features of a lovely girl, lovely even in the jaws of death, as she lay with her face towards the light, supported in a reclining position on cushions, on a red morocco mattrass, laid on a sort of frame or bed.

She was tall, so far as I could judge, but oh, how attenuated! Her lower limbs absolutely made no impression on the mattrass, to which her frame appeared to cling, giving a ghastly conspicuousness to the oedematous swelling of her feet, and to her person, for, alas! she was in a way to have become a mother

"The offspring of his wayward youth,

When he betrayed Bianca's truth;
The maid whose folly could confide

In him, who made her not his bride.”

Her hand, grasping her pocket-handkerchief, drenched, alas, with blood, hung over the side of the bed, thin and pale, with her long taper fingers as transparent as if they had been fresh cut alabaster, with the blue veins winding through her wrists, and her bosom wasted and shrunk, and her neck no thicker than her arm, with the pulsations of the large arteries as plain and evident as if the skin had been a film, and her beautiful features, although now sharpened by the near approaching death agony, her lovely mouth, her straight nose, her arched eyebrows, black like penciled jet lines, and her small ears,-and oh, who can describe her rich black raven hair, lying combed out, and spread all over the bed and pillow? She was dressed in a long loose gown of white crape; it looked like a winding-sheet; but the fire of her eyes—I have purposely not ventured to describe them—the unearthly brilliancy of her large, full, swimming eye!

When I entered, I bowed, and remained standing near the door. She said something, but in so low a voice that I could not catch the words; and when I stepped nearer, on purpose to hear more distinctly, all at once the blood mantled in her cheeks and forehead and throat, like the last gleam of the setting sun; but it faded as rapidly, and once more she lay pale as her smock

"Yet not such blush, as mounts when health would show
All the heart's hue in that delightful glow;

But 'twas a hectic tint of secret care,
That for a burning moment fever'd there ;
And the wild sparkle of her eye seem'd caught
From high, and lighten'd with electric thought;
Though its black orb these long low lashes' fringe
Had temper'd with a melancholy tinge."

Her voice was becoming more and more weak, she said, so she must be prompt. "You have some trinkets for me, Mr Cringle?" I presented them. She kissed the crucifix fervently, and then looked mournfully on her own miniature. "This was thought like once, Mr Cringle.-Are the newspaper accounts of his trial correct?" she next asked. I answered, that in the main facts they were. "And do you believe in the commission of all these alleged atrocities by him?" I remained silent. "Yes, they are but too true. Hush, hush," said she-"look there."

I did as she requested. There, glancing bright in the sunshine, a most beautiful butterfly fluttered in the air, in the very middle of the open window. When we first saw it, it was flitting gaily and happily amongst the plants and flowers that were blooming in the balcony, but it gradually became more and more slow on the wing, and at last poised itself so unusually steadily for an insect of its class, that even had Maria not spoken, it would have attracted my attention. Below it, on the window sill, near the wall, with head erect, and its little basilisk eyes upturned towards the lovely fly, crouched a camelion lizard; its beautiful body, when I first looked at it, was a bright sea-green. It moved into the sunshine, a little away from the shade of the laurel bush, which grew on the side it first appeared on, and suddenly the back became transparent amber, the legs and belly continuing green. From its breast under the chin, it every now and then shot out a semicircular film of a bright scarlet colour, like a leaf of a tulip stretched vertically, or the pectoral fin of a fish.

This was evidently a decoy, and the poor fly was by degrees drawn down towards it, either under the impression of its being in reality a flower, or impelled by some impulse which it could not resist. It gradually fluttered nearer and more near, the reptile remaining all the while steady as a stone, until it made a sudden spring, and in the next moment the small meally wings were quivering on each side of the camelion's tiny jaws. While in the act of gorging its prey, a little fork, like a wire, was projected from the opposite corner of the window; presently a small round black snout, with a pair of little fiery blasting eyes, appeared, and a thin

black neck glanced in the sun. The lizard saw it. I could fancy it trembled. Its body became of a dark blue, then ashy pale; the imitation of the flower, the gaudy fin was withdrawn, it appeared to shrink back as far as it could, but it was nailed or fascinated to the window sill, for its feet did not move. The head of the snake approached, with its long forked tongue shooting out and shortening, and with a low hissing noise. By this time about two feet of its body was visible, lying with its white belly on the wooden beam, moving forward with a small horizontal wavy motion, the head and six inches of the neck being a little raised. I shrunk back from the serpent, but no one else seemed to have any dread of it; indeed, I afterwards learned, that this kind being good mousers, and otherwise quite harmless, were, if any thing, encouraged about houses in the country. I looked again; its open mouth was now within an inch of the lizard, which by this time seemed utterly paralyzed and motionless; the next instant its head was drawn into the snake's mouth, and by degrees the whole body disappeared, as the reptile gorged it, and I could perceive from the lump which gradually moved down the snake's neck, that it had been sucked into its stomach. Involuntarily I raised my hand, when the whole suddenly disappeared.

I turned, I could scarcely tell why, to look at the dying girl. A transient flush had again lit up her pale wasted face. She was evidently greatly excited. “Can you read me that riddle, Mr Cringle? Does no analogy present itself to you between what you have seen, between the mysterious power possessed by these subtile reptiles, and-Look-look again."

A large and still more lovely butterfly suddenly rose from beneath where the snake had vanished, all glittering in the dazzling sunshine, and after fluttering for a moment, floated steadily up into the air, and disappeared in the blue sky. My eye followed it as long as it was visible, and when it once more declined to where we had seen the snake, I saw a most splendid dragonfly, about three inches long, like a golden bodkin, with its gauzelike wings moving so quickly, as it hung steadily poised in mid air, like a hawk preparing to stoop, that the body seemed to be surrounded by silver tissue, or a bright halo, while it glanced in the sunbeam.

"Can you not read it yet, Mr Cringle? can you not read my story in the fate of the first beautiful fly, and the miserable end of my Federico, in that of the lizard? And oh, may the last appearance of that ethereal thing, which but now rose, and melted into the lovely sky, be a true type of what I shall be! But that poor

insect, that remains there suspended between heaven and earth, shall I say hell, what am I to think of it?"

The dragonfly was still there. She continued-"En purgatorio, ah Dios, tu quedas en purgatorio," as if the fly had represented the unhappy young pirate's soul in limbo. Oh, let no one smile at the quaintness of the dying fancy of the poor heart-crushed girl. The weather began to lower again, the wind came past us moaninglythe sun was obscured-large drops of rain fell heavily into the room -a sudden dazzling flash of lightning took place, and the dragonfly was no longer there. A long low wild cry was heard. I started, and my flesh creeped. The cry was repeated. "Es él—él mismo, y ningun otro. Me venga, Federico; me venga, mi querido!" shrieked poor Maria, with a supernatural energy, and with such piercing distinctness that it was heard shrill even above the rolling thunder.

I turned to look at Maria-another flash. It glanced on the crucifix which the old priest had elevated at the foot of the bed, full in her view. It was nearer, the thunder was louder. "Is that the rain-drops which are falling heavily on the floor through the open window?" Oh God! Oh God! it is her warm heart's-blood, which was bubbling from her mouth like a crimson fountain. Her pale fingers were clasped on her bosom in the attitude of prayer— a gentle quiver of her frame-and the poor brokenhearted girl, and her unborn babe, "sleeped the sleep that knows no waking."

CHAPTER XIV.

Ariel.

SCENES IN CUBA.

▬▬▬▬▬Safely in harbour

Is the king's ship; in the deep nook, where once
Thou call'dst me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes-there she's hid.

The Tempest.

THE spirit had indeed fled-the ethereal essence had departed— and the poor wasted and blood-stained husk which lay before us, could no longer be moved by our sorrows, or gratified by our

sympathy. Yet I stood riveted to the spot, until I was aroused by the deep-toned voice of Padre Carera, who, lifting up his hands towards heaven, addressed the Almighty in extempore prayer, beseeching his mercy to our erring sister who had just departed. The unusualness of this startled me.--" As the tree falls, so must it lie," had been the creed of my forefathers, and was mine; but now for the first time I heard a clergyman wrestling in mental agony, and interceding with the God who hath said, "Repent before the night cometh, in which no man can work," for a sinful creature, whose worn-out franie was now as a clod of the valley. But I had little time for consideration, as presently all the negro servants of the establishment set up a loud howl, as if they had lost their nearest and dearest. "Oh, our poor dear young mistress is dead! She has gone to the bosom of the Virgin! She is gone to be happy!"-"Then why the deuce make such a yelling?" quoth Bang in the other room, when this had been translated to him. Glad to leave the chamber of death, I entered the large hall, where I had left our friend.

"I say, Tom-awful work. Hear how the rain pours, and— murder-such a flash! Why, in Jamaica, we don't startle greatly at lightning, but absolutely I heard it hiss-there, again”—the noise of the thunder stopped further colloquy, and the wind now burst down the valley with a loud roar.

Don Ricardo joined us. "My good friends-we are in a scrape here what is to be done?-a melancholy affair altogether."Bang's curiosity here fairly got the better of him.

"I say, Don Ricardibus-do-beg pardon, though-do give over this humbugging outlandish lingo of yours-speak like a Christian, in your mother tongue, and leave off your Spanish, which now, since I know it is all a bam, seems to sit as strangely on you as my grandmother's toupée would on Tom Cringle's Mary." "Now do pray, Mr Bang," said 1, when Don Ricardo broke

in

66

Why, Mr Bang, I am, as you now know, a Scotchman.”

How do I know any such thing-that is, for a certainty—while you keep cruising amongst so many lingoes, as Tom there says?" "The docken, man,” said I.-Don Ricardo smiled.

“I am a Scotchman, my dear Sir; and the same person who, in his youth, was neither more nor less than wee Richy Cloche, in the long town of Kirkaldy, and in his old age Don Ricardo Campana of St Jago de Cuba. But more of this anon,—at present we are in the house of mourning, and alas the day! that it should be so."