able intrusion. Yet why should she complain? I had shown every disposition to be satisfied with her accommodations, wretched as they were, and she had besides been assured that she should be liberally rewarded for her trouble.

After having harassed the fuel into flame, my sullen hostess arose, and taking the lantern with her, left me to myself. My attention was now drawn to a circumstance which struck me as not a little extraordinary. The room in which I had observed the light, was directly above me, and I now heard the occupant, whoever he were, pacing backward and forward with a slow and deliberate stride. At another time, I should, in all probability, have taken no notice whatever of a circumstance apparently so trifling. But the gloominess of the weather and the loneliness of the place, had given to my nervous system, naturally very excitable, and debilitated very much by my recent disease, a degree of painful sensibility. The room above me was considerably larger than the one which I was in, as I plainly perceived by the distance to which I traced the steps of the person who was walking overhead. That the stranger was no ordinary personage I felt assured, for there was something so exact, so deliberate, so meditative in his tread, (I say it seriously,) that I could not for a moment suppose it proceeded from the clumsy limbs and thick shoes of an uneducated countryman. Nor could he be a benighted. traveller like myself, for John who had now returned from the barn, assured me that there was no horse nor vehicle whatever there, other than my own. After walking for nearly an hour, with that slow and measured tread, and that peculiar creaking of the boot, which a traveller's ear distinguishes at once from the abrupt and downright tramp of the plebeian, I heard him open the door, and walk to the head of the staircase. He called to the black girl I mentioned before," Caroline!" It was but a single word, and uttered, for aught I knew, for an indifferent purpose. Yet I heard it with the acutest interest; for I could plainly perceive, in his voice, the tone of habitual pensiveness and melancholy. The distinct ness and elegance with which each syllable of this simple word was pronounced, told me that the stranger was a man of education; the tone in which it was uttered convinced me he was unhappy. But what motive could possibly induce such a man to establish his permanent residence in a wretched hovel in these unfrequented wilds? The stranger called Caroline a second and a third time. She did not answer. He called again and again. Why need he do this? Why not descend the stair-case? Why was he afraid of encountering the

eyes of a stranger? He certainly knew of my accident and my being in the house, and I had every reason to suppose that my arrival in a part of the country rarely, if ever, visited by travellers, would at least have roused his curiosity to see and converse with me. But this man was not merely indifferent; he anxiously avoided me. Caroline finally went up to the head of the staircase, and a long conversation in whispers ensued. The stranger then returned to his room, locked the door, and traversed the floor with a hasty and agitated stride, and although I could not distinguish what he said, was evidently speaking to himself in a tone of painful and melancholy selfconsultation. There seemed to be here some enigma which I vainly endeavoured to solve. My hostess scarcely condescended to reply to any of my questions; and sat, while we were attempting to eat the wretched fare she set before us, silently squatted on a stool beneath the arch of the fire-place, doubling the number of her wrinkles with a frown of determined discontent. I attempted, in various ways, to soften her peevish severity, but every inquiry which I made with regard to my strange fellow lodger was effectually parried by the simple reply "Indeed, I can't tell ye, sir, indeed."

I need not say that this evasion only stimulated more and more my increasing curiosity. But as this, to all appearance, seemed a useless and a hopeless curiosity, I threw myself at last upon a couch, which John had prepared for me, with my cloak and some hay from the barn. I endeavoured to forget my impatience in the oblivion of sleep. But to sleep, I found was utterly impossible. The stranger continued to walk across the room, muttering to himself something which I could not understand. At one time I thought I could distinguish these words: "Good God! for what purpose were these afflictions sent upon us? Yet why all this delay and hesitation? I had better do it now. It must come out-it must come out at last. There is no other way!" These words seemed plainly to imply that the mind of the stranger was oppressed with the burden of some fearful secret, which he now was painfully resolving to divulge. Could this determination be connected with my arrival? I could scarcely believe it. He had not seen me, and no one here was acquainted with my name. Yet was it not possible that circumstances of which I might not be aware might render it proper or necessary that any stranger should be the depositary of his confidence? It must come out at last!" And to shun the dreadful consequences of inevitable detection, he was resolved to unfold the fearful mystery to me, whom he knew not, to solicit, perhaps, my assistance, or con

ciliate, at least, my compassion. It must come out at last!' Had the stranger then committed one of those foul deeds that

―rise,

Though all the earth o'erwhelm them, to men's eyes.'

And was it then the force of conscience, and the hope of pardon, which urged him to confess a crime he could not long conceal? This seemed a harsh interpretation; but did not every thing combine to strengthen my suspicions? The extreme reluctance with which I was admitted, the mysterious reserve of the woman who received me, the unwillingness shown by the stranger to descend, the peculiarly anxious tones of his voice, his restless and agitated gait, his soliloquy at an hour so untimely, and the few words I had just overheard, concurred to produce in my mind a vehement misgiving that all was not right. Still, when I reflected that the reserve of the woman might result from a natural moroseness, and that the language of affliction may sometimes be mistaken for the symptoms of remorse, I felt strong reasons to doubt of the truth of my surmises. I was losing myself thus, in a wilderness of the wildest conjecture, when it struck me at last, that my fellow lodger was probably deranged, and I felt vexed that I had perhaps been fruitlessly endeavouring to analyse the motives of a madman. Satisfied with this explananation, I was sinking into sleep, when suddenly I heard the most extraordinary sound with which ever mortal ears were assailed. My whole frame, even at this remote period, convulsively shudders at the recollection. It was a woman's cry, a cry of extreme debility and unutterable agony fearfully combined, and proceeded evidently from the room above. Feeble as it was, it was lengthened and swelled out into a horrible expression of intolerable anguish. The cry, that tells us that the pangs of the victim of hydrothorax are terminating in his death-the cry that issues from the lips of the mangled and exhausted wretch who lies writhing on the rack, when his dying breath is expended in the utterance-the cry that strikes into our souls, when the desperate yet conscious swimmer struggles upward, before our eyes, to the surface of the suffocating element, and shrieks to the shrieking and the powerless for help, are shouts of joy and exultation in comparison to this. I would have started on my feet, but my limbs refused their office, and my heart beat audibly and even loudly at my ribs. I trembled and shivered like a sick man at the first accession of a fever, and stared wildly and vainly around me in unimaginable terror. I had raised my head and back from my couch, and sustained my shuddering frame on my arms, which were behind me ; but they soon grew

too weak to support me, and I fell backward on my bed. Let none do me the injustice to suppose that my alarm grew out of fears for my personal safety. I had braved danger and death in every possible shape, and what man dare' I am sure that I dared.' But there was something so horribly unnatural in this heart-piercing scream-and yet it was not a scream, but a wild sepulchral howl, which had it not been so fearfully articulate, I might have thought to be the nearly suffocated yell of some savage beast of prey-there was something in it, I repeat, so unearthly and so ominous, that I could no more resist the agonies of fear which rushed over me than if I had been paralysed and crushed by the influence of demoniac possession. I lay for near an hour before I could rebuke the terrors which oppressed me; and when my fears had so far vanished that I began to be ashamed of having felt them, I was forced again to undergo all the terrors of alarm. There came, curdling my blood, and penetrating, as it were, my very soul, a second cry, in the same wild, unearthly and unnatural accent as the first. All that I suffered, I cannot, and if I could, I would not describe; for either I should not be believed, or else I should be stigmatized as the veriest craven who ever heard the coward beatings of his heart. If I could for a moment have supposed that the miserable victim was screaming from the force of mortal agonies-that the excruciating pangs of disease, or the steel of the midnight assassin, had extorted this heart-rending cry, I could have rushed with strong nerves and stout heart to the succour of the sufferer. But the hand of some demon seemed upon me, and I lay shuddering and spell-bound on my couch. I prayed fervently to God that I might be spared the agony of a third trial of my agitated senses; for I felt a horrid certainty that my reason could scarcely stand the shock. My prayers were not heard. It came again! that cry! and again, and then again, shooting with a fearful concentration of effect through my tortured and agonizing brain. Suddenly the door of the stranger's room opened. He rushed swiftly to the head of the staircase. "Caroline!" he said, in a voice of the deepest anxiety. I summoned all my scattered energies, rose from my bed, and groped my way as far as to the door" Caroline!" he repeated in a tone of the wildest impatience. I raised the latch of the door with feverish and oppressive agitation. "Caroline," a third time he reiterated with the accent of despair and unutterable anguish. I staggered wildly forth into the hall, and listened, as, upon the dreadful day of doom, the trembling sinner will listen to his sentence.-"Caroline! girl!"—the words are writ in lines of fire upon my brain

"don't you hear! come up here, right away! Molly's 'most crazy with the pain of her tooth, and I am agoin' to try to get it

OUT!"

Already is the itch of scribbling on me,

Six lines are written, and three couplets chime;
And the same folly which in school days won me
To fill old Homer with unseemly rhyme,

And versify e'en Dalzel's Collectanea,

Comes o'er my thoughts with twice the same old mania.
III.

And in my hand my very goosequill seems

To have caught a portion of the same velocity,
With which it whilom ran o'er diverse reams

The perished tokens of my mind's precocity,
Which were in fancy to have raised my name
'Above all Greek, above all Roman fame.'

IV.

But now where are they? I have an old box,
I know exactly where it stands-alone,

I look not in it often, for it mocks-

With the dim spectres of my visions gone,
Mementos sad of desolated joys-

Each hope the present moment that employs.
V.

There lie they-many a blotted manuscript

Prized in its time o'er Homer, Milton, Dante,
But now of all their fancied honours stripped

In guise unseemly and in place most scanty,-
All undisturbed, excepting when the slattern
Chambermaid wants some paper for a pattern.
VI.

Then as her hands, unreverendly scatter,

Without a thought beyond the just dimension
Required to suit the gown or other matter

Which then employs her classical attention,
Impromptus-Satires-Essays-School-philippics,
And still-born Cantos of forgotten epics-