in the blaze of the nicely-trimmed wood fire, and Mammy sat in her elbow-chair at the side of it, a perfect specimen of the majestic repose of extreme, but unbending age. It seemed to me that there was something far more grand about the whole appearance of the old woman, now that I saw her under her own paternal roof. The bluntness of address and expression, which had before been a sort of oddity to amuse a circle of tolerant superiors, was now the natural privilege of independence; though, indeed, I am not sure that the sense of home, and the instinct of hospitality, had not somewhat softened already the external manifestations of a temper, which no change of circumstances could have essentially altered. received with courtesy-even with grace; and when, a minute or two afterwards, Miss Joanne came into the room, and, modestly saluting me, drew her stool towards Mammy's knee, I really could not help thinking, that, in spite of all the young lady's native elegance of aspect and carriage, a stranger might easily have been deceived, and supposed himself to be contemplating a family group.

I was

I, you will have no great difficulty in believing, could not contemplate it without some feelings of awkwardness, as well as of admiration. The situation in which I saw Joanne Barr was new; and her demeanour, I could not help thinking, was almost as greatly changed. We had been used to treat each other like friends -some spell seemed now to hover over us both. Our eyes seldom met, and neither addressed more than a few syllables

to the other-she took her work, and I sat listening, or pretending to listen, to Mammy. At last, I contrived to make it be understood that I had come to take my farewell; that I was to leave the

country the next morning. Mammy gave me her blessing very affectionately, and I bowed to Joanne. The poor girl said nothing, but (in a very low whisper it was) “I wish you well, Sir, wherever you go." She did not put out her hand, and I retired, stammering more good byes.

I jumped into my little boat, and had pushed myself a few yards from the brink, when I heard my name called in Joanne's sweet voice, and perceived that she had

followed me to the bank of the river, and

was holding something towards me in her hand. I ran the skiff in again, and she stooped to give me my gloves, which I had left behind me. Our hands touch

ed each other and, in the deepening twilight, and in the midst of some confusion of my own, I could not be blind to the blush, the deep, grave, timid blush,

and the troubled workings of that halfaverted eye. How much may pass in a moment! My little boat was out in the stream again almost instantly, and yet the words return and hope had been whispered; and while, in rowing across the river, my eyes were fixed upon the lowly cabin, I perceived that a shadow was still lingering in the window-and a soft dream floated over my heart, that some day I should indeed return, and that the world, after all, might still retain some visions of hope-ay, of tenderness and soothing consolation, for meeven for me. No fiery pulse beat-no maddening ecstasy of passion fluttered in my brain :-these were strings which had been snapt; but a calm, pensive feeling, was deep upon me. I cannot explain it. No man loves twice, perhaps, in the same sense of the word. But, although the pine-tree will never sprout again after he has been levelled to the ground, what need hinder plants of humbler stature, yet of softer foliage, to spring from the soil beneath which his ponderous roots are mouldering?

Joanne and Wald are marriedand great changes follow. Wald recovers evidence that the connection between Sir Claud and the mother of Joanne had been such as would, according to the law of Scotland, amount to a regular marriage, and that his wife was consequently the heiress of his estates;-and the family of Sir Claud are glad to compromise the matter, by ceding to him the property of Barrmains. His happiness is qualified, however, by a strong methodistical feeling, to which the gentle mind of Joanne had been, for some time, yielding; and to divert her attention from those gloomy imaginations which had been created by the preaching of some country fanatic, and fostered by solitude, he gets into Parliament, and prepares for a visit to London. We pass over a good deal of a comic cast, which is fairly executed, but exceedingly inferior to the deeper parts of the book, to which we now approach with rapidity. Wald receives the

unexpected intelligence, that Katharine had been deserted by her husband, and had disappeared; and, by one of those strange accidents, which and not in the best of these either, never occur anywhere but in novels, the lodging-house of Wald, in London, happens to join that which was

the retreat of Katharine. The following passage is the commencement of the tragedies which occupy the remainder of the volume:

1 was sitting, however, by myself one night, reading my book, when, happening to feel my room overheated, I threw open the window, and was detained leaning over it by the extreme beauty and serenity of the moonlight. Suddenly my ear caught sounds-sounds of grief ap. parently-and, watching for a moment, I became satisfied that they proceeded from the neighbouring house. However

I had smiled at the servants' dark conjectures and tales, I confess that this lamentation, the first sound of human voice that I had ever heard proceed from this mysterious quarter-I confess that the groans I heard, together with the lateness of the hour, and the profound deathlike silence which reigned over everything besides-I confess that all this moved in me, not a feeling of simple cu riosity merely, but a crowd of feelings which I could not analyse on the instant, nor shall I be idle enough to attempt describing them now. Let it suffice, that I obeyed the impulse of the moment. I fastened a cord to the little iron balcony of my window, dropt upon the turf below, and having often before noticed that a certain horse-chesnut tree in my garden threw some of its branches partly over the wall which separated it from the adjoining one-to this tree I walked, and fairly began to climb it.

I soon was higher, much higher than my wall. I found out the projecting branch which seemed to be most capable of sustaining my weight, and crept along it. I could now see that there was light in a window-the same window towards which the boy had seemed to cast his eyes when he played on the green. Could I get a yard or two further, I might probably see something of what was going on within that room. The sounds came upon my ear every moment more clearly, more distinctly. Heavens! a woman's voice!-what ruffian deeds may be doing in this guarded lair of guilt! Why did I not bring my sword with me? I could go back for that-in the meantime, let me see, if possible, what is the fact. I huddled myself a pace or two farther on-A woman-a lady-a lady alone I just caught one glimpse of this, when snap went the branch under me. I heard the crash in its progress, but it was too late-I fell, and I fell about as senseless as the timber I had broken.

This was for a moment-no more. I gathered myself up instantly-at least so

it semed to me; and behold, what is here a man, an oldish man bending over me, scanning my features by the light of his lamp. "As I live, Mr Matthew!-Oh, my lady, 'tis Mr Matthew, our own Mr Wald, my lady!"

I sprung to my feet. Before me, right before me, three paces off, no more—“Is this under the cope of heaven ?-do I dream? am I mad?-am I dead and buried, and among the beings of eter nity ?-Katharine, Katharine Wald! do I indeed see thee? Is this life or vision? Behold me once more at thy feet! Katharine! angel! victim! martyred love. liness! Speak-speak-forgiveness !"

She gazed, she extended her arms, she dropt-but not upon the ground-I received her; I lifted her, faint, speechless, shivering, sobbing. I lifted her in my arms; I could have borne her to the end of the earth, although I had been pierced with fifty daggers. I bore her into the house-I followed, and the man led me

I placed her where he pointed. She lay with her long dishevelled curls upon my bosom. The man, with instinctive reverence, withdrew. We were alone; no, not quite alone. Her child was asleep, smiling close beside us in the serenity of happy dreams. I gazed upon the infant. She looked upon him too, and she 'sunk again upon my breast in a passion of lamentation.

How mechanically these old wrinkled fingers do their work! Is it thus that I live over again those moments? Alas! when was that day that I did not live them ?

What humiliation on both sides!—and yet what was mine? What signified it to me to say out that which had for years curdled at the roots of my heart?—I had suffered vanity and sinful revenge to lead astray a mind irritated by imaginary wrongs-wrongs at least shapeless, name less, incapable of being clothed in words. I had suffered for this? Perhaps soperhaps not. The external tenor of my life at least had been fortunate, eminent. ly fortunate. Had I not a wife of my own choice-an estate a station equal at least to my earliest hopes? But her story-how different was this! For any woman to tell the cruelty of her husband is enough, but for Katharine Wald to tell her husband's cruelty to me-to me that had hated him, and shewn my hatred from the first moment our eyes met to me that had never spoken to her since she was his wife that had acted acts of hostility, ay, and worse, of contempt to me that had ceased to be her kinsman from the hour in which I saw him--this was bitterness indeed!

"Oh no, my Lord Lascelyne, not to that only. Come, come, here is no time for trifling; choose."

"I insist upon hearing what is your quarrel, Mr Wald."

"My quarrel ?--You sign yourself, 'Wald Lascelyne,' I think, too?-Come, my Lord, draw."

"And wherefore?-Speak plainly, at all events."

"In me, Sir, you see the representative of an insulted blood-that is not all, but that is enough-choose, and choose quickly."

"Why, Sir, if you think that you have any particular title to fight me because I have happened to have some disagree ment with your cousin, that is well enough in its way, and I sha'n't be the man to baulk you-but not here, nor thus, if you please. I must have my boy, Sir, first; and, secondly, I must place him in hands that I happen to approve of-that's my fancy, Sir;-and then, Mr Wald, if you have no very par ticular objection, I rather prefer going through such things in the most received fashion,-in short, I choose among my own friends, ere I pick among your blades, that also is my fancy."

"Friends!-Friends to see us!-Seconds, forsooth!"

66 Ay, Sir, seconds; 'tis the rule, and I have no passion for singularities, whatever may be your taste."

"Come, come-when you next fall out with some fop about a pointer, or a dancer, my Lord-some pirouetting dan cer-this puppy legislation will do finely. I thought we were serious."

"Serious! partly so, partly not, Mr Wald. I consider, (but I won't baulk you, though,) I consider this as rather a laughable hurry of yours, Mr Wald." "Laughable? ha!-was that your

word ?"

what a joke was all this !—I rushed upon him, Sir, as if I had been some horned brute. I had no more thought of guards and passes than if I had been a bison. He stabbed me thrice-thrice through the arm-clean through the arm-that was my guard-but what signified this? I felt his blade as if it had been a gnat-a nothing. At last my turn came-I spitted him through the heart-I rushed on till the hilt stopped me.—I did not draw my steel out of him.-I spurned him off it with my foot.

"Lie there.-rot there, beast-!" a single groan, and his eye fixed.

The Stagyrite says you cannot hate the dead :-He never hated. I dipped my shoe in his blood.

I rushed home as if I had had wings; but my courage forsook me at the threshhold.

I entered the room where Katharine was (she was still seated there, her child on her knee, waiting for me)-I entered it with my cloak wrapped about me. I sat down at some little distance from them-and in silence.

"Matthew," said she," where have you been?-what have you been about? -your looks were strange before-but

now

I drew my cloak closer about me. "Oh! Matthew-your eyes!—will you never compose yourself ?" "Never, Kate."

"But now you were softening.Come hither, Matthew.-Oh! try if you can weep."

I drew out my sword from below the cloak-1 held out the red blade before me-the drops had not all baked yet→→→ one or two fell upon the floor.

"Speak, Matthew! what is this?Speak!-Ha! God of Mercy! there is blood upon that sword."

blood."

"Ay, blood, my cousin "My husband! my Lascelyne !"—I heard no more. Heavens and earth! that I should write this down! One shriekone-just one !

Fainted?-swooned ?-Dead! oh! dead. I remember no more.

There is something in the ferocity of this duel that reminds of the insane grandeur of Mandeville's reflections on the scar inflicted on his forehead by the sword of Clifford. A powerful chapter, describing those remains of the visions of insanity which Wald recollects after his restoration to health, concludes the