Clifford have already taken steps to secure himself against interference? Again the image of Emma appeared, sometimes with a reproachful, and sometimes a mournful, look; her pale cheek, where the marks of recent indisposition had been visible, her heavy and sorrowful eye that seemed to have been but too familiar with untimely tears; her listless walks, her melancholy voice-all rose upon his fancy like accusing witnesses.

His meditations were interrupted by his postillions suddenly pulling in their horses; a carriage, it appeared, was approaching in the opposite direction, and the night being dark, and the road extremely narrow at this place, it was necessary to be circumspect. He looked out of the window, but for some moments could only perceive the lamps of the other carriage, which was driving with considerable speed. At length as it came nearer, moving more slowly, he observed what seemed to him, in his state of feverish sensibility, an evil omen of the result of his journey-the postillions wore white cockades, and it appeared evidently to be a marriage-party. The two vehicles were now by the side of each other, their wheels grazing slightly as they passed, and Mortimer looked with a natural curiosity into the opposite window, which was open. The look that met his could not be mistaken; it had

startled him on the solitary road-it had glanced on him at the inn-door-and the expression of triumph, mingled half with derision, half with pity, which now shone with a magnificent and fatal lustre in its glance, withered his very soul. Gasping for breath, and catching with convulsive energy at the window-frame, he stretched forward to obtain a view of the bride-their eyes met—a terrible shriek rung in the ears of the wretched Mortimer-a second came more faintly and more distant-and a third was lost in the rushing of the wheels, and the trampling of the horses, as he found himself carried with headlong speed-what matters it whither?

THE

NEW-YEAR'S GIFT.

That night, a child might understand,
The de'il had business on his hand.
TAM O' SHANTER.

IT was the first night of January, and a more dismal night could not well be imagined. It seemed as if the spirits of the air were keeping holiday on the occasion, and welcoming in the new year with fiendish revelry. The inhabitants of a little hut, on the borders of Ettering forest, were listening, in gloomy silence, to the storm, as they cowered round the dying embers of a fireplace in the middle of the room, or rather in the middle of the house, for their wretched hovel could not boast of more than one apartment. The rain dropping through a gap in the roof, which served the purpose of a vent, had nearly extinguished the damp and scanty faggot; while

the wind piercing through a thousand crevices rendered still more miserable this abode of desolation, which at best was destitute of almost every comfort that distinguishes the dwelling of men from the lair of wild beasts.

Oswald the wood-cutter, the owner of this sorry mansion, was a man of middle age, possessing an appearance of superiority to his present fortunes, which seemed to denote his having seen better days. As he looked for a moment at the care-worn features of her whom he had married for love, a blooming, light-hearted girl, twenty years before, then at his two daughters, just rising up into womanhood, and lastly at the bare mud walls which enclosed them, and the empty cupboard, a groan of bitter agony burst from his heart, and he leaned his forehead on his clenched hands, as if in utter despair.

"For shame, Oswald," said his wife, struggling to appear cheerful," is this a time to droop. The last year was bad enough to be sure, and, heaven be praised, it is over; but we are now only on the threshold of another-and who knows what may happen before its close!"

"Ay, who knows," said the youngest girl eagerly, as she stole round to her father, and threw her arms round his neck-" who knows what may happen indeed!—Did not our next

door neighbour, who lives only two miles off, find-"

Here her voice was drowned in the storm, which broke upon the hut with a sound as if it was tearing up the roof, and the shrinking girl hid her face in her father's bosom, till the fitful blast, which seemed to have arisen in wild mockery of her hopes, died away with a slow and melancholy cadence. The little party listened for some moments in consternation to the ominous sound, till their silence was again broken by the youngest daughter, who, raising her head, continued in a low voice:

"It was gold, father, our neighbour found, last new-year's day, in the ruins of the abbey, and I have heard too," added she, whispering, "of new-year's gifts that did not come by chance!"

"Hark!" cried the females at once, as a sound resembling, in their excited imaginations, a human voice, rose wildly upon the storm.

66

"For God's sake hush, sister," said the elder girl; this is no night to talk of gifts like these; poor as we are, we should be none the richer of the fairies' gold."

"Gold!" echoed Oswald, in a melancholy tone, who had for some time appeared buried in a kind of stupefaction, from which neither the