer, whose veracityno one would impugn, affirms that between this electrical endowment andwhatever mesmeric properties he might possess, there is a remarkablerelationship and parallelism. Whatever state of the atmosphere tends toaccumulate and insulate electricity in the body, promotes equally' (saysMr. Townshend) 'the power and facility with which I influence othersmesmerically. ' What Mr. Townshend thus observes in himself, Americanphysicians and professors of chemistry depose to have observed in thosemodern magicians, the mediums of (so-called) 'spirit manifestation. 'They state that all such mediums are of the electric temperament, thuseverywhere found allied with the ecstatic, and their power varies inproportion as the state of the atmosphere serves to depress or augmentthe electricity stored in themselves. Here, then, in the midst ofvagrant phenomena, either too hastily dismissed as altogether the tricksof fraudful imposture, or too credulously accepted as supernaturalportents-here, at least, in one generalized fact, we may, perhaps, finda starting point, from which inductive experiment may arrive, soonor late, at a rational theory. But however the power of which we arespeaking (a power accorded to special physical temperament) may or maynot be accounted for by some patient student of nature, I am persuadedthat it is in that power we are to seek for whatever is not whollyimposture, in the attributes assigned to magic or witchcraft. It is wellsaid, by a writer who has gone into the depth of these subjects with theresearch of a scholar and the science of a pathologist, 'that if magichad exclusively reposed on credulity and falsehood, its reign wouldnever have endured so long; but that its art took its origin in singularphenomena, proper to certain affections of the nerves, or manifested inthe conditions of sleep. These phenomena, the principle of which wasat first unknown, served to root faith in magic, and often abused evenenlightened minds. The enchanters and magicians arrived, by diverspractices, at the faculty of provoking in other brains a determinedorder of dreams, of engendering hallucinations of all kinds, of inducingfits of hypnotism, trance, mania, during which the persons so affectedimagined that they saw, heard, touched, supernatural beings, conversedwith them, proved their influences, assisted at prodigies of which magicproclaimed itself to possess the secret. The public, the enchanters, and the enchanted were equally dupes. '(6) Accepting this explanation, unintelligible to no physician of a practice so lengthened as minehas been, I draw from it the corollary, that as these phenomena areexhibited only by certain special affections, to which only certainspecial constitutions are susceptible, so not in any superior facultiesof intellect, or of spiritual endowment, but in peculiar physicaltemperaments, often strangely disordered, the power of the sorcererin affecting the imagination of others is to be sought. In the nativetribes of Australasia the elders are instructed in the arts of thisso-called sorcery, but only in a very few constitutions does instructionavail to produce effects in which the savages recognize the powers of asorcerer: it is so with the Obi of the negroes. The fascination of Obiis an unquestionable fact, but the Obi man cannot be trained by formallessons; he is born a fascinator, as a poet is born a poet. It is sowith the Laplanders, of whom Tornoeus reports that of those instructedin the magical art 'only a few are capable of it. ' 'Some, ' he says, 'arenaturally magicians. ' And this fact is emphatically insisted upon bythe mystics of our own middle ages, who state that a man must be borna magician; in other words, that the gift is constitutional, thoughdeveloped by practice and art. Now, that this gift and its practiceshould principally obtain in imperfect states of civilization, and fadeinto insignificance in the busy social enlightenment of cities, may beaccounted for by reference to the known influences of imagination. Inthe cruder states of social life not only is imagination more frequentlypredominant over all other faculties, but it has not the healthful ventswhich the intellectual competition of cities and civilization affords. The man who in a savage tribe, or in the dark feudal ages, would be amagician, is in our century a poet, an orator, a daring speculator, an inventive philosopher. In other words, his imagination is drawn topursuits congenial to those amongst whom it works. It is the tendencyof all intellect to follow the directions of the public opinion amidstwhich it is trained. Where a magician is held in reverence or awe, therewill be more practitioners of magic than where a magician is despisedas an impostor or shut up as a lunatic. In Scandinavia, before theintroduction of Christianity, all tradition records the wonderfulpowers of the Vala, or witch, who was then held in reverence and honour. Christianity was introduced, and the early Church denounced the Vala asthe instrument of Satan, and from that moment down dropped the majesticprophetess into a miserable and execrated old hag!"

"The ideas you broach, " said I, musingly, "have at moments crossed me, though I have shrunk from reducing them to a theory which is but one ofpure hypothesis. But this magic, after all, then, you would place in theimagination of the operator, acting on the imagination of those whom itaffects? Here, at least, I can follow you, to a certain extent, for herewe get back into the legitimate realm of physiology. "

"And possibly, " said Faber, "we may find hints to guide us to usefulexamination, if not to complete solution of problems that, oncedemonstrated, may lead to discoveries of infinite value, --hints, I say, in two writers of widely opposite genius, Van Helmont and Bacon. Van Helmont, of all the mediaeval mystics, is, in spite of his manyextravagant whims, the one whose intellect is the most suggestive to thedisciplined reasoners of our day. He supposed that the faculty which hecalls Fantasy, and which we familiarly call Imagination, --is investedwith the power of creating for itself ideas independent of the senses, each idea clothed in a form fabricated by the imagination, andbecoming an operative entity. This notion is so far favoured by modernphysiologists, that Lincke reports a case where the eye itself wasextirpated; yet the extirpation was followed by the appearance ofluminous figures before the orbit. And again, a woman, stone-blind, complained of 'luminous images, with pale colours, before her eyes. 'Abercrombie mentions the case 'of a lady quite blind, her eyes beingalso disorganized and sunk, who never walked out without seeing alittle old woman in a red cloak, who seemed to walk before her. '(7)Your favourite authority, the illustrious Miller, who was himself inthe habit of 'seeing different images in the field of vision when helay quietly down to sleep, asserts that these images are not merelypresented to the fancy, but that even the images of dreams are reallyseen, ' and that 'any one may satisfy himself of this by accustominghimself regularly to open his eyes when waking after a dream, --theimages seen in the dream are then sometimes visible, and can be observedto disappear gradually. ' He confirms this statement not only by theresult of his own experience, but by the observations made by Spinoza, and the yet higher authority of Aristotle, who accounts for spectralappearance as the internal action of the sense of vision. (8) And thisopinion is favoured by Sir David Brewster, whose experience leads himto suggest 'that the objects of mental contemplation may be seen asdistinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same local positionin the axis of vision as if they had been formed by the agency oflight. ' Be this as it may, one fact remains, --that images can be seeneven by the blind as distinctly and vividly as you and I now see thestream below our feet and the opossums at play upon yonder boughs. Let us come next to some remarkable suggestions of Lord Bacon. In hisNatural History, treating of the force of the imagination, and the helpit receives 'by one man working by another, ' he cites an instance hehad witnessed of a kind of juggler, who could tell a person what cardhe thought of. He mentioned this 'to a pretended learned man, curious insuch things, ' and this sage said to him, 'It is not the knowledge of theman's thought, for that is proper to God, but the enforcing of a thoughtupon him, and binding his imagination by a stronger, so that he couldthink of no other card. ' You see this sage anticipated our modernelectro-biologists! And the learned man then shrewdly asked Lord Bacon, 'Did the juggler tell the card to the man himself who had thought of it, or bid another tell it?' 'He bade another tell it, ' answered Lord Bacon. 'I thought so, ' returned his learned acquaintance, 'for the jugglerhimself could not have put on so strong an imagination; but by tellingthe card to the other, who believed the juggler was some strange man whocould do strange things, that other man caught a strong imagination. '(9)The whole story is worth reading, because Lord Bacon evidently thinksit conveys a guess worth examining. And Lord Bacon, were he now living, would be the man to solve the mysteries that branch out of mesmerism or(so-called) spiritual manifestation, for he would not pretend to despisetheir phenomena for fear of hurting his reputation for good sense. Bacon then goes on to state that there are three ways to fortify theimagination. 'First, authority derived from belief in an art and in theman who exercises it; secondly, means to quicken and corroborate theimagination; thirdly, means to repeat and refresh it. ' For the secondand the third he refers to the practices of magic, and proceedsafterwards to state on what things imagination has most force, --'uponthings that have the lightest and easiest motions, and, therefore, aboveall, upon the spirits of men, and, in them, on such affections asmove lightest, --in love, in fear, in irresolution. And, ' adds Bacon, earnestly, in a very different spirit from that which dictates to thesages of our time the philosophy of rejecting without trial that whichbelongs to the Marvellous, --'and whatsoever is of this kind, should bethoroughly inquired into. ' And this great founder or renovator of thesober inductive system of investigation even so far leaves it a matterof speculative inquiry, whether imagination may not be so powerfulthat it can actually operate upon a plant, that he says: 'This likewiseshould be made upon plants, and that diligently; as if you should tella man that such a tree would die this year, and will him, at these andthese times, to go unto it and see how it thriveth. ' I presume thatno philosopher has followed such recommendations: had some greatphilosopher done so, possibly we should by this time know all thesecrets of what is popularly called witchcraft. "

And as Faber here paused, there came a strange laugh from the fantasticshe-oak-tree overhanging the stream, --a wild, impish laugh. 

"Pooh! it is but the great kingfisher, the laughing-bird of theAustralian bush, " said Julius Faber, amused at my start of superstitiousalarm. 

We walked on for some minutes in musing silence, and the rude log-hut inwhich my wise companion had his home came in view, --the flocks grazingon undulous pastures, the lone drinking at a watercourse fringed by theslender gum-trees, and a few fields, laboriously won from the luxuriantgrassland, rippling with the wave of corn. 

I halted, and said, "Rest here for a few moments, till I gather up theconclusions to which your speculative reasoning seems to invite me. "

We sat down on a rocky crag, half mantled by luxuriant creepers withvermilion buds. 

"From the guesses, " said I, "which you have drawn from the erudition ofothers and your own ingenious and reflective inductions, I collect thissolution of the mysteries, by which the experience I gain from mysenses confounds all the dogmas approved by my judgment. To the rationalconjectures by which, when we first conversed on the marvels thatperplexed me, you ascribe to my imagination, predisposed by mentalexcitement, physical fatigue or derangement, and a concurrenceof singular events tending to strengthen such predisposition, thephantasmal impressions produced on my senses, --to these conjecturesyou now add a new one, more startling and less admitted by soberphysiologists. You conceive it possible that persons endowed with a rareand peculiar temperament can so operate on imagination, and, throughthe imagination, on the senses of others, as to exceed even the powersascribed to the practitioners of mesmerism' and electro-biology, and give a certain foundation of truth to the old tales of magic andwitchcraft. You imply that Margrave may be a person thus gifted, andhence the influence he unquestionably exercised over Lilian, and over, perhaps, less innocent agents, charmed or impelled by his will. And notdiscarding, as I own I should have been originally induced to do, the queries or suggestions adventured by Bacon in his discursivespeculations on Nature, to wit, 'that there be many things, some of theminanimate, that operate upon the spirits of men by secret sympathy andantipathy, ' and to which Bacon gave the quaint name of 'imaginants, ' soeven that wand, of which I have described to you the magic-like effects, may have had properties communicated to it by which it performs the workof the magician, as mesmerists pretend that some substance mesmerizedby them can act on the patient as sensibly as if it were the mesmerizerhimself. Do I state your suppositions correctly?"

"Yes; always remembering that they are only suppositions, andvolunteered with the utmost diffidence. But since, thus seated in theearly wilderness, we permit ourselves the indulgence of childlike guess, may it not be possible, apart from the doubtful question whether a mancan communicate to an inanimate material substance a power to act uponthe mind or imagination of another man--may it not, I say, be possiblethat such a substance may contain in itself such a virtue or propertypotent over certain constitutions, though not over all. For instance, itis in my experience that the common hazel-wood will strongly affect somenervous temperaments, though wholly without effect on others. I remembera young girl, who having taken up a hazel-stick freshly cut, could notrelax her hold of it; and when it was wrenched away from her by force, was irresistibly attracted towards it, repossessed herself of it, and, after holding it a few minutes, was cast into a kind of trance, in whichshe beheld phantasmal visions. Mentioning this curious case, which Isupposed unique, to a learned brother of our profession, he told me thathe had known other instances of the effect of the hazel upon nervoustemperaments in persons of both sexes. Possibly it was some suchpeculiar property in the hazel that made it the wood selected for theold divining-rod. Again, we know that the bay-tree, or laurel, wasdedicated to the oracular Pythian Apollo. Now wherever, in the oldworld, we find that the learning of the priests enabled them to exhibitexceptional phenomena, which imposed upon popular credulity, there was asomething or other which is worth a philosopher's while to explore;and, accordingly, I always suspected that there was in the laurelsome property favourable to ecstatic vision in highly impressionabletemperaments. My suspicion, a few years ago, was justified by theexperience of a German physician, who had under his care a catalepticor ecstatic patient, and who assured me that he found nothing in thispatient so stimulated the state of 'sleep-waking, ' or so disposed thatstate to indulge in the hallucinations of prevision, as the berry ofthe laurel. (10) Well, we do not know what this wand that produced aseemingly magical effect upon you was really composed of. You did notnotice the metal employed in the wire, which you say communicated athrill to the sensitive nerves in the palm of the hand. You cannot tellhow far it might have been the vehicle of some fluid force in nature. Orstill more probably, whether the pores of your hand insensibly imbibed, and communicated to the brain, some of those powerful narcotics fromwhich the Buddhists and the Arabs make unguents that induce visionaryhallucinations, and in which substances undetected in the hollow of thewand, or the handle of the wand itself, might be steeped. (11) One thingwe do know, namely, that amongst the ancients, and especially in theEast, the construction of wands for magical purposes was no commonplacemechanical craft, but a special and secret art appropriated to men whocultivated with assiduity all that was then known of natural sciencein order to extract from it agencies that might appear supernatural. Possibly, then, the rods or wands of the East, of which Scripture makesmention, were framed upon some principles of which we in our day arevery naturally ignorant, since we do not ransack science for the samesecrets; and thus, in the selection or preparation of the materialemployed, mainly consisted whatever may be referrible to naturalphilosophical causes in the antique science of Rhabdomancy, ordivination and enchantment by wands. The staff, or wand, of which youtell me, was, you say, made of iron or steel and tipped with crystal. Possibly iron and crystal do really contain some properties not hithertoscientifically analyzed, and only, indeed, potential over exceptionaltemperaments, which may account for the fact that iron and crystal havebeen favourites with all professed mystics, ancient and modern. TheDelphic Pythoness had her iron tripod, Mesmer his iron bed; and manypersons, indisputably honest, cannot gaze long upon a ball of crystalbut what they begin to see visions. I suspect that a philosophical causefor such seemingly preternatural effects of crystal and iron will befound in connection with the extreme impressionability to changes intemperatures which is the characteristic both of crystal and iron. But if these materials do contain certain powers over exceptionalconstitutions, we do not arrive at a supernatural but at a naturalphenomenon. "

"Still, " said I, "even granting that your explanatory hypotheses hitor approach the truth;--still what a terrible power you would assign toman's will over men's reason and deeds!"

"Man's will, " answered Faber, "has over men's deeds and reason, habitualand daily, power infinitely greater and, when uncounterbalanced, infinitely more dangerous than that which superstition exaggerates inmagic. Man's will moves a war that decimates a race, and leaves behindit calamities little less dire than slaughter. Man's will frames, but italso corrupts laws; exalts, but also demoralizes opinion; sets the worldmad with fanaticism, as often as it curbs the heart's fierce instinctsby the wisdom of brother-like mercy. You revolt at the exceptional, limited sway over some two or three individuals which the arts of asorcerer (if sorcerer there be) can effect; and yet, at the very momentin which you were perplexed and appalled by such sway, or by yourreluctant belief in it, your will was devising an engine to unsettle thereason and wither the hopes of millions!"

"My will! What engine?"

"A book conceived by your intellect, adorned by your learning, anddirected by your will, to steal from the minds of other men theirpersuasion of the soul's everlasting Hereafter. "

I bowed my head, and felt myself grow pale. 

"And if we accept Bacon's theory of 'secret sympathy, ' or the plainerphysiological maxim that there must be in the imagination, morbidlyimpressed by the will of another, some trains of idea in affinity withsuch influence and preinclined to receive it, no magician could warp youto evil, except through thoughts that themselves went astray. Grantthat the Margrave who still haunts your mind did really, by some occult, sinister magnetism, guide the madman to murder, did influence theservant-woman's vulgar desire to pry into the secrets of her ill-fatedmaster, or the old maid's covetous wish and envious malignity: whatcould this awful magician do more than any commonplace guilty adviser, to a mind predisposed to accept the advice?"

"You forget one example which destroys your argument, --the spell whichthis mysterious fascinator could cast upon a creature so pure from allguilt as Lilian!"

"Will you forgive me if I answer frankly?"

"Speak. "

"Your Lilian is spotless and pure as you deem her, and the fascination, therefore, attempts no lure through a sinful desire; it blends withits attraction no sentiment of affection untrue to yourself. Nay, it isjustice to your Lilian, and may be melancholy comfort to you, to statemy conviction, based on the answers my questions have drawn from her, that you were never more cherished by her love than when that loveseemed to forsake you. Her imagination impressed her with the illusionthat through your love for her you were threatened with a greatperil. What seemed the levity of her desertion was the devotion ofself-sacrifice. And, in her strange, dream-led wanderings, do not thinkthat she was conscious of the fascination you impute to this mysteriousMargrave: in her belief it was your own guardian angel that guided hersteps, and her pilgrimage was ordained to disarm the foe that menacedyou, and dissolve the spell that divided her life from yours! But hadshe not, long before this, willingly prepared herself to be so deceived?Had not her fancies been deliberately encouraged to dwell remote fromthe duties we are placed on the earth to perform? The loftiest facultiesin our nature are those that demand the finest poise, not to fall fromtheir height and crush all the walls that they crown. With exquisitebeauty of illustration, Hume says of the dreamers of 'bright fancies, ''that they may be compared to those angels whom the Scriptures representas covering their eyes with their wings. ' Had you been, like my nephew, a wrestler for bread with the wilderness, what helpmate would yourLilian have been to you? How often would you have cried out injustifiable anger, 'I, son of Adam, am on earth, not in Paradise! Oh, that my Eve were at home on my hearth, and not in the skies with theseraphs!' No Margrave, I venture to say, could have suspended thehealthful affections, or charmed into danger the wide-awake soul of myAmy. When she rocks in its cradle the babe the young parents intrust toher heed; when she calls the kine to the milking, the chicks to theircorn; when she but flits through my room to renew the flowers on thestand, or range in neat order the books that I read, no spell on herfancy could lead her a step from the range of her provident cares! Atday she is contented to be on the commonplace earth; at evening she andI knock together at the one door of heaven, which opes to thanksgivingand prayer; and thanksgiving and prayer send us back, calm and hopeful, to the task that each morrow renews. "

I looked up as the old man paused, and in the limpid clearness of theAustralian atmosphere, I saw the child he thus praised standing by thegarden-gate, looking towards us, and though still distant she seemednear. I felt wroth with her. My heart so cherished my harmless, defenceless Lilian, that I was jealous of the praise taken from her tobe bestowed on another. 

"Each of us, " said I, coldly, "has his or her own nature, and the usesharmonious to that nature's idiosyncrasy. The world, I grant, would geton very ill if women were not more or less actively useful and quietlygood, like your Amy. But the world would lose standards that exalt andrefine, if no woman were permitted to gain, through the indulgence offancy, thoughts exquisite as those which my Lilian conceived, whilethought, alas! flowed out of fancy. I do not wound you by citing yourAmy as a type of the mediocre; I do not claim for Lilian the rank weaccord to the type of genius. But both are alike to such types in this:namely, that the uses of mediocrity are for every-day life, and the usesof genius, amidst a thousand mistakes which mediocrity never commits, are to suggest and perpetuate ideas which raise the standard of themediocre to a nobler level. There would be fewer Amys in life if therewere no Lilian! as there would be far fewer good men of sense if therewere no erring dreamer of genius!"

"You say well, Allen Fenwick. And who should be so indulgent to thevagaries of the imagination as the philosophers who taught your youthto doubt everything in the Maker's plan of creation which could notbe mathematically proved? 'The human mind, ' said Luther, 'is like adrunkard on horseback; prop it on one side, and it falls on the other. 'So the man who is much too enlightened to believe in a peasant'sreligion, is always sure to set up some insane superstition of his own. Open biographical volumes wherever you please, and the man who has nofaith in religion is a man who has faith in a nightmare. See that typeof the elegant sceptics, --Lord Herbert of Cherbury. He is writing a bookagainst Revelation; he asks a sign from heaven to tell him if his bookis approved by his Maker, and the man who cannot believe in the miraclesperformed by his Saviour gravely tells us of a miracle vouchsafed tohimself. Take the hardest and strongest intellect which the hardestand strongest race of mankind ever schooled and accomplished. See thegreatest of great men, the great Julius Caesar! Publicly he assertsin the Senate that the immortality of the soul is a vain chimera. Heprofesses the creed which Roman voluptuaries deduced from Epicurus, and denies all Divine interference in the affairs of the earth. A greatauthority for the Materialists--they have none greater! They can showon their side no intellect equal to Caesar's! And yet this magnificentfreethinker, rejecting a soul and a Deity, habitually entered hischariot muttering a charm; crawled on his knees up the steps of a templeto propitiate the abstraction called 'Nemesis;' and did not cross theRubicon till he had consulted the omens. What does all this prove?--avery simple truth. Man has some instincts with the brutes; for instance, hunger and sexual love. Man has one instinct peculiar to himself, founduniversally (or with alleged exceptions in savage States so rare, thatthey do not affect the general law(12)), --an instinct of an invisiblepower without this earth, and of a life beyond the grave, which thatpower vouchsafes to his spirit. But the best of us cannot violate aninstinct with impunity. Resist hunger as long as you can, and, ratherthan die of starvation, your instinct will make you a cannibal; resistlove when youth and nature impel to it, and what pathologist does nottrack one broad path into madness or crime? So with the noblest instinctof all. Reject the internal conviction by which the grandest thinkershave sanctioned the hope of the humblest Christian, and you areservile at once to some faith inconceivably more hard to believe. Theimagination will not be withheld from its yearnings for vistas beyondthe walls of the flesh, and the span of the present hour. Philosophyitself, in rejecting the healthful creeds by which man finds hissafeguards in sober prayer and his guide through the wilderness ofvisionary doubt, invents systems compared to which the mysteries oftheology are simple. Suppose any man of strong, plain understanding hadnever heard of a Deity like Him whom we Christians adore, then ask thisman which he can the better comprehend in his mind, and accept as anatural faith, --namely, the simple Christianity of his shepherd or thePantheism of Spinoza? Place before an accomplished critic (who comeswith a perfectly unprejudiced mind to either inquiry), first, thearguments of David Hume against the gospel miracles, and then themetaphysical crotchets of David Hume himself. This subtle philosopher, not content, with Berkeley, to get rid of matter, --not content, withCondillac, to get rid of spirit or mind, --proceeds to a miracle greaterthan any his Maker has yet vouchsafed to reveal. He, being then aliveand in the act of writing, gets rid of himself altogether. Nay, heconfesses he cannot reason with any one who is stupid enough to think hehas a self. His words are: 'What we call a mind is nothing but a heapor collection of different perceptions or objects united together bycertain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed withperfect simplicity and identity. If any one, upon serious and candidreflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confessI can reason with him no longer. ' Certainly I would rather believe allthe ghost stories upon record than believe that I am not even a ghost, distinct and apart from the perceptions conveyed to me, no matterhow, --just as I am distinct and apart from the furniture in my room, no matter whether I found it there or whether I bought it. If some oldcosmogonist asked you to believe that the primitive cause of thesolar system was not to 'be traced to a Divine Intelligence, but toa nebulosity, originally so diffused that its existence can withdifficulty be conceived, and that the origin of the present system oforganized beings equally dispensed with the agency of a creative mind, and could be referred to molecules formed in the water by the powerof attraction, till by modifications of cellular tissue in the graduallapse of ages, one monad became an oyster and another a Man, --would younot say this cosmogony could scarce have misled the human understandingeven in the earliest dawn of speculative inquiry? Yet such are thehypotheses to which the desire to philosophize away that simpleproposition of a Divine First Cause, which every child can comprehend, led two of the greatest geniuses and profoundest reasoners of moderntimes, --La Place and La Marck. (13) Certainly, the more you examine thosearch phantasmagorists, the philosophers who would leave nothing in theuniverse but their own delusions, the more your intellectual pride maybe humbled. The wildest phenomena which have startled you are not moreextravagant than the grave explanations which intellectual presumptionadventures on the elements of our own organism and the relations betweenthe world of matter and the world of ideas. "

Here our conversation stopped, for Amy had now joined us, and, lookingup to reply, I saw the child's innocent face between me and the furrowedbrow of the old man. 

(1) See, on the theory elaborated from this principle, Dr. Hibbert'sinteresting and valuable work on the "Philosophy of Apparitions. "

(2) What Faber here says is expressed with more authority by one of themost accomplished metaphysicians of our time (Sir W. Hamilton):

"Somnambulism is a phenomenon still more astonishing (than dreaming). In this singular state a person performs a regular series of rationalactions, and those frequently of the most difficult and delicate nature;and what is still more marvellous, with a talent to which he could makeno pretension when awake. (Cr. Ancillon, Essais Philos. Ii. 161. ) Hismemory and reminiscence supply him with recollections of words andthings which, perhaps, never were at his disposal in the ordinarystate, --he speaks more fluently a more refined language. And if weare to credit what the evidence on which it rests hardly allows us todisbelieve, he has not only perception of things through other channelsthan the common organs of sense, but the sphere of his cognitionis amplified to an extent far beyond the limits to which sensibleperception is confined. This subject is one of the most perplexing inthe whole compass of philosophy; for, on the one hand, the phenomena areso remarkable that they cannot be believed, and yet, on the other, theyare of so unambiguous and palpable a character, and the witnesses totheir reality are so numerous, so intelligent, and so high above everysuspicion of deceit, that it is equally impossible to deny credit towhat is attested by such ample and un exceptionable evidence. "--Sir W. Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. Ii. P. 274. 

This perplexity, in which the distinguished philosopher leaves thejudgment so equally balanced that it finds it impossible to believe, andyet impossible to disbelieve, forms the right state of mind in whicha candid thinker should come to the examination of those moreextraordinary phenomena which he has not himself yet witnessed, butthe fair inquiry into which may be tendered to him by persons abovethe imputation of quackery and fraud. Muffler, who is not theleast determined, as he is certainly one of the most distinguished, disbelievers of mesmeric phenomena, does not appear to have witnessed, or at least to have carefully examined, them, or he would, perhaps, haveseen that even the more extraordinary of those phenomena confirm, ratherthan contradict, his own general theories, and may be explained by thesympathies one sense has with another, --"the laws of reflection throughthe medium of the brain. " (Physiology of the Senses, p. 1311. ) Andagain by the maxim "that the mental principle, or cause of the mentalphenomena, cannot be confined to the brain, but that it exists in alatent state in every part of the organism. " (Ibid. , p. 1355. ) The"nerve power, " contended for by Mr. Bain, also may suggest a rationalsolution of much that has seemed incredible to those physiologists whohave not condescended to sift the genuine phenomena of mesmerism fromthe imposture to which, in all ages, the phenomena exhibited by what maybe called the ecstatic temperament have been applied. 

(3) Descartes, L'Homme, vol. Iv. P. 345. Cousin's Edition. 

(4) Ibid. , p. 428. 

(5) Facts in Mesmerism. 

(6) La Magic et l'Astrologie dans l'Antiquitd et an Moyen-Age. Par L. F. Alfred Maury, Membre de Institut. P. 225. 

(7) "She had no illusions when within doors. "--Abercrombie, On theIntellectual Powers, p. 277. (15th Edition. )

(8) Muller, Physiology of the Senses, Baley's translation, pp. 1068-1395, and elsewhere. Mr. Bain, in his thoughtful and suggestivework on the "Senses and Intellect, " makes very powerful use of thesestatements in support of his proposition, which Faber advances in otherwords, namely, "the return of the nervous currents exactly on their oldtrack in revived sensations. "

(9) Perhaps it is for the reason suggested in the text, namely, that themagician requires the interposition of a third imagination betweenhis own and that of the consulting believer, that any learned adept in(so-called) magic will invariably refuse to exhibit without the presenceof a third person. Hence the author of "Dogme et Rituel de la HauteMagic, " printed at Parisy 1852-53--a book less remarkable for itslearning than for the earnest belief of a scholar of our own day in thereality of the art of which he records the history--insists much on thenecessity of rigidly observing Le Ternaire, in the number of persons whoassist in an enchanter's experiments. 

(10) I may add that Dr. Kerner instances the effect of laurel-berrieson the Seeress of Prevorst, corresponding with that asserted by JuliusFaber in the text. 

(11) See for these unguents the work of M. Maury, before quoted, "LaMagic et l'Astrologie, " etc. , p. 417. 

(12) It seems extremely doubtful whether the very few instances inwhich it has been asserted that a savage race has been found withoutrecognition of a Deity and a future state would bear searchingexamination. It is set forth, for example, in most of the popular workson Australia, that the Australian savages have no notion of a Deity ora Hereafter, that they only worship a devil, or evil spirit. Thisassumption, though made more peremptorily, and by a greater number ofwriters than any similar one regarding other savages, is altogethererroneous, and has no other foundation than the ignorance of thewriters. The Australian savages recognize a Deity, but He is too augustfor a name in their own language; in English they call Him the GreatMaster, --an expression synonymous with "The Great Lord. " They believein a hereafter of eternal joy, and place it amongst the stars. --SeeStrzelecki's Physical Description of New South Wales. 

(13) See the observations on La Place and La Marck in the Introductionto Kirby's "Bridgewater Treatise. "

CHAPTER LXXII. 

I turned back alone. The sun was reddening the summits of the distantmountain-range, but dark clouds, that portended rain, were gatheringbehind my way and deepening the shadows in many a chasm and hollow whichvolcanic fires had wrought on the surface of uplands undulating likediluvian billows fixed into stone in the midst of their stormy swell. Iwandered on and away from the beaten track, absorbed in thought. CouldI acknowledge in Julius Faber's conjectures any basis for logicalratiocination; or were they not the ingenious fancies of that empiricalPhilosophy of Sentiment by which the aged, in the decline of severerfaculties, sometimes assimilate their theories to the hazy romance ofyouth? I can well conceive that the story I tell will be regarded bymost as a wild and fantastic fable; that by some it may be considered avehicle for guesses at various riddles of Nature, without or withinus, which are free to the license of romance, though forbidden to thecaution of science. But, I--I--know unmistakably my own identity, myown positive place in a substantial universe. And beyond that knowledge, what do I know? Yet had Faber no ground for his startling parallelsbetween the chimeras of superstition and the alternatives to faithvolunteered by the metaphysical speculations of knowledge? On thetheorems of Condillac, I, in common with numberless contemporaneousstudents (for, in my youth, Condillac held sway in the schools, as now, driven forth from the schools, his opinions float loose through thetalk and the scribble of men of the world, who perhaps never opened hispage), --on the theorems of Condillac I had built up a system of thoughtdesigned to immure the swathed form of material philosophy from allrays and all sounds of a world not material, as the walls of some blindmausoleum shut out, from the mummy within, the whisper of winds and thegleaming of stars. 

And did not those very theorems, when carried out to their strict andcompleting results by the close reasonings of Hume, resolve my ownliving identity, the one conscious indivisible me, into a bundleof memories derived from the senses which had bubbled and duped myexperience, and reduce into a phantom, as spectral as that of theLuminous Shadow, the whole solid frame of creation?

While pondering these questions, the storm whose forewarnings I hadneglected to heed burst forth with all the suddenness peculiar to theAustralian climes. The rains descended like the rushing of floods. Inthe beds of watercourses, which, at noon, seemed dried up and exhausted, the torrents began to swell and to rave; the gray crags around them wereanimated into living waterfalls. I looked round, and the landscape wasas changed as a scene that replaces a scene on the player's stage. Iwas aware that I had wandered far from my home, and I knew not whatdirection I should take to regain it. Close at hand, and raised abovethe torrents that now rushed in many a gully and tributary creek, aroundand before me, the mouth of a deep cave, overgrown with bushes andcreeping flowers tossed wildly to and fro between the rain from aboveand the spray of cascades below, offered a shelter from the storm. I entered, --scaring innumerable flocks of bats striking against me, blinded by the glare of the lightning that followed me into the cavern, and hastening to resettle themselves on the pendants of stalactites, orthe jagged buttresses of primaeval wall. 

From time to time the lightning darted into the gloom and lingeredamongst its shadows; and I saw, by the flash, that the floors on which Istood were strewed with strange bones, some amongst them the fossilizedrelics of races destroyed by the Deluge. The rain continued for morethan two hours with unabated violence; then it ceased almost as suddenlyas it had come on, and the lustrous moon of Australia burst from theclouds shining bright as an English dawn, into the hollows of thecave. And then simultaneously arose all the choral songs of thewilderness, --creatures whose voices are heard at night, --the loud whirof the locusts, the musical boom of the bullfrog, the cuckoo note of themorepork, and, mournful amidst all those merrier sounds, the hoot of theowl, through the wizard she-oaks and the pale green of the gum-trees. 

I stepped forth into the open air and gazed, first instinctively on theheavens, next, with more heedful eye, upon the earth. The nature of thesoil bore the evidence of volcanic fires long since extinguished. Justbefore my feet, the rays fell full upon a bright yellow streak in theblock of quartz half imbedded in the soft moist soil. In the midst ofall the solemn thoughts and the intense sorrows which weighed upon heartand mind, that yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction remotefrom philosophy, quickened the heart to a beat that chimed with nohousehold affections. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck theblock with the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried habitually about me, forthe purpose of marking the trees that I wished to clear from the wasteof my broad domain. The quartz was shattered by the stroke, and leftdisburied its glittering treasure. My first glance had not deceived me. I, vain seeker after knowledge, had, at least, discovered gold. I tookup the bright metal--gold! I paused; I looked round; the land thatjust before had seemed to me so worthless took the value of Ophir. Itsfeatures had before been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and now my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled the rough mapof my possessions, the first careless ride round their boundaries. Yes, the land on which I stood--for miles, to the spur of those farthermountains--the land was mine, and, beneath its surface, there was gold!I closed my eyes; for some moments visions of boundless wealth, and ofthe royal power which such wealth could command, swept athwart my brain. But my heart rapidly settled back to its real treasure. "What matters, "I sighed, "all this dross? Could Ophir itself buy back to my Lilian'ssmile one ray of the light which gave 'glory to the grass and splendourto the flower'?"

So muttering, I flung the gold into the torrent that raged below, andwent on through the moonlight, sorrowing silently, --only thankful forthe discovery that had quickened my reminiscence of the landmarks bywhich to steer my way through the wilderness. 

The night was half gone, for even when I had gained the familiar trackthrough the pastures, the swell of the many winding creeks that nowintersected the way obliged me often to retrace my steps; to find, sometimes, the bridge of a felled tree which had been providently leftunremoved over the now foaming torrent, and, more than once, to swimacross the current, in which swimmers less strong or less practisedwould have been dashed down the falls, where loose logs and torn treeswent clattering and whirling: for I was in danger of life. A band ofthe savage natives were stealthily creeping on my track, --the nativesin those parts were not then so much awed by the white man as now. Aboomerang(1) had whirred by me, burying itself amongst the herbage closebefore my feet. I had turned, sought to find and to face these dastardlyfoes; they contrived to elude me. But when I moved on, my ear, sharpenedby danger, heard them moving, too, in my rear. Once only three hideousforms suddenly faced me, springing up from a thicket, all tangled withhoneysuckles and creepers of blue and vermilion. I walked steadily upto them. They halted a moment or so in suspense; but perhaps they werescared by my stature or awed by my aspect; and the Unfamiliar, thoughHuman, had terror for them, as the Unfamiliar, although but a Shadow, had had terror for me. They vanished, and as quickly as if they hadcrept into the earth. 

At length the air brought me the soft perfume of my well-known acacias, and my house stood before me, amidst English flowers and Englishfruit-trees, under the effulgent Australian moon. Just as I was openingthe little gate which gave access from the pastureland into the garden, a figure in white rose up from under light, feathery boughs, and a handwas laid on my arm. I started; but my surprise was changed into fearwhen I saw the pale face and sweet eyes of Lilian. 

"Heavens! you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, what is this?"

"Hush!" she whispered, clinging to me; "hush! do not tell: no one knows. I missed you when the storm came on; I have missed you ever since. Others went in search of you and came back. I could not sleep, but therest are sleeping, so I stole down to watch for you. Brother, brother, if any harm chanced to you, even the angels could not comfort me; allwould be dark, dark! But you are safe, safe, safe!" And she clung to meyet closer. 

"Ah, Lilian, Lilian, your vision in the hour I first beheld you wasindeed prophetic, --'each has need of the other. ' Do you remember?"

"Softly, softly, " she said, "let me think!" She stood quietly by myside, looking up into the sky, with all its numberless stars, and itssolitary moon now sinking slow behind the verge of the forest. "It comesback to me, " she murmured softly, --"the Long ago, --the sweet Long ago!"

I held my breath to listen. 

"There, there!" she resumed, pointing to the heavens; "do you see?You are there, and my father, and--and--Oh! that terrible face, thoseserpent eyes, the dead man's skull! Save me! save me!"

She bowed her head upon my bosom, and I led her gently back towardsthe house. As we gained the door which she had left open, the starlightshining across the shadowy gloom within, she lifted her face from mybreast, and cast a hurried fearful look round the shining garden, theninto the dim recess beyond the threshold. 

"It is there--there!--the Shadow that lured me on, whispering that ifI followed it I should join my beloved. False, dreadful Shadow! it willfade soon, --fade into the grinning horrible skull. Brother, brother, where is my Allen? Is he dead--dead--or is it I who am dead to him?"

I could but clasp her again to my breast, and seek to mantleher shivering form with my dripping garments, all the while myeyes--following the direction which hers had taken--dwelt on the wallsof the nook within the threshold, half lost in darkness, half white instarlight. And there I, too, beheld the haunting Luminous Shadow, thespectral effigies of the mysterious being, whose very existence in theflesh was a riddle unsolved by my reason. Distinctly I saw the Shadow, but its light was far paler, its outline far more vague, than when Ihad beheld it before. I took courage, as I felt Lilian's heart beatingagainst my own. I advanced, I crossed the threshold, --the Shadow wasgone. 

"There is no Shadow here, --no phantom to daunt thee, my life's life, "said I, bending over Lilian. 

"It has touched me in passing; I feel it--cold, cold, cold!" sheanswered faintly. 

I bore her to her room, placed her on her bed, struck a light, watchedover her. At dawn there was a change in her face, and from thattime health gradually left her; strength slowly, slowly, yet to meperceptibly, ebbed from her life away. 

(1) A missile weapon peculiar to the Australian savages. 

CHAPTER LXXIII. 

Months upon months have rolled on since the night in which Lilian hadwatched for my coming amidst the chilling airs--under the haunting moon. I have said that from the date of that night her health began graduallyto fail, but in her mind there was evidently at work some slowrevolution. Her visionary abstractions were less frequent; when theyoccurred, less prolonged. There was no longer in her soft face thatcelestial serenity which spoke her content in her dreams, but often alook of anxiety and trouble. She was even more silent than before; butwhen she did speak, there were now evident some struggling gleams ofmemory. She startled us, at times, by a distinct allusion to theevents and scenes of her early childhood. More than once she spokeof commonplace incidents and mere acquaintances at L----. At lastshe seemed to recognize Mrs. Ashleigh as her mother; but me, as AllenFenwick, her betrothed, her bridegroom, no! Once or twice she spoketo me of her beloved as of a stranger to myself, and asked me not todeceive her--should she ever see him again? There was one change inthis new phase of her state that wounded me to the quick. She hadalways previously seemed to welcome my presence; now there were hours, sometimes days together, in which my presence was evidently painful toher. She would become agitated when I stole into her room, make signs tome to leave her, grow yet more disturbed if I did not immediately obey, and become calm again when I was gone. 

Faber sought constantly to sustain my courage and administer to my hopesby reminding me of the prediction he had hazarded, --namely, that throughsome malady to the frame the reason would be ultimately restored. 

He said, "Observe! her mind was first roused from its slumber by theaffectionate, unconquered impulse of her heart. You were absent; thestorm alarmed her, she missed you, --feared for you. The love withinher, not alienated, though latent, drew her thoughts into definitehuman tracks. And thus, the words that you tell me she uttered whenyou appeared before her were words of love, stricken, though as yetirregularly, as the winds strike the harp-strings from chords ofawakened memory. The same unwonted excitement, together with lengthenedexposure to the cold night-air, will account for the shock to herphysical system, and the languor and waste of strength by which it hasbeen succeeded. "

"Ay, and the Shadow that we both saw within the threshold. What ofthat?"

"Are there no records on evidence, which most physicians of veryextended practice will perhaps allow that their experience more orless tend to confirm--no records of the singular coincidences betweenindividual impressions which are produced by sympathy? Now, whether youor your Lilian were first haunted by this Shadow I know not. Perhapsbefore it appeared to you in the wizard's chamber it had appeared toher by the Monks' Well. Perhaps, as it came to you in the prison, so itlured her through the solitudes, associating its illusory guidance withdreams of you. And again, when she saw it within your threshold, yourfantasy, so abruptly invoked, made you see with the eyes of your Lilian!Does this doctrine of sympathy, though by that very mystery you twoloved each other at first, --though, without it, love at first sight werein itself an incredible miracle, --does, I say, this doctrine of sympathyseem to you inadmissible? Then nothing is left for us but to revolve theconjecture I before threw out. Have certain organizations like that ofMargrave the power to impress, through space, the imaginations of thoseover whom they have forced a control? I know not. But if they have, itis not supernatural; it is but one of those operations in Nature so rareand exceptional, and of which testimony and evidence are so imperfectand so liable to superstitious illusions, that they have not yet beentraced--as, if truthful, no doubt they can be, by the patient genius ofscience--to one of those secondary causes by which the Creator ordainsthat Nature shall act on Man. "

By degrees I became dissatisfied with my conversations with Faber. Iyearned for explanations; all guesses but bewildered me more. In hisfamily, with one exception, I found no congenial association. His nephewseemed to me an ordinary specimen of a very trite human nature, --a youngman of limited ideas, fair moral tendencies, going mechanically rightwhere not tempted to wrong. The same desire of gain which had urged himto gamble and speculate when thrown in societies rife with such example, led him, now in the Bush, to healthful, industrious, persevering labour. "Spes fovet agricolas, " says the poet; the same Hope which enticesthe fish to the hook impels the plough of the husband-man. Theyoung farmer's young wife was somewhat superior to him; she had morerefinement of taste, more culture of mind, but, living in his life, shewas inevitably levelled to his ends and pursuits; and, next to the babein the cradle, no object seemed to her so important as that of guardingthe sheep from the scab and the dingoes. I was amazed to see how quietlya man whose mind was so stored by life and by books as that of JuliusFaber--a man who had loved the clash of conflicting intellects, andacquired the rewards of fame--could accommodate himself to the cabinedrange of his kinsfolks' half-civilized existence, take interest in theirtrivial talk, find varying excitement in the monotonous household of apeasant-like farmer. I could not help saying as much to him once. "Myfriend, " replied the old man, "believe me that the happiest art ofintellect, however lofty, is that which enables it to be cheerfully athome with the Real!"

The only one of the family in which Faber was domesticated in whom Ifound an interest, to whose talk I could listen without fatigue, was thechild Amy. Simple though she was in language, patient of labour as themost laborious, I recognized in her a quiet nobleness of sentiment, which exalted above the commonplace the acts of her commonplace life. She had no precocious intellect, no enthusiastic fancies, but she had anexquisite activity of heart. It was her heart that animated her senseof duty, and made duty a sweetness and a joy. She felt to the corethe kindness of those around her; exaggerated, with the warmth of hergratitude, the claims which that kindness imposed. Even for the blessingof life, which she shared with all creation, she felt as if singledout by the undeserved favour of the Creator, and thus was filled withreligion, because she was filled with love. 

My interest in this child was increased and deepened by my saddened andnot wholly unremorseful remembrance of the night on which her sobs hadpierced my ear, --the night from which I secretly dated the mysteriousagencies that had wrenched from their proper field and career both mymind and my life. But a gentler interest endeared her to my thoughtsin the pleasure that Lilian felt in her visits, in the affectionateintercourse that sprang up between the afflicted sufferer and theharmless infant. Often when we failed to comprehend some meaningwhich Lilian evidently wished to convey to us--we, her mother and herhusband--she was understood with as much ease by Amy, the unletteredchild, as by Faber, the gray-haired thinker. 

"How is it, --how is it?" I asked, impatiently and jealously, of Faber. "Love is said to interpret where wisdom fails, and you yourself talkof the marvels which sympathy may effect between lover and beloved; yetwhen, for days together, I cannot succeed in unravelling Lilian's wishor her thought--and her own mother is equally in fault--you orAmy, closeted alone with her for five minutes, comprehend and arecomprehended. "

"Allen, " answered Faber, "Amy and I believe in spirit; and she, in whommind is dormant but spirit awake, feels in such belief a sympathy whichshe has not, in that respect, with yourself, nor even with her mother. You seek only through your mind to conjecture hers. Her mother has senseclear enough where habitual experience can guide it, but that sense isconfused, and forsakes her when forced from the regular pathway in whichit has been accustomed to tread. Amy and I through soul guess at soul, and though mostly contented with earth, we can both rise at times intoheaven. We pray. "

"Alas!" said I, half mournfully, half angrily, "when you thus speak ofMind as distinct from Soul, it was only in that Vision which you bidme regard as the illusion of a fancy stimulated by chemical vapours, producing on the brain an effect similar to that of opium or theinhalation of the oxide gas, that I have ever seen the silver spark ofthe Soul distinct from the light of the Mind. And holding, as I do, thatall intellectual ideas are derived from the experiences of the body, whether I accept the theory of Locke, or that of Condillac, or that intowhich their propositions reach their final development in the wonderfulsubtlety of Hume, I cannot detect the immaterial spirit in the materialsubstance, --much less follow its escape from the organic matter in whichthe principle of thought ceases with the principle of life. When themetaphysician, contending for the immortality of the thinking faculty, analyzes Mind, his analysis comprehends the mind of the brute, nay, ofthe insect, as well as that of man. Take Reid's definition of Mind, asthe most comprehensive which I can at the moment remember: 'By the mindof a man we understand that in him which thinks, remembers, reasons, andwills. (1) But this definition only distinguishes the mind of man fromthat of the brute by superiority in the same attributes, and not byattributes denied to the brute. An animal, even an insect, thinks, remembers, reasons, and wills. (1) Few naturalists will now support thedoctrine that all the mental operations of brute or insect are tobe exclusively referred to instincts; and, even if they do, the word'instinct' is a very vague word, --loose and large enough to cover anabyss which our knowledge has not sounded. And, indeed, in proportion asan animal like the dog becomes cultivated by intercourse, his instinctsgrow weaker, and his ideas formed by experience (namely, his mind), moredeveloped, often to the conquest of the instincts themselves. Hence, with his usual candour, Dr. Abercrombie--in contending 'that everythingmental ceases to exist after death, when we know that everythingcorporeal continues to exist, is a gratuitous assumption contrary toevery rule of philosophical inquiry'--feels compelled, by his reasoning, to admit the probability of a future life even to the lower animals. His words are: 'To this anode of reasoning it has been objected that itwould go to establish an immaterial principle in the lower animals whichin them exhibits many of the phenomena of mind. I have only to answer, Be it so. There are in the lower animals many of the phenomena ofmind, and with regard to these, we also contend that they are entirelydistinct from anything we know of the properties of matter, which is allthat we mean, or can mean, by being immaterial. '(2) Am I then driven toadmit that if man's mind is immaterial and imperishable, so also is thatof the ape and the ant?"

"I own, " said Faber, with his peculiar smile, arch and genial, "that ifI were compelled to make that admission, it would not shock my pride. I do not presume to set any limit to the goodness of the Creator; andshould be as humbly pleased as the Indian, if in--

 "'yonder sky, My faithful dog should bear me company. '

"You are too familiar with the works of that Titan in wisdom and error, Descartes, not to recollect the interesting correspondence between theurbane philosopher and our combative countryman, Henry More, (3) on thisvery subject; in which certainly More has the best of it when Descartesinsists on reducing what he calls the soul (l'ame) of brutes into thesame kind of machines as man constructs from inorganized matter. Thelearning, indeed, lavished on the insoluble question involved inthe psychology of the inferior animals is a proof at least of theall-inquisitive, redundant spirit of man. (4) We have almost a literaturein itself devoted to endeavours to interpret the language of brutes. (5)Dupont de Nemours has discovered that dogs talk in vowels, using onlytwo consonants, G, Z, when they are angry. He asserts that catsemploy the same vowels as dogs; but their language is more affluent inconsonants, including M, N, B, R, V, F. How many laborious efforts havebeen made to define and to construe the song of the nightingale! Oneversion of that song, by Beckstein, the naturalist, published in 1840, I remember to have seen. And I heard a lady, gifted with a singularlycharming voice, chant the mysterious vowels with so exquisite a pathos, that one could not refuse to believe her when she declared that shefully comprehended the bird's meaning, and gave to the nightingale'swarble the tender interpretation of her own woman's heart. 

"But leaving all such discussions to their proper place amongst theCuriosities of Literature, I come in earnest to the question you haveso earnestly raised; and to me the distinction between man and thelower animals in reference to a spiritual nature designed for a futureexistence, and the mental operations whose uses are bounded to anexistence on earth, seems ineffaceably clear. Whether ideas or evenperceptions be innate or all formed by experience is a speculationfor metaphysicians, which, so far as it affects the question of asimmaterial principle, I am quite willing to lay aside. I can wellunderstand that a materialist may admit innate ideas in Man, as hemust admit them in the instinct of brutes, tracing them to hereditarypredispositions. On the other hand, we know that the most devoutbelievers in our spiritual nature have insisted, with Locke, in denyingany idea, even of the Deity, to be innate. 

"But here comes my argument. I care not how ideas are formed, --thematerial point is, how are the capacities to receive ideas formed? Theideas may all come from experience, but the capacity to receive theideas must be inherent. I take the word 'capacity' as a good plainEnglish word, rather than the more technical word 'receptivity, 'employed by Kant. And by capacity I mean the passive power(6) toreceive ideas, whether in man or in any living thing by which ideasare received. A man and an elephant is each formed with capacities toreceive ideas suited to the several places in the universe held by each. 

"The more I look through Nature the more I find that on all varietiesof organized life is carefully bestowed the capacity to receive theimpressions, be they called perceptions or ideas, which are adapted tothe uses each creature is intended to derive from them. I find, then, that Man alone is endowed with the capacity to receive the ideas ofa God, of Soul, of Worship, of a Hereafter. I see no trace of such acapacity in the inferior races; nor, however their intelligence may berefined by culture, is such capacity ever apparent in them. 

"But wherever capacities to receive impressions are sufficiently generalin any given species of creature to be called universal to that species, and yet not given to another species, then, from all analogy throughoutNature, those capacities are surely designed by Providence for thedistinct use and conservation of the species to which they are given. 

"It is no answer to me to say that the inherent capacities thus bestowedon Man do not suffice in themselves to make him form right notions ofa Deity or a Hereafter; because it is plainly the design of Providencethat Man must learn to correct and improve all his notions by hisown study and observation. He must build a hut before he can build aParthenon; he must believe with the savage or the heathen before hecan believe with the philosopher or Christian. In a word, in all hiscapacities, Man has only given to him, not the immediate knowledge ofthe Perfect, but the means to strive towards the Perfect. And thus oneof the most accomplished of modern reasoners, to whose lectures you musthave listened with delight, in your college days, says well:--

 "'Accordingly the sciences always studied with keenest interest are those in a state of progress and uncertainty; absolute certainty and absolute completion would be the paralysis of any study, and the last worst calamity that could befall Man, as he is at present constituted, would be that full and final possession of speculative truth which he now vainly anticipates as the consummation of his intellectual happiness. '(7)

"Well, then, in all those capacities for the reception of impressionsfrom external Nature which are given to Man and not to the brutes, I seethe evidence of Man's Soul. I can understand why the inferior animalhas no capacity to receive the idea of a Deity and of Worship--simplybecause the inferior animal, even if graciously admitted to a futurelife, may not therein preserve the sense of its identity. I canunderstand even why that sympathy with each other which we men possessand which constitutes the great virtue we emphatically call Humanity, is not possessed by the lesser animals (or, at least, in a very rare andexceptional degree) even where they live in communities, like beavers, or bees, or ants; because men are destined to meet, to know, and to loveeach other in the life to come, and the bond between the brute ceaseshere. 

"Now the more, then, we examine the inherent capacities bestoweddistinctly and solely on Man, the more they seem to distinguish him fromthe other races by their comprehension of objects beyond his life uponthis earth. 

 "'Man alone, ' says Muller, 'can conceive abstract notions; and it is in abstract notions--such as time, space, matter, spirit, light, form, quantity, essence--that man grounds, not only all philosophy, all science, but all that practically improves one generation for the benefit of the next. '

"And why? Because all these abstract notions unconsciously lead the mindaway from the material into the immaterial, --from the present into thefuture. But if Man ceases to exist when he disappears in the grave, youmust be compelled to affirm that he is the only creature in existencewhom Nature or Providence has condescended to deceive and cheat bycapacities for which there are no available objects. How nobly and howtruly has Chalmers said:--

 "'What inference shall we draw from this remarkable law in Nature that there is nothing waste and nothing meaningless in the feelings and faculties wherewith living creatures are endowed? For each desire there is a counterpart object; for each faculty there is room and opportunity for exercise either in the present or the coming futurity. Now, but for the doctrine of immortality, Man would be an exception to this law, -he would stand forth as an anomaly in Nature, with aspirations in his heart for which the universe had no antitype to offer, with capacities of understanding and thought that never were to be followed by objects of corresponding greatness through the whole history of his being!

 . .. .. .. .. .. . 

 "'With the inferior animals there is a certain squareness of adjustment, if we may so term it, between each desire and its correspondent gratification. The one is evenly met by the other, and there is a fulness and definiteness of enjoyment up to the capacity of enjoyment. Not so with Man, who, both from the vastness of his propensities and the vastness of his powers, feels himself chained and beset in a field too narrow for him. He alone labours under the discomfort of an incongruity between his circumstances and his powers; and unless there be new circumstances awaiting him in a more advanced state of being, he, the noblest of Nature's products here, would turn out to be the greatest of her failures. '(8)

"This, then, I take to be the proof of Soul in Man, not that he has amind--because, as you justly say, inferior animals have that, thoughin a lesser degree--but because he has the capacities to comprehend, assoon as he is capable of any abstract ideas whatsoever, the very truthsnot needed for self-conservation on earth, and therefore not given toyonder ox and opossum, --namely, the nature of Deity, Soul, Hereafter. And in the recognition of these truths, the Human society, that excelsthe society of beavers, bees, and ants, by perpetual and progressiveimprovement on the notions inherited from its progenitors, rests itsbasis. Thus, in fact, this world is benefited for men by their beliefin the next, while the society of brutes remains age after age the same. Neither the bee nor the beaver has, in all probability, improved sincethe Deluge. 

"But inseparable from the conviction of these truths is the impulse ofprayer and worship. It does not touch my argument when a philosopher ofthe school of Bolingbroke or Lucretius says, 'that the origin of prayeris in Man's ignorance of the phenomena of Nature. ' That it is fear orignorance which, 'when rocked the mountains or when groaned the ground, taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray. ' My answer is, the brutesare much more forcibly impressed by natural phenomena than Man is; thebird and the beast know before you and I do when the mountain will rockand the ground groan, and their instinct leads them to shelter; but itdoes not lead them to prayer. If my theory be right that Soul is to besought not in the question whether mental ideas be innate or formed byexperience, by the sense, by association or habit, but in the inherentcapacity to receive ideas, then, the capacity bestowed on Man alone, to be impressed by Nature herself with the idea of a Power superior toNature, with which Power he can establish commune, is a proof that toMan alone the Maker has made Nature itself proclaim His existence, --thatto Man alone the Deity vouchsafes the communion with Himself which comesfrom prayer. "

"Even were this so, " said I, "is not the Creator omniscient? Ifall-wise, all-foreseeing? If all-foreseeing, all-pre-ordaining? Can theprayer of His creature alter the ways of His will?"

"For the answer to a question, " returned Faber, "which is notunfrequently asked by the clever men of the world, I ought to refer youto the skilled theologians who have so triumphantly carried the reasonerover that ford of doubt which is crossed every day by the infant. Butas we have not their books in the wilderness, I am contented to draw myreply as a necessary and logical sequence from the propositions I havesought to ground on the plain observation of Nature. I can only guessat the Deity's Omniscience, or His modes of enforcing His power by theobservation of His general laws; and of all His laws, I know of nonemore general than the impulse which bids men pray, --which makes Natureso act, that all the phenomena of Nature we can conceive, howeverstartling and inexperienced, do not make the brute pray, but thereis not a trouble that can happen to Man, but what his impulse is topray, --always provided, indeed, that he is not a philosopher. I say notthis in scorn of the philosopher, to whose wildest guess our obligationsare infinite, but simply because for all which is impulsive to Man, there is a reason in Nature which no philosophy can explain away. I donot, then, bewilder myself by seeking to bind and limit the Omniscienceof the Deity to my finite ideas. I content myself with supposing thatsomehow or other, He has made it quite compatible with His Omnisciencethat Man should obey the impulse which leads him to believe that, inaddressing a Deity, he is addressing a tender, compassionate, benignantFather, and in that obedience shall obtain beneficial results. If thatimpulse be an illusion, then we must say that Heaven governs the earthby a lie; and that is impossible, because, reasoning by analogy, allNature is truthful, --that is, Nature gives to no species instinctsor impulses which are not of service to it. Should I not be a shallowphysician if, where I find in the human organization a principle ora property so general that I must believe it normal to the healthfulconditions of that organization, I should refuse to admit that Natureintended it for use? Reasoning by all analogy, must I not say thehabitual neglect of its use must more or less injure the harmoniouswell-being of the whole human system? I could have much to add uponthe point in dispute by which the creed implied in your question wouldenthrall the Divine mercy by the necessities of its Divine wisdom, andsubstitute for a benignant Deity a relentless Fate. But here I shouldexceed my province. I am no theologian. Enough for me that in allmy afflictions, all my perplexities, an impulse, that I obey as aninstinct, moves me at once to prayer. Do I find by experience that theprayer is heard, that the affliction is removed, the doubt is solved?That, indeed, would be presumptuous to say. But it is not presumptuousto think that by the efficacy of prayer my heart becomes more fortifiedagainst the sorrow, and my reason more serene amidst the doubt. "

I listened, and ceased to argue. I felt as if in that solitude, andin the pause of my wonted mental occupations, my intellect was growinglanguid, and its old weapons rusting in disuse. My pride took alarm. Ihad so from my boyhood cherished the idea of fame, and so glorified thesearch after knowledge, that I recoiled in dismay from the thought thatI had relinquished knowledge, and cut myself off from fame. I resolvedto resume my once favourite philosophical pursuits, re-examine andcomplete the Work to which I had once committed my hopes of renown; and, simultaneously, a restless desire seized me to communicate, though butat brief intervals, with other minds than those immediately within myreach, --minds fresh from the old world, and reviving the memories ofits vivid civilization. Emigrants frequently passed my doors, but I hadhitherto shrunk from tendering the hospitalities so universally accordedin the colony. I could not endure to expose to such rough strangers myLilian's mournful affliction, and that thought was not less intolerableto Mrs. Ashleigh. I now hastily constructed a log-building a few hundredyards from the house, and near the main track taken by travellersthrough the spacious pastures. I transported to this building my booksand scientific instruments. In an upper story I placed my telescopes andlenses, my crucibles and retorts. I renewed my chemical experiments; Isought to invigorate my mind by other branches of science which I hadhitherto less cultured, --meditated new theories on Light and Colour, collected specimens in Natural History, subjected animalcules to mymicroscope, geological fossils to my hammer. With all these quickenedoccupations of thought, I strove to distract myself from sorrow, andstrengthen my reason against the illusion of my fantasy. The LuminousShadow was not seen again on my wall, and the thought of Margravehimself was banished. 

In this building I passed many hours of each day; more and moreearnestly plunging my thoughts into depths of abstract study, asLilian's unaccountable dislike to my presence became more and moredecided. When I thus ceased to think that my life cheered and comfortedhers, my heart's occupation was gone. I had annexed to the apartmentreserved for myself in the log-hut a couple of spare rooms, in which Icould accommodate passing strangers. I learned to look forward to theircoming with interest, and to see them depart with regret; yet, forthe most part, they were of the ordinary class of colonialadventurers, --bankrupt tradesmen, unlucky farmers, forlorn mechanics, hordes of unskilled labourers, now and then a briefless barrister, or asporting collegian who had lost his all on the Derby. One day, however, a young man of education and manners that unmistakably proclaimed thecultured gentleman of Europe, stopped at my door. He was a cadet ofa noble Prussian family, which for some political reasons had settleditself in Paris; there he had become intimate with young French nobles, and living the life of a young French noble had soon scandalized hisGerman parents, forestalled his slender inheritance, and been compelledto fly his father's frown and his tailor's bills. All this he told mewith a lively frankness which proved how much the wit of a German canbe quickened in the atmosphere of Paris. An old college friend, of birthinferior to his own, had been as unfortunate in seeking to make money asthis young prodigal had been an adept in spending it. The friend, afew years previously, had accompanied other Germans in a migration toAustralia, and was already thriving; the spendthrift noble was on hisway to join the bankrupt trader, at a German settlement fifty milesdistant from my house. This young man was unlike any German I ever met. He had all the exquisite levity by which the well-bred Frenchman givesto the doctrines of the Cynic the grace of the Epicurean. He ownedhimself to be good for nothing with an elegance of candour which notonly disarmed censure, but seemed to challenge admiration; and, withal, the happy spendthrift was so inebriate with hope, --sure that he shouldbe rich before he was thirty. How and wherefore rich, he could haveno more explained than I can square the circle. When the grand seriousGerman nature does Frenchify itself, it can become so extravagantlyFrench!

I listened, almost enviously, to this light-hearted profligate's babble, as we sat by my rude fireside, --I, sombre man of science and sorrow, he, smiling child of idleness and pleasure, so much one of Nature'scourtier-like nobles, that there, as he smoked his villanous pipe, inhis dust-soiled shabby garments, and with his ruffianly revolver stuckinto his belt, I would defy the daintiest Aristarch who ever presided ascritic over the holiday world not to have said, "There smiles thegenius beyond my laws, the born darling of the Graces, who in everycircumstance, in every age, like Aristippus, would have sociallycharmed; would have been welcome to the orgies of a Caesar or a Clodius, to the boudoirs of a Montespan or a Pompadour; have lounged through theMulberry Gardens with a Rochester and a Buckingham, or smiled from thedeath-cart, with a Richelieu and a Lauzun, a gentleman's disdain of amob!"

I was so thinking as we sat, his light talk frothing up from hiscareless lips, when suddenly from the spray and the sparkle of thatlight talk was flung forth the name of Margrave. 

"Margrave!" I exclaimed. "Pardon me. What of him?"

"What of him! I asked if, by chance, you knew the only Englishman I everhad the meanness to envy?"

"Perhaps you speak of one person, and I thought of another. "

"Pardieu, my dear host, there can scarcely be two Margraves! The one ofwhom I speak flashed like a meteor upon Paris, bought from a prince ofthe Bourse a palace that might have lodged a prince of the blood-royal, eclipsed our Jew bankers in splendour, our jeunesse doree in good looksand hair-brain adventures, and, strangest of all, filled his salons withphilosophers and charlatans, chemists and spirit-rappers; insulting thegravest dons of the schools by bringing them face to face with the mostimpudent quacks, the most ridiculous dreamers, --and yet, withal, himselfso racy and charming, so bon prince, so bon enfant! For six months hewas the rage at Paris: perhaps he might have continued to be the ragethere for six years, but all at once the meteor vanished as suddenly asit had flashed. Is this the Margrave whom you know?"

"I should not have thought the Margrave whom I knew could havereconciled his tastes to the life of cities. "

"Nor could this man: cities were too tame for him. He has gone to somefar-remote wilds in the East, --some say in search of the Philosopher'sStone; for he actually maintained in his house a Sicilian adventurer, who, when at work on that famous discovery, was stifled by the fumes ofhis own crucible. After that misfortune, Margrave took Paris in disgust, and we lost him. "

"So this is the only Englishman whom you envy! Envy him? Why?"

"Because he is the only Englishman I ever met who contrived to be richand yet free from the spleen; I envied him because one had only to lookat his face and see how thoroughly he enjoyed the life of which yourcountrymen seem to be so heartily tired. But now that I have satisfiedyour curiosity, pray satisfy mine. Who and what is this Englishman?"

"Who and what was he supposed at Paris to be?"

"Conjectures were numberless. One of your countrymen suggested thatwhich was the most generally favoured. This gentleman, whose name Iforget, but who was one of those old roues who fancy themselves youngbecause they live with the young, no sooner set eyes upon Margrave, thanhe exclaimed, 'Louis Grayle come to life again, as I saw him forty-fouryears ago! But no--still younger, still handsomer--it must be his son!"

"Louis Grayle, who was said to be murdered at Aleppo?"

"The same. That strange old man was enormously rich; but it seems thathe hated his lawful heirs, and left behind him a fortune so far belowthat which he was known to possess that he must certainly have disposedof it secretly before his death. Why so dispose of it, if not to enrichsome natural son, whom, for private reasons, he might not have wishedto acknowledge, or point out to the world by the signal bequest ofhis will? All that Margrave ever said of himself and the source of hiswealth confirmed this belief. He frankly proclaimed himself a naturalson, enriched by a father whose name he knew not nor cared to know. "

"It is true. And Margrave quitted Paris for the East. When?"

"I can tell you the date within a day or two, for his flight precededmine by a week; and, happily, all Paris was so busy in talking of it, that I slipped away without notice. "

And the Prussian then named a date which it thrilled me to hear, forit was in that very month, and about that very day, that the LuminousShadow had stood within my threshold. 

The young count now struck off into other subjects of talk: nothing morewas said of Margrave. An hour or two afterwards he went on his way, andI remained long gazing musingly on the embers of the dying glow on myhearth. 

(1) "Are intelligence and instinct, thus differing in their relativeproportion in man as compared with all other animals, yet the same inkind and manner of operation in both? To this question we must giveat once an affirmative answer. The expression of Cuvier, regarding thefaculty of reasoning in lower animals, 'Leur intelligence execute desoperations du meme genre, ' is true in its full sense. We can in nomanner define reason so as to exclude acts which are at every momentpresent to our observation, and which we find in many instances tocontravene the natural instincts of the species. The demeanour and actsof the dog in reference to his master, or the various uses to whichhe is put by man, are as strictly logical as those we witness in theordinary transactions of life. "--Sir Henry Holland, chapters on "MentalPhysiology, " p. 220. 

The whole of the chapter on Instincts and Habits in this work shouldbe read in connection with the passage just quoted. The work itself, atonce cautious and suggestive, is not one of the least obligations whichphilosophy and religion alike owe to the lucubrations of English medicalmen. 

(2) Abercrombie's Intellectual Powers, p. 26. (15th Edition. )

(3) OEuvres de Descartes, vol. X. P. 178, et seq. (Cousin's Edition. )

(4) M. Tissot the distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Dijon, in hisrecent work, "La Vie dans l'Homme, " p. 255, gives a long and illustriouslist of philosophers who assign a rational soul (ame) to the inferioranimals, though he truly adds, "that they have not always the courage oftheir opinion. "

(5) Some idea of the extent of research and imagination bestowed on thissubject may be gleaned from the sprightly work of Pierquin de Gemblouz, "Idiomologie des Animaux, " published at Paris, 1844. 

(6) "Faculty is active power: capacity is passive power. "--Sir W. Hamilton: Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic, vol. I. P. 178. 

(7) Sir W. Hamilton's "Lectures, " vol. I. P. 10. 

(8) Chalmers, "Bridgewater Treatise, " vol. Ii. Pp. 28, 30. Perhaps Ishould observe, that here and elsewhere in the dialogues between Faberand Fenwick, it has generally been thought better to substitute thewords of the author quoted for the mere outline or purport of thequotation which memory afforded to the interlocutor. 

CHAPTER LXXIV. 

My Work, my Philosophical Work-the ambitious hope of my intellectuallife--how eagerly I returned to it again! Far away from my householdgrief, far away from my haggard perplexities--neither a Lilian nor aMargrave there!

As I went over what I had before written, each link in its chain ofreasoning seemed so serried, that to alter one were to derange all; andthe whole reasoning was so opposed to the possibility of the wonders Imyself had experienced, so hostile to the subtle hypotheses of a Faber, or the childlike belief of an Amy, that I must have destroyed the entirework if I had admitted such contradictions to its design!

But the work was I myself!--I, in my solid, sober, healthful mind, before the brain had been perplexed by a phantom. Were phantoms to beallowed as testimonies against science? No; in returning to my Book, Ireturned to my former Me!

How strange is that contradiction between our being as man and our beingas Author! Take any writer enamoured of a system: a thousand things mayhappen to him every day which might shake his faith in that system;and while he moves about as mere man, his faith is shaken. But when hesettles himself back into the phase of his being as author, the mere actof taking pen in hand and smoothing the paper before him restores hisspeculations to their ancient mechanical train. The system, the belovedsystem, reasserts its tyrannic sway, and he either ignores, or mouldsinto fresh proofs of his theory as author, all which, an hour before, had given his theory the lie in his living perceptions as man. 

I adhered to my system, --I continued my work. Here, in the barbarousdesert, was a link between me and the Cities of Europe. All else mightbreak down under me. The love I had dreamed of was blotted out from theworld, and might never be restored; my heart might be lonely, my life bean exile's. My reason might, at last, give way before the spectres whichawed my senses, or the sorrow which stormed my heart. But here at leastwas a monument of my rational thoughtful Me, --of my individualizedidentity in multiform creation. And my mind, in the noon of its force, would shed its light on the earth when my form was resolved to itselements. Alas! in this very yearning for the Hereafter, though but theHereafter of a Name, could I see only the craving of Mind, and hear notthe whisper of Soul!

The avocation of a colonist, usually so active, had little interest forme. This vast territorial lordship, in which, could I have endeared itspossession by the hopes that animate a Founder, I should have felt allthe zest and the pride of ownership, was but the run of a common to thepassing emigrant, who would leave no son to inherit the tardy productsof his labour. I was not goaded to industry by the stimulus of need. I could only be ruined if I risked all my capital in the attempt toimprove. I lived, therefore, amongst my fertile pastures, as careless ofculture as the English occupant of the Highland moor, which he rents forthe range of its solitudes. 

I knew, indeed, that if ever I became avaricious, I might swell mymodest affluence into absolute wealth. I had revisited the spot in whichI had discovered the nugget of gold, and had found the precious metalin rich abundance just under the first coverings of the alluvial soil. I concealed my discovery from all. I knew that, did I proclaim it, thecharm of my bush-life would be gone. My fields would be infested by allthe wild adventurers who gather to gold as the vultures of prey rounda carcass; my servants would desert me, my very flocks would beshepherdless!

Months again rolled on months. I had just approached the close of mybeloved Work, when it was again suspended, and by an anguish keener thanall which I had previously known. 

Lilian became alarmingly ill. Her state of health, long graduallydeclining, had hitherto admitted checkered intervals of improvement, andexhibited no symptoms of actual danger. But now she was seized with akind of chronic fever, attended with absolute privation of sleep, an aversion to even the lightest nourishment, and an acute nervoussusceptibility to all the outward impressions of which she had longseemed so unconscious; morbidly alive to the faintest sound, shrinkingfrom the light as from a torture. Her previous impatience at my entranceinto her room became aggravated into vehement emotions, convulsiveparoxysms of distress; so that Faber banished me from her chamber, and, with a heart bleeding at every fibre, I submitted to the cruel sentence. 

Faber had taken up his abode in my house and brought Amy with him; oneor the other never left Lilian, night or day. The great physician spokedoubtfully of the case, but not despairingly. 

"Remember, " he said, "that in spite of the want of sleep, the abstinencefrom food, the form has not wasted as it would do were this feverinevitably mortal. It is upon that phenomenon I build a hope that I havenot been mistaken in the opinion I hazarded from the first. We are nowin the midst of the critical struggle between life and reason; if shepreserve the one, my conviction is that she will regain the other. That seeming antipathy to yourself is a good omen. You are inseparablyassociated with her intellectual world; in proportion as she revives toit, must become vivid and powerful the reminiscences of the shock thatannulled, for a time, that world to her. So I welcome, rather than fear, the over-susceptibility of the awakening senses to external sightsand sounds. A few days will decide if I am right. In this climate theprogress of acute maladies is swift, but the recovery from them is yetmore startlingly rapid. Wait, endure, be prepared to submit to the willof Heaven; but do not despond of its mercy. "

I rushed away from the consoler, --away into the thick of the forests, the heart of the solitude. All around me, there, was joyous with life;the locust sang amidst the herbage; the cranes gambolled on the banks ofthe creek; the squirrel-like opossums frolicked on the feathery boughs. "And what, " said I to myself, --"what if that which seems so fabulous inthe distant being whose existence has bewitched my own, be substantiallytrue? What if to some potent medicament Margrave owes his gloriousvitality, his radiant youth? Oh, that I had not so disdainfully turnedaway from his hinted solicitations--to what?--to nothing guiltierthan lawful experiment. Had I been less devoted a bigot to this vainschoolcraft, which we call the Medical Art, and which, alone in thisage of science, has made no perceptible progress since the days ofits earliest teachers--had I said, in the true humility of genuineknowledge, 'these alchemists were men of genius and thought; we owe tothem nearly all the grand hints of our chemical science, --is it likelythat they would have been wholly drivellers and idiots in the one faiththey clung to the most?'--had I said that, I might now have no fearof losing my Lilian. Why, after all, should there not be in Nature oneprimary essence, one master substance; in which is stored the specificnutriment of life?"

Thus incoherently muttering to the woods what my pride of reason wouldnot have suffered me gravely to say to my fellow-men, I fatigued mytormented spirits into a gloomy calm, and mechanically retraced mysteps at the decline of day. I seated myself at the door of my solitarylog-hut, lean ing my cheek upon my hand, and musing. Wearily I lookedup, roused by a discord of clattering hoofs and lumbering wheels on thehollow-sounding grass-track. A crazy groaning vehicle, drawn by fourhorses, emerged from the copse of gum-trees, --fast, fast along the road, which no such pompous vehicle had traversed since that which hadborne me--luxurious satrap for an early colonist--to my lodge in thewilderness. What emigrant rich enough to squander in the hire of suchan equipage more than its cost in England, could thus be entering on mywaste domain? An ominous thrill shot through me. 

The driver--perhaps some broken-down son of luxury in the Old World, fitfor nothing in the New World but to ply, for hire, the task that mighthave led to his ruin when plied in sport--stopped at the door of my hut, and called out, "Friend, is not this the great Fenwick Section, and isnot yonder long pile of building the Master's house?"

Before I could answer I heard a faint voice, within the vehicle, speaking to the driver; the last nodded, descended from his seat, openedthe carriage-door, and offered his arm to a man, who, waving aside theproffered aid, descended slowly and feebly; paused a moment as if forbreath, and then, leaning on his staff, walked from the road, acrossthe sward rank with luxuriant herbage, through the little gate in thenew-set fragrant wattle-fence, wearily, languidly, halting often, tillhe stood facing me, leaning both wan and emaciated hands upon his staff, and his meagre form shrinking deep within the folds of a cloak linedthick with costly sables. His face was sharp, his complexion of alivid yellow, his eyes shone out from their hollow orbits, unnaturallyenlarged and fatally bright. Thus, in ghastly contrast to his formersplendour of youth and opulence of life, Margrave stood before me. 

"I come to you, " said Margrave, in accents hoarse and broken, "from theshores of the East. Give me shelter and rest. I have that to say whichwill more than repay you. "

Whatever, till that moment, my hate and my fear of this unexpectedvisitant, hate would have been inhumanity, fear a meanness, conceivedfor a creature so awfully stricken down. 

Silently, involuntarily, I led him into the house. There he rested a fewminutes, with closed eyes and painful gasps for breath. Meanwhile, thedriver brought from the carriage a travelling-bag and a small woodenchest or coffer, strongly banded with iron clamps. Margrave, looking upas the man drew near, exclaimed fiercely, "Who told you to touchthat chest? How dare you? Take it from that man, Fenwick! Place ithere, --here by my side!"

I took the chest from the driver, whose rising anger at being soimperiously rated in the land of democratic equality was appeased by thegold which Margrave lavishly flung to him. 

"Take care of the poor gentleman, squire, " he whispered to me, in thespontaneous impulse of gratitude, "I fear he will not trouble you long. He must be monstrous rich. Arrived in a vessel hired all to himself, anda train of outlandish attendants, whom he has left behind in the townyonder. May I bait my horses in your stables? They have come a longway. "

I pointed to the neighbouring stables, and the man nodded his thanks, remounted his box, and drove off. 

I returned to Margrave. A faint smile came to his lips as I placed thechest beside him. 

"Ay, ay, " he muttered. "Safe! safe! I shall soon be well again, --verysoon! And now I can sleep in peace!"

I led him into an inner room, in which there was a bed. He threw himselfon it with a loud sigh of relief. Soon, half raising himself on hiselbow, he exclaimed, "The chest--bring it hither! I need it alwaysbeside me! There, there! Now for a few hours of sleep; and then, if Ican take food, or some such restoring cordial as your skill may suggest, I shall be strong enough to talk. We will talk! we will talk!"

His eyes closed heavily as his voice fell into a drowsy mutter: a momentmore and he was asleep. 

I watched beside him, in mingled wonder and compassion. Looking intothat face, so altered yet still so young, I could not sternly questionwhat had been the evil of that mystic life, which seemed now oozing awaythrough the last sands in the hour-glass. I placed my hand softly on hispulse: it scarcely beat. I put my ear to his breast, and involuntarilysighed, as I distinguished in its fluttering heave that dull, dumbsound, in which the heart seems knelling itself to the greedy grave!

Was this, indeed, the potent magician whom I had so feared!--this theguide to the Rosicrucian's secret of life's renewal, in whom, but anhour or two ago, my fancies gulled my credulous trust!

But suddenly, even while thus chiding my wild superstitions, a fear, that to most would seem scarcely less superstitious, shot across me. Could Lilian be affected by the near neighbourhood of one to whosemagnetic influence she had once been so strangely subjected? I leftMargrave still sleeping, closed and locked the door of the hut, wentback to my dwelling, and met Amy at the threshold. Her smile was socheering that I felt at once relieved. 

"Hush!" said the child, putting her finger to her lips, "she is soquiet! I was coming in search of you, with a message from her. "

"From Lilian to me--what! to me!"

"Hush! About an hour ago, she beckoned me to draw near to her, and thensaid, very softly: 'Tell Allen that light is coming back to me, and itall settles on him--on him. Tell him that I pray to be spared to walk byhis side on earth, hand-in-hand to that heaven which is no dream, Amy. Tell him that, --no dream!'"

While the child spoke my tears gushed, and the strong hands in whichI veiled my face quivered like the leaf of the aspen. And when I couldcommand my voice, I said plaintively, --

"May I not, then, see her?--only for a moment, and answer her messagethough but by a look?"

"No, no!"

"No! Where is Faber?"

"Gone into the forest, in search of some herbs, but he gave me this notefor you. "

I wiped the blinding tears from my eyes, and read these lines:--

"I have, though with hesitation, permitted Amy to tell you the cheeringwords, by which our beloved patient confirms my belief that reasonis coming back to her, --slowly, labouringly, but if she survive, forpermanent restoration. On no account attempt to precipitate or disturbthe work of nature. As dangerous as a sudden glare of light to eyes longblind and newly regaining vision in the friendly and soothing dark wouldbe the agitation that your presence at this crisis would cause. Confidein me. "

I remained brooding over these lines and over Lilian's message long andsilently, while Amy's soothing whispers stole into my ear, soft asthe murmurs of a rill heard in the gloom of forests. Rousing myself atlength, my thoughts returned to Margrave. Doubtless he would soon awake. I bade Amy bring me such slight nutriment as I thought best suited tohis enfeebled state, telling her it was for a sick traveller, restinghimself in my hut. When Amy returned, I took from her the little basketwith which she was charged, and having, meanwhile, made a carefulselection from the contents of my medicine-chest, went back to thehut. I had not long resumed my place beside Margrave's pillow before heawoke. 

"What o'clock is it?" he asked, with an anxious voice. 

"About seven. "

"Not later? That is well; my time is precious. "

"Compose yourself, and eat. "

I placed the food before him, and he partook of it, though sparingly, and as if with effort. He then dozed for a short time, again woke up, and impatiently demanded the cordial, which I had prepared in the meanwhile. Its effect was greater and more immediate than I could haveanticipated, proving, perhaps, how much of youth there was still left inhis system, however undermined and ravaged by disease. Colour came backto his cheek, his voice grew perceptibly stronger. And as I lighted thelamp on the table near us--for it was growing dark--he gathered himselfup, and spoke thus, --

"You remember that I once pressed on you certain experiments. My objectthen was to discover the materials from which is extracted the specificthat enables the organs of life to expel disease and regain vigour. Inthat hope I sought your intimacy, --an intimacy you gave, but withdrew. "

"Dare you complain? Who and what was the being from whose intimacy Ishrank appalled?"

"Ask what questions you please, " cried Margrave, impatiently, "later--ifI have strength left to answer them; but do not interrupt me, whileI husband my force to say what alone is important to me and to you. Disappointed in the hopes I had placed in you, I resolved to repairto Paris, --that great furnace of all bold ideas. I questioned learnedformalists; I listened to audacious empirics. The first, with all theirboasted knowledge, were too timid to concede my premises; the second, with all their speculative daring, too knavish to let me trust to theirconclusions. I found but one man, a Sicilian, who comprehended thesecrets that are called occult, and had the courage to meet Nature andall her agencies face to face. He believed, and sincerely, that he wasapproaching the grand result, at the very moment when he perished fromwant of the common precautions which a tyro in chemistry would havetaken. At his death the gaudy city became hateful; all its pretendedpleasures only served to exhaust life the faster. The true joys of youthare those of the wild bird and wild brute, in the healthful enjoymentof Nature. In cities, youth is but old age with a varnish. I fled to theEast; I passed through the tents of the Arabs; I was guided--no matterby whom or by what--to the house of a Dervish, who had had for histeacher the most erudite master of secrets occult, whom I knew years agoat Aleppo---Why that exclamation?"

"Proceed. What I have to say will come--later. "

"From this Dervish I half forced and half purchased the secret I soughtto obtain. I now know from what peculiar substance the so-called elixirof life is extracted; I know also the steps of the process through whichthat task is accomplished. You smile incredulously. What is your doubt?State it while I rest for a moment. My breath labours; give me more ofthe cordial. "

"Need I tell you my doubt? You have, you say, at your command the elixirof life of which Cagliostro did not leave his disciples the recipe; andyou stretch out your hand for a vulgar cordial which any village chemistcould give you!"

"I can explain this apparent contradiction. The process by which theelixir is extracted from the material which hoards its essence is onethat requires a hardihood of courage which few possess. This Dervish, who had passed through that process once, was deaf to all prayer, andunmoved by all bribes, to attempt it again. He was poor; for the secretby which metals may be transmuted is not, as the old alchemists seem toimply, identical with that by which the elixir of life is extracted. Hehad only been enabled to discover, in the niggard strata of the landswithin range of his travel, a few scanty morsels of the glorioussubstance. From these he had extracted scarcely enough of the elixir tofill a third of that little glass which I have just drained. He guardedevery drop for himself. Who that holds healthful life as the one boonabove all price to the living, would waste upon others what prolongsand recruits his own being? Therefore, though he sold me his secret, hewould not sell me his treasure. "

"Any quack may sell you the information how to make not only an elixir, but a sun and a moon, and then scare you from the experiment by talesof the danger of trying it! How do you know that this essence which theDervish possessed was the elixir of life, since, it seems, you have nottried on yourself what effect its precious drops could produce? Poorwretch, who once seemed to me so awfully potent! do you come to theAntipodes in search of a drug that only exists in the fables by which achild is amused?"

"The elixir of life is no fable, " cried Margrave, with a kindling ofeye, a power of voice, a dilatation of form, that startled me in onejust before so feeble. "That elixir was bright in my veins when we lastmet. From that golden draught of the life-spring of joy I took all thatcan gladden creation. What sage would not have exchanged his wearisomeknowledge for my lusty revels with Nature? What monarch would not havebartered his crown, with its brain-ache of care, for the radiance thatcircled my brows, flashing out from the light that was in me? Oh again, oh again! to enjoy the freedom of air with the bird, and the glow of thesun with the lizard; to sport through the blooms of the earth, Nature'splaymate and darling; to face, in the forest and desert, the pard andthe lion, --Nature's bravest and fiercest, --her firstborn, the heir ofher realm, with the rest of her children for slaves!"

As these words burst from his lips, there was a wild grandeur in theaspect of this enigmatical being which I had never beheld in the formertime of his affluent, dazzling youth. And, indeed, in his language, andin the thoughts it clothed, there was an earnestness, a concentration, adirectness, a purpose, which had seemed wanting to his desultory talkin the earlier days I expected that reaction of languor and exhaustionwould follow his vehement outbreak of passion, but, after a short pause, he went on with steady accents. His will was sustaining his strength. Hewas determined to force his convictions on me, and the vitality, once sorich, rallied all its lingering forces to the aid of its intense desire. 

"I tell you, then, " he resumed, with deliberate calmness, "that, yearsago, I tested in my own person that essence which is the sovereignmedicament. In me, as you saw me at L----, you beheld the proof of itsvirtues. Feeble and ill as I am now, my state was incalculably morehopeless when formerly restored by the elixir. He from whom I thentook the sublime restorative died without revealing the secret of itscomposition. What I obtained was only just sufficient to recruit thelamp of my life, then dying down--and no drop was left for renewing thelight which wastes its own rays in the air that it gilds. Though theDervish would not sell me his treasure, he permitted me to see it. The appearance and odour of this essence are strangelypeculiar, --unmistakable by one who has once beheld and partaken ofit. In short, I recognized in the hands of the Dervish the brightlife-renewer, as I had borne it away from the corpse of the Sage ofAleppo. "

"Hold! Are you then, in truth, the murderer of Haroun, and is your truename Louis Grayle?"

"I am no murderer, and Louis Grayle did not leave me his name. I againadjure you to postpone, for this night at least, the questions you wishto address to me. 

"Seeing that this obstinate pauper possessed that for which the paleowners of millions, at the first touch of palsy or gout, would consentto be paupers, of course I coveted the possession of the essence evenmore than the knowledge of the substance from which it is extracted. Ihad no coward fear of the experiment, which this timid driveller had notthe nerve to renew. But still the experiment might fail. I must traverseland and sea to find the fit place for it, while, in the rags of theDervish, the unfailing result of the experiment was at hand. The Dervishsuspected my design, he dreaded my power. He fled on the very nightin which I had meant to seize what he refused to sell me. After all, Ishould have done him no great wrong; for I should have left him wealthenough to transport himself to any soil in which the material for theelixir may be most abundant; and the desire of life would have givenhis shrinking nerves the courage to replenish its ravished store. Ihad Arabs in my pay, who obeyed me as hounds their master. I chased thefugitive. I came on his track, reached a house in a miserable village, in which, I was told, he had entered but an hour before. The day wasdeclining, the light in the room imperfect. I saw in a corner whatseemed to me the form of the Dervish, --stooped to seize it, and my handclosed on an asp. The artful Dervish had so piled his rags that theytook the shape of the form they had clothed, and he had left, as asubstitute for the giver of life, the venomous reptile of death. 

"The strength of my system enabled me to survive the effect of thepoison; but during the torpor that numbed me, my Arabs, alarmed, gave nochase to my quarry. At last, though enfeebled and languid, I was againon my horse. Again the pursuit, again the track! I learned--but thistime by a knowledge surer than man's--that the Dervish had taken hisrefuge in a hamlet that had sprung up over the site of a city once famedthrough Assyria. The same voice that in formed me of his whereaboutswarned me not to pursue. I rejected the warning. In my eager impatienceI sprang on to the chase; in my fearless resolve I felt sure of theprey. I arrived at the hamlet wearied out, for my forces were no longerthe same since the bite of the asp. The Dervish eluded me still; he hadleft the floor, on which I sank exhausted, but a few minutes before myhorse stopped at the door. The carpet, on which he had rested, stilllay on the ground. I dismissed the youngest and keenest of my troop insearch of the fugitive. Sure that this time he would not escape, my eyesclosed in sleep. 

"How long I slept I know not, --a long dream of solitude, fever, andanguish. Was it the curse of the Dervish's car pet? Was it a taint inthe walls of the house, or of the air, which broods sickly and rank overplaces where cities lie buried? I know not; but the Pest of the Easthad seized me in slumber. When my senses recovered I found myself alone, plundered of my arms, despoiled of such gold as I had carried aboutme. All had deserted and left me, as the living leave the dead whom thePlague has claimed for its own. As soon as I could stand I crawled fromthe threshold. The moment my voice was heard, my face seen, the wholesqualid populace rose as on a wild beast, --a mad dog. I was driven fromthe place with imprecations and stones, as a miscreant whom the Plaguehad overtaken while plotting the death of a holy man. Bruised andbleeding, but still defying, I turned in wrath on that dastardly rabble;they slunk away from my path. I knew the land for miles around. I hadbeen in that land years, long years ago. I came at last to the roadwhich the caravans take on their way to Damascus. There I was found, speechless and seemingly lifeless, by some European travellers. Conveyedto Damascus, I languished for weeks between life and death. But for thevirtue of that essence, which lingered yet in my veins, I could nothave survived--even thus feeble and shattered. I need not say that Inow abandoned all thought of discovering the Dervish. I had at least hissecret, if I had failed of the paltry supply he had drawn from its uses. Such appliances as he had told me were needful are procured in the Eastwith more ease than in Europe. To sum up, I am here, instructed inall the knowledge, and supplied with all the aids, which warrant me insaying, 'Do you care for new life in its richest enjoyments, if not foryourself, for one whom you love and would reprieve from the grave? Then, share with me in a task that a single night will accomplish, and ravisha prize by which the life that you value the most will be saved fromthe dust and the worm, to live on, ever young, ever blooming, when eachinfant, new-born while I speak, shall have passed to the grave. Nay, where is the limit to life, while the earth hides the substance by whichlife is renewed?"

I give as faithfully as I can recall them the words in which Margraveaddressed me. But who can guess by cold words transcribed, even werethey artfully ranged by a master of language, the effect words producewhen warm from the breath of the speaker? Ask one of an audience whichsome orator held enthralled, why his words do not quicken a beat in thereader's pulse, and the answer of one who had listened will be, "Thewords took their charm from the voice and the eye, the aspect, themanner, the man!" So it was with the incomprehensible being before me. Though his youth was faded, though his beauty was dimmed, though myfancies clothed him with memories of abhorrent dread, though my reasonopposed his audacious beliefs and assumptions, still he charmed andspell-bound me; still he was the mystical fascinator; still, ifthe legends of magic had truth for their basis, he was the bornmagician, --as genius, in what calling soever, is born with the gift toenchant and subdue us. 

Constraining myself to answer calmly, I said, "You have told me yourstory; you have defined the object of the experiment in which you ask meto aid. You do right to bid me postpone my replies or my questions. Seekto recruit by sleep the strength you have so sorely tasked. To-morrow--"

"To-morrow, ere night, you will decide whether the man whom out ofall earth I have selected to aid me shall be the foe to condemn me toperish! I tell you plainly I need your aid, and your prompt aid. Threedays from this, and all aid will be too late!"

I had already gained the door of the room, when he called to me to comeback. 

"You do not live in this but, but with your family yonder. Do not tellthem that I am here; let no one but yourself see me as I now am. Lockthe door of the but when you quit it. I should not close my eyes if Iwere not secure from intruders. "

"There is but one in my house, or in these parts, whom I would exceptfrom the interdict you impose. You are aware of your own imminentdanger; the life, which you believe the discovery of a Dervish willindefinitely prolong, seems to my eye of physician to hang on a thread. I have already formed my own conjecture as to the nature of the diseasethat enfeebles you. But I would fain compare that conjecture with theweightier opinion of one whose experience and skill are superior tomine. Permit me, then, when I return to you to-morrow, to bring withme the great physician to whom I refer. His name will not, perhaps, beunknown to you: I speak of Julius Faber. "

"A physician of the schools! I can guess well enough how learnedly hewould prate, and how little he could do. But I will not object to hisvisit, if it satisfies you that, since I should die under the hands ofthe doctors, I may be permitted to indulge my own whim in placing myhopes in a Dervish. Yet stay. You have, doubtless, spoken of me to thisJulius Faber, your fellow-physician and friend? Promise me, if you bringhim here, that you will not name me, --that you will not repeat to himthe tale I have told you, or the hope which has led me to these shores. What I have told you, no matter whether, at this moment, you consider methe dupe of a chimera, is still under the seal of the confidence which apatient reposes in the physician he himself selects for his confidant. Iselect you, and not Julius Faber!"

"Be it as you will, " said I, after a moment's reflection. "The momentyou make yourself my patient, I am bound to consider what is best foryou. And you may more respect, and profit by, an opinion based upon yourpurely physical condition than by one in which you might suppose theadvice was directed rather to the disease of the mind than to that ofthe body. "

"How amazed and indignant your brother-physician will be if he ever seeme a second time! How learnedly he will prove that, according to allcorrect principles of science and nature, I ought to be dead!"

He uttered this jest with a faint weary echo of his old merry, melodiouslaugh, then turned his face to the wall; and so I left him to repose. 

CHAPTER LXXV. 

I found Mrs. Ashleigh waiting for me in our usual sitting-room. Shewas in tears. She had begun to despond of Lilian's recovery, and sheinfected me with her own alarm. However, I disguised my participation inher fears, soothed and sustained her as I best could, and persuaded herto retire to rest. I saw Faber for a few minutes before I sought myown chamber. He assured me that there was no perceptible change for theworse in Lilian's physical state since he had last seen me, and that hermind, even within the last few hours, had become decidedly more clear. He thought that, within the next twenty-four hours, the reason wouldmake a strong and successful effort for complete recovery; but hedeclined to hazard more than a hope that the effort would not exhaustthe enfeebled powers of the frame. He himself was so in need of a fewhours of rest that I ceased to harass him with questions which he couldnot answer, and fears which he could not appease. Before leaving himfor the night, I told him briefly that there was a traveller in my butsmitten by a disease which seemed to me so grave that I would askhis opinion of the case, if he could accompany me to the but the nextmorning. 

My own thoughts that night were not such as would suffer me to sleep. 

Before Margrave's melancholy state much of my former fear and abhorrencefaded away. This being, so exceptional that fancy might well invest himwith preternatural attributes, was now reduced by human suffering tohuman sympathy and comprehension; yet his utter want of conscience wasstill as apparent as in his day of joyous animal spirits. With whathideous candour he had related his perfidy and ingratitude to the manto whom, in his belief, he owed an inestimable obligation, and with whatinsensibility to the signal retribution which in most natures would haveawakened remorse!

And by what dark hints and confessions did he seem to confirm theincredible memoir of Sir Philip Derval! He owned that he had borne fromthe corpse of Haroun the medicament to which he ascribed his recoveryfrom a state yet more hopeless than that under which he now laboured! Hehad alluded, rapidly, obscurely, to some knowledge at his command"surer than man's. " And now, even now the mere wreck of his formerexistence--by what strange charm did he still control and confuse myreason? And how was it that I felt myself murmuring, again and again, "But what, after all, if his hope be no chimera, and if Nature do hide asecret by which I could save the life of my beloved Lilian?"

And again and again, as that thought would force itself on me, I roseand crept to Lilian's threshold, listening to catch the faintest soundof her breathing. All still, all dark! In that sufferer recognizedscience detects no mortal disease, yet dares not bid me rely on itsamplest resources of skill to turn aside from her slumber the stealthyadvance of death; while in yon log-hut one whose malady recognizedscience could not doubt to be mortal has composed himself to sleep, confident of life! Recognized science?--recognized ignorance! Thescience of to-day is the ignorance of to-morrow! Every year some boldguess lights up a truth to which, but the year before, the schoolmen ofscience were as blinded as moles. 

"What, then, " my lips kept repeating, --"what if Nature do hide a secretby which the life of my life can be saved? What do we know of thesecrets of Nature? What said Newton himself of his knowledge? 'I am likea child picking up pebbles and shells on the sand, while the great oceanof Truth lies all undiscovered around me!' And did Newton himself, inthe ripest growth of his matchless intellect, hold the creed of thealchemists in scorn? Had he not given to one object of their research, in the transmutation of metals, his days and his nights? Is there proofthat he ever convinced himself that the research was the dream, whichwe, who are not Newtons, call it?(1) And that other great sage, inferioronly to Newton--the calculating doubt-weigher, Descartes--had he notbelieved in the yet nobler hope of the alchemists, --believed in someoccult nostrum or process by which human life could attain to the age ofthe Patriarchs?"(2)

In thoughts like these the night wore away, the moonbeams that streamedthrough my window lighting up the spacious solitudes beyond, --mead andcreek, forest-land, mountaintop, --and the silence without broken bythe wild cry of the night hawk and the sibilant melancholy dirge ofthe shining chrysococyx, (3)--bird that never sings but at night, andobstinately haunts the roofs of the sick and dying, ominous of woe anddeath. 

But up sprang the sun, and, chasing these gloomy sounds, out burst thewonderful chorus of Australian groves, the great kingfisher opening thejocund melodious babble with the glee of his social laugh. 

And now I heard Faber's step in Lilian's room, --heard through the doorher soft voice, though I could not distinguish the words. It was notlong before I saw the kind physician standing at the threshold of mychamber. He pressed his finger to his lip, and made me a sign to followhim. I obeyed, with noiseless tread and stifled breathing. He awaited mein the garden under the flowering acacias, passed his arm in mine, anddrew me into the open pasture-land. 

"Compose yourself, " he then said; "I bring you tidings both of gladnessand of fear. Your Lilian's mind is restored: even the memories whichhad been swept away by the fever that followed her return to her home inL---- are returning, though as yet indistinct. She yearns to see you, tobless you for all your noble devotion, your generous, greathearted love;but I forbid such interview now. If, in a few hours, she become eitherdecidedly stronger or decidedly more enfeebled, you shall be summonedto her side. Even if you are condemned to a loss for which the soleconsolation must be placed in the life hereafter, you shall have, atleast, the last mortal commune of soul with soul. Courage! courage!You are man! Bear as man what you have so often bid other men submit toendure. "

I had flung myself on the ground, --writhing worm that had no home buton earth! Man, indeed! Man! All, at that moment, I took from manhood wasits acute sensibility to love and to anguish!

But after all such paroxysms of mortal pain, there comes a strangelull. Thought itself halts, like the still hush of water between twodescending torrents. I rose in a calm, which Faber might well mistakefor fortitude. 

"Well, " I said quietly, "fulfil your promise. If Lilian is to pass awayfrom me, I shall see her, at least, again; no wall, you tell me, betweenour minds; mind to mind once more, --once more!"

"Allen, " said Faber, mournfully and softly, "why do you shun to repeatmy words--soul to soul?"

"Ay, ay, --I understand. Those words mean that you have resigned all hopethat Lilian's life will linger here, when her mind comes back in fullconsciousness; I know well that last lightning flash and the darknesswhich swallows it up!"

"You exaggerate my fears. I have not resigned the hope that Lilian willsurvive the struggle through which she is passing, but it will be cruelto deceive you--my hope is weaker than it was. "

"Ay, ay. Again, I understand! Your science is in fault, --it desponds. Its last trust is in the wonderful resources of Nature, the vitalitystored in the young!"

"You have said, --those resources of Nature are wondrous. The vitalityof youth is a fountain springing up from the deeps out of sight, when, amoment before, we had measured the drops oozing out from the sands, andthought that the well was exhausted. "

"Come with me, --come. I told you of another sufferer yonder. I want youropinion of his case. But can you be spared a few minutes from Lilian'sside?"

"Yes; I left her asleep. What is the case that perplexes your eye ofphysician, which is usually keener than mine, despite all the length ofmy practice?"

"The sufferer is young, his organization rare in its vigour. He has gonethrough and survived assaults upon life that are commonly fatal. Hissystem has been poisoned by the fangs of a venomous asp, and shatteredby the blast of the plague. These alone, I believe, would not sufficeto destroy him. But he is one who has a strong dread of death; and whilethe heart was thus languid and feeble, it has been gnawed by emotionsof hope or of fear. I suspect that he is dying, not from the bite of thereptile, not from the taint of the pestilence, but from the hope and thefear that have overtasked the heart's functions. Judge for yourself. "

We were now at the door of the hut. I unlocked it: we entered. Margravehad quitted his bed, and was pacing the room slowly. His step was lessfeeble, his countenance less haggard than on the previous evening. 

He submitted himself to Faber's questioning with a quiet indifference, and evidently cared nothing for any opinion which the great physicianmight found on his replies. 

When Faber had learned all he could, he said, with a grave smile: "I seethat my advice will have little weight with you; such as it is, at leastreflect on it. The conclusions to which your host arrived in his viewof your case, and which he confided to me, are, in my humble judgment, correct. I have no doubt that the great organ of the heart isinvolved in the cause of your sufferings; but the heart is a noble andmuch-enduring organ. I have known men in whom it has been more severelyand unequivocally affected with disease than it is in you, live on formany years, and ultimately die of some other disorder. But then life washeld, as yours must be held, upon one condition, --repose. I enjoin youto abstain from all violent action, to shun all excitements that causemoral disturbance. You are young: would you live on, you must live asthe old. More than this, --it is my duty to warn you that your tenureon earth is very precarious; you may attain to many years; you may besuddenly called hence tomorrow. The best mode to regard this uncertaintywith the calm in which is your only chance of long life, is so toarrange all your worldly affairs, and so to discipline all your humananxieties, as to feel always prepared for the summons that may comewithout warning. For the rest, quit this climate as soon as you can, --itis the climate in which the blood courses too quickly for one who shouldshun all excitement. Seek the most equable atmosphere, choose the mosttranquil pursuits; and Fenwick himself, in his magnificent pride ofstature and strength, may be nearer the grave than you are. "

"Your opinion coincides with that I have just heard?" asked Margrave, turning to me. 

"In much--yes. "

"It is more favourable than I should have supposed. I am far fromdisdaining the advice so kindly offered. Permit me, in turn, two orthree questions, Dr. Faber. Do you prescribe to me no drugs from yourpharmacopoeia?"

"Drugs may palliate many sufferings incidental to organic disease, butdrugs cannot reach organic disease itself. "

"Do you believe that, even where disease is plainly organic, Natureherself has no alternative and reparative powers, by which the organassailed may recover itself?"

"A few exceptional instances of such forces in Nature are upon record;but we must go by general laws, and not by exceptions. "

"Have you never known instances--do you not at this moment know one--inwhich a patient whose malady baffles the doctor's skill, imagines ordreams of a remedy? Call it a whim if you please, learned sir; do younot listen to the whim, and, in despair of your own prescriptions, comply with those of the patient?"

Faber changed countenance, and even started. Margrave watched him andlaughed. 

"You grant that there are such cases, in which the patient gives the lawto the physician. Now, apply your experience to my case. Suppose somestrange fancy had seized upon my imagination--that is the doctor's cantword for all phenomena which we call exceptional--some strange fancythat I had thought of a cure for this disease for which you have nodrugs; and suppose this fancy of mine to be so strong, so vivid, that todeny me its gratification would produce the very emotion from which youwarn me as fatal, --storm the heart, that you would soothe to repose, bythe passions of rage and despair, --would you, as my trusted physician, concede or deny me my whim?"

"Can you ask? I should grant it at once, if I had no reason to know thatthe thing that you fancied was harmful. "

"Good man and wise doctor! I have no other question to ask. I thankyou. "

Faber looked hard on the young, wan face, over which played a smileof triumph and irony; then turned away with an expression of doubt andtrouble on his own noble countenance. I followed him silently into theopen air. 

"Who and what is this visitor of yours?" he asked abruptly. 

"Who and what? I cannot tell you. "

Faber remained some moments musing, and muttering slowly to himself, "Tut! but a chance coincidence, --a haphazard allusion to a fact which hecould not have known!"

"Faber, " said I, abruptly, "can it be that Lilian is the patient inwhose self-suggested remedies you confide more than in the variouslearning at command of your practised skill?"

"I cannot deny it, " replied Faber, reluctantly. "In the intervals ofthat suspense from waking sense, which in her is not sleep, nor yetaltogether catalepsy, she has, for the last few days, stated accuratelythe precise moment in which the trance--if I may so call it--wouldpass away, and prescribed for herself the remedies that should be thenadministered. In every instance, the remedies so self-prescribed, thoughcertainly not those which would have occurred to my mind, have provedefficacious. Her rapid progress to reason I ascribe to the treatmentshe herself ordained in her trance, without remembrance of her ownsuggestions when she awoke. I had meant to defer communicating thesephenomena in the idiosyncrasy of her case until our minds could morecalmly inquire into the process by which ideas--not apparently derived, as your metaphysical school would derive all ideas, from preconceivedexperiences--will thus sometimes act like an instinct on the humansufferer for self-preservation, as the bird is directed to the herbor the berry which heals or assuages its ailments. We know how themesmerists would account for this phenomenon of hygienic introvision andclairvoyance. But here, there is no mesmerizer, unless the patient canbe supposed to mesmerize herself. Long, however, before mesmerism washeard of, medical history attests examples in which patients who baffledthe skill of the ablest physicians have fixed their fancies on someremedy that physicians would call inoperative for good or for harm, and have recovered by the remedies thus singularly self-suggested. AndHippocrates himself, if I construe his meaning rightly, recognizes thepowers for self-cure which the condition of trance will sometimes bestowon the sufferer, 'where' (says the father of our art) 'the sightbeing closed to the external, the soul more truthfully perceives theaffections of the body. ' In short--I own it--in this instance, the skillof the physician has been a compliant obedience to the instinct calledforth in the patient; and the hopes I have hitherto permitted myself togive you were founded on my experience that her own hopes, conceivedin trance, bad never been fallacious or exaggerated. The simples thatI gathered for her yesterday she had described; they are not in ourherbal. But as they are sometimes used by the natives, I had thecuriosity to analyze their chemical properties shortly after I came tothe colony, and they seemed to me as innocent as lime-blossoms. Theyare rare in this part of Australia, but she told me where I should findthem, --a remote spot, which she has certainly never visited. Last night, when you saw me disturbed, dejected, it was because, for the first time, the docility with which she had hitherto, in her waking state, obeyedher own injunctions in the state of trance, forsook her. She could notbe induced to taste the decoction I had made from the herbs; and if youfound me this morning with weaker hopes than before, this is the realcause, --namely, that when I visited her at sunrise, she was not in sleepbut in trance, and in that trance she told me that she had nothing moreto suggest or reveal; that on the complete restoration of her senses, which was at hand, the abnormal faculties vouchsafed to trance would bewithdrawn. 'As for my life, ' she said quietly, as if unconscious of ourtemporary joy or woe in the term of its tenure here, --'as for my life, your aid is now idle; my own vision obscure; on my life a dark and coldshadow is resting. I cannot foresee if it will pass away. When I striveto look around, I see but my Allen--'"

"And so, " said I, mastering my emotions, "in bidding me hope, you didnot rely on your own resources of science, but on the whisper of Naturein the brain of your patient?"

"It is so. "

We both remained silent some moments, and then, as he disappeared withinmy house, I murmured, --

"And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, she sees only me! Isthere some prophet-hint of Nature there also, directing me not to scornthe secret which a wanderer, so suddenly dropped on my solitude, assuresme that Nature will sometimes reveal to her seeker? And oh! that darkwanderer--has Nature a marvel more weird than himself?"

(1) "Besides the three great subjects of Newton's labours--the fluxionalcalculus, physical astronomy, and optics--a very large portion of histime, while resident in his college, was devoted to researches of whichscarcely a trace remains. Alchemy, which had fascinated so many eagerand ambitious minds, seems to have tempted Newton with an overwhelmingforce. What theories he formed, what experiments he tried, in thatlaboratory where, it is said, the fire was scarcely extinguished forweeks together, will never be known. It is certain that no successattended his labours; and Newton was not a man--like Kepler--to detailto the world all the hopes and disappointments, all the crude andmystical fancies, which mixed themselves up with his career ofphilosophy. .. Many years later we find Newton in correspondence withLocke, with reference to a mysterious red earth by which Boyle, whowas then recently dead, had asserted that he could effect the granddesideratum of multiplying gold. By this time, however, Newton's faithhad become somewhat shaken by the unsatisfactory communications whichhe had himself received from Boyle on the subject of the golden recipe, though he did not abandon the idea of giving the experiment a furthertrial as soon as the weather should become suitable for furnaceexperiments. "--Quarterly Review, No. 220, pp. 125, 126. 

(2) Southey, in his "Doctor, " vol. Vi. P. 2, reports the conversation ofSir Kenelm Digby with Descartes, in which the great geometrician said, "That as for rendering man immortal, it was what he could not ventureto promise, but that he was very sure he could prolong his life to thestandard of the patriarchs. " And Southey adds, "that St. Evremond, towhom Digby repeated this, says that this opinion of Descartes was wellknown both to his friends in Holland and in France. " By the stressSouthey lays on this hearsay evidence, it is clear that he was notacquainted with the works and biography of Descartes, or he would havegone to the fountain-head for authority on Descartes's opinions, namely, Descartes himself. It is to be wished that Southey had done so, forno one more than he would have appreciated the exquisitely candid andlovable nature of the illustrious Frenchman, and the sincerity withwhich he cherished in his heart whatever doctrine he conceived in hisunderstanding. Descartes, whose knowledge of anatomy was considerable, had that passion for the art of medicine which is almost inseparablefrom the pursuit of natural philosophy. At the age of twenty-four hehad sought (in Germany) to obtain initiation into the brotherhood of theRosicrucians, but unluckily could not discover any member of the societyto introduce him. "He desired, " says Cousin, "to assure the health ofman, diminish his ills, extend his existence. He was terrified by therapid and almost momentary passage of man upon earth. He believed itwas not, perhaps, impossible to prolong its duration. " There is a hiddenrecess of grandeur in this idea, and the means proposed by Descartes forthe execution of his project were not less grand. In his "Discourse onMethod, " Descartes says, "If it is possible to find some means to rendergenerally men more wise and more able than they have been till now, itis, I believe, in medicine that those means must be sought. .. I am surethat there is no one, even in the medical profession, who will notavow that all which one knows of the medical art is almost nothingin comparison to that which remains to learn, and that one could beexempted from an infinity of maladies, both of body and mind, and even, perhaps, from the decrepitude of old age, if one had sufficient loreof their causes and of all the remedies which nature provides for them. Therefore, having design to employ all my life in the research of ascience so necessary, and having discovered a path which appears to mesuch that one ought infallibly, in following, to find it, if one isnot hindered prematurely by the brevity of life or by the defects ofexperience, I consider that there is no better remedy against those twohindrances than to communicate faithfully to the public the littleI have found, " etc. ("Discours de la Methode, " vol. I. OEuvres deDescartes, Cousin's Edition. ) And again, in his "Correspondence" (vol. Ix. P. 341), he says: "The conservation of health has been always theprincipal object of my studies, and I have no doubt that there is ameans of acquiring much knowledge touching medicine which, up to thistime, is ignored. " He then refers to his meditated Treatise on Animalsas only an entrance upon that knowledge. But whatever secrets Descartesmay have thought to discover, they are not made known to the publicaccording to his promise. And in a letter to M. Chanut, written in 1646(four years before he died), he says ingenuously: "I will tell you inconfidence that the notion, such as it is, which I have endeavoured toacquire in physical philosophy, had greatly assisted me to establishcertain foundations for moral philosophy; and that I am more easilysatisfied upon this point than I am on many others touching medicine, towhich I have, nevertheless, devoted much more time. So that"--(adds thegrand thinker, with a pathetic nobleness )--"so that, instead of findingthe means to preserve life, I have found another good, more easy andmore sure, which is--not to fear death. "

(3) Chrysococyx lucidus, --namely, the bird popularly called the shiningor bronzed cuckoo. "Its note is an exceedingly melancholy whistle, heardat night, when it is very annoying to any sick or nervous person whomay be inclined to sleep. I have known many instances where the birdhas been perched on a tree in the vicinity of the room of an invalid, uttering its mournful notes, and it was only with the greatestdifficulty that it could be dislodged from its position. "--Dr. Bennett:Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia. 

CHAPTER LXXVI. 

I strayed through the forest till noon, in debate with myself, andstrove to shape my wild doubts into purpose, before I could nerve andcompose myself again to face Margrave alone. 

I re-entered the hut. To my surprise, Margrave was not in the room inwhich I had left him, nor in that which adjoined it. I ascended thestairs to the kind of loft in which I had been accustomed to pursue mystudies, but in which I had not set foot since my alarm for Lilian hadsuspended my labours. There I saw Margrave quietly seated before themanuscript of my Ambitious Work, which lay open on the rude table, justas I had left it, in the midst of its concluding summary. 

"I have taken the license of former days, you see, " said Margrave, smiling, "and have hit by chance on a passage I can understand withouteffort. But why such a waste of argument to prove a fact so simple? Inman, as in brute, life once lost is lost forever; and that is why lifeis so precious to man. "

I took the book from his hand, and flung it aside in wrath. His approvalrevolted me more with my own theories than all the argumentative rebukesof Faber. 

"And now, " I said, sternly, "the time has come for the explanationyou promised. Before I can aid you in any experiment that may serve toprolong your life, I must know how far that life has been a baleful anddestroying influence?"

"I have some faint recollection of having saved your life from animminent danger, and if gratitude were the attribute of man, as it is ofthe dog, I should claim your aid to serve mine as a right. Ask me whatyou will. You must have seen enough of me to know that I do not affecteither the virtues or vices of others. I regard both with so supreme anindifference, that I believe I am vicious or virtuous unawares. I knownot if I can explain what seems to have perplexed you, but if I cannotexplain I have no intention to lie. Speak--I listen! We have time enoughnow before us. "

So saying, he reclined back in the chair, stretching out his limbswearily. All round this spoilt darling of Material Nature were theaids and appliances of Intellectual Science, --books and telescopesand crucibles, with the light of day coming through a small circularaperture in the boarded casement, as I had constructed the opening formy experimental observation of the prismal rays. 

While I write, his image is as visible before my remembrance as ifbefore the actual eye, --beautiful even in its decay, awful even in itsweakness, mysterious as is Nature herself amidst all the mechanism bywhich our fancied knowledge attempts to measure her laws and analyze herlight. 

But at that moment no such subtle reflections delayed my inquisitiveeager mind from its immediate purpose, --who and what was this creatureboasting of a secret through which I might rescue from death the life ofher who was my all upon the earth?

I gathered rapidly and succinctly together all that I knew and all thatI guessed of Margrave's existence and arts. I commenced from my visionin that mimic Golgotha of creatures inferior to man, close by the sceneof man's most trivial and meaningless pastime. I went on, --Derval'smurder; the missing contents of the casket; the apparition seen by themaniac assassin guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous hauntingshadow; the positive charge in the murdered man's memoir connectingMargrave with Louis Grayle, and accusing him of the murder of Haroun;the night in the moonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful influenceon Lilian; the struggle between me and himself in the house by theseashore, --the strange All that is told in this Strange Story. 

But warming as I spoke, and in a kind of fierce joy to be enabled thusto free my own heart of the doubts that had burdened it, now that Iwas fairly face to face with the being by whom my reason had been soperplexed and my life so tortured. I was restrained by none of the fearslest my own fancy deceived me, with which in his absence I had strivento reduce to natural causes the portents of terror and wonder. I statedplainly, directly, the beliefs, the impressions which I had never daredeven to myself to own without seeking to explain them away. And comingat last to a close, I said: "Such are the evidences that seem to me tojustify abhorrence of the life that you ask me to aid in prolonging. Your own tale of last night but confirms them. And why to me--to me--doyou come with wild entreaties to lengthen the life that has blightedmy own? How did you even learn the home in which I sought unavailingrefuge? How--as your hint to Faber clearly revealed--were you awarethat, in yon house, where the sorrow is veiled, where the groan issuppressed, where the foot-tread falls ghostlike, there struggles nowbetween life and death my heart's twin, my world's sunshine? Ah!through my terror for her, is it a demon that tells you how to bribe myabhorrence into submission, and supple my reason into use to your ends?"

Margrave had listened to me throughout with a fixed attention, at timeswith a bewildered stare, at times with exclamations of surprise, butnot of denial. And when I had done, he remained for some moments silent, seemingly stupefied, passing his hand repeatedly over his brow, in thegesture so familiar to him in former days. 

At length he said quietly, without evincing any sign either ofresentment or humiliation, --

"In much that you tell me I recognize myself; in much I am as lost inamazement as you in wild doubt or fierce wrath. Of the effect that yousay Philip Derval produced on me I have no recollection. Of himself Ihave only this, --that he was my foe, that he came to England intent onschemes to shorten my life or destroy its enjoyments. All my facultiestend to self-preservation; there, they converge as rays in a focus; inthat focus they illume and--they burn. I willed to destroy my intendeddestroyer. Did my will enforce itself on the agent to which it wasguided? Likely enough. Be it so. Would you blame me for slaying thetiger or serpent--not by the naked hand, but by weapons that arm it? Butwhat could tiger and serpent do more against me than the man whowould rob me of life? He had his arts for assault, I had mine forself-defence. He was to me as the tiger that creeps through the jungle, or the serpent uncoiling his folds for the spring. Death to those whoselife is destruction to mine, be they serpent or tiger or man! Dervalperished. Yes! the spot in which the maniac had buried the casket wasrevealed to me--no matter how; the contents of the casket passed intomy hands. I coveted that possession because I believed that Derval hadlearned from Haroun of Aleppo the secret by which the elixir of life isprepared, and I supposed that some stores of the essence would be foundin his casket. I was deceived--not a drop! What I there found I knewnot how to use or apply, nor did I care to learn. What I sought was notthere. You see a luminous shadow of myself; it haunts, it accosts, itcompels you. Of this I know nothing. Was it the emanation of my intensewill really producing this spectre of myself, or was it the thingof your own imagination, --an imagination which my will impressed andsubjugated? I know not. At the hours when my shadow, real or supposed, was with you, my senses would have been locked in sleep. It is true, however, that I intensely desire to learn from races always near toman, but concealed from his every-day vision, the secret that I believedPhilip Derval had carried with him to the tomb; and from some causeor another I cannot now of myself alone, as I could years ago, subjectthose races to my command, --I must, in that, act through or with themind of another. It is true that I sought to impress upon your wakingthoughts the images of the circle, the powers of the wand, which, inyour trance or sleep-walking, made you the involuntary agent of my will. I knew by a dream--for by dreams, more or less vivid, are the resultsof my waking will sometimes divulged to myself--that the spell had beenbroken, the discovery I sought not effected. All my hopes were thentransferred from yourself, the dull votary of science, to the girl whomI charmed to my thraldom through her love for you and through herdreams of a realm which the science of schools never enters. In her, imagination was all pure and all potent; and tell me, O practicalreasoner, if reason has ever advanced one step into knowledge exceptthrough that imaginative faculty which is strongest in the wisdom ofignorance, and weakest in the ignorance of the wise. Ponder this, andthose marvels that perplex you will cease to be marvellous. I pass onto the riddle that puzzles you most. By Philip Derval's account I am, in truth, Louis Grayle restored to youth by the elixir, and while yetinfirm, decrepit, murdered Haroun, --a man of a frame as athletic asyours! By accepting this notion you seem to yourself alone to unravelthe mysteries you ascribe to my life and my powers. O wise philosopher!O profound logician! you accept that notion, yet hold my belief in theDervish's tale a chimera! I am Grayle made young by the elixir, and yetthe elixir itself is a fable!"

He paused and laughed, but the laugh was no longer even an echo ofits former merriment or playfulness, --a sinister and terrible laugh, mocking, threatening, malignant. 

Again he swept his hand over his brow, and resumed, --

"Is it not easier to so accomplished a sage as you to believe that theidlers of Paris have guessed the true solution of that problem, myplace on this earth? May I not be the love-son of Louis Grayle? And whenHaroun refused the elixir to him, or he found that his frame was too farexhausted for even the elixir to repair organic lesions of structure inthe worn frame of old age, may he not have indulged the common illusionof fathers, and soothed his death-pangs with the thought that he shouldlive again in his son? Haroun is found dead on his carpet--rumour saidstrangled. What proof of the truth of that rumour? Might he nothave passed away in a fit? Will it lessen your perplexity if I staterecollections? They are vague, --they often perplex myself; but so farfrom a wish to deceive you, my desire is to relate them so truthfullythat you may aid me to reduce them into more definite form. "

His face now became very troubled, the tone of his voice veryirresolute, --the face and the voice of a man who is eitherblundering his way through an intricate falsehood, or through obscurereminiscences. 

"This Louis Grayle! this Louis Grayle! I remember him well, as oneremembers a nightmare. Whenever I look back, before the illness of whichI will presently speak, the image of Louis Grayle returns to me. I seemyself with him in African wilds, commanding the fierce Abyssinians. I see myself with him in the fair Persian valley, -lofty, snow-coveredmountains encircling the garden of roses. I see myself with him in thehush of the golden noon, reclined by the spray of cool fountains, --nowlistening to cymbals and lutes, now arguing with graybeards on secretsbequeathed by the Chaldees, --with him, with him in moonlit nights, stealing into the sepulchres of mythical kings. I see myself with himin the aisles of dark caverns, surrounded by awful shapes, which have nolikeness amongst the creatures of earth. Louis Grayle! Louis Grayle! allmy earlier memories go back to Louis Grayle! All my arts and powers, allthat I have learned of the languages spoken in Europe, of the sciencestaught in her schools, I owe to Louis Grayle. But am I one and the samewith him? No--I am but a pale reflection of his giant intellect. I havenot even a reflection of his childlike agonies of sorrow. Louis Grayle!He stands apart from me, as a rock from the tree that grows out from itschasms. Yes, the gossip was right; I must be his son. "

He leaned his face on both hands, rocking himself to and fro. At length, with a sigh, he resumed, --

"I remember, too, a long and oppressive illness, attended with rackingpains, a dismal journey in a wearisome litter, the light hand of thewoman Ayesha, so sad and so stately, smoothing my pillow or fanning mybrows. I remember the evening on which my nurse drew the folds of thelitter aside, and said, 'See Aleppo! and the star of thy birth shiningover its walls!'

"I remember a face inexpressibly solemn and mournful. I remember thechill that the calm of its ominous eye sent through my veins, --the faceof Haroun, the Sage of Aleppo. I remember the vessel of crystal he borein his hand, and the blessed relief from my pains that a drop fromthe essence which flashed through the crystal bestowed! And then--andthen--I remember no more till the night on which Ayesha came to my couchand said, 'Rise. '

"And I rose, leaning on her, supported by her. We went through dimnarrow streets, faintly lit by wan stars, disturbing the prowl of thedogs, that slunk from the look of that woman. We came to a solitaryhouse, small and low, and my nurse said, 'Wait. '

"She opened the door and went in; I seated myself on the threshold. Andafter a time she came out from the house, and led me, still leaning onher, into her chamber. 

"A man lay, as in sleep, on the carpet, and beside him stood anotherman, whom I recognized as Ayesha's special attendant, --an Indian. 'Haroun is dead, ' said Ayesha. 'Search for that which will give thee newlife. Thou hast seen, and wilt know it, not I. '

"And I put my hand on the breast of Haroun--for the dead man was he--anddrew from it the vessel of crystal. 

"Having done so, the frown of his marble brow appalled me. I staggeredback, and swooned away. 

"I came to my senses, recovering and rejoicing, miles afar from thecity, the dawn red on its distant wall. Ayesha had tended me; the elixirhad already restored me. 

"My first thought, when full consciousness came back to me, restedon Louis Grayle, for he also had been at Aleppo; I was but one of hisnumerous train. He, too, was enfeebled and suffering; he had sought theknown skill of Haroun for himself as for me; and this woman loved andhad tended him as she had loved and tended me. And my nurse told me thathe was dead, and forbade me henceforth to breathe his name. 

"We travelled on, --she and I, and the Indian her servant, --my strengthstill renewed by the wondrous elixir. No longer supported by her, whatgazelle ever roved through its pasture with a bound more elastic thanmine?

"We came to a town, and my nurse placed before me a mirror. I did notrecognize myself. In this town we rested, obscure, till the letter therereached me by which I learned that I was the offspring of love, andenriched by the care of a father recently dead. Is it not clear thatLouis Grayle was this father?"

"If so, was the woman Ayesha your mother?"

"The letter said that 'my mother had died in my infancy. ' Nevertheless, the care with which Ayesha had tended me induced a suspicion that mademe ask her the very question you put. She wept when I asked her, andsaid, 'No, only my nurse. And now I needed a nurse no more. ' The dayafter I received the letter which announced an inheritance that allowedme to vie with the nobles of Europe, this woman left me, and went backto her tribe. "

"Have you never seen her since?"

Margrave hesitated a moment, and then answered, though with seemingreluctance, "Yes, at Damascus. Not many days after I was borne to thatcity by the strangers who found me half-dead on their road, I woke onemorning to find her by my side. And she said, 'In joy and in health youdid not need me. I am needed now. "'

"Did you then deprive yourself of one so devoted? You have not made thislong voyage--from Egypt to Australia--alone, --you, to whom wealth gaveno excuse for privation?"

"The woman came with me; and some chosen attendants. I engaged toourselves the vessel we sailed in. "

"Where have you left your companions?"

"By this hour, " answered Margrave, "they are in reach of my summons; andwhen you and I have achieved the discovery--in the results of which weshall share--I will exact no more from your aid. I trust all that restsfor my cure to my nurse and her swarthy attendants. You will aid me now, as a matter of course; the physician whose counsel you needed to guideyour own skill enjoins you to obey my whim--if whim you still callit; you will obey it, for on that whim rests your own sole hope ofhappiness, --you, who can love--I love nothing but life. Has my franknarrative solved all the doubts that stood between you and me, in thegreat meeting-grounds of an interest in common?"

"Solved all the doubts! Your wild story but makes some the darker, leaving others untouched: the occult powers of which you boast, andsome of which I have witnessed, --your very insight into my own householdsorrows, into the interests I have, with yourself, in the truth of afaith so repugnant to reason--"

"Pardon me, " interrupted Margrave, with that slight curve of the lipwhich is half smile and half sneer, "if, in my account of myself, Iomitted what I cannot explain, and you cannot conceive: let me firstask how many of the commonest actions of the commonest men are purelyinvoluntary and wholly inexplicable. When, for instance, you open yourlips and utter a sentence, you have not the faintest idea beforehandwhat word will follow another. When you move a muscle can you tell methe thought that prompts to the movement? And, wholly unable thus toaccount for your own simple sympathies between impulse and act, do youbelieve that there exists a man upon earth who can read all the riddlesin the heart and brain of another? Is it not true that not one drop ofwater, one atom of matter, ever really touches another? Between each andeach there is always a space, however infinitesimally small. How, then, could the world go on, if every man asked another to make his wholehistory and being as lucid as daylight before he would buy and sellwith him? All interchange and alliance rest but on this, --an interest incommon. You and I have established that interest: all else, all you askmore, is superfluous. Could I answer each doubt you would raise, still, whether the answer should please or revolt you, your reason would comeback to the same starting-point, --namely, In one definite proposal havewe two an interest in common?"

And again Margrave laughed, not in mirth, but in mockery. The laughand the words that preceded it were not the laugh and the words of theyoung. Could it be possible that Louis Grayle had indeed revived tofalse youth in the person of Margrave, such might have been his laughand such his words. The whole mind of Margrave seemed to have undergonechange since I last saw him; more rich in idea, more crafty even incandour, more powerful, more concentred. As we see in our ordinaryexperience, that some infirmity, threatening dissolution, brings forthmore vividly the reminiscences of early years, when impressions werevigorously stamped, so I might have thought that as Margrave neared thetomb, the memories he had retained from his former existence, in a beingmore amply endowed, more formidably potent, struggled back to the brain;and the mind that had lived in Louis Grayle moved the lips of the dyingMargrave. 

"For the powers and the arts that it equally puzzles your reason toassign or deny to me, " resumed my terrible guest, "I will say brieflybut this: they come from faculties stored within myself, and doubtlessconduce to my self-preservation, --faculties more or less, perhaps (soVan Helmont asserts), given to all men, though dormant in most; vividand active in me because in me self-preservation has been and yet is thestrong master-passion, or instinct; and because I have been taught howto use and direct such faculties by disciplined teachers, --some by LouisGrayle, the enchanter; some by my nurse, the singer of charmed songs. But in much that I will to have done, I know no more than yourself howthe agency acts. Enough for me to will what I wish, and sink calmly intoslumber, sure that the will would work somehow its way. But when I havewilled to know what, when known, should shape my own courses, I couldsee, without aid from your pitiful telescopes, all objects howsoeverfar. What wonder in that? Have you no learned puzzle-brainedmetaphysicians who tell you that space is but an idea, all this palpableuniverse an idea in the mind, and no more? Why am I an enigma as dark asthe Sibyls, and your metaphysicians as plain as a hornbook?" Again thesardonic laugh. "Enough: let what I have said obscure or enlighten yourguesses, we come back to the same link of union, which binds man to man, bids States arise from the desert, and foeman embrace as brothers. Ineed you and you need me; without your aid my life is doomed; without mysecret the breath will have gone from the lips of your Lilian before thesun of to-morrow is red on the hill-tops. "

"Fiend or juggler, " I cried in rage, "you shall not so enslave andenthrall me by this mystic farrago and jargon. Make your fantasticexperiment on yourself if you will: trust to your arts and your powers. My Lilian's life shall not hang on your fiat. I trust it--to--"

"To what--to man's skill? Hear what the sage of the college shall tellyou, before I ask you again for your aid. Do you trust to God's savingmercy? Ah, of course you believe in a God? Who, except a philosopher, can reason a Maker away? But that the Maker will alter His courses tohear you; that, whether or not you trust in Him, or in your doctor, it will change by a hairbreadth the thing that must be--do you believethis, Allen Fenwick?"

And there sat this reader of hearts! a boy in his aspect, mocking me andthe graybeards of schools. 

I could listen no more; I turned to the door and fled down the stairs, and heard, as I fled, a low chant: feeble and faint, it was still theold barbaric chant, by which the serpent is drawn from its hole by thecharmer. 

CHAPTER LXXVII. 

To those of my readers who may seek with Julius Faber to explore, through intelligible causes, solutions of the marvels I narrate, Margrave's confession may serve to explain away much that my ownsuperstitious beliefs had obscured. To them Margrave is evidentlythe son of Louis Grayle. The elixir of life is reduced to some simplerestorative, owing much of its effect to the faith of a credulouspatient: youth is so soon restored to its joy in the sun, with orwithout an elixir. To them Margrave's arts of enchantment are reducedto those idiosyncrasies of temperament on which the disciples of Mesmerbuild up their theories, --exaggerated, in much, by my own superstitions;aided, in part, by such natural, purely physical magic as, explored bythe ancient priest-crafts, is despised by the modern philosophies, andonly remains occult because Science delights no more in the slides ofthe lantern which fascinated her childhood with simulated phantoms. Tothem Margrave is, perhaps, an enthusiast, but, because an enthusiast, not less an impostor. "L'Homme se pique, " says Charron. Man cogs thedice for himself ere he rattles the box for his dupes. Was thereever successful impostor who did not commence by a fraud on his ownunderstanding? Cradled in Orient Fableland, what though Margravebelieves in its legends; in a wand, an elixir; in sorcerers or Afrites?That belief in itself makes him keen to detect, and skilful to profitby, the latent but kindred credulities of others. In all illustrationsof Duper and Duped through the records of superstition--from the guileof a Cromwell, a Mahomet, down to the cheats of a gypsy--professionalvisionaries are amongst the astutest observers. The knowledge thatMargrave had gained of my abode, of my affliction, or of the innermostthoughts in my mind, it surely demanded no preternatural aids toacquire. An Old Bailey attorney could have got at the one, and anyquick student of human hearts have readily mastered the other. In fine, Margrave, thus rationally criticised, is no other prodigy (save indegree and concurrence of attributes simple, though not very common)than may be found in each alley that harbours a fortune-teller who hasjust faith enough in the stars or the cards to bubble himself while heswindles his victims; earnest, indeed, in the self-conviction that heis really a seer, but reading the looks of his listeners, diviningthe thoughts that induce them to listen, and acquiring by practicea startling ability to judge what the listeners will deem it mostseer-like to read in the cards or divine from the stars. 

I leave this interpretation unassailed. It is that which is the mostprobable; it is clearly that which, in a case not my own, I should haveaccepted; and yet I revolved and dismissed it. The moment we dealwith things beyond our comprehension, and in which our own senses areappealed to and baffled, we revolt from the Probable, as it seems tothe senses of those who have not experienced what we have. And the sameprinciple of Wonder that led our philosophy up from inert ignorance intorestless knowledge, now winding back into shadow land, reverses itsrule by the way, and, at last, leaves us lost in the maze, our knowledgeinert, and our ignorance restless. 

And putting aside all other reasons for hesitating to believe thatMargrave was the son of Louis Grayle, --reasons which his own narrativemight suggest, --was it not strange that Sir Philip Derval, who hadinstituted inquiries so minute, and reported them in his memoir with sofaithful a care, should not have discovered that a youth, attended bythe same woman who had attended Grayle, had disappeared from the townon the same night as Grayle himself disappeared? But Derval had relatedtruthfully, according to Margrave's account, the flight of Ayesha andher Indian servant, yet not alluded to the flight, not even to theexistence of the boy, who must have been of no mean importance in thesuite of Louis Grayle, if he were, indeed, the son whom Grayle had madehis constant companion, and constituted his principal heir. Not manyminutes did I give myself up to the cloud of reflections through whichno sunbeam of light forced its way. One thought overmastered all;Margrave had threatened death to my Lilian, and warned me of what Ishould learn from the lips of Faber, "the sage of the college. " I stood, shuddering, at the door of my home; I did not dare to enter. 

"Allen, " said a voice, in which my ear detected the unwonted tremulousfaltering, "be firm, --be calm. I keep my promise. The hour is come inwhich you may again see the Lilian of old, mind to mind, soul to soul. "

Faber's hand took mine, and led me into the house. 

"You do, then, fear that this interview will be too much for herstrength?" said I, whisperingly. 

"I cannot say; but she demands the interview, and I dare not refuse it. "

CHAPTER LXXVIII. 

I left Faber on the stairs, and paused at the door of Lilian's room. Thedoor opened suddenly, noiselessly, and her mother came out with one handbefore her face, and the other locked in Amy's, who was leading her as achild leads the blind. Mrs. Ashleigh looked up, as I touched her, witha vacant, dreary stare. She was not weeping, as was her womanly wont inevery pettier grief, but Amy was. No word was exchanged between us. Ientered, and closed the door; my eyes turned mechanically to the cornerin which was placed the small virgin bed, with its curtains white as ashroud. Lilian was not there. I looked around, and saw her half reclinedon a couch near the window. She was dressed, and with care. Was not thather bridal robe?

"Allen! Allen!" she murmured. "Again, again my Allen--again, again yourLilian!" And, striving in vain to rise, she stretched out her arms inthe yearning of reunited love. And as I knelt beside her, those armsclosed round me for the first time in the frank, chaste, holy tendernessof a wife's embrace. 

"Ah!" she said, in her low voice (her voice, like Cordelia's, was everlow), "all has come back to me, --all that I owe to your protecting, noble, trustful, guardian love!"

"Hush! hush! the gratitude rests with me; it is so sweet to love, totrust, to guard! my own, my beautiful--still my beautiful! Suffering hasnot dimmed the light of those dear eyes to me! Put your lips to myear. Whisper but these words: 'I love you, and for your sake I wish tolive. '"

"For your sake, I pray--with my whole weak human heart--I pray to live!Listen. Some day hereafter, if I am spared, under the purple blossomsof yonder waving trees I shall tell you all, as I see it now; all thatdarkened or shone on me in my long dream, and before the dream closedaround me, like a night in which cloud and star chase each other! Someday hereafter, some quiet, sunlit, happy, happy day! But now, all Iwould say is this: Before that dreadful morning--" Here she paused, shuddered, and passionately burst forth, "Allen, Allen! you didnot believe that slanderous letter! God bless you! God bless you!Great-hearted, high-souled--God bless you, my darling! my husband! AndHe will! Pray to Him humbly as I do, and He will bless you. " Shestooped and kissed away my tears; then she resumed, feebly, meekly, sorrowfully, --

"Before that morning I was not worthy of such a heart, such a love asyours. No, no; hear me. Not that a thought of love for another evercrossed me! Never, while conscious and reasoning, was I untrue to you, even in fancy. But I was a child, --wayward as the child who pines forwhat earth cannot give, and covets the moon for a toy. Heaven had beenso kind to my lot on earth, and yet with my lot on earth I was secretlydiscontented. When I felt that you loved me, and my heart told me that Iloved again, I said to myself, 'Now the void that my soul finds onearth will be filled. ' I longed for your coming, and yet when you wentI murmured, 'But is this the ideal of which I have dreamed?' I askedfor an impossible sympathy. Sympathy with what? Nay, smile on me, dearest!--sympathy with what? I could not have said. Ah, Allen, then, then, I was not worthy of you! Infant that I was, I asked you tounderstand me: now I know that I am a woman, and my task is to studyyou. Do I make myself clear? Do you forgive me? I was not untrue to you;I was untrue to my own duties in life. I believed, in my vain conceit, that a mortal's dim vision of heaven raised me above the earth; I didnot perceive the truth that earth is a part of the same universe asheaven! Now, perhaps, in the awful affliction that darkened my reason, my soul has been made more clear. As if to chastise but to teach me, mysoul has been permitted to indulge its own presumptuous desire; it haswandered forth from the trammels of mortal duties and destinies; itcomes back, alarmed by the dangers of its own rash and presumptuousescape from the tasks which it should desire upon earth to perform. Allen, Allen, I am less unworthy of you now! Perhaps in my darkness onerapid glimpse of the true world of spirit has been vouchsafed to me. If so, how unlike to the visions my childhood indulged as divine! Now, while I know still more deeply that there is a world for the angels, Iknow, also, that the mortal must pass through probation in the world ofmortals. Oh, may I pass through it with you, grieving in your griefs, rejoicing in your joy!"

Here language failed her. Again the dear arms embraced me, and the dearface, eloquent with love, hid itself on my human breast. 

CHAPTER LXXIX. 

That interview is over! Again I am banished from Lilian's room; theagitation, the joy of that meeting has overstrained her enfeeblednerves. Convulsive tremblings of the whole frame, accompanied withvehement sobs, succeeded our brief interchange of sweet and bitterthoughts. Faber, in tearing me from her side, imperiously and sternlywarned me that the sole chance yet left of preserving her life was inthe merciful suspense of the emotions that my presence excited. Heand Amy resumed their place in her chamber. Even her mother shared mysentence of banishment. So Mrs. Ashleigh and I sat facing each other inthe room below; over me a leaden stupor had fallen, and I heard, as avoice from afar or in a dream, the mother's murmured wailings, "She will die! she will die! Her eyes have the same heavenly look as myGilbert's on the day on which his closed forever. Her very words are hislast words, --'Forgive me all my faults to you. ' She will die! she willdie!"

Hours thus passed away. At length Faber entered the room; he spoke firstto Mrs. Ashleigh, --meaningless soothings, familiar to the lips of allwho pass from the chamber of the dying to the presence of mourners, andknow that it is a falsehood to say "hope, " and a mockery as yet, to say, "endure. "

But he led her away to her own room, docile as a wearied child led tosleep, stayed with her some time, and then returned to me, pressing meto his breast father-like. 

"No hope! no hope!" said I, recoiling from his embrace. "You are silent. Speak! speak! Let me know the worst. "

"I have a hope, yet I scarcely dare to bid you share it; for it growsrather out of my heart as man than my experience as physician. I cannotthink that her soul would be now so reconciled to earth, so fondly, soearnestly, cling to this mortal life, if it were about to be summonedaway. You know how commonly even the sufferers who have dreaded deaththe most become calmly resigned to its coming, when death visiblyreveals itself out from the shadows in which its shape has been guessedand not seen. As it is a bad sign for life when the patient has lost allwill to live on, so there is hope while the patient, yet young and withno perceptible breach in the great centres of life (however violentlytheir forts may be stormed), has still intense faith in recovery, perhaps drawn (who can say?) from the whispers conveyed from above tothe soul. 

"I cannot bring myself to think that all the uses for which a reason, always so lovely even in its errors, has been restored, are yetfulfilled. It seems to me as if your union, as yet so imperfect, hasstill for its end that holy life on earth by which two mortal beingsstrengthen each other for a sphere of existence to which this is thespiritual ladder. Through yourself I have hope yet for her. Gifted withpowers that rank you high in the manifold orders of man, --thoughtful, laborious, and brave; with a heart that makes intellect vibrate to everyfine touch of humanity; in error itself, conscientious; in delusion, still eager for truth; in anger, forgiving; in wrong, seeking how torepair; and, best of all, strong in a love which the mean would haveshrunk to defend from the fangs of the slanderer, --a love, raisingpassion itself out of the realm of the senses, made sublime by thesorrows that tried its devotion, --with all these noble proofs inyourself of a being not meant to end here, your life has stopped shortin its uses, your mind itself has been drifted, a bark without rudderor pilot, over seas without shore, under skies without stars. Andwherefore? Because the mind you so haughtily vaunted has refused itscompanion and teacher in Soul. 

"And therefore, through you, I hope that she will be spared yet to liveon; she, in whom soul has been led dimly astray, by unheeding the checksand the definite goals which the mind is ordained to prescribe to itswanderings while here; the mind taking thoughts from the actual andvisible world, and the soul but vague glimpses and hints from theinstinct of its ultimate heritage. Each of you two seems to me as yetincomplete, and your destinies yet uncompleted. Through the bonds ofthe heart, through the trials of time, ye have both to consummate yourmarriage. I do not--believe me--I do not say this in the fanciful wisdomof allegory and type, save that, wherever deeply examined, allegory andtype run through all the most commonplace phases of outward and materiallife. I hope, then, that she may yet be spared to you; hope it, not frommy skill as physician, but my inward belief as a Christian. To perfectyour own being and end, 'Ye will need one another!'"

I started--the very words that Lilian had heard in her vision!

"But, " resumed Faber, "how can I presume to trace the numberless linksof effect up to the First Cause, far off--oh; far off--out of the scopeof my reason. I leave that to philosophers, who would laugh my meek hopeto scorn. Possibly, probably, where I, whose calling has been but tosave flesh from the worm, deem that the life of your Lilian is neededyet, to develop and train your own convictions of soul, Heaven in itswisdom may see that her death would instruct you far more than her life. I have said, Be prepared for either, --wisdom through joy, or wisdomthrough grief. Enough that, looking only through the mechanism by whichthis moral world is impelled and improved, you know that cruelty isimpossible to wisdom. Even a man, or man's law, is never wise but whenmerciful. But mercy has general conditions; and that which is mercy tothe myriads may seem hard to the one, and that which seems hard to theone in the pang of a moment may be mercy when viewed by the eye thatlooks on through eternity. "

And from all this discourse--of which I now, at calm distance of time, recall every word--my human, loving heart bore away for the moment butthis sentence, "Ye will need one another;" so that I cried out, "Life, life, life! Is there no hope for her life? Have you no hope asphysician? I am a physician, too; I will see her. I will judge. I willnot be banished from my post. "

"Judge, then, as physician, and let the responsibility rest with you. Atthis moment, all convulsion, all struggle, has ceased; the frame isat rest. Look on her, and perhaps only the physician's eye coulddistinguish her state from death. It is not sleep, it is not trance, itis not the dooming coma from which there is no awaking. Shall I call itby the name received in our schools? Is it the catalepsy in which lifeis suspended, but consciousness acute? She is motionless, rigid; itis but with a strain of my own sense that I know that the breath stillbreathes, and the heart still beats. But I am convinced that though shecan neither speak, nor stir, nor give sign, she is fully, sensitivelyconscious of all that passes around her. She is like those who have seenthe very coffin carried into their chamber, and been unable to cryout, 'Do not bury me alive!' Judge then for yourself, with this intenseconsciousness and this impotence to evince it, what might be the effectof your presence, --first an agony of despair, and then the completeextinction of life!"

"I have known but one such case, --a mother whose heart was wrapped up ina suffering infant. She had lain for two days and two nights, still, asif in her shroud. All save myself said, 'Life is gone. ' I said, 'Lifestill is there. ' They brought in the infant, to try what effect itspresence would produce; then her lips moved, and the hands crossed uponher bosom trembled. "

"And the result?" exclaimed Faber, eagerly. "If the result of yourexperience sanction your presence, come; the sight of the babe rekindledlife?"

"No; extinguished its last spark! I will not enter Lilian's room. I willgo away, --away from the house itself. That acute consciousness! I knowit well! She may even hear me move in the room below, hear me speak atthis moment. Go back to her, go back! But if hers be the state which Ihave known in another, which may be yet more familiar to persons of farampler experience than mine, there is no immediate danger of death. Thestate will last through to-day, through to-night, perhaps for days tocome. Is it so?"

"I believe that for at least twelve hours there will be no change in herstate. I believe also that if she recover from it, calm and refreshed, as from a sleep, the danger of death will have passed away. "

"And for twelve hours my presence would be hurtful?"

"Rather say fatal, if my diagnosis be right. "

I wrung my friend's hand, and we parted. 

Oh, to lose her now!--now that her love and her reason had bothreturned, each more vivid than before! Futile, indeed, might beMargrave's boasted secret; but at least in that secret was hope. Inrecognized science I saw only despair. 

And at that thought all dread of this mysterious visitor vanished, --allanxiety to question more of his attributes or his history. His lifeitself became to me dear and precious. What if it should fail me in thesteps of the process, whatever that was, by which the life of my Lilianmight be saved!

The shades of evening were now closing in. I remembered that I had leftMargrave without even food for many hours. I stole round to the back ofthe house, filled a basket with elements more generous than those ofthe former day; extracted fresh drugs from my stores, and, thus laden, hurried back to the hut. I found Margrave in the room below, seated onhis mysterious coffer, leaning his face on his hand. When I entered, helooked up, and said, --

"You have neglected me. My strength is waning. Give me more of thecordial, for we have work before us to-night, and I need support. "

He took for granted my assent to his wild experiment; and he was right. 

I administered the cordial. I placed food before him, and this timehe did not eat with repugnance. I poured out wine, and he drank itsparingly, but with ready compliance, saying, "In perfect health, Ilooked upon wine as poison; now it is like a foretaste of the gloriouselixir. "

After he had thus recruited himself, he seemed to acquire an energythat startlingly contrasted his languor the day before; the effort ofbreathing was scarcely perceptible; the colour came back to his cheeks;his bended frame rose elastic and erect. 

"If I understood you rightly, " said I, "the experiment you ask me to aidcan be accomplished in a single night?"

"In a single night, --this night. "

"Command me. Why not begin at once? What apparatus or chemical agenciesdo you need?"

"Ah!" said Margrave, "formerly, how I was misled! Formerly, how myconjectures blundered! I thought, when I asked you to give a month tothe experiment I wish to make, that I should need the subtlest skill ofthe chemist. I then believed, with Van Helmont, that the principle oflife is a gas, and that the secret was but in the mode by which the gasmight be rightly administered. But now all that I need is containedin this coffer, save one very simple material, --fuel sufficient for asteady fire for six hours. I see even that is at hand, piled up in yourouthouse. And now for the substance itself, --to that you must guide me. "

"Explain. "

"Near this very spot is there not gold--in mines yet undiscovered?--andgold of the purest metal?"

"There is. What then? Do you, with the alchemists, blend in onediscovery gold and life?"

"No. But it is only where the chemistry of earth or of man producesgold, that the substance from which the great pabulum of life isextracted by ferment can be found. Possibly, in the attempts at thattransmutation of metals, which I think your own great chemist, SirHumphry Davy, allowed might be possible, but held not to be worth thecost of the process, --possibly, in those attempts, some scanty grainsof this substance were found by the alchemists, in the crucible, withgrains of the metal as niggardly yielded by pitiful mimicry of Nature'sstupendous laboratory; and from such grains enough of the essence might, perhaps, have been drawn forth, to add a few years of existence to somefeeble graybeard, --granting, what rests on no proofs, that some of thealchemists reached an age rarely given to man. But it is not in themiserly crucible, it is in the matrix of Nature herself, that we mustseek in prolific abundance Nature's grand principle, --life. As theloadstone is rife with the magnetic virtue, as amber contains theelectric, so in this substance, to which we yet want a name, is foundthe bright life-giving fluid. In the old goldmines of Asia and Europethe substance exists, but can rarely be met with. The soil for itsnutriment may there be well-nigh exhausted. It is here, where Natureherself is all vital with youth, that the nutriment of youth must besought. Near this spot is gold; guide me to it. "

"You cannot come with me. The place which I know as auriferous is somemiles distant, the way rugged. You can not walk to it. It is true I havehorses, but--"

"Do you think I have come this distance and not foreseen and forestalledall that I want for my object? Trouble your self not with conjectureshow I can arrive at the place. I have provided the means to arrive atand leave it. My litter and its bearers are in reach of my call. Give meyour arm to the rising ground, fifty yards from your door. "

I obeyed mechanically, stifling all surprise. I had made my resolve, andadmitted no thought that could shake it. When we reached the summit ofthe grassy hillock, which sloped from the road that led to the seaport, Margrave, after pausing to recover breath, lifted up his voice, in akey, not loud, but shrill and slow and prolonged, half cry and halfchant, like the nighthawk's. Through the air--so limpid and still, bringing near far objects, far sounds--the voice pierced its way, artfully pausing, till wave after wave of the atmosphere bore andtransmitted it on. 

In a few minutes the call seemed re-echoed, so exactly, so cheerily, that for the moment I thought that the note was the mimicry of the shymocking Lyre-Bird, which mimics so merrily all that it hears in itscoverts, from the whir of the locust to the howl of the wild dog. 

"What king, " said the mystical charmer, and as he spoke he carelesslyrested his hand on my shoulder, so that I trembled to feel that thisdread son of Nature, Godless and soulless, who had been--and, my heartwhispered, who still could be--my bane and mind-darkener, leaned uponme for support, as the spoilt younger-born on his brother, --"what king, "said this cynical mocker, with his beautiful boyish face, --"what king inyour civilized Europe has the sway of a chief of the East? What link isso strong between mortal and mortal, as that between lord and slave?I transport yon poor fools from the land of their birth; they preservehere their old habits, --obedience and awe. They would wait till theystarved in the solitude, --wait to hearken and answer my call. And I, whothus rule them, or charm them--I use and despise them. They know that, and yet serve me! Between you and me, my philosopher, there is but onething worth living for, --life for oneself. "

Is it age, is it youth, that thus shocks all my sense, in my solemncompleteness of man? Perhaps, in great capitals, young men of pleasurewill answer, "It is youth; and we think what he says!" Young friends, Ido not believe you. 

CHAPTER LXXX. 

Along the grass-track I saw now, under the moon, just risen, a strangeprocession, never seen before in Australian pastures. It moved on, noiselessly but quickly. We descended the hillock, and met it on theway, --a sable litter, borne by four men, in unfamiliar Easterngarments; two other servitors, more bravely dressed, with yataghans andsilver-hilted pistols in their belts, preceded this sombre equipage. Perhaps Margrave divined the disdainful thought that passed through mymind, vaguely and half-unconsciously; for he said, with a hollow, bitterlaugh that had replaced the lively peal of his once melodious mirth, --

"A little leisure and a little gold, and your raw colonist, too, willhave the tastes of a pacha. "

I made no answer. I had ceased to care who and what was my tempter. Tome his whole being was resolved into one problem: Had he a secret bywhich death could be turned from Lilian?

But now, as the litter halted, from the long dark shadow which it castupon the turf the figure of a woman emerged and stood before us. Theoutlines of her shape were lost in the loose folds of a black mantle, and the features of her face were hidden by a black veil, except onlythe dark, bright, solemn eyes. Her stature was lofty, her bearingmajestic, whether in movement or repose. 

Margrave accosted her in some language unknown to me. She replied inwhat seemed to me the same tongue. The tones of her voice were sweet, but inexpressibly mournful. The words that they uttered appearedintended to warn, or deprecate, or dissuade; but they called toMargrave's brow a lowering frown, and drew from his lips a burst ofunmistakable anger. The woman rejoined, in the same melancholy music ofvoice. And Margrave then, leaning his arm upon her shoulder, as he hadleaned it on mine, drew her away from the group into a neighbouringcopse of the flowering eucalypti, --mystic trees, never changing the huesof their pale-green leaves, ever shifting the tints of their ash-gray, shedding bark. For some moments I gazed on the two human forms, dimlyseen by the glinting moonlight through the gaps in the foliage. Thenturning away my eyes, I saw, standing close at my side, a man whom I hadnot noticed before. His footstep, as it stole to me, had fallen on thesward without sound. His dress, though Oriental, differed from that ofhis companions, both in shape and colour; fitting close to the breast, leaving the arms bare to the elbow, and of a uniform ghastly white, asare the cerements of the grave. His visage was even darker than those ofthe Syrians or Arabs behind him, and his features were those of a birdof prey, --the beak of the eagle, but the eye of the vulture. His cheekswere hollow; the arms, crossed on his breast, were long and fleshless. Yet in that skeleton form there was a something which conveyed the ideaof a serpent's suppleness and strength; and as the hungry, watchfuleyes met my own startled gaze, I recoiled impulsively with that inwardwarning of danger which is conveyed to man, as to inferior animals, inthe very aspect of the creatures that sting or devour. At my movementthe man inclined his head in the submissive Eastern salutation, andspoke in his foreign tongue, softly, humbly, fawningly, to judge by histone and his gesture. 

I moved yet farther away from him with loathing, and now the humanthought flashed upon me: was I, in truth, exposed to no danger intrusting myself to the mercy of the weird and remorseless master ofthose hirelings from the East, --seven men in number, two at least ofthem formidably armed, and docile as bloodhounds to the hunter, whohas only to show them their prey? But fear of man like myself is notmy weakness; where fear found its way to my heart, it was throughthe doubts or the fancies in which man like myself disappeared in theattributes, dark and unknown, which we give to a fiend or a spectre. And, perhaps, if I could have paused to analyze my own sensations, thevery presence of this escort-creatures of flesh and blood-lessened thedread of my incomprehensible tempter. Rather, a hundred times, front anddefy those seven Eastern slaves--I, haughty son of the Anglo-Saxon whoconquers all races because he fears no odds--than have seen again on thewalls of my threshold the luminous, bodiless Shadow! Besides: Lilian!Lilian! for one chance of saving her life, however wild and chimericalthat chance might be, I would have shrunk not a foot from the march ofan army. 

Thus reassured and thus resolved, I advanced, with a smile of disdain, to meet Margrave and his veiled companion, as they now came from themoonlit copse. 

"Well, " I said to him, with an irony that unconsciously mimicked hisown, "have you taken advice with your nurse? I assume that the dark formby your side is that of Ayesha. "

The woman looked at me from her sable veil, with her steadfast solemneyes, and said, in English, though with a foreign accent: "The nurseborn in Asia is but wise through her love; the pale son of Europeis wise through his art. The nurse says, 'Forbear!' Do you say, 'Adventure'?"

"Peace!" exclaimed Margrave, stamping his foot on the ground. "I take nocounsel from either; it is for me to resolve, for you to obey, and forhim to aid. Night is come, and we waste it; move on. "

The woman made no reply, nor did I. He took my arm and walked back tothe hut. The barbaric escort followed. When we reached the door ofthe building, Margrave said a few words to the woman and to thelitter-bearers. They entered the but with us. Margrave pointed out tothe woman his coffer, to the men the fuel stowed in the outhouse. Bothwere borne away and placed within the litter. Meanwhile, I took fromthe table, on which it was carelessly thrown, the light hatchet that Ihabitually carried with me in my rambles. 

"Do you think that you need that idle weapon?" said Margrave. "Do youfear the good faith of my swarthy attendants?"

"Nay, take the hatchet yourself; its use is to sever the gold from thequartz in which we may find it embedded, or to clear, as this shovel, which will also be needed, from the slight soil above it, the ore thatthe mine in the mountain flings forth, as the sea casts its waifs on thesands. "

"Give me your hand, fellow-labourer!" said Margrave, joyfully. "Ah, there is no faltering terror in this pulse! I was not mistaken in theMan. What rests, but the Place and the Hour? I shall live! I shalllive!"

CHAPTER LXXXI. 

Margrave now entered the litter, and the Veiled Woman drew the blackcurtains round him. I walked on, as the guide, some yards inadvance. The air was still, heavy, and parched with the breath of theAustralasian sirocco. 

We passed through the meadow-lands, studded with slumbering flocks; wefollowed the branch of the creek, which was linked to its source inthe mountains by many a trickling waterfall; we threaded the gloom ofstunted, misshapen trees, gnarled with the stringy bark which makes oneof the signs of the strata that nourish gold; and at length the moon, now in all her pomp of light, mid-heaven amongst her subject stars, gleamed through the fissures of the cave, on whose floor lay the relicsof antediluvian races, and rested in one flood of silvery splendour uponthe hollows of the extinct volcano, with tufts of dank herbage, and widespaces of paler sward, covering the gold below, --Gold, the dumb symbolof organized Matter's great mystery, storing in itself, according asMind, the informer of Matter, can distinguish its uses, evil and good, bane and blessing. 

Hitherto the Veiled Woman had remained in the rear, with thewhite-robed, skeleton-like image that had crept to my side unawares withits noiseless step. Thus in each winding turn of the difficult path atwhich the convoy following behind me came into sight, I had seen, first, the two gayly-dressed, armed men, next the black bier-like litter, andlast the Black-veiled Woman and the White-robed Skeleton. 

But now, as I halted on the tableland, backed by the mountain andfronting the valley, the woman left her companion, passed by the litterand the armed men, and paused by my side, at the mouth of the moonlitcavern. 

There for a moment she stood, silent, the procession below mountingupward laboriously and slow; then she turned to me, and her veil waswithdrawn. 

The face on which I gazed was wondrously beautiful, and severely awful. There was neither youth nor age, but beauty, mature and majestic as thatof a marble Demeter. 

"Do you believe in that which you seek?" she asked, in her foreign, melodious, melancholy accents. 

"I have no belief, " was my answer. "True science has none. True sciencequestions all things, takes nothing upon credit. It knows but threestates of the mind, --Denial, Conviction, and that vast interval betweenthe two, which is not belief, but suspense of judgment. "

The woman let fall her veil, moved from me, and seated herself on a cragabove that cleft between mountain and creek, to which, when I had firstdiscovered the gold that the land nourished, the rain from the cloudshad given the rushing life of the cataract; but which now, in thedrought and the hush of the skies, was but a dead pile of stones. 

The litter now ascended the height: its bearers halted; a lean hand torethe curtains aside, and Margrave descended, leaning, this time, not onthe Black-veiled Woman, but on the White-robed Skeleton. 

There, as he stood, the moon shone full on his wasted form; on hisface, resolute, cheerful, and proud, despite its hollowed outlines andsicklied hues. He raised his head, spoke in the language unknown to me, and the armed men and the litter-bearers grouped round him, bending low, their eyes fixed on the ground. The Veiled Woman rose slowly and came tohis side, motioning away, with a mute sign, the ghastly form on which heleaned, and passing round him silently, instead, her own sustaining arm. Margrave spoke again a few sentences, of which I could not even guessthe meaning. When he had concluded, the armed men and the litter-bearerscame nearer to his feet, knelt down, and kissed his hand. They thenrose, and took from the bier-like vehicle the coffer and the fuel. Thisdone, they lifted again the litter, and again, preceded by the armedmen, the procession descended down the sloping hillside, down into thevalley below. 

Margrave now whispered, for some moments, into the ear of the hideouscreature who had made way for the Veiled Woman. The grim skeleton bowedhis head submissively, and strode noiselessly away through the longgrasses, --the slender stems, trampled under his stealthy feet, reliftingthemselves, as after a passing wind. And thus he, too, sank out of sightdown into the valley below. On the tableland of the hill remained onlywe three, --Margrave, myself, and the Veiled Woman. 

She had reseated herself apart, on the gray crag above the driedtorrent. He stood at the entrance of the cavern, round the sides ofwhich clustered parasital plants, with flowers of all colours, someamongst them opening their petals and exhaling their fragrance only inthe hours of night; so that, as his form filled up the jaws of the dullarch, obscuring the moonbeam that strove to pierce the shadows thatslept within, it stood now--wan and blighted--as I had seen it first, radiant and joyous, literally "framed in blooms. "

CHAPTER LXXXII. 

"So, " said Margrave, turning to me, "under the soil that spreads aroundus lies the gold which to you and to me is at this moment of no value, except as a guide to its twin-born, --the regenerator of life!"

"You have not yet described to me the nature of the substance which weare to explore, nor of the process by which the virtues you impute to itare to be extracted. "

"Let us first find the gold, and instead of describing the life-amber, so let me call it, I will point it out to your own eyes. As to theprocess, your share in it is so simple, that you will ask me why I seekaid from a chemist. The life-amber, when found, has but to be subjectedto heat and fermentation for six hours; it will be placed, in a smallcaldron which that coffer contains, over the fire which that fuelwill feed. To give effect to the process, certain alkalies and otheringredients are required; but these are prepared, and mine is the taskto commingle them. From your science as chemist I need and ask nought. In you I have sought only the aid of a man. "

"If that be so, why, indeed, seek me at all? Why not confide in thoseswarthy attendants, who doubtless are slaves to your orders?"

"Confide in slaves! when the first task enjoined to them would be todiscover, and refrain from purloining gold! Seven such unscrupulousknaves, or even one such, and I, thus defenceless and feeble! Such isnot the work that wise masters confide to fierce slaves. But that isthe least of the reasons which exclude them from my choice, and fix mychoice of assistant on you. Do you forget what I told you of the dangerwhich the Dervish declared no bribe I could offer could tempt him asecond time to brave?"

"I remember now; those words had passed away from my mind. "

"And because they had passed away from your mind, I chose you for mycomrade. I need a man by whom danger is scorned. "

"But in the process of which you tell me I see no possible danger unlessthe ingredients you mix in your caldron have poisonous fumes. "

"It is not that. The ingredients I use are not poisons. "

"What other danger, except you dread your own Eastern slaves? But, ifso, why lead them to these solitudes; and, if so, why not bid me bearmed?"

"The Eastern slaves, fulfilling my commands, wait for my summons wheretheir eyes cannot see what we do. The danger is of a kind in whichthe boldest son of the East would be more craven, perhaps, than thedaintiest Sybarite of Europe, who would shrink from a panther and laughat a ghost. In the creed of the Dervish, and of all who adventure intothat realm of nature which is closed to philosophy and open to magic, there are races in the magnitude of space unseen as animalcules in theworld of a drop. For the tribes of the drop, science has its microscope. Of the host of yon azure Infinite magic gains sight, and through themgains command over fluid conductors that link all the parts of creation. Of these races, some are wholly indifferent to man, some benign to him, and some dreadly hostile. In all the regular and prescribed conditionsof mortal being, this magic realm seems as blank and tenantless as yonvacant air. But when a seeker of powers beyond the rude functions bywhich man plies the clockwork that measures his hours, and stops whenits chain reaches the end of its coil, strives to pass over thoseboundaries at which philosophy says, 'Knowledge ends, '--then he is likeall other travellers in regions unknown; he must propitiate or brave thetribes that are hostile, --must depend for his life on the tribes thatare friendly. Though your science discredits the alchemist's dogmas, your learning informs you that all alchemists were not ignorantimpostors; yet those whose discoveries prove them to have been thenearest allies to your practical knowledge, ever hint in their mysticalworks at the reality of that realm which is open to magic, --ever hintthat some means less familiar than furnace and bellows are essentialto him who explores the elixir of life. He who once quaffs that elixir, obtains in his very veins the bright fluid by which he transmits theforce of his will to agencies dormant in nature, to giants unseen in thespace. And here, as he passes the boundary which divides his allottedand normal mortality from the regions and races that magic alone canexplore, so, here, he breaks down the safeguard between himself and thetribes that are hostile. Is it not ever thus between man and man? Let arace the most gentle and timid and civilized dwell on one side a riveror mountain, and another have home in the region beyond, each, if itpass not the intervening barrier, may with each live in peace. Butif ambitious adventurers scale the mountain, or cross the river, withdesign to subdue and enslave the population they boldly invade, thenall the invaded arise in wrath and defiance, --the neighbours are changedinto foes. And therefore this process--by which a simple though rarematerial of nature is made to yield to a mortal the boon of a life whichbrings, with its glorious resistance to Time, desires and faculties tosubject to its service beings that dwell in the earth and the air andthe deep--has ever been one of the same peril which an invader mustbrave when he crosses the bounds of his nation. By this key alone youunlock all the cells of the alchemist's lore; by this alone understandhow a labour, which a chemist's crudest apprentice could perform, hasbaffled the giant fathers of all your dwarfed children of science. Nature, that stores this priceless boon, seems to shrink from concedingit to man; the invisible tribes that abhor him, oppose themselves tothe gain that might give them a master. The duller of those who werethe life-seekers of old would have told you how some chance, trivial, unlooked-for, foiled their grand hope at the very point offruition, --some doltish mistake, some improvident oversight, a defectin the sulphur, a wild overflow in the quicksilver, or a flaw in thebellows, or a pupil who failed to replenish the fuel, by falling asleepby the furnace. The invisible foes seldom vouchsafe to make themselvesvisible where they can frustrate the bungler, as they mock at his toilsfrom their ambush. But the mightier adventurers, equally foiled indespite of their patience and skill, would have said, 'Not with us reststhe fault; we neglected no caution, we failed from no oversight. But outfrom the caldron dread faces arose, and the spectres or demons dismayedand baffled us. ' Such, then, is the danger which seems so appalling toa son of the East, as it seemed to a sees in the dark age of Europe. Butwe can deride all its threats, you and I. For myself, I own frankly Itake all the safety that the charms and resources of magic bestow. You, for your safety, have the cultured and disciplined reason which reducesall fantasies to nervous impressions; and I rely on the courage of onewho has questioned, unquailing, the Luminous Shadow, and wrested fromthe hand of the magician himself the wand which concentred the wondersof will!"

To this strange and long discourse I listened without interruption, andnow quietly answered, --

"I do not merit the trust you affect in my courage; but I am now on myguard against the cheats of the fancy, and the fumes of a vapour canscarcely bewilder the brain in the open air of this mountain-land. Ibelieve in no races like those which you tell me lie viewless in space, as do gases. I believe not in magic; I ask not its aids, and I dread notits terrors. For the rest, I am confident of one mournful courage, --thecourage that comes from despair. I submit to your guidance, whatever itbe, as a sufferer whom colleges doom to the grave submits to the quackwho says, 'Take my specific and live!' My life is nought in itself; mylife lives in another. You and I are both brave from despair; you wouldturn death from yourself, I would turn death from one I love more thanmyself. Both know how little aid we can win from the colleges, and both, therefore, turn to the promises most audaciously cheering. Dervish ormagician, alchemist or phantom, what care you and I? And if they failus, what then? They cannot fail us more than the colleges do!"

CHAPTER LXXXIII. 

The gold has been gained with an easy labour. I knew where to seek forit, whether under the turf or in the bed of the creek. But Margrave'seyes, hungrily gazing round every spot from which the ore was disburied, could not detect the substance of which he alone knew the outwardappearance. I had begun to believe that, even in the description givento him of this material, he had been credulously duped, and that no suchmaterial existed, when, coming back from the bed of the watercourse, Isaw a faint yellow gleam amidst the roots of a giant parasite plant, theleaves and blossoms of which climbed up the sides of the cave with itsantediluvian relics. The gleam was the gleam of gold, and on removingthe loose earth round the roots of the plant, we came on--No, I willnot, I dare not, describe it. The gold-digger would cast it aside, the naturalist would pause not to heed it; and did I describe it, andchemistry deign to subject it to analysis, could chemistry alone detachor discover its boasted virtues?

Its particles, indeed, are very minute, not seeming readily tocrystallize with each other; each in itself of uniform shape and size, spherical as the egg which contains the germ of life, and small as theegg from which the life of an insect may quicken. 

But Margrave's keen eye caught sight of the atoms upcast by the lightof the moon. He exclaimed to me, "Found! I shall live!" And then, as hegathered up the grains with tremulous hands, he called out to the VeiledWoman, hitherto still seated motionless on the crag. At his word sherose and went to the place bard by, where the fuel was piled, busyingherself there. I had no leisure to heed her. I continued my search inthe soft and yielding soil that time and the decay of vegetable life hadaccumulated over the Pre-Adamite strata on which the arch of the caverested its mighty keystone. 

When we had collected of these particles about thrice as much as aman might hold in his hand, we seemed to have exhausted their bed. Wecontinued still to find gold, but no more of the delicate substance, towhich, in our sight, gold was as dross. 

"Enough, " then said Margrave, reluctantly desisting. "What we havegained already will suffice for a life thrice as long as legendattributes to Haroun. I shall live, --I shall live through thecenturies. "

"Forget not that I claim my share. "

"Your share--yours! True--your half of my life! It is true. " He pausedwith a low, ironical, malignant laugh; and then added, as he rose andturned away, "But the work is yet to be done. "

CHAPTER LXXXIV. 

While we had thus laboured and found, Ayesha had placed the fuel wherethe moonlight fell fullest on the sward of the tableland, --a part of italready piled as for a fire, the rest of it heaped confusedly close athand; and by the pile she had placed the coffer. And there she stood, her arms folded under her mantle, her dark image seeming darker stillas the moonlight whitened all the ground from which the image rosemotionless. Margrave opened his coffer, the Veiled Woman did not aidhim, and I watched in silence, while he as silently made his weird andwizard-like preparations. 

CHAPTER LXXXV. 

On the ground a wide circle was traced by a small rod, tipped apparentlywith sponge saturated with some combustible naphtha-like fluid, so thata pale lambent flame followed the course of the rod as Margrave guidedit, burning up the herbage over which it played, and leaving a distinctring, like that which, in our lovely native fable-talk, we call the"Fairy's Ring, " but yet more visible because marked in phosphorescentlight. On the ring thus formed were placed twelve small lamps, fed withthe fluid from the same vessel, and lighted by the same rod. The lightemitted by the lamps was more vivid and brilliant than that whichcircled round the ring. 

Within the circumference, and immediately round the woodpile, Margravetraced certain geometrical figures, in which--not without a shudder, that I overcame at once by a strong effort of will in murmuring tomyself the name of "Lilian"--I recognized the interlaced triangles whichmy own hand, in the spell enforced on a sleep-walker, had described onthe floor of the wizard's pavilion. The figures were traced, like thecircle, in flame, and at the point of each triangle (four in number) wasplaced a lamp, brilliant as those on the ring. This task performed, thecaldron, based on an iron tripod, was placed on the wood-pile. And thenthe woman, before inactive and unheeding, slowly advanced, knelt by thepile, and lighted it. The dry wood crackled and the flame burst forth, licking the rims of the caldron with tongues of fire. 

Margrave flung into the caldron the particles we had collected, pouredover them first a liquid, colourless as water, from the largest of thevessels drawn from his coffer, and then, more sparingly, drops fromsmall crystal phials, like the phials I had seen in the hand of PhilipDerval. 

Having surmounted my first impulse of awe, I watched these proceedings, curious yet disdainful, as one who watches the mummeries of an enchanteron the stage. 

"If, " thought I, "these are but artful devices to inebriate and fool myown imagination, my imagination is on its guard, and reason shall not, this time, sleep at her post!"

"And now, " said Margrave, "I consign to you the easy task by whichyou are to merit your share of the elixir. It is my task to feed andreplenish the caldron; it is Ayesha's to heed the fire, which must notfor a moment relax in its measured and steady heat. Your task is thelightest of all it is but to renew from this vessel the fluid that burnsin the lamps, and on the ring. Observe, the contents of the vessel mustbe thriftily husbanded; there is enough, but not more than enough, tosustain the light in the lamps, on the lines traced round the caldron, and on the farther ring, for six hours. The compounds dissolved in thisfluid are scarce, --only obtainable in the East, and even in the Eastmonths might have passed before I could have increased my supply. 

"I had no months to waste. Replenish, then, the light only when itbegins to flicker or fade. Take heed, above all, that no part of theouter ring--no, not an inch--and no lamp of the twelve, that are to itszodiac like stars, fade for one moment in darkness. "

I took the crystal vessel from his hand. 

"The vessel is small, " said I, "and what is yet left of its contents isbut scanty; whether its drops suffice to replenish the lights I cannotguess, --I can but obey your instructions. But, more important by farthan the light to the lamps and the circle, which in Asia or Africamight scare away the wild beasts unknown to this land--more importantthan light to a lamp, is the strength to your frame, weak magician! Whatwill support you through six weary hours of night-watch?"

"Hope, " answered Margrave, with a ray of his old dazzling style. "Hope!I shall live, --I shall live through the centuries!"

CHAPTER LXXXVI. 

One hour passed away; the fagots under the caldron burned clear inthe sullen sultry air. The materials within began to seethe, and theircolour, at first dull and turbid, changed into a pale-rose hue; fromtime to time the Veiled Woman replenished the fire, after she had doneso reseating herself close by the pyre, with her head bowed over herknees, and her face hid under her veil. 

The lights in the lamps and along the ring and the triangles now beganto pale. I resupplied their nutriment from the crystal vessel. Asyet nothing strange startled my eye or my ear beyond the rim of thecircle, --nothing audible, save, at a distance, the musical wheel-likeclick of the locusts, and, farther still, in the forest, the howl ofthe wild dogs, that never bark; nothing visible, but the trees and themountain-range girding the plains silvered by the moon, and the arch ofthe cavern, the flush of wild blooms on its sides, and the gleam of drybones on its floor, where the moonlight shot into the gloom. 

The second hour passed like the first. I had taken my stand by the sideof Margrave, watching with him the process at work in the caldron, whenI felt the ground slightly vibrate beneath my feet, and, looking up, it seemed as if all the plains beyond the circle were heaving like theswell of the sea, and as if in the air itself there was a perceptibletremor. 

I placed my hand on Margrave's shoulder and whispered, "To me earth andair seem to vibrate. Do they seem to vibrate to you?"

"I know not, I care not, " he answered impetuously. "The essence isbursting the shell that confined it. Here are my air and my earth!Trouble me not. Look to the circle! feed the lamps if they fail. "

I passed by the Veiled Woman as I walked towards a place in the ring inwhich the flame was waning dim; and I whispered to her the same questionwhich I had whispered to Margrave. She looked slowly around, andanswered, "So is it before the Invisible make themselves visible! DidI not bid him forbear?" Her head again drooped on her breast, and herwatch was again fixed on the fire. 

I advanced to the circle and stooped to replenish the light where itwaned. As I did so, on my arm, which stretched somewhat beyond the lineof the ring, I felt a shock like that of electricity. The arm fell tomy side numbed and nerveless, and from my hand dropped, but within thering, the vessel that contained the fluid. Recovering my surprise or mystun, hastily with the other hand I caught up the vessel, but some ofthe scanty liquid was already spilled on the sward; and I saw with athrill of dismay, that contrasted indeed the tranquil indifference withwhich I had first undertaken my charge, how small a supply was now left. 

I went back to Margrave, and told him of the shock, and of itsconsequence in the waste of the liquid. 

"Beware, " said he, "that not a motion of the arm, not an inch of thefoot, pass the verge of the ring; and if the fluid be thus unhappilystinted, reserve all that is left for the protecting circle and thetwelve outer lamps! See how the Grand Work advances! how the hues in thecaldron are glowing blood-red through the film on the surface!"

And now four hours of the six were gone; my arm had gradually recoveredits strength. Neither the ring nor the lamps had again requiredreplenishing; perhaps their light was exhausted less quickly, as itwas no longer to be exposed to the rays of the intense Australian moon. Clouds had gathered over the sky, and though the moon gleamed at timesin the gaps that they left in blue air, her beam was more hazy anddulled. The locusts no longer were heard in the grass, nor the howl ofthe dogs in the forest. Out of the circle, the stillness was profound. 

And about this time I saw distinctly in the distance a vast Eye! It drewnearer and nearer, seeming to move from the ground at the height of somelofty giant. Its gaze riveted mine; my blood curdled in the blaze fromits angry ball; and now as it advanced larger and larger, other Eyes, asif of giants in its train, grew out from the space in its rear; numberson numbers, like the spearheads of some Eastern army, seen afar by palewarders of battlements doomed to the dust. My voice long refused anutterance to my awe; at length it burst forth shrill and loud, --

"Look! look! Those terrible Eyes! Legions on legions! And hark! thattramp of numberless feet; they are not seen, but the hollows of earthecho the sound of their march!"

Margrave, more than ever intent on the caldron, in which, from time totime, he kept dropping powders or essences drawn forth from his coffer, looked up, defyingly, fiercely. 

"Ye come, " he said, in a low mutter, his once mighty voice soundinghollow and labouring, but fearless and firm, --"ye come, --not to conquer, vain rebels!--ye whose dark chief I struck down at my feet in the tombwhere my spell had raised up the ghost of your first human master, theChaldee! Earth and air have their armies still faithful to me, and stillI remember the war-song that summons them up to confront you! Ayesha!Ayesha! recall the wild troth that we pledged amongst roses; recall thedread bond by which we united our sway over hosts that yet own thee asqueen, though my sceptre is broken, my diadem reft from my brows!"

The Veiled Woman rose at this adjuration. Her veil now was withdrawn, and the blaze of the fire between Margrave and herself flushed, as withthe rosy bloom of youth, the grand beauty of her softened face. It wasseen, detached as it were, from her dark-mantled form; seen through themist of the vapours which rose from the caldron, framing it round likethe clouds. That are yieldingly pierced by the light of the eveningstar. 

Through the haze of the vapour came her voice, more musical, moreplaintive than I had heard it before, but far softer, more tender; stillin her foreign tongue; the words unknown to me, and yet their sense, perhaps, made intelligible by the love, which has one common languageand one common look to all who have loved, --the love unmistakably heardin the loving tone, unmistakably seen in the loving face. 

A moment or so more, and she had come round from the opposite side ofthe fire-pile, and bending over Margrave's upturned brow, kissed itquietly, solemnly; and then her countenance grew fierce, her crest roseerect; it was the lioness protecting her young. She stretched forth herarm from the black mantle, athwart the pale front that now again bentover the caldron, --stretched it towards the haunted and hollow-soundingspace beyond, in the gesture of one whose right hand has the sway of thesceptre. And then her voice stole on the air in the music of a chant, not loud, yet far-reaching; so thrilling, so sweet, and yet so solemn, that I could at once comprehend how legend united of old the spell ofenchantment with the power of song. All that I recalled of the effectswhich, in the former time, Margrave's strange chants had produced on theear that they ravished and the thoughts they confused, was but as thewild bird's imitative carol, compared to the depth and the art and thesoul of the singer, whose voice seemed endowed with a charm to enthrallall the tribes of creation, though the language it used for that charmmight to them, as to me, be unknown. As the song ceased, I heard, frombehind, sounds like those I had heard in the spaces before me, --thetramp of invisible feet, the whir of invisible wings, as if armies weremarching to aid against armies in march to destroy. 

"Look not in front nor around, " said Ayesha. "Look, like him, on thecaldron below. The circle and the lamps are yet bright; I will tell youwhen the light again fails. "

I dropped my eyes on the caldron. 

"See, " whispered Margrave, "the sparkles at last begin to arise, and therose-hues to deepen, --signs that we near the last process. "

CHAPTER LXXXVII. 

The fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha said to me, "Lo! the circleis fading; the lamps grow dim. Look now without fear on the spacebeyond; the eyes that appalled thee are again lost in air, as lightningsthat fleet back into cloud. "

I looked up, and the spectres had vanished. The sky was tinged withsulphurous hues, the red and the black intermixed. I replenished thelamps and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully; but when I came tothe sixth lamp, not a drop in the vessel that fed them was left. In avague dismay, I now looked round the half of the wide circle in rear ofthe two bended figures intent on the caldron. All along that disk thelight was already broken, here and there flickering up, here and theredying down; the six lamps in that half of the circle still twinkled, butfaintly, as stars shrinking fast from the dawn of day. But it was notthe fading shine in that half of the magical ring which daunted my eyeand quickened with terror the pulse of my heart; the Bushland beyondwas on fire. From the background of the forest rose the flame and thesmoke, --the smoke, there, still half smothering the flame. But along thewidth of the grasses and herbage, between the verge of the forest andthe bed of the water-creek just below the raised platform from which Ibeheld the dread conflagration, the fire was advancing, --wave upon wave, clear and red against the columns of rock behind, --as the rush of aflood through the mists of some Alp crowned with lightnings. 

Roused from my stun at the first sight of a danger not foreseen by themind I had steeled against far rarer portents of Nature, I cared no morefor the lamps and the circle. Hurrying back to Ayesha, I exclaimed: "Thephantoms have gone from the spaces in front; but what incantation orspell can arrest the red march of the foe, speeding on in the rear!While we gazed on the caldron of life, behind us, unheeded, behold theDestroyer!"

Ayesha looked, and made no reply; but, as by involuntary instinct, bowed her majestic head, then rearing it erect, placed herself yetmore immediately before the wasted form of the young magician (he stillbending over the caldron, and hearing me not in the absorption and hopeof his watch), --placed herself before him, as the bird whose first careis her fledgling. 

As we two there stood, fronting the deluge of fire, we heard Margravebehind us, murmuring low, "See the bubbles of light, how they sparkleand dance! I shall live, I shall live!" And his words scarcely died inour ears before, crash upon crash, came the fall of the age-long treesin the forest; and nearer, all near us, through the blazing grasses, thehiss of the serpents, the scream of-the birds, and the bellow and trampof the herds plunging wild through the billowy red of their pastures. 

Ayesha now wound her arms around Margrave, and wrenched him, reluctantand struggling, from his watch over the seething caldron. In rebuke; ofhis angry exclamations, she pointed to the march of the fire, spoke insorrowful tones a few words in her own language, and then, appealing tome in English, said, --

"I tell him that here the Spirits who oppose us have summoned a foe thatis deaf to my voice, and--"

"And, " exclaimed Margrave, no longer with gasp and effort, but with theswell of a voice which drowned all the discords of terror and of agonysent forth from the Phlegethon burning below, --"and this witch, whom Itrusted, is a vile slave and impostor, more desiring my death than mylife. She thinks that in life I should scorn and forsake her, that indeath I should die in her arms! Sorceress, avaunt! Art thou useless andpowerless now when I need thee most? Go! Let the world be one funeralpyre! What to me is the world? My world is my life! Thou knowest thatmy last hope is here, --that all the strength left me this night will diedown, like the lamps in the circle, unless the elixir restore it. Boldfriend, spurn that sorceress away. Hours yet ere those flames can assailus! A few minutes more, and life to your Lilian and me!"

Thus having said, Margrave turned from us, and cast into the caldronthe last essence yet left in his empty coffer. Ayesha silently drew herblack veil over her face; and turned, with the being she loved, from theterror he scorned, to share in the hope that he cherished. 

Thus left alone, with my reason disenthralled, disenchanted, Isurveyed more calmly the extent of the actual peril with which we werethreatened, and the peril seemed less, so surveyed. 

It is true all the Bush-land behind, almost up to the bed of the creek, was on fire; but the grasses, through which the flame spread so rapidly, ceased at the opposite marge of the creek. Watery pools were still, atintervals, left in the bed of the creek, shining tremulous, like wavesof fire, in the glare reflected from the burning land; and even wherethe water failed, the stony course of the exhausted rivulet was abarrier against the march of the conflagration. Thus, unless the wind, now still, should rise, and waft some sparks to the parched combustibleherbage immediately around us, we were saved from the fire, and our workmight yet be achieved. 

I whispered to Ayesha the conclusion to which I came. "Thinkest thou, "she answered, without raising her mournful head, "that the Agencies ofNature are the movements of chance? The Spirits I invoked to his aidare leagued with the hosts that assail. A mightier than I am has doomedhim!"

Scarcely had she uttered these words before Margrave exclaimed, "Beholdhow the Rose of the alchemist's dream enlarges its blooms from the foldsof its petals! I shall live, I shall live!"

I looked, and the liquid which glowed in the caldron had now taken asplendour that mocked all comparisons borrowed from the lustre of gems. In its prevalent colour it had, indeed, the dazzle and flash of theruby; but out from the mass of the molten red, broke coruscations of allprismal hues, shooting, shifting, in a play that made the wavelets themselves seem living things, sensible of their joy. No longer was therescum or film upon the surface; only ever and anon a light rosy vapourfloating up, and quick lost in the haggard, heavy, sulphurous air, hot with the conflagration rushing towards us from behind. And thesecoruscations formed, on the surface of the molten ruby, literally theshape of a Rose, its leaves made distinct in their outlines by sparks ofemerald and diamond and sapphire. 

Even while gazing on this animated liquid lustre, a buoyant delightseemed infused into my senses; all terrors conceived before wereannulled; the phantoms, whose armies had filled the wide spaces infront, were forgotten; the crash of the forest behind was unheard. In the reflection of that glory, Margrave's wan cheek seemed alreadyrestored to the radiance it wore when I saw it first in the framework ofblooms. 

As I gazed, thus enchanted, a cold hand touched my own. 

"Hush!" whispered Ayesha, from the black veil, against which the rays ofthe caldron fell blunt, and absorbed into Dark. "Behind us, the light ofthe circle is extinct, but there we are guarded from all save the brutaland soulless destroyers. But before!--but before!--see, two of thelamps have died out!--see the blank of the gap in the ring Guard thatbreach, --there the demons will enter. "

"Not a drop is there left in his vessel by which to replenish the lampson the ring. "

"Advance, then; thou hast still the light of the soul, and the demonsmay recoil before a soul that is dauntless and guiltless. If not, Threeare lost!--as it is, One is doomed. "

Thus adjured, silently, involuntarily, I passed from the Veiled Woman'sside, over the sere lines on the turf which had been traced by thetriangles of light long since extinguished, and towards the verge ofthe circle. As I advanced, overhead rushed a dark cloud of wings, --birdsdislodged from the forest on fire, and screaming, in dissonant terror, as they flew towards the farthermost mountains; close by my feet hissedand glided the snakes, driven forth from their blazing coverts, andglancing through the ring, unscared by its waning lamps; all undulatingby me, bright-eyed and hissing, all made innocuous by fear, --even theterrible Death-adder, which I trampled on as I halted at the verge ofthe circle, did not turn to bite, but crept harmless away. I halted atthe gap between the two dead lamps, and bowed my head to look again intothe crystal vessel. Were there, indeed, no lingering drops yet left, if but to recruit the lamps for some priceless minutes more? As I thusstood, right into the gap between the two dead lamps strode a giganticFoot. All the rest of the form was unseen; only, as volume after volumeof smoke poured on from the burning land behind, it seemed as if onegreat column of vapour, eddying round, settled itself aloft from thecircle, and that out from that column strode the giant Foot. And, asstrode the Foot, so with it came, like the sound of its tread, a roll ofmuttered thunder. 

I recoiled, with a cry that rang loud through the lurid air. 

"Courage!" said the voice of Ayesha. "Trembling soul, yield not an inchto the demon!"

At the charm, the wonderful charm, in the tone of the Veiled Woman'svoice, my will seemed to take a force more sublime than its own. I folded my arms on my breast, and stood as if rooted to the spot, confronting the column of smoke and the stride of the giant Foot. Andthe Foot halted, mute. 

Again, in the momentary hush of that suspense, I heard a voice, --it wasMargrave's. 

"The last hour expires, the work is accomplished! Come! come! Aid me totake the caldron from the fire; and quick!--or a drop may be wasted invapour--the Elixir of Life from the caldron!"

At that cry I receded, and the Foot advanced. 

And at that moment, suddenly, unawares, from behind, I was strickendown. Over me, as I lay, swept a whirlwind of trampling hoofs andglancing horns. The herds, in their flight from the burning pastures, had rushed over the bed of the watercourse, scaled the slopes of thebanks. Snorting and bellowing, they plunged their blind way to themountains. One cry alone, more wild than their own savage blare, piercedthe reek through which the Brute Hurricane swept. At that cry of wrathand despair I struggled to rise, again dashed to earth by the hoofs andthe horns. But was it the dream-like deceit of my reeling senses, or didI see that giant Foot stride past through the close-serried ranks ofthe maddening herds? Did I hear, distinct through all the huge uproar ofanimal terror, the roll of low thunder which followed the stride of thatFoot?

CHAPTER LXXXVIII. 

When my sense had recovered its shock, and my eyes looked dizzily round, the charge of the beasts had swept by; and of all the wild tribeswhich had invaded the magical circle, the only lingerer was the brownDeath-adder, coiled close by the spot where my head had rested. Besidethe extinguished lamps which the hoofs had confusedly scattered, thefire, arrested by the watercourse, had consumed the grasses that fed it, and there the plains stretched, black and desert as the PhlegroeanField of the Poet's Hell. But the fire still raged in the forestbeyond, --white flames, soaring up from the trunks of the tallest trees, and forming, through the sullen dark of the smoke-reek, innumerablepillars of fire, like the halls in the City of fiends. 

Gathering myself up, I turned my eyes from the terrible pomp of thelurid forest, and looked fearfully down on the hoof-trampled sward formy two companions. 

I saw the dark image of Ayesha still seated, still bending, as I hadseen it last. I saw a pale hand feebly grasping the rim of the magicalcaldron, which lay, hurled down from its tripod by the rush ofthe beasts, yards away from the dim fading embers of the scatteredwood-pyre. I saw the faint writhings of a frail wasted frame, over whichthe Veiled Woman was bending. I saw, as I moved with bruised limbs tothe place, close by the lips of the dying magician, the flash of theruby-like essence spilled on the sward, and, meteor-like, sparkling upfrom the torn tufts of herbage. 

I now reached Margrave's side. Bending over him as the Veiled Womanbent, and as I sought gently to raise him, he turned his face, fiercelyfaltering out, "Touch me not, rob me not! You share with me! Never!never! These glorious drops are all mine! Die all else! I will live! Iwill live!" Writhing himself from my pitying arms, he plunged his faceamidst the beautiful, playful flame of the essence, as if to lap theelixir with lips scorched away from its intolerable burning. Suddenly, with a low shriek, he fell back, his face upturned to mine, and on thatface unmistakably reigned Death!

Then Ayesha tenderly, silently, drew the young head to her lap, and itvanished from my sight behind her black veil. 

I knelt beside her, murmuring some trite words of comfort; but sheheeded me not, rocking herself to and fro as the mother who cradles achild to sleep. Soon the fast-flickering sparkles of the lost elixirdied out on the grass; and with their last sportive diamond-like trembleof light, up, in all the suddenness of Australian day, rose the sun, lifting himself royally above the mountain-tops, and fronting the meanerblaze of the forest as a young king fronts his rebels. And as there, where the bush-fires had ravaged, all was a desert, so there, wheretheir fury had not spread, all was a garden. Afar, at the foot of themountains, the fugitive herds were grazing; the cranes, flocking backto the pools, renewed the strange grace of their gambols; and the greatkingfisher, whose laugh, half in mirth, half in mockery, leads the choirthat welcome the morn, --which in Europe is night, --alighted bold onthe roof of the cavern, whose floors were still white with the bones ofraces, extinct before--so helpless through instincts, so royal throughSoul--rose Man!

But there, on the ground where the dazzling elixir had wasted itsvirtues, --there the herbage already had a freshness of verdure which, amid the duller sward round it, was like an oasis of green in a desert. And there wild-flowers, whose chill hues the eye would have scarcelydistinguished the day before, now glittered forth in blooms ofunfamiliar beauty. Towards that spot were attracted myriads of happyinsects, whose hum of intense joy was musically loud. But the form ofthe life-seeking sorcerer lay rigid and stark; blind to the bloom of thewild-flowers, deaf to the glee of the insects, --one hand still restingheavily on the rim of the emptied caldron, and the face still hid behindthe Black Veil. What! the wondrous elixir, sought with such hope andwell-nigh achieved through such dread, fleeting back to the earth fromwhich its material was drawn, to give bloom, indeed, --but to herbs: joyindeed, --but to insects!

And now, in the flash of the sun, slowly wound up the slopes that led tothe circle the same barbaric procession which had sunk into the valleyunder the ray of the moon. The armed men came first, stalwart and tall, their vests brave with crimson and golden lace, their weapons gaylygleaming with holiday silver. After them, the Black Litter. As they cameto the place, Ayesha, not raising her head, spoke to them in her ownEastern tongue. A wail was her answer. The armed men bounded forward, and the bearers left the litter. 

All gathered round the dead form with the face concealed under the blackveil; all knelt, and all wept. Far in the distance, at the foot of theblue mountains, a crowd of the savage natives had risen up as if fromthe earth; they stood motionless, leaning on their clubs and spears, andlooking towards the spot on which we were, --strangely thus brought intothe landscape, as if they too, the wild dwellers on the verge whichHumanity guards from the Brute, were among the mourners for themysterious Child of mysterious Nature! And still, in the herbage, hummed the small insects, and still, from the cavern, laughed the greatkingfisher. I said to Ayesha, "Farewell! your love mourns the dead, mine calls me to the living. You are now with your own people, they mayconsole you; say if I can assist. "

"There is no consolation for me! What mourner can be consoled if thedead die forever? Nothing for him is left but a grave; that grave shallbe in the land where the song of Ayesha first lulled him to sleep. Thouassist Me, --thou, the wise man of Europe! From me ask assistance. Whatroad wilt thou take to thy home?"

"There is but one road known to me through the maze of thesolitude, --that which we took to this upland. "

"On that road Death lurks, and awaits thee! Blind dupe, couldst thouthink that if the grand secret of life had been won, he whose head restson my lap would have yielded thee one petty drop of the essence whichhad filched from his store of life but a moment? Me, who so loved andso cherished him, --me he would have doomed to the pitiless cord of myservant, the Strangler, if my death could have lengthened a hair-breadththe span of his being. But what matters to me his crime or his madness?I loved him! I loved him!"

She bowed her veiled head lower and lower; perhaps, under the veil, herlips kissed the lips of the dead. Then she said whisperingly, --

"Juma the Strangler, whose word never failed to his master, whose preynever slipped from his snare, waits thy step on the road to thy home!But thy death cannot now profit the dead, the beloved. And thou hast hadpity for him who took but thine aid to design thy destruction. His lifeis lost, thine is saved. "

She spoke no more in the tongue that I could interpret. She spoke, inthe language unknown, a few murmured words to her swarthy attendants;then the armed men, still weeping, rose, and made a dumb sign to meto go with them. I understood by the sign that Ayesha had told them toguard me on my way; but she gave no reply to my parting thanks. 

CHAPTER LXXXIX. 

I descended into the valley; the armed men followed. The path, on thatside of the watercourse not reached by the flames, wound through meadowsstill green, or amidst groves still unscathed. As a turning in the waybrought in front of my sight the place I had left behind, I beheld theblack litter creeping down the descent, with its curtains closed, andthe Veiled Woman walking by its side. But soon the funeral processionwas lost to my eyes, and the thoughts that it roused were erased. Thewaves in man's brain are like those of the sea, rushing on, rushing overthe wrecks of the vessels that rode on their surface, to sink, afterstorm, in their deeps. One thought cast forth into the future nowmastered all in the past: "Was Lilian living still?" Absorbed in thegloom of that thought, hurried on by the goad that my heart, in itstortured impatience, gave to my footstep, I outstripped the slow strideof the armed men, and, midway between the place I had left and the homewhich I sped to, came, far in advance of my guards, into the thicket inwhich the bushmen had started up in my path on the night that Lilianhad watched for my coming. The earth at my feet was rife with creepingplants and many-coloured flowers, the sky overhead was half-hid bymotionless pines. Suddenly, whether crawling out from the herbage, or dropping down from the trees, by my side stood the white-robed andskeleton form, --Ayesha's attendant, the Strangler. 

I sprang from him shuddering, then halted and faced him. The hideouscreature crept towards me, cringing and fawning, making signs ofhumble good-will and servile obeisance. Again I recoiled, --wrathfully, loathingly; turned my face homeward, and fled on. I thought I hadbaffled his chase, when, just at the mouth of the thicket, he droppedfrom a bough in my path close behind me. Before I could turn, somedark muffling substance fell between my sight and the sun, and I felt afierce strain at my throat. But the words of Ayesha had warned me; withone rapid hand I seized the noose before it could tighten too closely, with the other I tore the bandage away from my eyes, and, wheeling roundon the dastardly foe, struck him down with one spurn of my foot. Hishand, as he fell, relaxed its hold on the noose; I freed my throat fromthe knot, and sprang from the copse into the broad sunlit plain. I sawno more of the armed men or the Strangler. Panting and breathless, Ipaused at last before the fence, fragrant with blossoms, that divided myhome from the solitude. 

The windows of Lilian's room were darkened; all within the house seemedstill. 

Darkened and silenced Home! with the light and sounds of the jocund dayall around it. Was there yet hope in the Universe for me? All to which Ihad trusted Hope had broken down! The anchors I had forged for her holdin the beds of the ocean, her stay from the drifts of the storm, hadsnapped like the reeds which pierce the side that leans on the barb oftheir points, and confides in the strength of their stems. No hope inthe baffled resources of recognized knowledge! No hope in the daringadventures of Mind into regions unknown; vain alike the calm lore of thepractised physician, and the magical arts of the fated Enchanter! Ihad fled from the commonplace teachings of Nature, to explore in herShadow-land marvels at variance with reason. Made brave by the grandeurof love, I had opposed without quailing the stride of the Demon, and byhope, when fruition seemed nearest, had been trodden into dust by thehoofs of the beast! And yet, all the while, I had scorned, as a dreammore wild than the word of a sorcerer, the hope that the old man and thechild, the wise and the ignorant, took from their souls as inborn. Man and fiend had alike failed a mind, not ignoble, not skilless, notabjectly craven; alike failed a heart not feeble and selfish, not deadto the hero's devotion, willing to shed every drop of its blood fora something more dear than an animal's life for itself! Whatremained--what remained for man's hope?--man's mind and man's heart thusexhausting their all with no other result but despair! What remainedbut the mystery of mysteries, so clear to the sunrise of childhood, thesunset of age, only dimmed by the clouds which collect round the noonof our manhood? Where yet was Hope found? In the soul; in its every-dayimpulse to supplicate comfort and light, from the Giver of soul, wherever the heart is afflicted, the mind is obscured. 

Then the words of Ayesha rushed over me: "What mourner can be consoled, if the Dead die forever?" Through every pulse of my frame throbbed thatdread question. All Nature around seemed to murmur it. And suddenly, asby a flash from heaven, the grand truth in Faber's grand reasoningshone on me, and lighted up all, within and without. Alan alone, of allearthly creatures, asks, "Can the Dead die forever?" and the instinctthat urges the question is God's answer to man! No instinct is given invain. 

And born with the instinct of soul is the instinct that leads the soulfrom the seen to the unseen, from time to eternity, from the torrentthat foams towards the Ocean of Death, to the source of its stream, faraloft from the Ocean. 

"Know thyself, " said the Pythian of old. "That precept descended fromHeaven. " Know thyself! Is that maxim wise? If so, know thy soul. Butnever yet did man come to the thorough conviction of soul but whathe acknowledged the sovereign necessity of prayer. In my awe, in myrapture, all my thoughts seemed enlarged and illumined and exalted. Iprayed, --all my soul seemed one prayer. All my past, with its pride andpresumption and folly, grew distinct as the form of a penitent, kneelingfor pardon before setting forth on the pilgrimage vowed to a shrine. And, sure now, in the deeps of a soul first revealed to myself, that theDead do not die forever, my human love soared beyond its brief trial ofterror and sorrow. Daring not to ask from Heaven's wisdom that Lilian, for my sake, might not yet pass away from the earth, I prayed that mysoul might be fitted to bear with submission whatever my Maker mightordain. And if surviving her--without whom no beam from yon material suncould ever warm into joy a morrow in human life--so to guide my stepsthat they might rejoin her at last, and, in rejoining, regain forever!

How trivial now became the weird riddle that, a little while before, hadbeen clothed in so solemn an awe! What mattered it to the vast interestsinvolved in the clear recognition of Soul and Hereafter, whether or notmy bodily sense, for a moment, obscured the face of the Nature I shouldone day behold as a spirit? Doubtless the sights and the sounds whichhad haunted the last gloomy night, the calm reason of Faber would stripof their magical seemings; the Eyes in the space and the Foot in thecircle might be those of no terrible Demons, but of the wild's savagechildren whom I had seen, halting, curious and mute, in the light of themorning. The tremor of the ground (if not, as heretofore, explicable bythe illusory impression of my own treacherous senses) might be but thenatural effect of elements struggling yet under a soil unmistakablycharred by volcanoes. The luminous atoms dissolved in the caldronmight as little be fraught with a vital elixir as are the splendours ofnaphtha or phosphor. As it was, the weird rite had no magic result. Themagician was not rent limb from limb by the fiends. By causes as naturalas ever extinguished life's spark in the frail lamp of clay, he had diedout of sight--under the black veil. 

What mattered henceforth to Faith, in its far grander questions andanswers, whether Reason, in Faber, or Fancy, in me, supplied the moreprobable guess at a hieroglyph which, if construed aright, was but aword of small mark in the mystical language of Nature? If all the artsof enchantment recorded by Fable were attested by facts which Sages wereforced to acknowledge, Sages would sooner or later find some causefor such portents--not supernatural. But what Sage, without causesupernatural, both without and within him, can guess at the wonders heviews in the growth of a blade of grass, or the tints on an insect'swing? Whatever art Man can achieve in his progress through time, Man'sreason, in time, can suffice to explain. But the wonders of God? Thesebelong to the Infinite; and these, O Immortal! will but develop newwonder on wonder, though thy sight be a spirit's, and thy leisure totrack and to solve an eternity. 

As I raised my face from my clasped hands, my eyes fell full upon aform standing in the open doorway. There, where on the night in whichLilian's long struggle for reason and life had begun, the LuminousShadow had been beheld in the doubtful light of a dying moon and a yethazy dawn; there, on the threshold, gathering round her bright locksthe aureole of the glorious sun, stood Amy, the blessed child! And as Igazed, drawing nearer and nearer to the silenced house, and that Imageof Peace on its threshold, I felt that Hope met me at the door, --Hope inthe child's steadfast eyes, Hope in the child's welcoming smile!

"I was at watch for you, " whispered Amy. "All is well. "

"She lives still--she lives! Thank God! thank God!"

"She lives, --she will recover!" said another voice, as my head sunk onFaber's shoulder. "For some hours in the night her sleep was disturbed, convulsed. I feared, then, the worst. Suddenly, just before the dawn, she called out aloud, still in sleep, --

"'The cold and dark shadow has passed away from me and fromAllen, --passed away from us both forever!'

"And from that moment the fever left her; the breathing became soft, the pulse steady, and the colour stole gradually back to her cheek. Thecrisis is past. Nature's benign Disposer has permitted Nature to restoreyour life's gentle partner, heart to heart, mind to mind--"

"And soul to soul, " I cried, in my solemn joy. "Above as below, soul tosoul!" Then, at a sign from Faber, the child took me by the hand and ledme up the stairs into Lilian's room. 

Again those clear arms closed around me in wife-like and holy love, andthose true lips kissed away my tears, --even as now, at the distance ofyears from that happy morn, while I write the last words of this StrangeStory, the same faithful arms close around me, the same tender lips kissaway my tears. 

THE END.