Rivers pulled his hat over his eyes, and watching him out of sight, resumed his march to and fro on the plain, wrapt in thought.

"This fear," he muttered at length, "this unaccountable fear of man for man, must be weak, cowardly. Poor Von Oldenberg, but they are cruel to him; liberty is to him as needful as the air he breathes; why was not his destiny mine? I should have gloried in defying their spies. But they have no object in incarcerating an Englishman; they would not bestow a prison upon me."

Had the Government been liberally inclined in this respect, it would, perhaps, have been the best thing that could have happened to Mr. Ernest Rivers; a few months' solitary confinement and reflection might have sent him forth in the world a better and a wiser man.

And that dreary hour of night, eleven, tolled out from the clock of the church of the Holy Ghost, whose tall spire stood out dark against the star-lit sky, still he kept his lonely watch in that little sheltered spot among the mountains. A misanthrope, he looked down in bitter scorn upon the great pulse of life that was lying hushed at his feet. A worldhater he was, yet its victim and its slave, though his proud spirit chafed against the chain it could not break. With a heart that might have been the temple of all that was good, noble, and beautiful, he forced down all idealism, and with suicidal hand

destroyed the real romance of his own life. So it was, that to him the calm of the night brought no thoughts of peace. For him there was no guiding thought up to nature's God, written in the beautiful stars. So it was, that wrapping his cloak about him against the chill night air, he strode fiercely across the meadow, crushing beneath his feet the soft grass and the blue forget-me-nots, that by their sweet English name might have reminded him of his childhood and its home.

CHAPTER IV.

THE students of Heidelberg, at the time of which we are speaking, were a most motley set of beings. About two o'clock, when the hours were over, which the studious passed in study, and the idle in its profession, the streets somewhat resembled a large open-air masquerade. Not only has the fame of its university collected students from all parts of the world, but the Germans themselves assume such varieties of costume, that one would pronounce Heidelberg the monarch of cosmopolite cities. Here the elegances and fripperies of Paris are seen side by side with the dark cavalier's cloak and hat which shades the haughty features of the Spaniard. There the master-piece of English tailors jostles the patriotic aboriginal, who, professing to go back to the fashion of his ancestors, appears in the approved Teutonic patrican dress of black velvet; poor Von Oldenberg had delighted in this at one time, but now was, for want

to adopt a less remarkable one. But by far the greater number of students chose an attire which would be no disgrace to the disciples of Diogenes, and perhaps not altogether out of place in his habitation. With a short meerschaum in their mouths, and a hat stuck on the top of their heads, often having a perverse inclination to fall on either side, or to hang over their faces, they stroll about the town and leaning over the classic bridges of the Neckar, discuss the metaphysical abstractions, quoting Goethe, Schiller, by wholesale, and speak in languid whispers of the ancient glories of Heidelberg among the ruined walls and mouldering columns of the palace of Fugelheim.

It was about this time, a day or two after the midnight meeting between Ernest Rivers and Von Oldenberg, that the two friends were seated in Ernest's lodgings, busily engaged in smoking. Ernest had prevailed upon Von Oldenberg to visit him there, instead of hiding about in the mountains like an outlaw. The poor fellow had almost childlike faith in Ernest's power to protect even him from what he so much dreaded, the police. His affection had in it, indeed, something so exceedingly deferential, that it reminded one more of a favorite dog, than of a human being. It was founded, also, in gratitude, for his handsome protector had been the means of saving him from the ridicule, and even on one occasion, the unmanly violence of some of the students. Ernest Rivers had been pleased to observe this affec