posite cliff. I felt awed, but unappalled, by such | know all, and may do your worst; but the an unaccustomed danger; I hesitated not, how- Heaven that is above us and around us be my ever; making up my mind for every conse- witness, that I never wronged your dear kinsquence, I sprang from firm ground with desperate woman with a thought that could offend an force, reached the opposite crag, and steadied angel." myself there.

I then followed the hunter along his perilous path. A turn of it brought me to a still narrower spot, where Arnold stood confronting me; beyond him there was no farther way. He appeared less conscious of our imminent danger, however, than the vultures did; for a huge pair of these obscene creatures now began to wheel round us, nearer and more near, till I could perceive the foul odor of their bodies.

But Arnold heeded them not. He pointed downward, where yawned a precipice of a thousand feet, bristling with icy spikes and pointed crags. I thought he must be deranged, and shuddered, in spite of myself, at what now seemed to be inevitable. But I followed his dark eye and gesture, as they glanced from the abyss beneath us, wandered on, over the intervening mountains, the valleys, and the lake, and at length rested on a faint white spot beyond. It was the village where Marguerite was then watching, and, perhaps, at that moment, praying for us. I felt her kinsman's simple and sublime appeal, but I did not shrink from it. I, too, gazed mournfully, yet calmly, on the place to which he pointed, and his countenance grew darker as I did so.

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Englishman!" cried he; "thou seest yon spot which offered thee an asylum; thou seest there too, with thy mind's eye, the innocent, trusting child who gave away to thee her heart; and yet thou tremblest not; though in the presence of one who has sworn to avenge her. Thou hast nerves of iron to match thy harder heart; but neither shall avail thee here, if thou hast wronged or ever had a thought of wronging her. Here, upon this awful altar of eternal purity, I swear, that thou shalt die, or vow to render justice to her honor!"

The words and menace of the excited hunter scarcely surprised me; I had already read them in his looks; but I should have spurned them, had I not respected and felt for his passionate

emotion.

Arnold listened to me with eyes of piercing and stern inquiry; then, turning away his face, he remained silent for many minutes. Making, at length, a strong effort of self-control, he extended to me his hand and said, hoarsely: "It is true. I see it is true; though the strangest of all truths. Hadst thou faltered in a single word-had thy cheek changed color-thou hadst died; ay, though my body were blent with thine in one bloody mass-below there-in that icy gulf. Thy trial is now ended: I offer thee my hand in proof of my belief, but not of my forgiveness. I respect-but I shall loathe thee while I live. Let us be going now, if indeed we can go, for the sun has been shining hotly on our snowy path, and it may exist no longer toward the south."

I turned cautiously on the narrow and slippery ledge that overhung the precipice, and endeavored slowly to retrace my steps. When I had passed the angle of the rock, I found, as my guide had apprehended, the path was gone. Ledges of icy rock projected here and there, but no living thing could have trodden them and lived!

Above us towered an inaccessible pinnacle of snow, beneath us yawned a ghastly gulf, whose depths were unfathomable to the dizzy sight, Our situation appeared utterly hopeless, and the vultures wheeled nearer and nearer round our devoted heads. I looked at Arnold; his practiced and undaunted eyes were calmly scrutinizing every ledge or fissure of the ice that offered the slightest chance, but apparently in vain.

Why did you bring me here?" I demanded of him; "could you not have put your question to me elsewhere, without involving, at the same time, a murder and a suicide ?”

"I will tell thee," he replied; "since both of us will scarcely survive for future explanations. I was almost certain of thy guilt; from all I heard and saw of thee, I could easily discover that thou wert of high rank in thine own country. I know, too well, the code of honor there! I have seen too much of your Wilmots and your 66 Arnold," said I, you have wronged me Gorings, not to be acquainted with their prindeeply and dangerously. If a thought of evil had ciples. On my arrival at Lausanne, I soon ascerbeen lurking in my heart, your threat would have tained from my poor, poor, artless child, how her roused it into proud resistance; but I have known affections had been given-not cautiously and life too mournfully, and dared death too often, to with calculation as in your chill country-but let the hope or fear of either influence my will. unreservedly-utterly and forever! I heard of I have no pride-I have deep pain, in defying your nightly meetings; of your long protracted you. Had you thus spoken to me some hours intimacy; but never one word of marriage! ago, I would have grasped your hand, and What, indeed, would a poor village girl have done thanked you for your championship of one whom in your lordly halls in haughty England? Well! I would joyfully have called my own; but now that poor village girl is all that remains to me on I can only feel for yonder lovely girl, as you do, earth to love, to care for, to protect. Since her tenderly, respectfully, and without one warmer father died, she has been to me as my own child thought. Arnold-I loved a lady, long ago, in my comfort, hope, and pride. In an evil hour, my own land; I have mourned her in my exile, I left Switzerland to toil for her, and not vainly, not only as one lost to me forever, but as one dis- in foreign lands. Returning with wealth that honored, and unworthy of my love. By a mys- might have made her a bride for princes, I found terious chance, her honor has been vindicated her, as I thought, the pastime of a masquerading upon this distant mountain, and my love is re- outlaw. Of him there was but one question to stored to her with such devotion, that to think of be asked, and his answer involved life and honor. any other would be adultery. Your own hand has produced the witness of her honor: the crushed wretch whom you rescued from the grave has restored her to my heart.-Now you

Hadst thou fallen by my hand on the spot that gave thee refuge, or had my death consummated thy triumph, my child's fair name would have been tarnished. Here, if either of us perish, it

will only be talked of as an accident. Do you | horror as this brave Switzer's fate. I did not understand me now?"

'So well," I replied, “that I acquit you of all blame. Let us, then, as true comrades, forget all else for the present, except how we can best stand by and assist each other. If I fail you, believe me to be the villain that you thought me yesterday."

For the first time since our acquaintance, Arnold's features assumed a kindly almost a gentle expression.

I would that I had known thee better and sooner;" he said, as with a sorrowing but a manful gaze he examined our forlorn position. He shook hands with me in silence; wrote some lines on a leaf of his tablet and placed it carefully in my hunting frock. Then, he said, solemnly: "There is yet one chance, but it is a fearful one. Thou seest this long steep slope of snow? It must rest on a ledge of rock, or of ice, firm enough to bear some weight. It swells out over the chasm that divides us from the living world; and beyond its edge there seems good footing on the opposite cliff, not a dozen feet apart. Now, you have nerve and activity enough, you may slide along this bank of snow, and spring for your life when it ceases to support you. There is no other hope."

if

"And you?"

"Will follow, or precede you, as you please; you have a right to choose."

"Which do you recommend me?"

"To be last; for then, if I fail, you may try some other more desperate-seeming but happier chance."

I waited for no more: breathing one earnest prayer, I committed myself forthwith to the snowy steep. I shot down it with a rapidity that almost took away my sight, but as I felt the cold air blow up from the abyss beneath, I made one desperate spring; the gulf yawned blackly below me for one moment, the next I was landed on firm rock beyond; trembling, I confess it, in every fiber of my frame.

dare to dwell upon it then, however, for I had still a most perilous path to tread, without a guide or any experience to direct me. Evening, too, was stealing upward from the valleys, and to pass the night among those glaciers was certain death. I started at once upon my lonely way; sustained -nay, winged-by desperation, I bounded along where the chamois might have feared to tread. I climbed steep precipices of uncertain snow, and leaped wide fissures in the ice that would have defied my best efforts at another time. And still I pressed forward, acquiring fresh confidence, and a stronger momentum of mind as well as body, at every conquered danger.

At length I stood upon the grass, the soft familiar grass, that seemed to me like the blessed shore to the half-drowned sailor. I then descended more leisurely, and, almost in an exhausted state, I reached the good pastor's house at midnight.

There I found a kind welcome, and sincere sympathy for my comrade's dreadful fate. The old priest seemed grieved, but not shocked to hear it Such dismal accidents were too common amongst his mountains to excite surprise. When I explained to him the spot where I had lost my companion, and inquired whether we might not be able to recover his body, he replied:

"In the cottage adjoining mine, lives a widow with three brave sons. Her husband's corpse has lain unburied for sixteen years in the very chasm that you speak of. He was one of the few who ever reached the glacier that surmounts it, and he was lost on his return. No human eye will ever see him more." So saying, the venerable priest led me to a chamber, in which was a bed of fir tops, and there, notwithstanding all my trouble, I slept a dreamless sleep.

The next morning, I found that the Puritan had a slight access of fever, which was considered a favorable sign, but of course increased the necessity for quiet. I could not rest. Seizing my carbine, I once more set out toward the fatal glacier, and attempted to explore its mysteries. In vain. Never, until the "world shall melt with fervent heat," may the bodies of those who rest in the crypts of that icy wilderness be revealed!

As soon as I could steady myself, I looked up. There some hundred feet above me-was Arnold, separated by that awful chasm from the 'living world,' as he had said a few minutes before. He was now kneeling on the snow; his head was bowed very low, and his hands were For some days longer I remained in the house clasped upon his breast. The vultures were still of the good pastor of the mountain. I did not flapping their dark wings impatiently, as they wish to leave it until I had some further converwheeled in still narrowing circles over that soli-sation with the Puritan, but I was enjoined for tary man. the present not to disturb him. Day by day, I At length he rose, and with a thoughtful but proceeded to my hopeless search for Arnold's rebrave air, once more looked round upon his mag-mains, and returned each night to the hospitable nificent mountains and his distant home. Then, presbytère.

girding his belt firmly round him, he descended At length, Hezekiah appeared restored to comon the shelving_snow. It was already deeply parative health, and expressed to me a wish that marked where I had passed, and he endeavored he might be removed from being a burthen on to keep himself in the same track; as he launch-the poor priest. I invited him to my humble ed himself on the declivity I turned away my cottage; but I did not describe it as humble, eyes; I could not bear to watch the fearful ex-fearing lest he should construe the expression inperiment. I listened to the rushing sound, how-to a reproach. It was all the home that he had ever, and held my breath to hear his foot fall on left to me. After some consideration, he rethe snow beside me. I heard it not; but instead plied: of it, a sort of groan, and nothing more. When "Yea, I will even go with thee. My carnal I looked up at last, I saw nothing but the moun- pride revolts so much against thy hospitality, tains and the sky, the dark abyss, and the vul- that it must be my duty to accept it. tures hoarsely screaming, as if baffled of their go." prey!

I have witnessed many terrible scenes in my time, but never one that thrilled me with such

Let us

We departed accordingly. The generous priest would accept of no return for all his care, not even of my gratitude, to which he said he had no

claim. His poor little chapel, however, wanted | evening approached, and I hastened anxiously to some repairs, and I was still able to afford the the well-known walk by the water-side, where I few gold pieces that would render it comfortable always expected to meet with Marguerite. for the good man and his humble flock. Even this trifling matter, however, I was obliged to arrange with one of the village elders, who, doubtless, has faithfully discharged his trust.

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shed for subsistence, nor to debauchery for a cowThree days afterward, I attended her funeral. ard's comfort. I find thee here alone, wrestling Poor Marguerite! she lay upon her little bed, as before; not a whit more pale or less beautiful. They had dressed her, as for a festival, in virgin white, and a wreath of living flowers encircled her dead brow. She seemed to me appareled exactly as when first I saw her, in the pride and prime of life!

In an outer room, also dimly lighted by torches of pine-wood, sat the childless widow, surrounded by weeping friends, whose sympathy did not seem importunate to her simple sorrow. And when the child was carried out, crossing her own threshold for the last time, those friends gathered round the mother, to hide that last departure from her sight. Then we moved onward into the open sunlight; and onward, toward the grave. As we passed each house, its inmates joined the sad procession, with heads uncovered and glistening eyes: there was not one mere formal mourner there. At length we reached the last, best resting place of weary humanity; the beautiful form of our loved one was lowered gently into its dark bed, and the earth closed over all that was mortal of young Marguerite.

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"Sweet flower! with flowers I strew thy bridal bed;

Sweet tomb, that in thy circuit doth contain
The perfect model of eternity;

Fair Marguerite, that with angels dost remain,
Accept this latest favor at my hands i

That living honored thee, and being dead,
With funeral praises do adorn thy tomb!"

CHAPTER LV.

No resting could he finde at all,
No ease, nor heart's content;

No house, no home, no biding place :
But wandering forth he went

From towne to towne in foreign landes.
With grieved conscience still,
Repenting for the heinous guilt
Of his forepassed ill.

manfully with thy fate, and dignifying privation with contentment, and energetic fortitude. Thy hand is hardened by honest work, and thy brow is darkened by the sweat of noble labor. Yea, thou hast wrestled bravely with the angel of thy fate, and won from Him his blessing. For me, who hated thee, and triumphed over thee, I have no such retrospect, as thou shalt learn. Why should I not tell thee all? What have I to seek shelter in but humiliation and self-abasement, and what sterner penance can I perform than to make what the Papists call my shrift, to thee?

"I was born like thee,-a Cavalier and a high Churchman, that is, as one who saw naught in politics but a King; and naught in religion but its priests. I was brought up in the half-heathenish sort of education that becomes such principles. When Nature made me ready for the world, I was fit for nothing but to fight my way through it, like a wild beast that preys on blood. I became a soldier therefore; I was fearless and subtle, and I obtained notice. I went to France with the Duke of Buckingham;" -here the Puritan seemed as if he suffered pain which kept him silent for a few minutes. He then resumed, in a sterner voice: "I became his favorite-his minion rather, for he dared to trample on me when I would not humble myself to all his caprices. We quarreled; he sent me on a 'forlorn against Rochelle, in hopes to quiet me. Most of my party were slain; I was taken prisoner, my junior officer escaped and was promoted.

Meanwhile, I lay, wounded and forgotten, in the hospital of a French prison. I will not attempt to tell thee what visions then presented themselves to me; what realities I beheld that transcended all imagination. Hour after hour, astounding truths flashed new light upon my long-blinded and darkened soul. It awoke to a consciousness of its pollution; it endeavored to purify itself, and conceived the great ambition of self-regeneration. From that time I was a changed man; new thoughts rushed in upon my mind, until my brain reeled beneath their pressure. As they assumed form, they gradually shaped themselves into a destiny. I felt that I had a great mission given to me to fulfill. By fasting and prayer, I prepared for a just trial of my faith: I resolved to escape from prison in the open day; if I failed, I should perish, and there was an end of all; if I succeeded, I should take it for a sign.

THE WANDERING JEW (ANCIENT BALLAD). In the painful sense of vacuity that followed, I turned with feverish interest toward the Puritan, in order to distract my thoughts. For the last few days I had ministered to his wants in silence, with which he seemed well satisfied. I now told him that I had been attending the funeral of a dear friend, but for the future that I could devote more time to my duties as his host. They will not long be needed," he replied "I did succeed, miraculously; I was led thence solemnly; "my pilgrimage is nearly accom- to Geneva, where I refreshed my thirst after plished; my most wretched existence is drawing divine learning, at the fountains opened by Calnear its close. Wonderful has been the guiding vin and his great disciples. I felt called to that led me to thy roof for my last shelter-that England, and reached that enslaved island, I appointed thy hand to close my weary eyes- scarcely know how. My tyrant, Buckingham, thine ears to receive my last and only confession. was then in full power; supreme over the counYes-Reginald Hastings, thou hast heaped coals try and the country's King. I felt called upon to of fire on my head, and they have melted my work a great deliverance for Israel; but first stubborn heart. I always, even when I hated I resolved to seek a sign; for I sometimes held thee, respected thy bravery, and would have fearful doubts that the old man was not dead loved, whilst I pitied, the gentleness of thy within me, but survived-lurking and disguised heart. For my hate-it has never harmed thee-in my regenerated soul. as it has harmed me. No-though it has left "I presented myself to Buckingham, and I thee houseless, landless, and alone in a land of made claim upon him for my sufferings in his exile. Still thou hast acted according to thy cause. Not that I cared for aught that was in light, dimly as it shone for thee. In poverty and the all-powerful minion's ability to bestow; but despair, thou didst not turn to mercenary blood- I thought that if he gave patient ear unto me, or

showed human feeling-that then, it might be-der her humble roof! they were the peacefulest he was not ordained to die by my hand. But he of my whole life. I took orders; none knew spurned me; he vilified, he blasphemed me, that I bore a name of ignominy: Í entered into and he died. Yes, I-John Felton-slew him your church and I, the convicted felon, had a pulwith this right arm, and felt that I had done a pit to preach from, and a house to shelter my righteous service." mother. I preached too boldly. I was driven The assassin became silent, and his counten- from my pulpit, banished from my home. I ance assumed an expression, such as it might could not remain a pensioner on my parishioners. have worn when the knife was weltering in the I wandered away with my poor mother in rich veins of Buckingham. Conflicting passions mid-winter. She died. I rebelled against the we're raging in his memory, as if but just awak-church. I made myself friends among the ened; his teeth were set; his eyes rolled wildly, friendless; I became the favorite orator of the and the very hair upon his head was stirred, and London people; and yet, I never spoke to them seemed to creep; whilst his emotion gave him one word I did not feel. momentary strength, and he sat upright on his pallet a fearful sight!

The village surgeon had left some soothing medicine, which I now offered to the unhappy man. He dashed it from him, exclaiming fiercely:

"The leaders of the great popular movement then courted me; I was admitted to their counsels; I soon obtained more weight there than was convenient to them. I was sent away to the north under a plausible pretext; I remained for some months an inmate of

The Puritan's voice had for some time been failing-had failed from time to time, but had been recovered and sustained thus far. Now his lips moved, but no sound proceeded from them, and yet he knew it not. It was awful to see the various emotions of his supposed confession pass over his changing countenance, and yet to hear nothing!

"Accursed be all opiates and the repose that they can give. Accursed be all the soothing delusions that wrap the soul or body in lethargic rest, when they have the great work of eternity to perform. I once thought otherwise, I once thought that when my spirit was frozen by despair, it was a calm from pleased Heaven that brooded over it. When I smote that unhappy man, I felt even so! I walked contentedly in The shades of night gathered over us; profront of the tumultuous crowd that gathered found silence wrapped all around, and the fitful round him. I felt that they could not harm me gleaming of the fire alone threw its light upon -and they did not. In vain was the bitter an- us the imaginary speaker, and the eager watchger and vengeance of England's King; in vain was torture threatened; I told my Lord of Dorset, who thought that steel and fire could wring secrets out of a soul like mine! I told him that he was the only man I should accuse-and he threatened it no more.

"I was condemned to die by England's Judges, but I had been self-condemned before-by my own heart. I offered the right hand that had committed the dark deed, as a free-will offering, but the stern Justice, that stood by English law, forbade it. My life, and nothing but my life, would formal justice have; and she had it not. The people were with me; my guards were with me; the very executioner and the wretches who were to share my fate-all hated Buckingham. The felon about to close his eyes on England by England's laws, still hated the minion Buckingham.

er for a word that might throw light upon his future life. Hitherto, with a clear, articulate voice, had the Puritan spoken of himself; now that he was about to speak of Zillah, his voice failed him, faltered, and was gone.

At length he seemed roused to a consciousness of his inability to speak. He groped under his pillow, as one blind, but he was unable to do more; his attenuated hand rested where he had placed it; and so, after his stormy and passioned life, that gifted and crime-stained man passed away.

Morning came at length, brightly and hopefully shining over that house of death, and darting light and life into everything save the pallid body that once had energy and daring enough to set itself against the old power of the English throne. I rose from feverish dreams to gaze upon the wasted corpse. I remembered his last gesture, and sought beneath his pillow for what he had failed to tell. I found there a letter directed to me; it was from Zillah, and had been opened; it was dated long ago, and ran thus:

"I know not how they managed it; nor care. Some one of my brother malefactors was hanged twice over, or some one else was hanged, I cared not. I knew that I was not fated then to die, because I longed for death as a weary child for sleep. I was saved by some juggle and set free. "FOR THE LORD HASTINGS. I loathed my crime then;-ah! horribly. I had "Some time since, I wrote to you to say that resolved to slay the man Buckingham, but I had I had been visited by one whom you remember not thought of his immortal soul; now tortured well. He had almost persuaded me that I ought among demons for ages everlasting. Once more to surrender the administration of my poor faI sought a sign to justify myself: I smote my ther's property to the Parliament, for the right hand with a sword, but it was severed. I present. Indeed, I should have done so, but that did not reck the loss of limb, the pain, the en- he at length proposed to me to return to England during mark of shame: I felt only the destruc--and with him! I at once retired from the grille, tion of my assurance that I had been appointed and was somewhat disturbed to find that the abto slay that man. bess had been a listener to our conversation; "Humbled as I was, I sought her-with whom and she was an Englishwoman. From that day alone the hapless, the doomed, the despairing forth she persecuted me with her attentions, her are sure to find refuge, if not sympathy-my arguments, and her controversy. I attempted to mother. She was aged and forlorn, and in pov- take refuge with poor Phœbe; but at length I erty; but she received me, and she comforted was forbidden to see her; she was under some me. Blessed be the few months that I passed un- 'soul-saving discipline,' as they expressed it.