descendant now occupies a cabin by the road-side. The second settler was one Mechinette; then came Colonel De la Cour, whose descendants are in Cork; and Pierre Durant, from Gascony, whose house was where now stands Mrs. Stannus's handsome residence. Then there was a Count Petit Baux; and a Grenier, the latter family extinct. The old Huguenot's eyes sparkled when he spoke of these matters, and grew dim when he told me that there were eleven families of his name and blood now in Bordeaux, of a different faith from his. "The water wears the stone," and all things decay-the old French church has undergone such architectural revisions, under the commendable surveillance of its present pious and hard-working minister, the Rev. John Benn, that it is almost a second edition of the edifice, much enlarged and improved, to suit a growing_congregation. Its registries, which I have never seen, must be deeply interesting; they range from 1694 to 1844, and are full of historic and romantic associations. The church plate was a royal gift from the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, the wise consort of George II. It consists of a massive silver salver, two tall heavy flagons, one cup, and one paten, on all and each of which is engraven the shield, motto, &c., of the Prince of Wales, followed by this Inscription:

"Donné par son Altesse Royale
Madame Wilhelmina Carolina,
Princesse de Galles,

en faveur

de l'Eglise Francoise Conformiste de Portarlington.

Le 1 Mar., 1714-5."

There is likewise the following inscription on the church bell:.

"In usum Ecclesiæ Gallica Portarlingtoniensis Campanam hanc dono dedit Serenissima et Piisima Princeps, Wilhelmina Carolina, Serenissimi Georgii Whaliæ Principis Uxor-Dilectissima Serenissimi et Potentissimi Georgii Magnæ Brittaniæ, Fran. Hib. Regis Nurus meritissima. Promovente Illustrissimo Comite Henrico de Galloway, qui dum pro rege Res in Hib. Administraret hoc Templum sumptibus suis ædificari curavit, 1715."

This composition of stupid superlatives is redeemed by the information conveyed in the last few lines; it appears, then, that the French Church of St. Paul, Portarlington, was built at the expense of the younger Rouvig

ny. His was, indeed, a noble character, generous and devoted; and Burnet illustrates these points well and truly, when he tells us that in 1691 "old Rouvigny being dead, his son offered his service to the King, who unwillingly accepted of it, because he knew that an estate which his father had in France, and of which he had still the income, would be immediately confiscated. But he, Rouvigny, had no regard for that, and heartily engag ed in the King's service, &c., and is a man of eminent virtue, capacity, courage, and zeal for religion."

Rouvigny appears in high and merited favour with the old Whig Bishop. Another of his master's generals does not stand quite so well with him—I mean Ginkel; he tells us how he was made Earl of Athlone, and "had noble rewards for the great service he had done;" but he omits to say, that the 26,000 acres which William granted him in 1693 (the forfeited estate of William Dungan, Earl of Limerick), and which grant Parliament confirmed 7th December, 1695, they, i.c., the parlia ment, reversed on the 15th day of the same month! on which the family retired to Holland, where they remained, and no Lord of Athlone sat in parliament for fully a hundred years from that time, when Frederick, the sixth earl, took his seat in the Irish House of Lords, A.D. 1795. Truly, William, of glorious memory, appears to have had something like a very stiff-necked House of Commons.

As I stood leaning over the stone battlements of the bridge which spans the Barrow, musing and revolving many of the occurrences which are here offered to the public, I could not help devoutly wishing that the stream of my country's history henceforward might more and more resemble the track and passage of the tranquil river below me, no doubt at times to be fretted by rock, or swoln by flood, or shoaled by drought-no doubt at times subjected to windings and to rapids, and exhibiting foam and bubbles; but on the whole, flowing calmly, fertilising its own banks with its own waters, and reflecting their prosperity, their industry, and their peace on its quiet bosom, and performing in the sight of nations its stated and steady course from fount to fall-from its rise amidst the rocks of the cycles of time till its flow into the broad main of eternity.

B.

O SLEEK, Smiling, unsifted scoundrel! "I knew her sister but slightly," forsooth "Wonder if she is like her?" He dared to write that to me, her husband, the brother of his victim! But this record of damnation had slipped his clutches, while he blessed himself in his yet unravelled infamy. Ay, he had driven a hard bargain with the devil-this fellow-and "who," thought he, "will ever see the contract?" buried, as it was, under such a whited wall; he would yet walk delicately under the world's eyes, not too far-sighted for him, brazen-browed, and with sneer for sneer. But the elder imp tricked him, and fooled him, and tripped him up in the end, for all that, and put hay in his horn!

Morton flung down the papers, with a spot of hot scorn in his pale, proud cheek.

It has been impossible to preserve in all their original vividness the accumulated and rapid pictures with which Morton, as he went on, in his quaint eloquence, piled up his story. He had, indeed, been greatly excited, but now spoke with more calmness.

These details (he resumed) I learned from my wife, whom the letter of Count C had thrown into a state of violent agitation. My own sympathy, and the knowledge of subsequent facts have filled up the gaps. One day, when, fortunately, my wife was away at the Rectory, a parcel arrived from London, addressed to her. From its shape I guessed that it contained the bracelet spoken of by the Count, and therefore opened it at once. I was right. In the case was a serpent dropt with gems of all colours, the head a single emerald, the largest I had ever seen-one blaze of green light; the coil a twist of knot. ted gold. It was, indeed, a noble piece of costly workmanship; but one thing about it struck me as strange; the fangs of the serpent were wide apart, and the tongue protruded — a detail unusual in such trifles. But as though the artificer had wished to set a foil against the extravagant magni

VOL. XLIV. NO. CCLXI.

ficence of the rest of his work, or following out some bitter whim of his own, had chosen to mix base things with rich, the little tongue was of common steel, but worked and cut with a marvellous minuteness, and so fine and delicate that it vibrated as I turned over the bracelet in my hand. I determined that my wife should not see this thing, dreading the effect it was likely to have upon her mind, and I therefore locked it carefully up in a little cabinet in the room, which had never before been made use of, and said nothing about it. The same evening, when Madeline returned home, I observed something strangely feverish and restless in her manner. She was unusually talkative, but no subject retained her attention for more than a few minutes. She seemed, indeed, wholly other than herself, and her old pensive, thoughtful habit, quite gone. The change pained me; I inquired anxiously of her if she felt unwell; but she replied that she had never felt better in her life. Nevertheless, I felt her pulse, and it was quick and irritable. On a sudden, as we were talking, she rose from the sofa, where she had been sitting with me, and went to the little cabinet, in which I had locked up the bracelet. "I have conceived a great curiosity," said she, "to open this cabinet. I never well observed it before, but it has greatly taken me on a sudden, and I should like to have it moved into my bedroom."

I made some excuses about the dif ficulty of moving it, and said that I should be obliged to look for the key. Fortunately, before I had done speaking, some new fancy had taken her, and she interrupted me to speak of other things. For several days after that evening, however, I remarked that she would sit, whenever she could do so, close to the cabinet; if seated anywhere else, she became restless, and would at last leave her place, and sit down in the recess where it stood.

Every day she became less and less able to move about; her confinement

U

was now imminent; and with me every day rose and set anxiously, between a thousand tender hopes and fears. Intelligence of life or death from another world was at hand. Any hour might break the seal of a great joy or a great sorrow. Already from the future young blue eyes seemed to laugh at me. Already in still corners of the dreamy house the phantom of a baby voice would mock me. Already a joyous confusion of sweet-sounding names ran over in my mind; but yet, gathering intensity day by day, an icy, terrible apprehension clung to my heart. Madeline was so frail a thing, her very beauty was not of flesh and blood. She seemed a soul made visible. That pain should revel and have sway in that fine fragile form, so acutely and delicately finished from head to foot, and susceptible to the finger-tips, was a thought that agonised me. A buxom young woman from the village was installed in the house. I had written to London to secure the attendance of an able physician, whom I had known for many years. My recollections of the native Galen were too vivid for me to rely exclusively on his services.

Many and many a night, too anxious to sleep, did I hang over that pale young face, upturned in its pure dreams, and listen with almost agony to the low coming and going of the breath upon the fragrant lips.

One night I awoke suddenly from a strange and most unpleasant dream, in which it seemed to me that I was sitting with Madeline by the grave of Geraldine. My wife's hand was in mine, and we were talking of the dead girl, when a serpent suddenly sprang out of the long weeds, and fastened at the throat of Madeline. I started up in terror to pluck away the reptile, but my foot slipped, and I fell, and fell, and fell. You know that sensation in dreams. Well, when the whirl and eddy of the fall had subsided in my head, I looked about, and all was changed. I found myself walking through pillared streets, in some dim decaying city of the south. Column and arch were tumbled on the ground, and heaped among rank grasses. Here were temples. there palaces there prisons. Classicism and feudalism jumbled together with a desolate strange beauty, beneath a gorgeous sky. Walking at my elbow, on one side, was Count C; on the other,

what think you? -the dead body of Geraldine Rushbrook, stepping in its grave-clothes. Although I had never seen her, I recognised the corpse as hers, by some strange dream-instinct. And I felt no surprise, as though the dead walked daily, and a skeleton might have sauntered out of the next house with a walking-stick, or a lady, holding up her winding-sheet from the gutter, tripped into the cashmereshawl-shop; or young babies in swaddling clothes of the charnel, be seen taking an airing in open coffins, on the knees of ghost-like nurses. As we walked on, C, going up to that other dead companion, rudely drew back the head-bands from the corpse, and cut off a long tress of the silky hair which fell in showers over the shoulder; and as he did so, I observed a frown and a look of pain in the dead face, as though the body, spite of its ghastly galvanic scintillation of life, would have prevented the rude insolence of the robbery, but could not. Then I observed C-- thrust his hand into his bosom, and draw from thence a small casket, into which he tossed the lock of hair; and under the half-open lid, as he hastily shut it up again, I just caught the green glare of a huge emerald, and recognised the head of the serpent, and the gems on the bracelet, which the Count had sent to my wife. While I was looking over his shoulder, I stumbled against a loose fragment of stone, and fell over him, and out of the dream altogether, and so I awoke.

It was an inexpressible relief to find myself in my own bed, in my own bedroom, and to catch, by one faint ray of the autumn moon that struggled through the window draperies, the shapes of familiar objects about me. Nevertheless, through all the mist and numbness of recent sleep, an unaccountable feeling of alarm and loss oppressed me. Instinctively, I stretched my arms to Madeline, and turned to see if she were yet asleep. Conceive my horror, when my hand passed over a vacant pillow and a dimpled empty place. My wife was not there. I was thoroughly awake in a moment; I sat up in the bed, and rubbed my eyes, and looked all about me, and called her by her name. No, she was not there; and the coverlid flung back, as though she had risen in haste, and the room evidently empty. I leaped up, and

went to the door; it was open; Ipassed through it, and like one that follows the adventure of a dream, all in a puzzled wonderment, crept mechanically down the stairs.

The drawing-room door was standing wide open, and the moon, that wanted but two days of the full, shining through the oriel at the further end, flooded the floor and galleries with light. I entered, with a wild flutter of the heart, as in some fairy-hall a prince, treading the chambers of a charmed castle, dreads in each to light upon some evil thing. Near the window, in the recess of the little cabinet, I found my wife sitting quite still. Her elbows were resting on the ebony ledge, and her cheek propped upon one hand. By her eye, in the light of the moon, I could perceive that she was asleep; and this was sleep-walking. I stood motionless, and holding my breath for many minutes, fearing to disturb her, and casting in my mind some means of getting her back to her room. But

thus standing, I had rested iny arm on a little table close to where she was sitting, and in the abstraction of ainazement in which I was, I threw all my weight upon that arm, drawing back to look at her. In a moment, over went the table with a crash more dinning for the deathly silence of all the house. I almost bit my tongue through with vexation.

All is over, thought I; she will awake, and be dangerously ill, perhaps. This thought flashed through me, for I had heard of the danger of sudden shocks to sleep-walkers. But Madeline did not move in her still seat. There she was, when I looked up, her head resting on her hand, as though unconscious of the noise. I was more than ever alarmed. I touched her wrist, it was warm, and the pulse even, though somewhat rapid.

"Madeline!" I bent down, and whispered.

"Yes, dear," she answered, in a low voice.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, inexpressibly relieved by the sound of her voice.

"Nothing," she replied.

"But what made you leave your room at this hour of the night, to sit here? It is very dangerous, dearest. I have been so alarmed by your absence."

"I like this little cabinet so much," she answered.

"But will you not return with me now? Think of the danger you are running. If you should have caught cold already

"Yes, I will go back with you. Give me your hand that is well. I

like to feel your hand."

"And how long have you been here?"

"About an hour, I think."

"And what makes you so fond of this cabinet ?"

"I don't know; but do you know I think that there must be something belonging to Geraldine in it; I feel as though that were so. I wish you would have it opened, darling. I have had such strange thoughts about it."

Hoping to obtain some control over her while she was in this state, which anything said in her waking hours might have failed to ensure, I said—

"Promise me, then, dearest, that you will not, at any rate, come here by night again-if not for my sake, at least for the sake of that which is soon, I hope, to be so dear to both of us."

"Yes," she said. "It was not right of me, I think, to come to-night; but I feel as though some one led me here by the hand."

What makes you think," said I, "that there is anything belonging to Geraldine in the cabinet ?"

"I don't know; I have only a strange feeling about it."

This is all she would say; but she let me lead her back quietly to her

room.

I was agonised by the fear that she might have caught a chill by this extraordinary nocturnal walk. She did not, however, seem materially worse the next day, though she looked fatigued. I asked her how she had slept, and she said well. She seemed to have no recollection of what had taken place during the night, and I did not allude to it. To my great relief, the physician, to whom I had sent, arrived that day at and I walked over to see him at the Rectory, where he was staying. Before going, I went to the cabinet, and took out the bracelet, which I resolved to deposit in the parson's house. Had I known where was to be found, I should have sent it back to him.

C

My way lay amid the reeking autumn leaves, from which the oppressive exhalations added a physical dejection to the mental gloom which weighed

upon me. I had time, as I went along, to turn over in my mind all that had lately happened, and shape a thousand vague conjectures, more terrible, because so vague, as to the cause of my wife's sudden sleep-walking, and her strange attraction to the cabinet which contained the bracelet.

I knew how great a sympathy and tenderness had existed between the sisters; I knew what strange phenomena physical ill-health sometimes develops in highly nervous temperaments such as Madeline's. In this knowledge I sought to find the germ of some satisfactory explanation, but every thought that could suggest one was crowded out of my brain by hideous fancies. I called to mind the strange fascination which all that I had read in that incoherent journal of Geraldine's seemed to prove, had been exercised over the poor girl by C▬▬. Did not this fascination appear to have been the result of some mysterious power wholly independent of the love of the girl for the Count? The thought had occurred to me before; now, more than ever, did it gather probability. What then if, for some evil purpose best known to himself, he now sought to obtain a similar influence over Madeline? What if this casket contained some medium of communication? But the notion seemed too extravagant for any serious belief. What kind of influence did this man possess? and what could there be in a gold bracelet calculated to assist it? This fancy was, after all, as wild as that of a pact with the fiend, and the old tale of signatures in blood, and the Gothic devil with horns; and yet—and yet-what were the facts? Had not my wife really been attracted to the cabinet? Had this strange attraction shown itself before the bracelet was placed there? Had she not walked in her sleep last night-a thing she had never done before? Or was all delusion, and I the only dreamer, after all? The smell of the rotting leaves almost choked me. A mash of hideous doubts were at riot in my brain. I ran fast, that I might not think, and the purple leaves followed me in eddies up the dismal gust, with a pattering like the feet of fearful things in a night

mare.

When I reached the porch of the Parsonage, I was glad to see the merry firelight on the pane, and to catch the

cheery voice of the old man, as he came into the hall to meet me. "Madeline well, quite well, my dear boy-eh?"

"Thank God, yes. I feared that it was too damp for her to venture out." "But you look pale yourself, Clarence, dear boy. How's that? It will never do-not it-eh ?"

"No, sir; this damp autumn weather pulls me down a little - that's all. And Dr. ? Arrived yet?"

"Yes, Clarence-yes; up stairs, unpacking. Come to the fire, boy, and warm yourself. Ligna super foco large reponens, and the time is come for that now. I pass the day by the hearth like a cat, dulce susurrans, purring, you know. I declare I dread the ugly black winter, Clarence, more than all things

"When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul,'

eh ? and the church is so damp. I pray God our Madeline may go through it bravely, Clarence. You did well not to bring her. We must be careful that she catches no cold. And you have confidence in Dr. ——, I hope? I am rejoiced that we have him here in good time. By the way, Dr. Jenks is so angry. But what a merry christening we'll have, boy! Bless me, I grow young in the thought of my grandchildren suavissima pro

les !"

There seemed to me something unnatural in the cheerfulness of the old man. The gloom gathered thicker and darker about me with the darkening day. Everything added to it; I could not shake it off. If, indeed," thought I, "Madeline's confinement were well over, I should have no fear."

"Surely there is something on your mind, my dear son," resumed the parson, as I stood moodily looking into the firelight; "yes, something, I see. What is it, Clarence? Why so taciturn? What 'ox on the tongue,' dear boy? A very big ox, I am afraid. But don't you think we may send him to graze elsewhere?"

I was about to reply, when the house bell rang sharply, and I felt the blood tingling in my finger-tips, as I caught a sight through the darkening windowpane of the face of the young woman whom I had left in the house with my wife.

"Please, sir," said the servant.
"Quick! quick! — what news?"