friend's little parlour, when Agnes Redford's brother entered. Recognising Edgar, he advanced to him with a face black with wrath, and denouncing him as a villain, declared he would not sit in his company for a moment; and, to make good his declaration, he turned on his heel and left the house. The violent spirit of Edgar was stung to madness by this insult, which was aggravated by the fact that two or three young men, some of them strangers to him, were present. He sprung up; craved their leave for a moment that he might follow and call Mr Redford back; and sallying out of the house, without his hat, overtook his aggressor on the street, tapped him on the shoulder, and thus addressed him with a grim smile:"Come now, my good friend, I must have you back, gently to unsay me a word or two. With your leave now! Come! Come, Sir, or by all that's fixed, this night your blood shall wash out the imputation!"

"This hour-this very minute of mortal time,” replied Redford in a hoarse compressed whisper, "my soul craves to grapple with you, and put our mutual affair to a mortal arbitrement. Hark ye, Edgar, you are a stranger in this city, I presume, and cannot reasonably be expected to provide yourself easily with a second; moreover, who would second such a villain? Now, will you follow me this moment to my lodgings, and accept from my hand one of a pair of pistols; and then let us, without further formality, retire to a convenient place, and there do ourselves a pleasure and a justice? I am a-weary of living under the same sun with you; and if I can shed your foul blood beneath yonder chaste stars of night, I would willingly die for it the next moment. Dare you follow me and quickly, before those fellows think of looking after us?"

To Edgar's boiling heart of indignation it was no hard task to follow, and Redford's proposal was immediately carried into execution. I must notice particularly, that, as the parties were about to leave Redford's house, a letter was put into Redford's hand. Observing that it was from his mother, and bore the outward notification of mourning, he craved Edgar's permission to read it, which he did

with a twinkling in his eye, and a working as of deep grief in the muscles of his face; but in a minute he violently crushed the letter, put it in his pocket, and turning anew to his opponent said grimly, "I think we are all ready now." And now I shall only state generally that, within an hour from the first provocation of the evening, this irregular duel was settled, and left Redford shot through the body by his antagonist. No sooner did Edgar see him fall than horror and remorse seized him; he ran to the prostrate youth and attempted to raise him up; but durst not offer pity or ask forgiveness, though his heart panted to do it. The wounded man rejected his assistance, waving him off, and thus faintly said:"Now, mine enemy! I will tell you—that you may sooner feel the curse of God, which shall for ever cling to you round aboutthat letter from my mother which you saw me read, informed me of the death of that sister Agnes whom I loved so much, and who-Oh God!-never recovered from your villany! And my heart-broken father, he too must perish forsooth, and all for you! And he perished. Off, fiend! nor mock me! You shall not triumph so! You shall not see me die!" So saying, the wounded youth, who was lying on his back, with his pale writhen features upturned, and now dimly seen in the twilight, threw himself round with a convulsive effort, and pressed the ground with his face. In a fearful agony stood Edgar, wringing his hands, not knowing whether again to attempt raising his victim, or to run to the city for a surgeon. The former he at length did, and found no resistance, for alas! Redford was dead. The appearance of two or three individuals now making towards the bloody spot, which was in the suburbs of the town, and to which, in all probability, they were drawn by the report of the pistols, roused Edgar for the first time to a sense of his own danger. He left the ground, dashed through the fields, and, without distinctly calculating his route, instinctively turned towards his native district. By and bye he began to consider what course of procedure he should follow, and resolved at last to go straight to his friends in the South of Scotland,

and, after having made one or two necessary arrangements with them, seek the nearest seaport, and try to escape to America. The moon by this time was up, and lighted him on his way. But there was no peace to his heart. The cold glittering leaves on the trees, struck with a momentary gust as he passed, made him start and look about; and the shadowy foot and figure of the midnight lover, coming round from the back window of the lonely cottage, was to his alarmed apprehension the avenger of blood at hand. As he looked far along the glittering road, the black fir trees upon the edge of the moor were like men coming running down to meet him; and the baying of the watch-dog, and the distant hoof of the traveller's horse, heard now and then as he listened, seemed all in the way of pursuit and vengeance. Morning came, and to the weary fugitive, as he left the road and struck into the open country, was agreeably grey and soft; but the sun arose upon him in the forenoon, shining from between the glassy glistering clouds with far greater heat than he does from a pure blue sky. Edgar had now crossed many a broad acre of the weary moorlands, when he came to a long morass which barred his straightforward way. He was fain to drink here from a dull pool overgrown with paddockpipe, and black with tadpoles. He then threw himself down on the sunny side of some long reeds, and fell fast asleep.

He was awakened by the screaming of lapwings, and the noise of a neighbouring bittern; and felt himself oppressed with a throbbing headach, and with nausea, caused, no doubt, by anxiety of mind and bodily fatigue, and by the sun's having beat upon him while he lay asleep. He arose; but finding himself quite unable to pursue his way, he again threw himself down on a small airy brow of land to get what breeze might be stirring abroad. There were several patches of people at work digging peats in the moss, and one party now sat down very near him to their dinner. One of them, a young woman, had passed so close to him as to be able to guess from his countenance that he was unwell; and in a few minutes she came to

him with some food, of which, to satisfy her kindness rather than his own hunger, he ate a little. The air changed in the afternoon, and streaming clouds of hail crossed over that wild country; yet he lay still. Party after party left the moss, and yet he was there. He made indeed a show of leaving the place at a quick step, to disappoint the fears of the people who had seen him at noon, and who, as they again came near to gather up their clothes, were evidently perplexed on his account, which they showed, by looking first towards him, and then at each other. It was all he could do to get quite out of their sight beyond a little eminence, and there once more he lay down in utter prostration of mind and body. Twilight began to darken upon the pools of that desolate place. There, however, poor Edgar still lay; and he lay all the night. At dawn he arose somewhat better, and went on. In the afternoon he had reached our Village, and was passing through it, when, being thirsty, he entered a cottage to get a draught of water. There was a hushed solemnity in the little apartment into which, with the familiarity of Scottish villages, he did not hesitate to enter; and observing the face of the clock covered up with a white napkin, he knew by this token that there was death in the house. A kind-looking elderly woman whispered in his ear, as she gave him a porringer of water with a little oatmeal sprinkled on it, that the only daughter of the house, a fine young woman, was lying "a-corpse." Without noticing his presence, and indeed with her face half hid in her hand, her elbow leaning on her knee, and drawing occasionally a heavy sigh, sat another elderly female, whom Edgar took for the bereaved mother of the damsel. After lingering a moment in the sacred quiet of the house of mourning, he turned to go out, and was met in the narrow passage which led to the door by a man with the coffin, on the lid of which he read, as it was pushed up to his very face, "AGNES REDFORD, aged 22." His heart was smitten cold. With knees trembling against each other, he tried to pass, but could not for want of room; and as the coffin was not to be withdrawn in accommoda

tion to him, he was forced to go back again into the interior of the cottage. The afflicted mother raised her head at the hollow sound of the coffin, as it grated against the walls of the narrow entrance; and observing Edgar, she started up with a piercing look of recognition. "Take him away-take him away," she cried, as she pressed her face down on a bed covered with white linen, beneath which the outstretched form of her dead child was seen to lie. Edgar stood aghast. Here was the mother of the maiden whom he had destroyed, driven from the home of her better days into the humblest dwelling of poverty, probably from his own first stab to the peace of her family. Moreover, he was fearfully conscious of another bloody wo which he had just brought down on that poor mother's heart, though as yet she knew nothing of it. Staggering and reeling, he turned to depart; but the strength of nature failed him, and he fell on the floor. He was raised up, but was evidently in some severe fit. The surgeon was at hand, and came. As it was impossible to remove the unfortunate youth from the house in his present state, he was lifted into a bed in another small apartment. There he lay delirious, in a burning fever, with some violent inflammatory action about the brain; and there, in the necessity of circumstances, he must continue to lie.

Agnes Redford was buried next day, that is to say, the day after Edgar took ill in her mother's house. Mrs Redford was a right-minded woman; and, whatever her feelings towards Edgar might be, she ministered to him in his alarming illness, and gave every accommodation in her power to his relatives, who, being informed of his situation, had to be in her house to wait upon him. They were very desirous to have him removed, but it could not yet be done. In every interval of his delirium the unhappy young man kept asking, “Am I in her house?Is he come yet?" evidently referring to the coming of Redford's body. And, when any stir was heard in the main apartment of the cottage, he raised himself half up, and, with features sharpening thin, listened with intense