therance of her designs, which were, never to lose sight of Lord de Clifford's plans as far as she could ascertain them, in the hope of achieving that vague and shadowy revenge which, matured as it was by Madge's mysterious prophecies, became a part and attribute of her existence. And Lord de Clifford! what change did this dark episode make in his existence? None, save that of determining him to go abroad a little sooner than he otherwise might have done, and leaving Blichingly immediately. What other change could it make? for no one knew poor Mary Lee, and every one knew Lord de Clifford; a Mecænas in his way, a spawner of Whig pamphlets, and a crack political writer in the "Edinburgh;" he crammed newspaper editors with good dinners, and they crammed him with praise; he figured in, paragraph after paragraph as that enlightened and patriotic nobleman, whose liberal policy and just views had triumphed over the accident of birth and the prejudice of station, and who, to his eternal honour be it spoken, had taught the people that all greatness, all freedom, all justice, and all morals! must emanate from themselves!" 66 With regard to his personal and individual code, when his vices did not interfere more actively, his was that philosophy of indolence which the epicurean Roman taught, and which looks upon life only as a visionary pageant, and death as the deep sleep that succeeds the dream. Such philosophy, "falsely so called," ever has been, and ever will be, destructive of all pure and lofty feelings; an antidote to all that is ennobling and good; a plague-spot, dark, pestilent, and all-corrupting, in the soul of that man who harbours it. And did the image of poor Mary Lee, a wreck in mind, body, and soul, never overshadow his pleasures or shake his ambition? It has been ascertained that there is iron enough in the blood of forty-two men to make a ploughshare weighing about twenty-four pounds: Lord de Clifford had reversed the order of nature in this, as in most other things—he had iron enough in his single composition to have made forty-two ploughshares. CHAPTER XV. "If it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge. * * Cooled my friends, heated mine enemies." * Merchant of Venice. "A tale of human power-despair not-list and learn! * * * * "What, returned, captain!" * P. B. SHELLEY. SCHILLER'S Robbers. WHEN Mrs. Stokes reached Mary Lee's cottage, it was almost dark, for the clouds had again gathered in black masses, and predicted an impending storm. She hurried up the little wilderness of a garden, and finding the door shut, tapped at the window; but receiving no answer, she tried to raise the latch of the door, which, however, resisted her efforts, being locked from within. "Dear me, how provoking!" said Mrs. Stokes, as large drops of rain began to fall, and a loud peal of thunder rolled above her as though it would rend the heavens; "they cannot be all out, surely? Bless me, how it lightens!" and Mrs. Stokes placed her hand before her eyes, and hurried round to the back of the house, to seek admittance there; but the thunder grew louder and louder, and her appeals for admittance were either unheard or unheeded. "How very tiresome!" reiterated Mrs. Stokes; "I shall be drowned. I'll try and get in at the window of Lee's workroom." So saying, she walked up to it, but stood transfixed to the spot at the scene she beheld within. In the large old chimney blazed a wood fire, on which was placed a tripod, surmounted by a large black iron pot; in one corner of the ample chimney stood a bundle of green fagots; in the opposite one was a cradle, in which slept a rosy-cheeked child of about three years old, unconscious alike of the scene within and the storm without; while on the top of the cradle, like a tutelary saint, sat a large black cat, with one white ring round her tail, the tail itself being curled round her paws, while she was luxuriating in that dignified and perpendicular sleep which only cats, dogs, and somnambulists enjoy. At one side of the cradle, in fearful proximity to the fire (unless his paws were insured), Îay a mosaic of sleeping, watching, and waking, in the person of little Wasp, the Scotch terrier. Two vacant high-backed chairs were at either side of the fireplace on the outside of the chimney; in the seat of one of them was a very dirty pack of cards, a pewter soup-plate full of a darklooking fluid, a cut lemon, and a raw pigeon with the entrails taken out; on the back of the other chair hung a gipsy hat and a red cloak, and in the seat of it was a pair of thick but small shoes, with very large silver buckles; round the whitewashed walls of the room glittered and gleamed, like death's armory, various-sized leaden coffin-plates and handles; against the wall opposite the window, on a large deal workboard, was a largesized but lidless coffin, apparently just finished; the floor was covered with shavings and carpenters' tools; all, save a circle, in the centre of which were marked and chalked out several rectangular lines; within this circle stood Mary Lee and Madge Brindal, the former in the black dress and Quaker-like cap she always wore; her fair hair parted on her high, clear forehead; her cheeks colourless, but still with that sort of pale bloom that is seen in a Provence rose; her mouth was the only citadel that health had not deserted, it was full and rich as ever; the beautifully curved, short upper lip, gently parted, like a twin cherry, from the red, pouting under one; yes, health still seemed as though it clung to "Those yet cool lips to share The last pure life that linger'd there." Her small, white, and almost shadowy hands were crossed upon her bosom, as she peered into the mysterious depths of her companion's wild prophetic eyes, as though time and eternity were to be read within them. Through the almost Ethiopian darkness of Madge Brindal's cheek VOL. I.-Q was a rich, red glow, like that of fire against a midnight sky; her profile was chiselled in the most perfect Greek outline; the mouth was handsome, but somewhat sensual; but then the teeth within it were so pearl-like and costly, that no wonder it seemed a little epicurean; her eyes were large, dark, and lustrous in the extreme, and would have been fierce but that they were curtained with lashes so long and so soft that they almost made one sleepy to look at them; the brows above them were low, straight, and intellectual; her hair, which was of that purple black seldom seen but on a raven's wing, was braided back beneath a red handkerchief, put on much after the fashion of an elderly Roman Contadina; not much above the middle size, her full and voluptuous figure might have been heavy had it been less perfectly moulded. She wore a short green, glazed stuff petticoat, with a short bedgown of bright red striped calico, the sleeves of which were now turned up, displaying a beautifully rounded arm, singularly white compared to her hands, which were brown and rather coarse, this being rendered the more apparent by being covered with very showy but trumpery-looking gold and silver rings, glittering with coloured stones; on her feet were bright blue worsted stockings, without shoes; and just before them was placed a small brazier, from which issued a thick, dense smoke, as ever and anon Madge threw into it with her left hand some mystic powder, while with her right she waved over it a green cypress branch, repeating at the same time some low, unintelligible words. Such was the picture that presented itself to the astounded and disconsolate Mrs. Stokes, as she peered in through a hole in the window-shutter, the firelight blazing before her, and the lightning flashing behind, while the wind whistled, and the hailstones rattled against the windows like dice in a dicebox. "The Lord have mercy upon me!" cried she, her knees trembling and her teeth chattering a second to the contralto of the hail. "What in the name of wickedness are they about? I shall never be able to make them hear me, for the noise of this terrible storm. If John Stokes had been a man—but then every one knows he isn't-he'd have come with me, and not have let me come out alone such an evening as this." Now it is evident that Mrs. Stokes's metaphysical and logical perspicuity must have been completely uprooted by the storm; and that she was incapable of reasoning categorically, or she must have remembered that Tommy and her own orders (and which had the most weight in her ménage, it would have puzzled Archimedes and all his successors to decide) were the sole causes of Mr. Stokes not having braved the storm without as well as that within. Scarcely had Mrs. Stokes uttered this zoological assertion with regard to her husband, when a peal of thunder and a flash of lightning, more awful than the last, seemed to threaten her with instant deafness and blindness; but "fiat justitia, ruat cœlum." So Mrs. Stokes, at that very moment, bethought herself, that, being as deficient in ubiquity as in most other talents, her sposo could not at one and the same moment be taking up the stitches the cat had dropped, and holding that itinerant waterspout, ycleped an umbrella, over her head; therefore, with a candour and recantation of error peculiar to great minds, she added a protocol to her last sentence of, "Oh! I forgot." Again Mrs. Stokes approached the aperture in the shutter and gazed upon the scene within, when, to her horror, she beheld upon the whitened wall of the room the phantasmagoria of a horse galloping down a precipice; a man thrown from it, and a red stream flowing from him. The face she could not distinguish, as it was upon it that he had fallThe smoke now rose from the brazier in such dense masses, while Madge continued to repeat her incantations over it, that the whole phantom became obscured by it; and when at length it was succeeded by a clear blue lambent flame, the plain wall became visible and colourless as before, while the lurid flame played upon Mary's pale fixed features and unearthly-looking eyes, leaving her as like a shade, to all appearance, as the one she had just witnessed. Madge stood gazing inquiringly into her face, while she held the cypress branch triumphantly above her head, pointed at the wall. This she continued to do for a few seconds, and then let it drop into the lidless coffin. en. Mrs. Stokes could hear no more. Her teeth chattered, her head reeled. She with difficulty supported herself against the wall as she muttered, "The Lord have mercy upon me! If they ain't a raising the devil, or doing something worse! Poor Mary, to be sure, she has no reason left to know better; but that Witch of Endor, Madge Brindal, deserves to be dragged through a |