. That momentary conversation seems, even now, like a troubled dream. I believe it ended there. I remember nothing further. The crush my felings received, dimmed my recollection. I remember, next day, being introduced to Jacqueline Stromborough. This was the person to whom Mary Delamere was engaged. He was a middle aged man, with a dark suspicious brow; reputed rich, and followed no fixed occupation. Having resided a considerable time in the neighbourhood. and being possessed of leisure and address, he had devoted himself zealously to the task of making interest at the cottage; and though not a favourite with any of the Delameres, the charm of riches accomplished what ought to be the peculiar province of the person and the mind to effect, the conquest of the object of his desires. I know not what sentence may be passed upon my conduct, but I avow, that, perhaps no person pried with as rigid scrutiny into the character and the affairs of Jacqueline, as myself. I thought I could have given myself to perpetual grief, and sacrificed the only affection I had ever cherished; I thought I could have gone up to Hawthorn Hill, and given Mary my hand, even on the wedding day, had she chosen one whose age, and mind, and person, in any degree rendered him worthy of her. As it was, I could not lull my heart into acquiescence with the match. But all my researches ended in the information, that he had been in business at the South, that he had acquired a handsome estate in money, and that he was a foreigner by birth. These he had stated to be facts; circumstances seemed to corroborate them; they could not therefore be readily disputed, and yet might, in all material points, be false and deceptive.

Thus matters now rested. I went occasionally to the cottage. The Delameres were always rejoiced to see me. Mary was rather more reserved than formerly; she seemed hurt that I should treat her with the least coolness, or I thought she seemed so. I remember once she called me to her as she sat in a little bower I had three years before built for her in the garden, and attempted to say something; but the first word faultered on her tongue, and she burst into tears. I had no command of myself I could not speak, and walked hastily away. They were then preparing her wedding dress. Jacqueline avoided me in public, and had always treated me with great distance when he met me at the cottage. I reflected on these things and at last resolved to visit there no more. The resolution cost me a struggle; but, once made, I persisted in it for the time. Mary was taken sick shortly afterwards, and the wedding was put off in consequence. She recovered slowly-very slowly. Some feared she was gradually sinking in a decay; and as her beauty wasted away, and her spirits seemed to be wholly dissipa

ted, I sometimes heard surmises that at least a portion of the disease had its seat in her mind. These sunk deep in my heart, but I endured in silence.

Naturally fond of the hunter's life, and the forests affording a great abundance of game, I was induced, under all these peculiar circumstances, to devote a considerable portion of my time to this amusement, because I discovered that nothing had so great a tendency to dispel the melancholy I found stealing upon me, as the active, busy, and bracing sports of the field and forests. It was about this time that a singular accident occurred to me. I wounded a deer early one morning among the broken ridges that terminate the eastern boundaries of the Muncey hills; and pursuing it many miles to the North East, finally lost the track amid the giant precipices of the Bald Mountains. Fatigued and thirsty I wandered, along a deep ravine in search of water, and came at last to the mouth of an enormous cavern, which opened at the base of a mighty pyramidic pile of mountainous rocks, whose summit seemed to penetrate the clouds. I entered it a distance of about thirty feet, and found the aperture grew narrow and descending; I listened-the faint dripping of water was heard, and the coldness and humidity of the air bespoke a spring, at no great distance. Prompted by thirst, and a romantic desire to explore the hidden recesses to which this passage led, I collected a branch of pine torches, applied to my flint and matches, and having fired the splintered wood carefully, descended with my rifle in one hand and the light in the other, to guard, alike, against wild beasts who might have made this frightful abode a refuge, and the intricacies of the unknown passage.

When I had penetrated the cavern to the distance of about sixty feet, it appeared to branch off in two directions; the descent became greater, and the passage so narrow that I could not stand erect. I chose the largest opening, and persevered, sometimes crawling on my hands and knees, and sometimes letting myself down several feet perpendicular. In this way I progressed about sixty feet further, and as I could still discover no termination, I began to think of returning. I paused here to examine my situation, arched in on every side with rock, dripping with moisture, behind me a faint and distant gleam of light from the mouth of the cave, and before me, a dark and narrow passage, chilled with the cold, though it was a warm day in August, a kind of enthusiasm even then came over me. I resolved to descend yet a little further. Perhaps I did not examine the footing with sufficient care. I scarcely knew how it was-I recollect taking a few steps forward, when suddenly a stone on which I stood gave way. I fell, the distance I know

not. The first sensation I recollect, was a belief that the mountain had fallen in and buried me beneath its foundation; the next that it was a momentary, a fearful, a delirious dream. But I awoke. I had been stunned by the fall. My torch had gone out, and I found myself in darkness most horrible, blacker a thousand times than I had ever witnessed or conceived. My first effort was to feel whether the foundation I stood on was firm, the next was to raise my arms and search in every direction for means of escape. It was in vain. I had fallen down a perpendicular rock. many, many feet. A thought then struck me that perhaps there might be some other passage which would lead me out. In one direction I groped my way a few feet, but was met by a flood of water which stopped my progress. I turned in another and another, and at last found a narrow passage through which I attempted to force myself, but as it seemed to grow more narrow I was forced to return.

Hope now forsook me. I was already chilled to the heart, and the water dropped on me perpetually, cold as winter rain, from the arch above. I sat down on the wet stones, and gathering all my strength, sent forth a shriek for help, so loud, shrill, and piercing, that I thought the echoes would be eternal-the cry seemed to come back in every dolorous, and anguished, and heart-rending tone. In my frenzy I thought I had fallen into the caverns of the lost, and that the shrieks of a million fiends were tearing my soul in atoms. At last the voices died away; but the silence that followed was scarcely less horrible. Now I felt what it was to be cut suddenly off from all the hopes of life to pass by a rapid and frightful transition, from the possession of health and youth-from every hope, and from all the pursuits of pleasure, to that untried existence beyond the grave. The world with its sunny skies, its green fields, variegated forests-its loves, its friendships, its allurements, seemed now closed forever on my sight; there remained only the slow and torturing and nameless agonies of dissolution; and these were to be endured unseen, unpitied and alone, far down in the bowels of the earth, where mountains were piled above me, and where my body must remain to the last hour-glass of time. Oh! I thought, how sweet death itself would be, if my eyes could grow dim beneath the light of the sun, or my quivering lips be moistened by human breath. Now too, I thought of home and friends, a weeping father, a broken-hearted mother, and Mary-she would live on and forget me. I thought before, that I had violently broken the powerful ties that bound me to her; but now, in my last extremity, her image too came back. I thought I had been the means of conveying a deep wound to her feelings; but that I was never to be permitted to ask her forgiveness, or tell

her when I was dying, how much I longed for her happiness. Lost, lost, forever-the sepulchral gloom around me seemed to speak out the words. I tried then to compose myself, and think of heaven, the angels, and the mysterious Deity; but my mind was fevered, was distracted-I sunk beneath the fierceness of of my despair, that rived, and gashed, and frittered away my heart.

At last a kind of dreaming stupor fell upon me. I thought I stood on a mountain-top above, and looked abroad upon a desolate world, from which a pestilence had swept all life. The sky was full of stormy clouds, that gathered blacker, and blacker, until they burst in one tremendous peal of thunder, and the mountain sunk with me a thousand miles into the earth, and the rocks, and hills, and rivers, closed in a mighty mass above me. I felt that my limbs and body were crushed, and yet that I could not die. There seemed to be a dark, open space, above me; and my favourite dog looked over the brink, and howled most piteously. I tried to speak to him, but death had paralized my tongue. I next fancied myself dead, and that my soul was doomed to this dimsal prison-house ten thousand years. Gradually all these frightful phantasies subsided: but my mind was lost; I seemed to have slept an age; when suddenly, pain and a distressing heart-sickness took possession of me-I struggled-my eyes opened, and I found myself in a rude log hut, my only human attendant an old hag-ridden woman. I was stretched upon the floor, and my two faithful dogs sat by my side anxiously looking in my face. They no sooner saw this appearance of returning life, than they demonstrated their gladness by every act in their power-they fawned upon me, and licked my hands and feet, and barked for joy.

I was soon able to set up and converse. The woman told me, that my dogs, whom I remembered to have left at the mouth of the cave when I entered it, had come to her hut, two miles distant from the spot, and by their behaviour induced her to follow them. They led her to the cave, with every part of which she was acquainted; and with their assistance she found me, apparently lifeles, after I had been there sixteen hours. I had entered it by the wrong aperture, and had fallen twenty feet. From the place where I lay, however, there was an opening which I had not found in the dark, and which led into an upper cavity, through which she had dragged me and conveyed me to her cabin. I recovered rapidly by her attention, and was soon on my feet again. She seemed to be naturally a woman of a kind heart, but I found her bitter against my sex. When I offered to fix her in a more comfortable situation if she would go wtih me to the village, she scornfully replied that she preferred her VOL. I.-No. v.

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solitude-it was hers by choice. My offers of compensation rendered her morose and unconversible; she refused to communicate one particular of her life-except that she had lived in that abode two years, and had never been further from it than the nearest inhabited dwelling, to which sometimes, her necessities forced her to repair. That man was a scoundrel by nature; that husbands were traitors and murderers, and that society was utterly corrupt, were axioms she avowed, without taking the trouble to establish them by argument.

There was something in this suffering, but wild and wayward woman, that excited the keenest interest; and I was naturally soon awakened to it. There appeared to remain with her but one of the many peculiarities of her sex, she was inquisitive. I told her every thing that was going forward in the village, and among other things, of the coming wedding on Hawthorn Hill—the singularities of the case, the suspicion I had of Jacqueline, and many minute circumstances concerning him. I saw that I had struck upon a theme that interested her, for she made a thousand anxious enquiries, and at the end cursed him for an imposter and villain-adding with frightful gestures-" My curse is upon him he shall not prosper!" I left the woman as soon as I was able to travel, believing her to be partially insane, and reached home five days after I had left it.

I made a journey to the south soon after, and did not return until the eve of Mary Delamere's contemplated marriage. Our family had a general invitation. My father insisted in my going; and though I would as soon have been led to execution, I determined not to betray my weakness, or to falsify, in the eyes of my parents, the avowal my pride had led me to make, that my affections were weaned from her. I accompanied them, and met her with an unchanged countenance. But she was changed

her cheeks were white as marble, the fine fire of her eyes were quenched with moisture, her hand trembled as she leaned it on a chair. I read in every look, and tone, that her heart was breaking. But the moment arrived, she stood up on the floor, supported by Jacqueline, and her maids. The ceremony was just commencing, when the hasty trample of a horse arrested a momentary attention. Some one dismounted at the door, and almost instantaneously, a tall female figure, habited in white, with her face half concealed by a dark cowl or hood, glided through the company, and stood immediately before the bride and bridegroom. She said not a word, but, hastily throwing back the garments from her face, raised her shrivelled hand pointed to her brow. The light glared upon her features; and amid the general exclamations of horror, I involuntarily pressed forward and caught Mary in my arms, just in time to prevent