her features, and the full glory of that face to which earth had given its noblest modulation, and heaven its holiest character and expression, burst on the eyes of Amirald.

He gazed on them intently for a moment, then clasping his hands, attempted to bend his knee in the attitude of worship, but his strength failed in the effort, and he fell prostrate at her feet. Terrified at this prostration, which she ascribed to his weakness, Genevieve was attempting to raise him, when the voice and eager gestures of Amand, who was rapidly descending from a hill, announced to her that not a moment was to be lost. Genevieve, accustomed to these pulses of terror, caught the hand extended to her, and casting one look of regret behind her, followed Amand, till her failing steps and broken respiration made him pause from compassion, which she had not breath to solicit. "There is danger and disaster in thy speed," said his panting companion at length," nor dare I ask what it is this fearful haste announces."-" Men say that the

Bishop of Toulouse approaches with a mighty host," said Amand hastily, "and messengers have come from Count Raymond, commanding that the women and the children be sent farther into the mountains till this evil be overpast; and half I rejoice," he added in a voice of constrained passion, "at these hasty and fearful tidings, for now must thou see this stranger no more, nor shall mine eyes waste in their sockets beholding your meetings; ere morning, distance and deserts will be between you."-" But that will not deprive him of thy aid?" said Genevieve: "Now know I of an assured surety, that thou wilt not desert him, for never was good deed coupled with peril but it seemed lovelier in the eye of the brave."-" Thy flattering words win me not," said Amand obdurately; "I fear the wrath of the congregation because of him. Shall I become an Achan and a troubler of the camp for this stranger, because his favour is fairer than mine? Knowest thou not, that they who aid our enemies in any wise are cursed with a

curse?"-" It is vain for man to curse what
God hath blessed," said the maiden; "there
is a prior and unwritten law of love and
mercy in thy heart, Amand, which thou
mayest neglect but canst not efface; what is
enjoined in that law? how readest thou ?"-
"I see how it fares with thee," said Amand,
his eyes flashing with a fire visible even in
the increasing darkness of twilight—“ I see
how it fares with thee; thou hast loved
strangers, and after them wilt thou go.
Neither distance nor danger, impassable paths
nor the terrors of night, the prayers of thy
friend nor the wrath of thy people, can avail
to withhold thee from forsaking the guide
of thy youth, and forgetting the covenant of
thy God."

Affrighted at his violence, and wounded
by his reproaches, Genevieve forbore to plead,
and at this moment the murmurs of many
voices in various accents of alarm, grief, and
anxiety, announced to her fresh cause for
concentrating her resolution, and banishing
all cares but those of meeting the present

emergency. It was a night of tumult, terror, and distress to the unfortunate Albigenses, the feeble and female part of whom were preparing, on the approach of night, and amid the stormy gloom of autumn, to penetrate farther into the mountain fastnesses, and seek amid the haunts of the wolf and the bear, that shelter which was denied them in the abodes of man. Their progress, however, was checked by another messenger from Count Raymond, requiring that all the males capable of bearing arms should immediately repair to his camp, as the forces of the Crusaders, headed by the Bishop of Toulouse, were fast approaching, and threatened to intercept all communication between him and the advanced body of the Albigenses. This order, with which it was indispensable in the present exigency to comply, completed the despair of the unfortunate women, as it deprived them not only of guides and protectors in the "howling wilderness" they were about to traverse, but of those to whom they were entwined by every tie of nature and of

passion: husbands took brief and sad leave of wives, and parents of children, committing them to Him, whom they invoked to be their pillar of flame in the desert; and the cries of warlike preparation and solemn intercession were heard on every side, mingled with the wailings of unappeasable mothers, and the ceaseless moan of scared and wearied infancy. Amid the tumult, Amand invented a thousand causes of delay (for which his courage was not overpraised), till his topical knowledge, eminently serviceable amid scenes like these, where wild and perilous exigencies were to be encountered only by as wild and perilous expedients, had enabled him to recognize a spot where his adventurous step had often scaled alone, and where no force of man could reach those who had obtained

access to it. It was a perpendicular rock which closed the extremity of the gorge or ravine, which they had reached in their dismal progress: it was ascendible only on one side by a stony path broken by many interruptions; and this path, which wound