times rather have one day of conscious | ting to work as early as you please in the purity of heart and mind and soul and morning." Lody, than an eternity of. such a life as I have now. What am I saying?" he added, with a despairing laugh. It is a fool's comparison; for an eternity of the former would be bliss-one moment of the latter is misery."

I could but admire and pity my poor friend both at once.

Miss Pease had entered unheard. "Mr. Cumbermede," she said, "I have been looking for you to show you your room. It is not the one I should like to have got for you, but Mrs. Wilson says you have occupied it before, and I daresay you will find it comfortable enough."

"Thank you, Miss Pease. I am sorry you should have taken the trouble. I can go home well enough. I am not afraid of a little rain."

"A little rain!" said Charley, trying to speak lightly.

Well, any amount of rain," I said. "But the lightning!"-expostulated Miss Pease in a timid voice.

"I am something of a fatalist, Miss Pease," I said. "Every bullet has its billet,' you know. Besides if I had a choice, I think I would rather die by lightning than any other way."

"Don't talk like that, Mr. Cumbermede. -Oh! what a flash!"

"I was not speaking irreverently, I assure you," I replied. "I think I had better set out at once, for there seems no chance of its clearing."

"I am sure Sir Giles would be distressed if you did."

"He will never know, and I dislike giving trouble."

The room is ready. I will show you where it is, that you may go when you like."

"If Mrs. Wilson says it is a room I have occupied before, I know the way quite well."

There are two ways to it," she said. "But of course one of them is enough," she added with a smile. "Mr. Osborne, your room is in another part quite.”

"I know where my sister's room is," said Charley. "Is it anywhere near hers?"

That is the room you are to have. Miss Osborne is to be with your mamma, I think. There is plenty of accomodation, only the notice was short."

I began to button my coat.

"Don't go, Wilfrid," said Charley. "You might give offence. Besides, if you stay, you will have the advantage of get

It was late, and I was tired- -consequently less inclined than usual to encounter a storm, for in general I enjoyed being in any commotion of the elements. Also, I felt I should like to pass another night in that room, and have besides the opportunity of once more examining at my leisure the gap in the tapestry.

Will you meet me early in the library, Charley?" I said.

"Yes to be sure I will as early as you like."

"Let us go to the drawing-room then." "Why should you, if you are tired, and want to go to bed?"

"Because Lady Brotherton will not like my being included in the invitation. She will think it absurd of me not to go home." There is no occasion to go near her

"I trust that is unnecessary," he replied. I gave orders." But as he spoke he went towards the bell. "It is all arranged, I believe, Sir Giles, " I said. · Mrs. Wilson has already informed me which is my room. Good night, Sir Giles.”

He shook hands with me kindly. I bowed to Lady Brotherton, and retired. It may seem foolish to record such mere froth of conversation, but I want my reader to understand how a part at least of the family of Moldwarp Hall regarded me.

CHAPTER XL.

A DREAM.

My room looked dreary enough. There was no fire, and the loss of the patch of tapestry from the wall, gave the whole an air of dilapidation. The wind howled fearfully in the chimney and about the door on the roof, and the rain came down

on the leads like the distant trampling of many horses. But I was not in an imaginative mood. Charley was again my trouble. I could not bear him to be so miserable. Why was I not as miserable as he, I asked myself. Perhaps I ought to be, for although certainly I hoped more, I could not say I believed more than he. I wished more than ever that I did believe, for then I should be able to help him I was sure of that; but I saw no possible way of arriving at belief. Where was the proof? Where even the hope of a growing probability?

With these thoughts drifting about in my brain, like waifs which the tide will not let go, I was poring over the mutilated forms of the tapestry round the denuded door, with an expectation, almost a conviction, that I should find the fragment still hanging on the wall of the kitchen at the Moat the very piece wanted to complete the broken figures. When I had them well fixed in my memory, I went to bed, and lay pondering over the several broken links which indicated some former connection between the Moat and the Hall, until I fell asleep, and began to dream strange wild dreams, of which the following was the last.

before me on my left, and through the bowed end of the aisle I passed behind it into the lady-chapel. There against the outter wall stood a dusky ill-defined shape. Its head rose above the sill of the eastern window, and I saw it against the rising moon. But that and the whole figure were covered with a thick drapery; I could see nothing of the face, and distinguish little of the form.

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Who art thou?" I asked trembling. "I am Death- dost thou not know me?" answered the figure, in a sweet. though worn and weary voice. Thou hast been following me all thy life, and hast followed me hither."

Then I saw through the lower folds of the cloudy garment, which grew thin and gauze-like as I gazed, a huge iron door, with folding leaves, and a great iron bar across them.

"Art thou at thy own door?" I asked. "Surely thy house cannot open under the eastern window of the church?"

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Follow and see, "answered the figure. Turning, it drew back the bolt, threw wide the portals, and low-stooping entered. I followed, not into the moonlit night, but through a cavernous opening into darkness. If my Athanasia were I was in a great palace, wandering hith-down with Death, I would go with Death, er and thither, and meeting no one. A that I might at least end with her. weight of silence brooded in the place. Down and down I followed the veiled figFrom hall to hall I went, along corridor ure, down flight after flight of stony stairs, and gallery, and up and down endless through passages like those of the catastairs. I knew that in some room near me combs, and again down steep straight was one whose name was Athanasia, a stairs. At length it stopped at another maiden, I thought in my dream, whom I gate, and with beating heart I heard what had known and loved for years but had I took for bony fingers fumbling with a lately lost-I knew not how. Some- chain and a bolt. But ere the fastenings where here she was, if only I could find had yielded, once more I heard the sweet her! From room to room I went seeking odour-like music of the distant organ. her. Every room I entered bore some The same moment the door opened, but I proof that she had just been there - but could see nothing for sometime for the there she was not. In one lay a veil, in mighty inburst of a lovely light. A fair another a handkerchief, in a third a glove; river, brimming full, its little waves flashand all were scented with a strange en- ing in the sun and wind, washed the trancing odour, which I had never known threshold of the door, and over its surface, before, but which in certain moods I can hither and thither, sped the white sails of to this day imperfectly recall. I followed shining boats, while from somewhere, and followed until hope failed une utterly, clear now, but still afar, came the sound and I sat down and wept. But while I of a great organ psalm. Beyond the rivwept, hope dawned afresh, and I rose and er, the sun was rising- over blue sumagain followed the quest, until I found my-mer hills that melted into blue summer self in a little chapel like that of Moldwarp sky. On the threshold stood my guide, Hall. It was filled with the sound of an bending towards me, as if waiting for me organ, distance-faint, and the thin music to pass out also. I lifted my eyes: the was the same as the odour of the handker- vel had fallen-it was my lost Athanachief which I carried in my bosom. I tried sia! Not one beam touched her face, for to follow the sound, but the chapel grew and grew as I wandered, and I came no nearer to its source. At last the altar rose

her back was to the sun, yet her face was radiant. Trembling, I would have kneeled at her feet, but she stepped out* upon the

"What's the matter with you?" he asked again, after an interval of silence, which I judge from the question must have been rather a long one.

"What is the matter with me, Charley?"

"I can't tell. You don't seem yourself, somehow."

depression of the lead-covered roof. But alas, before I had finished, I found that I had brought only one of my shoes away with me! This settled the question I was at the moment debating - whether, namely, it would be better to go home, or to find some way of reaching the library. I put my remaining shoe in my pocket, and set out to discover a descent. It would have i I do not know what answer I gave him, been easy to get down into the little gal- but I knew myself what was the matter lery, but it communicated on both sides with me well enough. The form and face immediately with bed-rooms, which for of the maiden of my dream, the Athanasia anything I knew might be occupied; and lost that she might be found, blending with besides I was unwilling to enter the the face and form of Mary Osborne, filled house for fear of encountering some of the my imagination so that I could think of domestics. But I knew more of the place nothing else. Gladly would I have been now, and had often speculated concerning rid of even Charley's company, that, while the odd position and construction of an my hands were busy with the books, my outside stair in the first court, close to the heart might brood at will now upon the chapel, with its landing at the door of a lovely dream, now upon the lovely vision to room en suite with those of Sir Giles and which I awoke from it, and which, had it Lady Brotherton. It was for a man an easy not glided into the forms of the foregone drop to this landing quiet as a cat, I crept dream and possessed it with itself, would over the roof, let myself down, crossed the have banished it altogether. At length court swiftly, drew back the bolt which I was aware of light steps and sweet voices alone secured the wicket, and, with no in the next room, and Mary and Clara greater mishap than the unavoidable wet-presently entered. ting of shoeless feet, was soon safe in my own room, exchanging my evening for a morning dress. When I looked at my watch I found it nearly seven o'clock.

I was so excited and bewildered by the adventures I had gone through, that, from very commonness, all things about me looked alien and strange. I had no feeling of relation to the world of ordinary life. The first thing I did was to hang my sword in its own old place, and the next to take down the bit of tapestry from the opposite wall, which I proceeded to examine in the light of any recollection of that round the denuded door. Room was left for not even a single doubt as to the relation between this and that: they had been wrought in one and the same piece by fair fingers of some long vanished time.

How came it that the face of the one had lost the half of its radiance, and the face of the other had gathered all that the former had lost. Mary's countenance was as still as ever; there was not in it a single ray of light beyond its usual expression; but I had become more capable of reading it, for the coalescence of the face of my dream with her dreaming face had given me its key; and I was now so far from indifferent, that I was afraid to look for fear of betraying the attraction I now found it exercise over me. Seldom surely has a man been so long familiar with and careless of any countenance to find it all at once an object of absorbing interest! The very fact of its want of revelation added immensely to its power over me now-for was I not in its secret? Did I not know what a lovely soul hid behind that unexpressive countenance? Did I not know that it was as the veil of the holy of holies, at times reflecting only the light of the seven golden lamps in the holy place; at others almost melted away in the rush of the radiance unspeakable from the hidden and holier side the region whence come the revelations. To draw through it if but once the feeblest glimmer of the light I had but once beheld, seemed an ambition worthy of a life. Knowing her power of reticence, however, and of withdrawing from the outer courts into the penetralia of her sanctuary, guessing also at something of the aspect in which she

"With what shift and pains we come into the world, we remember not; but 'tis commonly found no easy matter to get out of it. Many have studied to exasperate the ways of death, but fewer hours have been spent to soften that necessity."

regarded me, I dared not now make any the beginning of the thirteenth section of such attempt. But I resolved to seize the second part. what opportunity might offer of convineing her that I was not so far out of sympathy with her as to be unworthy of holding closer converse; and I now began to feel distressed at what had given me little trouble before, namely, that she should suppose me the misleader of her brother. "Ovid, the old heroes, and the Stoicks, while I knew that, however far I might be who were so afraid of drowning, as dreadfrom an absolute belief in things which ing thereby the extinction of their soul.. she seemed never to have doubted, I was which they conceived to be a fire, stood yet in some measure the means of keeping probably in fear of an easier way of him from flinging aside the last cords death; wherein the water, entering the which held him to the faith of his fathers. possessions of air, makes a temperate sufBut I would not lead in any such direc- focation, and kills as it were without a tion, partly from the fear of hypocrisy, fever. Surely many who have had the partly from horror at the idea of making spirit to destroy themselves, have not capital of what little faith I had. But been ingenious in the contrivance thereCharley himself afforded me an opportuni- of."-"Cato is much to be pitied, who ty which I could not, whatever my scrupulosity, well avoid.

Have you ever looked into that little book, Charley?" I said, finding in my hands an early edition of the Christian Morals of Sir Thomas Browne. I wanted to say something, that I might not appear distraught.

"No," he answered, with indifference, as he glanced at the title page. "Is it anything particular?"

"Everything he writes, however whimsical in parts, is well worth more than mere reading," I answered. It is a strangely latinized style, but it has its charm notwithstanding."

He was turning over the leaves as I spoke. Receiving no response, I looked up. He seemed to have come upon something which had attracted him.

What have you found?" I asked. "Here's a chapter on the easiest way of putting a stop to it all," he answered. What do you mean?

"He was a medical man- wasn't he? I'm ashamed to say I know nothing about him."

"Then he knew what he was about." "As well probably as any man of his profession at the time."

He recommends drowning," said Charley, without raising his eyes from the book.

What do you mean?"

"I mean for suicide."

Nonsense. He was the last man to favour that. You must make a mistake. He was a thoroughly Christian man." "I know nothing about that. Hear this."

He read the following passages

mangled himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his delivery, not in the point but in the pummel of his sword."

"Poison, I suppose," he said, as he ended the extract.

"Yes, that's the story, if you remember," I answered; "but I don't see that Sir Thomas is favouring suicide. Not at all. What he writes there is merely a speculation on the comparative ease of different modes of dying. Let me see it.” I took the book from his hands, and, glancing over the essay, read the closing passage.

"But to learn to die, is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find some ways to untie or cut the most gordian knots of life, and make men's miseries as mortal as themselves; whereas evil spirits, as undying substances, are inseparable from their calamities; and, therefore, they everlastingly struggle under their angustias, and bound up with immortality can never get out of theinselves."

"There! I told you so!" cried Charley. "Don't you see? He is the most cunning arguer― beats Despair in the Fairy Queen hollow!"

By this time, either attracted by the stately flow of Sir Thomas's speech, or by the tone of our disputation, the two girls had drawn nearer, and were listening.

"What do you mean, Charley?" I said, perceiving however the hold I had by my further quotation given him.

"First of all, he tells you the easiest way of dying, and then informs you that it ends all your troubles. He is too cunning to say in so many words that there from is no hereafter, but what else can he wish