CHAPTER XLI. 

The lawyer came the next day, and with something like a smile on his lips. He brought me a few lines in pencil from Mrs. Ashleigh; they were kindlyexpressed, bade me be of good cheer; "she never for a moment believed inmy guilt; Lilian bore up wonderfully under so terrible a trial; it was anunspeakable comfort to both to receive the visits of a friend so attachedto me, and so confident of a triumphant refutation of the hideous calumnyunder which I now suffered as Mr. Margrave!"

The lawyer had seen Margrave again, --seen him in that house. Margraveseemed almost domiciled there!

I remained sullen and taciturn during this visit. I longed again for thenight. Night came. I heard the distant clock strike twelve, when againthe icy wind passed through my hair, and against the wall stood theluminous Shadow. 

"Have you considered?" whispered the voice, still as from afar. "I repeatit, --I alone can save you. "

"Is it among the conditions which you ask, in return, that I shall resignto you the woman I love?"

"No. "

"Is it one of the conditions that I should commit some crime, --a crimeperhaps heinous as that of which I am accused?"

"No. "

"With such reservations, I accept the conditions you may name, provided I, in my turn, may demand one condition from yourself. "

"Name it. "

"I ask you to quit this town. I ask you, meanwhile, to cease your visitsto the house that holds the woman betrothed to me. "

"I will cease those visits. And before many days are over, I will quitthis town. "

"Now, then, say what you ask from me. I am prepared to concede it. Andnot from fear for myself, but because I fear for the pure and innocentbeing who is under the spell of your deadly fascination. This is yourpower over me. You command me through my love for another. Speak. "

"My conditions are simple. You will pledge yourself to desist from allcharges of insinuation against myself, of what nature soever. You willnot, when you meet me in the flesh, refer to what you have known of mylikeness in the Shadow. You will be invited to the house at which I maybe also a guest; you will come; you will meet and converse with me asguest speaks with guest in the house of a host. "

"Is that all?"

"It is all. "

"Then I pledge you my faith; keep your own. "

"Fear not; sleep secure in the certainty that you will soon be releasedfrom these walls. "

The Shadow waned and faded. Darkness settled back, and a sleep, profoundand calm, fell over me. 

The next day Mr. Stanton again visited me. He had received that morning anote from Mr. Margrave, stating that he had left L---- to pursue, inperson, an investigation which he had already commenced through another, affecting the man who had given evidence against me, and that, if hishope should prove well founded, he trusted to establish my innocence, andconvict the real murderer of Sir Philip Derval. In the research he thusvolunteered, he had asked for, and obtained, the assistance of thepoliceman Waby, who, grateful to me for saving the life of his sister, hadexpressed a strong desire to be employed in my service. 

Meanwhile, my most cruel assailant was my old college friend, RichardStrahan. For Jeeves had spread abroad Strahan's charge of purloining thememoir which had been entrusted to me; and that accusation had done megreat injury in public opinion, because it seemed to give probability tothe only motive which ingenuity could ascribe to the foul deed imputed tome. That motive had been first suggested by Mr. Vigors. Cases are onrecord of men whose life had been previously blameless, who have committeda crime which seemed to belie their nature, in the monomania of someintense desire. In Spain, a scholar reputed of austere morals murderedand robbed a traveller for money in order to purchase books, --bookswritten, too, by Fathers of his Church! He was intent on solving someproblem of theological casuistry. In France, an antiquary, esteemed notmore for his learning than for amiable and gentle qualities, murdered hismost intimate friend for the possession of a medal, without which his owncollection was incomplete. These, and similar anecdotes, tending to provehow fatally any vehement desire, morbidly cherished, may suspend thenormal operations of reason and conscience, were whispered about by Dr. Lloyd's vindictive partisan; and the inference drawn from them and appliedto the assumptions against myself was the more credulously received, because of that over-refining speculation on motive and act which theshallow accept, in their eagerness to show how readily they understand theprofound. 

I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of chemical experiments;to be eager in testing the truth of any novel invention. Strahan, catching hold of the magistrate's fantastic hypothesis, went aboutrepeating anecdotes of the absorbing passion for analysis and discoverywhich had characterized me in youth as a medical student, and to which, indeed, I owed the precocious reputation I had obtained. 

Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but to the directtestimony of his servant, had acquired in the course of his travels manysecrets in natural science, especially as connected with the healingart, --his servant had deposed to the remarkable cures he had effected bythe medicinals stored in the stolen casket. Doubtless Sir Philip, inboasting of these medicinals in the course of our conversation, hadexcited my curiosity, inflamed my imagination; and thus when I afterwardssuddenly met him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse had acted on a brainheated into madness by curiosity and covetous desire. 

All these suppositions, reduced into system, were corroborated byStrahan's charge that I had made away with the manuscript supposed tocontain the explanations of the medical agencies employed by Sir Philip, and had sought to shelter my theft by a tale so improbable, that a man ofmy reputed talent could not have hazarded it if in his sound senses. Isaw the web that had thus been spread around me by hostile prepossessionsand ignorant gossip: how could the arts of Margrave scatter that web tothe winds? I knew not, but I felt confidence in his promise and hispower. Still, so great had been my alarm for Lilian, that the hope ofclearing my own innocence was almost lost in my joy that Margrave, atleast, was no longer in her presence, and that I had received his pledgeto quit the town in which she lived. 

Thus, hours rolled on hours, till, I think, on the third day from thatnight in which I had last beheld the mysterious Shadow, my door washastily thrown open, a confused crowd presented itself at thethreshold, --the governor of the prison, the police superintendent, Mr. Stanton, and other familiar faces shut out from me since my imprisonment. I knew at the first glance that I was no longer an outlaw beyond the paleof human friendship. And proudly, sternly, as I had supported myselfhitherto in solitude and suspense, when I felt warm hands clasping mine, heard joyous voices proffering congratulations, saw in the eyes of allthat my innocence had been cleared, the revulsion of emotion was toostrong for me, --the room reeled on my sight, I fainted. I pass, asquickly as I can, over the explanations that crowded on me when Irecovered, and that were publicly given in evidence in court next morning. I had owed all to Margrave. It seems that he had construed to my favourthe very supposition which had been bruited abroad to my prejudice. "For, " said he, "it is conjectured that Fenwick committed the crime ofwhich he is accused in the impulse of a disordered reason. Thatconjecture is based upon the probability that a madman alone could havecommitted a crime without adequate motive. But it seems quite clear thatthe accused is not mad; and I see cause to suspect that the accuser is. "Grounding this assumption on the current reports of the witness's mannerand bearing since he had been placed under official surveillance, Margravehad commissioned the policeman Waby to make inquiries in the village towhich the accuser asserted he had gone in quest of his relations, and Wabyhad there found persons who remembered to have heard that the two brothersnamed Walls lived less by the gains of the petty shop which they kept thanby the proceeds of some property consigned to them as the nearest of kinto a lunatic who had once been tried for his life. Margrave had thenexamined the advertisements in the daily newspapers. One of them, warningthe public against a dangerous maniac, who had effected his escape from anasylum in the west of England, caught his attention. To that asylum hehad repaired. 

There he learned that the patient advertised was one whose propensity washomicide, consigned for life to the asylum on account of a murder, forwhich he had been tried. The description of this person exactly talliedwith that of the pretended American. The medical superintendent of theasylum, hearing all particulars from Margrave, expressed a strongpersuasion that the witness was his missing patient, and had himselfcommitted the crime of which he had accused another. If so, thesuperintendent undertook to coax from him the full confession of all thecircumstances. Like many other madmen, and not least those whosepropensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac was exceedingly cunning, treacherous, secret, and habituated to trick and stratagem, --more subtlethan even the astute in possession of all their faculties, whether toachieve his purpose or to conceal it, and fabricate appearances againstanother. But while, in ordinary conversation, he seemed rational enoughto those who were not accustomed to study him, he had one hallucinationwhich, when humoured, led him always, not only to betray himself, but toglory in any crime proposed or committed. He was under the belief that hehad made a bargain with Satan, who, in return for implicit obedience, would bear him harmless through all the consequences of such submission, and finally raise him to great power and authority. It is no unfrequentillusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are under the influence ofthe Evil One, or possessed by a Demon. Murderers have assigned as theonly reason they themselves could give for their crime, that "the Devilgot into them, " and urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, noattribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. Themaniac who has been removed from a garret sticks straws in his hair andcalls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance characterize mentalaberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I have detected, inthat infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, long before the brain hadmade its disease manifest even to the most familiar kindred. 

Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the dreadful illusion by which theman I now speak of was possessed. He was proud to be the protected agentof the Fallen Angel. And if that self-esteem were artfully appealed to, he would exult superbly in the evil he held himself ordered to perform, asif a special prerogative, an official rank and privilege; then, he wouldbe led on to boast gleefully of thoughts which the most cynical ofcriminals in whom intelligence was not ruined would shrink from owning;then, he would reveal himself in all his deformity with as complacent andfrank a self-glorying as some vain good man displays in parading hisamiable sentiments and his beneficent deeds. 

"If, " said the superintendent, "this be the patient who has escaped fromme, and if his propensity to homicide has been, in some way, directedtowards the person who has been murdered, I shall not be with him aquarter of an hour before he will inform me how it happened, and detailthe arts he employed in shifting his crime upon another; all will be toldas minutely as a child tells the tale of some school-boy exploit, inwhich he counts on your sympathy, and feels sure of your applause. "

Margrave brought this gentleman back to L----, took him to the mayor, whowas one of my warmest supporters: the mayor had sufficient influence todictate and arrange the rest. The superintendent was introduced to theroom in which the pretended American was lodged. At his own desire aselect number of witnesses were admitted with him. Margrave excusedhimself; he said candidly that he was too intimate a friend of mine to bean impartial listener to aught that concerned me so nearly. 

The superintendent proved right in his suspicions, and verified hispromises. My false accuser was his missing patient; the man recognizedDr. ---- with no apparent terror, rather with an air of condescension, andin a very few minutes was led to tell his own tale, with a gloatingcomplacency both at the agency by which he deemed himself exalted, and atthe dexterous cunning with which he had acquitted himself of the task, that increased the horror of his narrative. 

He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was extremely ingenious, but ofwhich the details, long in themselves, did not interest me, and Iunderstood them too imperfectly to repeat. He had encountered asea-faring traveller on the road, whom he had knocked down with a stone, and robbed of his glazed hat and pea-jacket, as well as of a small sum incoin, which last enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that conveyedhim eighty miles away from the asylum. Some trifling remnant of thismoney still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot along the high-roadtill he came to a town about twenty miles distant from L----; there he hadstayed a day or two, and there he said "that the Devil had told him to buya case-knife, which he did. " "He knew by that order that the Devil meanthim to do something great. " "His Master, " as he called the fiend, thendirected him the road he should take. He came to L----, put up, as he hadcorrectly stated before, at a small inn, wandered at night about the town, was surprised by the sudden storm, took shelter under the convent arch, overheard somewhat more of my conversation with Sir Philip than he hadpreviously deposed, --heard enough to excite his curiosity as to thecasket: "While he listened his Master told him he must get possession ofthat casket. " Sir Philip had quitted the archway almost immediately afterI had done so, and he would then have attacked him if he had not caughtsight of a policeman going his rounds. He had followed Sir Philip to ahouse (Mr. Jeeves's). "His Master told him to wait and watch. " He didso. When Sir Philip came forth, towards the dawn, he followed him, sawhim enter a narrow street, came up to him, seized him by the arm, demandedall he had about him. Sir Philip tried to shake him off, --struck at him. What follows I spare the reader. The deed was done. He robbed the deadman both of the casket and the purse that he found in the pockets; hadscarcely done so when he heard footsteps. He had just time to get behindthe portico of a detached house at angles with the street when I came up. He witnessed, from his hiding-place, the brief conference between myselfand the policemen, and when they moved on, bearing the body, stoleunobserved away. He was going back towards the inn, when it occurred tohim that it would be safer if the casket and purse were not about hisperson; that he asked his Master to direct him how to dispose of them:that his Master guided him to an open yard (a stone-mason's) at a verylittle distance from the inn; that in this yard there stood an oldwych-elm tree, from the gnarled roots of which the earth was worn away, leaving chinks and hollows, in one of which he placed the casket andpurse, taking from the latter only two sovereigns and some silver, andthen heaping loose mould over the hiding-place. That he then repaired tohis inn, and left it late in the morning, on the pretence of seeking forhis relations, --persons, indeed, who really had been related to him, butof whose death years ago he was aware. He returned to L---- a few daysafterwards, and in the dead of the night went to take up the casket andthe money. He found the purse with its contents undisturbed; but the lidof the casket was unclosed. From the hasty glance he had taken of itbefore burying it, it had seemed to him firmly locked, --he was alarmedlest some one had been to the spot. But his Master whispered to him notto mind, told him that he might now take the casket, and would be guidedwhat to do with it; that he did so, and, opening the lid, found the casketempty-; that he took the rest of the money out of the purse, but that hedid not take the purse itself, for it had a crest and initials on it, which might lead to the discovery of what had been done; that he thereforeleft it in the hollow amongst the roots, heaping the mould over it asbefore; that in the course of the day he heard the people at the inn talkof the murder, and that his own first impulse was to get out of the townimmediately, but that his Master "made him too wise for that, " and badehim stay; that passing through the streets, he saw me come out of thesash-window door, go to a stable-yard on the other side of the house, mount on horseback and ride away; that he observed the sash-door was leftpartially open; that he walked by it and saw the room empty; there wasonly a dead wall opposite; the place was solitary, unobserved; that hisMaster directed him to lift up the sash gently, enter the room, anddeposit the knife and the casket in a large walnut-tree bureau whichstood unlocked near the window. All that followed--his visit to Mr. Vigors, his accusation against myself, his whole tale--was, he said, dictated by his Master, who was highly pleased with him, and promised tobring him safely through. And here he turned round with a hideous smile, as if for approbation of his notable cleverness and respect for his highemploy. 

Mr. Jeeves had the curiosity to request the keeper to inquire how, in whatform, or in what manner, the Fiend appeared to the narrator, or conveyedhis infernal dictates. The man at first refused to say; but it wasgradually drawn from him that the Demon had no certain and invariableform: sometimes it appeared to him in the form of a rat; sometimes evenof a leaf, or a fragment of wood, or a rusty nail; but that his Master'svoice always came to him distinctly, whatever shape he appeared in; only, he said, with an air of great importance, his Master, this time, hadgraciously condescended, ever since he left the asylum, to communicatewith him in a much more pleasing and imposing aspect than he had ever donebefore, --in the form of a beautiful youth, or, rather, like a brightrose-coloured shadow, in which the features of a young man were visible, and that he had heard the voice more distinctly than usual, though in amilder tone, and seeming to come to him from a great distance. 

After these revelations the man became suddenly disturbed. He shook fromlimb to limb, he seemed convulsed with terror; he cried out that he hadbetrayed the secret of his Master, who had warned him not to describe hisappearance and mode of communication, or he would surrender his servant tothe tormentors. Then the maniac's terror gave way to fury; his moredireful propensity made itself declared; he sprang into the midst of hisfrightened listeners, seized Mr. Vigors by the throat, and would havestrangled him but for the prompt rush of the superintendent and hissatellites. Foaming at the mouth, and horribly raving, he was thenmanacled, a strait-waistcoat thrust upon him, and the group so left himin charge of his captors. Inquiries were immediately directed towardssuch circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details he had sominutely set forth. The purse, recognized as Sir Philip's, by the valetof the deceased, was found buried under the wych-elm. A policemandespatched, express, to the town in which the maniac declared the knife tohave been purchased, brought back word that a cutler in the placeremembered perfectly to have sold such a knife to a seafaring man, andidentified the instrument when it was shown to him. From the chink of adoor ajar, in the wall opposite my sash-window, a maid-servant, watchingfor her sweetheart (a journeyman carpenter, who habitually passed that wayon going home to dine), had, though unobserved by the murderer, seen himcome out of my window at a time that corresponded with the dates of hisown story, though she had thought nothing of it at the moment. He mightbe a patient, or have called on business; she did not know that I was fromhome. The only point of importance not cleared up was that which relatedto the opening of the casket, --the disappearance of the contents; the lockhad been unquestionably forced. No one, however, could suppose that somethird person had discovered the hiding-place and forced open the casket toabstract its contents and then rebury it. The only probable suppositionwas that the man himself had forced it open, and, deeming the contents ofno value, had thrown them away before he had hidden the casket and purse, and, in the chaos of his reason, had forgotten that he had so done. Whocould expect that every link in a madman's tale would be found integraland perfect? In short, little importance was attached to this solitarydoubt. Crowds accompanied me to my door, when I was set free, in opencourt, stainless; it was a triumphal procession. The popularity I hadpreviously enjoyed, superseded for a moment by so horrible a charge, cameback to me tenfold as with the reaction of generous repentance for amomentary doubt. One man shared the public favour, --the young man whoseacuteness had delivered me from the peril, and cleared the truth from soawful a mystery; but Margrave had escaped from congratulation andcompliment; he had gone on a visit to Strahan, at Derval Court. 

Alone, at last, in the welcome sanctuary of my own home, what were mythoughts? Prominent amongst them all was that assertion of the madman, which had made me shudder when repeated to me: he had been guided to themurder and to all the subsequent proceedings by the luminous shadow of thebeautiful youth, --the Scin-Laeca to which I had pledged myself. If SirPhilip Derval could be believed, Margrave was possessed of powers, derivedfrom fragmentary recollections of a knowledge acquired in a former stateof being, which would render his remorseless intelligence infinitely direand frustrate the endeavours of a reason, unassisted by similar powers, tothwart his designs or bring the law against his crimes. Had he then thearts that could thus influence the minds of others to serve his fellpurposes, and achieve securely his own evil ends through agencies thatcould not be traced home to himself?

But for what conceivable purpose had I been subjected as a victim toinfluences as much beyond my control as the Fate or Demoniac Necessity ofa Greek Myth? In the legends of the classic world some august suffereris oppressed by powers more than mortal, but with an ethical if gloomyvindication of his chastisement, --he pays the penalty of crime committedby his ancestors or himself, or he has braved, by arrogating equality withthe gods, the mysterious calamity which the gods alone can inflict. ButI, no descendant of Pelops, no OEdipus boastful of a wisdom which couldinterpret the enigmas of the Sphynx, while ignorant even of his ownbirth--what had I done to be singled out from the herd of men for trialsand visitations from the Shadowland of ghosts and sorcerers? It would beludicrously absurd to suppose that Dr. Lloyd's dying imprecation couldhave had a prophetic effect upon my destiny; to believe that the pretencesof mesmerizers were specially favoured by Providence, and that to questiontheir assumptions was an offence of profanation to be punished by exposureto preternatural agencies. There was not even that congruity betweencause and effect which fable seeks in excuse for its inventions. Of allmen living, I, unimaginative disciple of austere science, should be thelast to become the sport of that witchcraft which even imaginationreluctantly allows to the machinery of poets, and science casts aside intothe mouldy lumber-room of obsolete superstition. 

Rousing my mind from enigmas impossible to solve, it was with intenseand yet most melancholy satisfaction that I turned to the image of Lilian, rejoicing, though with a thrill of awe, that the promise so mysteriouslyconveyed to my senses had, hereto, been already fulfilled, --Margrave hadleft the town; Lilian was no longer subjected to his evil fascination. But an instinct told me that that fascination had already produced aneffect adverse to all hope of happiness for me. Lilian's love for myselfwas gone. Impossible otherwise that she--in whose nature I had alwaysadmired that generous devotion which is more or less inseparable from theromance of youth--should have never conveyed to me one word of consolationin the hour of my agony and trial; that she, who, till the last evening wehad met, had ever been so docile, in the sweetness of a nature femininelysubinissive to my slightest wish, should have disregarded my solemninjunction, and admitted Margrave to acquaintance, nay, to familiarintimacy, --at the very time, too, when to disobey my injunctions was toembitter my ordeal, and add her own contempt to the degradation imposedupon my honour! No, her heart must be wholly gone from me; her verynature wholly warped. A union between us had become impossible. My lovefor her remained unshattered; the more tender, perhaps, for a sentiment ofcompassion. But my pride was shocked, my heart was wounded. My love wasnot mean and servile. Enough for me to think that she would be at leastsaved from Margrave. Her life associated with his!--contemplationhorrible and ghastly!--from that fate she was saved. Later, she wouldrecover the effect of an influence happily so brief. She might form somenew attachment, some new tie; but love once withdrawn is never to berestored--and her love was withdrawn from me. I had but to release her, with my own lips, from our engagement, --she would welcome that release. Mournful but firm in these thoughts and these resolutions, I sought Mrs. Ashleigh's house. 

CHAPTER XLII. 

It was twilight when I entered, unannounced (as had been my wont in ourfamiliar intercourse), the quiet sitting-room in which I expected to findmother and child. But Lilian was there alone, seated by the open window, her hands crossed and drooping on her knee, her eye fixed upon thedarkening summer skies, in which the evening star had just stolen forth, bright and steadfast, near the pale sickle of a half-moon that was dimlyvisible, but gave as yet no light. 

Let any lover imagine the reception he would expect to meet from hisbetrothed coming into her presence after he had passed triumphant througha terrible peril to life and fame--and conceive what ice froze my blood, what anguish weighed down my heart, when Lilian, turning towards me, rosenot, spoke not, gazed at me heedlessly as if at some indifferentstranger--and--and--But no matter. I cannot bear to recall it even now, at the distance of years! I sat down beside her, and took her hand, without pressing it; it rested languidly, passively in mine, one moment; Idropped it then, with a bitter sigh. 

"Lilian, " I said quietly, "you love me no longer. Is it not so?"

She raised her eyes to mine, looked at me wistfully, and pressed her handon her forehead; then said, in a strange voice, "Did I ever love you?What do you mean?"

"Lilian, Lilian, rouse yourself; are you not, while you speak, under somespell, some influence which you cannot describe nor account for?"

She paused a moment before she answered, calmly, "No! Again I ask what doyou mean?"

"What do I mean? Do you forget that we are betrothed? Do you forget howoften, and how recently, our vows of affection and constancy have beenexchanged?"

"No, I do not forget; but I must have deceived you and myself--"

"It is true, then, that you love me no more?"

"I suppose so. "

"But, oh, Lilian, is it that your heart is only closed to me; or isit--oh, answer truthfully--is it given to another, --to him--tohim--against whom I warned you, whom I implored you not to receive? Tellme, at least, that your love is not gone to Margrave--"

"To him! love to him! Oh, no--no--"

"What, then, is your feeling towards him?"

Lilian's face grew visibly paler, even in that dim light. "I know not, "she said, almost in a whisper; "but it is partly awe--partly--"

"What?"

"Abhorrence!" she said almost fiercely, and rose to her feet, with a wilddefying start. 

"If that be so, " I said gently, "you would not grieve were you never againto see him--"

"But I shall see him again, " she murmured in a tone of weary sadness, andsank back once more into her chair. 

"I think not, " said I, "and I hope not. And now hear me and heed me, Lilian. It is enough for me, no matter what your feelings towardsanother, to learn from yourself that the affection you once professed forme is gone. I release you from your troth. If folks ask why we twohenceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, if youplease, that you could not give your hand to a man who had known the taintof a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to you anungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness, --happiness to hearthat you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnlythan before! Will you not give me your hand in parting--and have I notspoken your own wish?"

She turned away her face, and resigned her hand to me in silence. Silently I held it in mine, and my emotions nearly stifled me. Onesymptom of regret, of reluctance, on her part, and I should have fallen ather feet, and cried, "Do not let us break a tie which our vows should havemade indisoluble; heed not my offers, wrung from a tortured heart! Youcannot have ceased to love me!" But no such symptom of relenting showeditself in her, and with a groan I left the room. 

CHAPTER XLIII. 

I was just outside the garden door, when I felt an arm thrown round me, mycheek kissed and wetted with tears. Could it be Lilian? Alas, no! Itwas her mother's voice, that, between laughing and crying, exclaimedhysterically: "This is joy, to see you again, and on these thresholds. Ihave just come from your house; I went there on purpose to congratulateyou, and to talk to you about Lilian. But you have seen her?"

"Yes; I have but this moment left her. Come this way. " I drew Mrs. Ashleigh back into the garden, along the old winding walk, which theshrubs concealed from view of the house. We sat down on a rustic seatwhere I had often sat with Lilian, midway between the house and the Monks'Well. I told the mother what had passed between me and her daughter; Imade no complaint of Lilian's coldness and change; I did not hint at itscause. "Girls of her age will change, " said I, "and all that now remainsis for us two to agree on such a tale to our curious neighbours as mayrest the whole blame on me. Man's name is of robust fibre; it could notpush its way to a place in the world, if it could not bear, withoutsinking, the load idle tongues may lay on it. Not so Woman's Name: whatis but gossip against Man, is scandal against Woman. "

"Do not be rash, my dear Allen, " said Mrs. Ashleigh, in great distress. "I feel for you, I understand you; in your case I might act as you do. Icannot blame you. Lilian is changed, --changed unaccountably. Yet sure Iam that the change is only on the surface, that her heart is really yours, as entirely and as faithfully as ever it was; and that later, when sherecovers from the strange, dreamy kind of torpor which appears to havecome over all her faculties and all her affections, she would awake with adespair which you cannot conjecture to the knowledge that you hadrenounced her. "

"I have not renounced her, " said I, impatiently; "I did but restore herfreedom of choice. But pass by this now, and explain to me more fullythe change in your daughter, which I gather from your words is notconfined to me. "

"I wished to speak of it before you saw her, and for that reason came toyour house. It was on the morning in which we left her aunt's to returnhither that I first noticed some thing peculiar in her look and manner. She seemed absorbed and absent, so much so that I asked her several timesto tell me what made her so grave; but I could only get from her that shehad had a confused dream which she could not recall distinctly enough torelate, but that she was sure it boded evil. During the journey shebecame gradually more herself, and began to look forward with delight tothe idea of seeing you again. Well, you came that evening. What passedbetween you and her you know best. You complained that she slighted yourrequest to shun all acquaintance with Mr. Margrave. I was surprised that, whether your wish were reasonable or not, she could have hesitated tocomply with it. I spoke to her about it after you had gone, and she weptbitterly at thinking she had displeased you. "

"She wept! You amaze me. Yet the next day what a note she returned tomine!"

"The next day the change in her became very visible to me. She told me, in an excited manner, that she was convinced she ought not to marry you. Then came, the following day, the news of your committal. I heard of it, but dared not break it to her. I went to our friend the mayor, to consultwith him what to say, what to do; and to learn more distinctly than I haddone from terrified, incoherent servants, the rights of so dreadful astory. When I returned, I found, to my amazement, a young stranger in thedrawing-room; it was Mr. Margrave, --Miss Brabazon had brought him at hisrequest. Lilian was in the room, too, and my astonishment was increased, when she said to me with a singular smile, vague but tranquil: 'I know allabout Allen Fenwick; Mr. Margrave has told me all. He is a friend ofAllen's. He says there is no cause for fear. ' Mr. Margrave thenapologized to me for his intrusion in a caressing, kindly manner, as ifone of the family. He said he was so intimate with you that he felt thathe could best break to Miss Ashleigh information she might receiveelsewhere, for that he was the only man in the town who treated the chargewith ridicule. You know the wonderful charm of this young man's manner. I cannot explain to you how it was, but in a few moments I was as much athome with him as if he had been your brother. To be brief, having oncecome, he came constantly. He had moved, two days before you went toDerval Court, from his hotel to apartments in Mr. ----'s house, justopposite. We could see him on his balcony from our terrace; he wouldsmile to us and come across. I did wrong in slighting your injunction, and suffering Lilian to do so. I could not help it, he was such acomfort to me, --to her, too--in her tribulation. He alone had no dolefulwords, wore no long face; he alone was invariably cheerful. 'Everything, 'he said, 'would come right in a day or two. '"

"And Lilian could not but admire this young man, he is so beautiful. "

"Beautiful? Well, perhaps. But if you have a jealous feeling, you werenever more mistaken. Lilian, I am convinced, does more than dislike him;he has inspired her with repugnance, with terror. And much as I own Ilike him, in his wild, joyous, careless, harmless way, do not think Iflatter you if I say that Mr. Margrave is not the man to make any girluntrue to you, --untrue to a lover with infinitely less advantages than youmay pretend to. He would be a universal favourite, I grant; but there issomething in him, or a something wanting in him, which makes liking andadmiration stop short of love. I know not why; perhaps, because, with allhis good humour, he is so absorbed in himself, so intensely egotistical, so light; were he less clever, I should say so frivolous. He could notmake love, he could not say in the serious tone of a man in earnest, 'Ilove you. ' He owned as much to me, and owned, too, that he knew not evenwhat love was. As to myself, Mr. Margrave appears rich; no whisperagainst his character or his honour ever reached me. Yet were you out ofthe question, and were there no stain on his birth, nay, were he as highin rank and wealth as he is favoured by Nature in personal advantages, Iconfess I could never consent to trust him with my daughter's fate. Avoice at my heart would cry, 'No!' It may be an unreasonable prejudice, but I could not bear to see him touch Lilian's hand!"

"Did she never, then--never suffer him even to take her hand?"

"Never. Do not think so meanly of her as to suppose that she could becaught by a fair face, a graceful manner. Reflect: just before she hadrefused, for your sake, Ashleigh Sumner, whom Lady Haughton said 'no girlin her senses could refuse;' and this change in Lilian really began beforewe returned to L----, --before she had even seen Mr. Margrave. I amconvinced it is something in the reach of your skill as physician, --it ison the nerves, the system. I will give you a proof of what I say, onlydo not betray me to her. It was during your imprisonment, the nightbefore your release, that I was awakened by her coming to my bedside. Shewas sobbing as if her heart would break. 'O mother, mother!' she cried, 'pity me, help me! I am so wretched. ' 'What is the matter, darling?' 'Ihave been so cruel to Allen, and I know I shall be so again. I cannothelp it. Do not question me; only if we are separated, if he cast me off, or I reject him, tell him some day perhaps when I am in my grave--not tobelieve appearances; and that I, in my heart of hearts, never ceased tolove him!'"

"She said that! You are not deceiving me?"

"Oh, no! how can you think so?"

"There is hope still, " I murmured; and I bowed my head upon my hands, hottears forcing their way through the clasped fingers. 

"One word more, " said I; "you tell me that Lilian has a repugnance to thisMargrave, and yet that she found comfort in his visits, --a comfort thatcould not be wholly ascribed to cheering words he might say about myself, since it is all but certain that I was not, at that time, uppermost in hermind. Can you explain this apparent contradiction?"

"I cannot, otherwise than by a conjecture which you would ridicule. "

"I can ridicule nothing now. What is your conjecture?"

"I know how much you disbelieve in the stories one hears of animalmagnetism and electro-biology, otherwise--"

"You think that Margrave exercises some power of that kind over Lilian?Has he spoken of such a power?"

"Not exactly; but he said that he was sure Lilian possessed a faculty thathe called by some hard name, not clairvoyance, but a faculty, which hesaid, when I asked him to explain, was akin to prevision, --to secondsight. Then he talked of the Priestesses who had administered the ancientoracles. Lilian, he said, reminded him of them, with her deep eyes andmysterious smile. "

"And Lilian heard him? What said she?"

"Nothing; she seemed in fear while she listened. "

"He did not offer to try any of those arts practised by professionalmesmerists and other charlatans?"

"I thought he was about to do so, but I forestalled him, saying I neverwould consent to any experiment of that kind, either on myself or mydaughter. "

"And he replied--"

"With his gay laugh, 'that I was very foolish; that a person possessed ofsuch a faculty as he attributed to Lilian would, if the faculty weredeveloped, be an invaluable adviser. ' He would have said more, but Ibegged him to desist. Still I fancy at times--do not be angry--that hedoes somehow or other bewitch her, unconsciously to herself; for shealways knows when he is coming. Indeed, I am not sure that he does notbewitch myself, for I by no means justify my conduct in admitting him toan intimacy so familiar, and in spite of your wish; I have reproachedmyself, resolved to shut my door on him, or to show by my manner that hisvisits were unwelcome; yet when Lilian has said, in the drowsy lethargictone which has come into her voice (her voice naturally earnest andimpressive, though always low), 'Mother, he will be here in two minutes; Iwish to leave the room and cannot, ' I, too, have felt as if somethingconstrained me against my will; as if, in short, I were under thatinfluence which Mr. Vigors--whom I will never forgive for his conduct toyou--would ascribe to mesmerism. But will you not come in and see Lilianagain?"

"No, not to-night; but watch and heed her, and if you see aught to makeyou honestly believe that she regrets the rupture of the old tic fromwhich I have released her--why, you know, Mrs. Ashleigh, that--that--"My voice failed; I wrung the good woman's hand, and went my way. 

I had always till then considered Mrs. Ashleigh--if not as Mrs. Poyntzdescribed her--"commonplace weak"--still of an intelligence somewhat belowmediocrity. I now regarded her with respect as well as gratefultenderness; her plain sense had divined what all my boasted knowledge hadfailed to detect in my earlier intimacy with Margrave, --namely, that inhim there was a something present, or a something wanting, which forbadelove and excited fear. Young, beautiful, wealthy, seemingly blameless inlife as he was, she would not have given her daughter's hand to him!

CHAPTER XLIV. 

The next day my house was filled with visitors. I had no notion that Ihad so many friends. Mr. Vigors wrote me a generous and handsome letter, owning his prejudices against me on account of his sympathy with poor Dr. Lloyd, and begging my pardon for what he now felt to have been harshness, if not distorted justice. But what most moved me was the entrance ofStrahan, who rushed up to me with the heartiness of old college days. "Oh, my dear Allen, can you ever forgive me; that I should havedisbelieved your word, --should have suspected you of abstracting my poorcousin's memoir?"

"Is it found, then?"

"Oh, yes; you must thank Margrave. He, clever fellow, you know, came tome on a visit yesterday. He put me at once on the right scent. Onlyguess; but you never can! It was that wretched old housekeeper whopurloined the manuscript. You remember she came into the room while youwere looking at the memoir. She heard us talk about it; her curiosity wasroused; she longed to know the history of her old master, under his ownhand; she could not sleep; she heard me go up to bed; she thought youmight leave the book on the table when you, too, went to rest. She stoledownstairs, peeped through the keyhole of the library, saw you asleep, the book lying before you, entered, took away the book softly, meant toglance at its contents and to return it. You were sleeping so soundlyshe thought you would not wake for an hour; she carried it into thelibrary, leaving the door open, and there began to pore over it. Shestumbled first on one of the passages in Latin; she hoped to find somepart in plain English, turned over the leaves, putting her candle close tothem, for the old woman's eyes were dim, when she heard you make somesound in your sleep. Alarmed, she looked round; you were moving uneasilyin your seat, and muttering to yourself. From watching you she was soondiverted by the consequences of her own confounded curiosity and folly. In moving, she had unconsciously brought the poor manuscript close to thecandle; the leaves caught the flame; her own cap and hand burning firstmade her aware of the mischief done. She threw down the book; her sleevewas in flames; she had first to tear off the sleeve, which was, luckilyfor her, not sewn to her dress. By the time she recovered presence ofmind to attend to the book, half its leaves were reduced to tinder. Shedid not dare then to replace what was left of the manuscript on yourtable; returned with it to her room, hid it, and resolved to keep her ownsecret. I should never have guessed it; I had never even spoken to her ofthe occurrence; but when I talked over the disappearance of the book toMargrave last night, and expressed my disbelief of your story, he said, inhis merry way: 'But do you think that Fenwick is the only person curiousabout your cousin's odd ways and strange history? Why, every servant inthe household would have been equally curious. You have examined yourservants, of course?' 'No, I never thought of it. ' 'Examine them now, then. Examine especially that old housekeeper. I observe a great changein her manner since I came here, weeks ago, to look over the house. Shehas something on her mind, --I see it in her eyes. ' Then it occurred to me, too, that the woman's manner had altered, and that she seemed always in atremble and a fidget. I went at once to her room, and charged her withstealing the book. She fell on her knees, and told the whole story as Ihave told it to you, and as I shall take care to tell it to all to whom Ihave so foolishly blabbed my yet more foolish suspicions of yourself. Butcan you forgive me, old friend?"

"Heartily, heartily! And the book is burned?"

"See;" and he produced a mutilated manuscript. Strange, the partburned--reduced, indeed, to tinder--was the concluding part that relatedto Haroun, --to Grayle: no vestige of that part was left; the earlierportions were scorched and mutilated, though in some places stilldecipherable; but as my eye hastily ran over those places, I saw onlymangled sentences of the experimental problems which the writer had sominutely elaborated. 

"Will you keep the manuscript as it is, and as long as you like?" saidStrahan. 

"No, no; I will have nothing more to do with it. Consult some other manof science. And so this is the old woman's whole story? Noaccomplice, --none? No one else shared her curiosity and her task?"

"No. Oddly enough, though, she made much the same excuse for her pitifulfolly that the madman made for his terrible crime; she said, 'the Devilput it into her head. ' Of course he did, as he puts everything wrong intoany one's head. That does not mend the matter. "

"How! did she, too, say she saw a Shadow and heard a voice?"

"No; not such a liar as that, and not mad enough for such a lie. But shesaid that when she was in bed, thinking over the book, somethingirresistible urged her to get up and go down into the study; swore shefelt something lead her by the hand; swore, too, that when she firstdiscovered the manuscript was not in English, something whispered in herear to turn over the leaves and approach them to the candle. But I had nopatience to listen to all this rubbish. I sent her out of the house, bagand baggage. But, alas! is this to be the end of all my wise cousin'sgrand discoveries?"

True, of labours that aspired to bring into the chart of science newworlds, of which even the traditionary rumour was but a voice from theland of fable--nought left but broken vestiges of a daring footstep! Thehope of a name imperishable amidst the loftiest hierarchy of Nature'ssecret temple, with all the pomp of recorded experiment, that applied tothe mysteries of Egypt and Chaldwa the inductions of Bacon, the tests ofLiebig--was there nothing left of this but what, here and there, somepuzzled student might extract, garbled, mutilated, perhaps unintelligible, from shreds of sentences, wrecks of problems! O mind of man, can theworks, on which thou wouldst found immortality below, be annulled intosmoke and tinder by an inch of candle in the hand of an old woman!

When Strahan left me, I went out, but not yet to visit patients. I stolethrough by-paths into the fields; I needed solitude to bring my thoughtsinto shape and order. What was delusion, and what not? Was I right orthe Public? Was Margrave really the most innocent and serviceable ofhuman beings, kindly affectionate, employing a wonderful acuteness forbenignant ends? Was I, in truth, indebted to him for the greatest boonone man can bestow on another, --for life rescued, for fair namejustified? Or had he, by some demoniac sorcery, guided the hand of themurderer against the life of the person who alone could imperil his own?Had he, by the same dark spells, urged the woman to the act that haddestroyed the only record of his monstrous being, --the only evidence thatI was not the sport of an illusion in the horror with which he inspiredme?

But if the latter supposition could be admissible, did he use his agentsonly to betray them afterwards to exposure, and that, without any possibleclew to his own detection as the instigator? Then, there came over meconfused recollections of tales of mediaeval witchcraft, which I had readin boyhood. Were there not on judicial record attestation and evidence, solemn and circumstantial, of powers analogous to those now exercised byMargrave, --of sorcerers instigating to sin through influences ascribed toDemons; making their apparitions glide through guarded walls, their voicesheard from afar in the solitude of dungeons or monastic cells; subjugatingvictims to their will, by means which no vigilance could have detected, ifthe victims themselves had not confessed the witchcraft that had ensnared, courting a sure and infamous death in that confession, preferring suchdeath to a life so haunted? Were stories so gravely set forth in the pompof judicial evidence, and in the history of times comparatively recent, indeed to be massed, pell-mell together, as a moles indigesta of senselesssuperstition, --all the witnesses to be deemed liars; all the victims andtools of the sorcerers, lunatics; all the examiners or judges, with theirsolemn gradations--lay and clerical--from Commissions of Inquiry to Courtsof Appeal, --to be despised for credulity, loathed for cruelty; or, amidstrecords so numerous, so imposingly attested, were there the fragments of aterrible truth? And had our ancestors been so unwise in those laws we nowdeem so savage, by which the world was rid of scourges more awful and morepotent than the felon with his candid dagger? Fell instigators of theevil in men's secret hearts, shaping into action the vague, half-formeddesire, and guiding with agencies impalpable, unseen, their spell-boundinstruments of calamity and death. 

Such were the gloomy questions that I--by repute, the sternest advocate ofcommon-sense against fantastic errors; by profession, the searcher intoflesh and blood, and tissue and nerve and sinew, for the causes of allthat disease the mechanism of the universal human frame; I, self-boastingphysician, sceptic, philosopher, materialist--revolved, not amidst gloomypines, under grim winter skies, but as I paced slow through laughingmeadows, and by the banks of merry streams, in the ripeness of the goldenAugust: the hum of insects in the fragrant grass, the flutter of birdsamid the delicate green of boughs checkered by playful sunbeams and gentleshadows, and ever in sight of the resorts of busy workday man, --walls, roof-tops, church-spires rising high; there, white and modern, thehandwriting of our race, in this practical nineteenth century, on itssquare plain masonry and Doric shafts, the Town-Hall, central in theanimated marketplace. And I--I--prying into long-neglected corners anddust-holes of memory for what my reason had flung there as worthlessrubbish; reviving the jargon of French law, in the proces verbal, againsta Gille de Retz, or an Urbain Grandier, and sifting the equity ofsentences on witchcraft!

Bursting the links of this ghastly soliloquy with a laugh at my own folly, I struck into a narrow path that led back towards the city, by a quiet andrural suburb; the path wound on through a wide and solitary churchyard, atthe base of the Abbey-hill. Many of the former dwellers on that eminencenow slept in the lowly burial-ground at its foot; and the place, mournfully decorated with the tombs which still jealously markdistinctions of rank amidst the levelling democracy of the grave, was kepttrim with the care which comes half from piety, and half from pride. 

I seated myself on a bench, placed between the clipped yew-trees thatbordered the path from the entrance to the church porch, deeming vaguelythat my own perplexing thoughts might imbibe a quiet from the quiet of theplace. 

"And oh, " I murmured to myself, "oh that I had one bosom friend to whom Imight freely confide all these torturing riddles which I cannotsolve, --one who could read my heart, light up its darkness, exorcise itsspectres; one in whose wisdom I could welcome a guide through the Naturewhich now suddenly changes her aspect, opening out from the walls withwhich I had fenced and enclosed her as mine own formal garden;--all herpathways, therein, trimmed to my footstep; all her blooms grouped andharmonized to my own taste in colour; all her groves, all her caverns, butthe soothing retreats of a Muse or a Science; opening out--opening out, desert on desert, into clewless and measureless space! Gone is thegarden! Were its confines too narrow for Nature? Be it so! The Desertreplaces the garden, but where ends the Desert? Reft from my senses arethe laws which gave order and place to their old questionless realm. Istand lost and appalled amidst Chaos. Did my Mind misconstrue the laws itdeemed fixed and immutable? Be it so! But still Nature cannot belawless; Creation is not a Chaos. If my senses deceive me in some things, they are still unerring in others; if thus, in some things, fallacious, still, in other things, truthful. Are there within me senses finer thanthose I have cultured, or without me vistas of knowledge which instincts, apart from my senses, divine? So long as I deal with the Finite alone, mysenses suffice me; but when the Infinite is obtruded upon me there, are mysenses faithless deserters? If so, is there aught else in my royalresources of Man--whose ambition it is, from the first dawn of his gloryas Thinker, to invade and to subjugate Nature, --is there aught else tosupply the place of those traitors, the senses, who report to my Reason, their judge and their sovereign, as truths seen and heard tales which myReason forfeits her sceptre if she does not disdain as lies? Oh, for afriend! oh, for a guide!"

And as I so murmured, my eye fell upon the form of a kneeling child, --atthe farther end of the burial-ground, beside a grave with its newheadstone gleaming white amidst the older moss-grown tombs, a femalechild, her head bowed, her hands clasped. I could see but the outline ofher small form in its sable dress, --an infant beside the dead. My eye andmy thoughts were turned from that silent figure, too absorbed in my ownrestless tumult of doubt and dread, for sympathy with the grief or theconsolation of a kneeling child. And yet I should have remembered thattomb! Again I murmured with a fierce impatience, "Oh, for a friend! oh, for a guide!"

I heard steps on the walk under the yews; and an old man came in sight, slightly bent, with long gray hair, but still with enough of vigour foryears to come, in his tread, firm, though slow, in the unshrunken muscleof his limbs and the steady light of his clear blue eye. I started. Wasit possible? That countenance, marked, indeed, with the lines oflaborious thought, but sweet in the mildness of humanity, and serene inthe peace of conscience! I could not be mistaken. Julius Faber wasbefore me, --the profound pathologist, to whom my own proud self-esteemacknowledged inferiority, without humiliation; the generous benefactor towhom I owed my own smooth entrance into the arduous road of fame andfortune. I had longed for a friend, a guide; what I sought stood suddenlyat my side. 

CHAPTER XLV. 

Explanation on Faber's part was short and simple. The nephew whom hedesigned as the heir to his wealth had largely outstripped the liberalallowance made to him, had incurred heavy debts; and in order to extricatehimself from the debts, had plunged into ruinous speculations. Faber hadcome back to England to save his heir from prison or outlawry, at theexpense of more than three-fourths of the destined inheritance. To add toall, the young man had married a young lady without fortune; the uncleonly heard of this marriage on arriving in England. The spendthrift washiding from his creditors in the house of his father-in-law, in one of thewestern counties. Faber there sought him; and on becoming acquaintedwith his wife, grew reconciled to the marriage, and formed hopes of hisnephew's future redemption. He spoke, indeed, of the young wife withgreat affection. She was good and sensible; willing and anxious toencounter any privation by which her husband might reprieve the effectsof his folly. "So, " said Faber, "on consultation with this excellentcreature--for my poor nephew is so broken down by repentance, that othersmust think for him how to exalt repentance into reform--my plans weredetermined. I shall remove my prodigal from all scenes of temptation. Hehas youth, strength, plenty of energy, hitherto misdirected. I shall takehim from the Old World into the New. I have decided on Australia. Thefortune still left to me, small here, will be ample capital there. It isnot enough to maintain us separately, so we must all live together. Besides, I feel that, though I have neither the strength or the experiencewhich could best serve a young settler on a strange soil, still, under myeye, my poor boy will be at once more prudent and more persevering. Wesail next week. "

Faber spoke so cheerfully that I knew not how to express compassion; yet, at his age, after a career of such prolonged and distinguished labour, toresign the ease and comforts of the civilized state for the hardships andrudeness of an infant colony, seemed to me a dreary prospect; and, asdelicately, as tenderly as I could to one whom I loved and honoured as afather, I placed at his disposal the fortune which, in great part, I owedto him, --pressing him at least to take from it enough to secure tohimself, in his own country, a home suited to his years and worthy of hisstation. He rejected all my offers, however earnestly urged on him, withhis usual modest and gentle dignity; and assuring me that he lookedforward with great interest to a residence in lands new to his experience, and affording ample scope for the hardy enjoyments which had always mostallured his tastes, he hastened to change the subject. 

"And who, think you, is the admirable helpmate my scape-grace has had thesaving good luck to find? A daughter of the worthy man who undertook thecare of poor Dr. Lloyd's orphans, --the orphans who owed so much to yourgenerous exertions to secure a provision for them; and that child, nowjust risen from her father's grave, is my pet companion, my darling ewelamb, --Dr. Lloyd's daughter Amy. "

Here the child joined us, quickening her pace as she recognized the oldman, and nestling to his side as she glanced wistfully towards myself. Awinning, candid, lovable child's face, somewhat melancholy, somewhat morethoughtful than is common to the face of childhood, but calm, intelligent, and ineffably mild. Presently she stole from the old man, and put herhand in mine. 

"Are you not the kind gentleman who came to see him that night when hepassed away from us, and who, they all say at home, was so good to mybrothers and me? Yes, I recollect you now. " And she put her pure face tomine, wooing me to kiss it. 

I kind! I good! I--I! Alas! she little knew, little guessed, thewrathful imprecation her father had bequeathed to me that fatal night!

I did not dare to kiss Dr. Lloyd's orphan daughter, but my tears fell overher hand. She took them as signs of pity, and, in her infantthankfulness, silently kissed me. 

"Oh, my friend!" I murmured to Faber, "I have much that I yearn to say toyou--alone--alone! Come to my house with me, be at least my guest as longas you stay in this town. "

"Willingly, " said Faber, looking at me more intently than he had donebefore, and with the true eye of the practised Healer, at once soft andpenetrating. 

He rose, took my arm, and whispering a word in the ear of the little girl, she went on before us, turning her head, as she gained the gate, foranother look at her father's grave. As we walked to my house, JuliusFaber spoke to me much of this child. Her brothers were all at school;she was greatly attached to his nephew's wife; she had become yet moreattached to Faber himself, though on so short an acquaintance; it bad beensettled that she was to accompany the emigrants to Australia. 

"There, " said he, "the sum, that some munificent, but unknown friend ofher father has settled on her, will provide her no mean dower for acolonist's wife, when the time comes for her to bring a blessing to someother hearth than ours. " He went on to say that she had wished toaccompany him to L----, in order to visit her father's grave beforecrossing the wide seas; "and she has taken such fond care of me all theway, that you might fancy I were the child of the two. I come back tothis town, partly to dispose of a few poor houses in it which still belongto me, principally to bid you farewell before quitting the Old World, nodoubt forever. So, on arriving to-day, I left Amy by herself in thechurchyard while I went to your house, but you were from home. And now Imust congratulate you on the reputation you have so rapidly acquired, which has even surpassed my predictions. "

"You are aware, " said I, falteringly, "of the extraordinary charge fromwhich that part of my reputation dearest to all men has just emerged!"

He had but seen a short account in a weekly journal, written after myrelease. He asked details, which I postponed. 

Reaching my home, I hastened to provide for the comfort of my twounexpected guests; strove to rally myself, to be cheerful. Not tillnight, when Julius Faber and I were alone together, did I touch on whatwas weighing at my heart. Then, drawing to his side, I told him all, --allof which the substance is herein written, from the deathscene in Dr. Lloyd's chamber to the hour in which I had seen Dr. Lloyd's child at herfather's grave. Some of the incidents and conversations which had mostimpressed me I had already committed to writing, in the fear that, otherwise, my fancy might forge for its own thraldom the links ofreminiscence which my memory might let fall from its chain. Faberlistened with a silence only interrupted by short pertinent questions;and when I had done, he remained thoughtful for some moments; then thegreat physician replied thus:--

"I take for granted your conviction of the reality of all you tell me, even of the Luminous Shadow, of the bodiless Voice; but, before admittingthe reality itself, we must abide by the old maxim, not to accept as causeto effect those agencies which belong to the Marvellous, when causes lessimprobable for the effect can be rationally conjectured. In this case arethere not such causes? Certainly there are--"

"There are?"

"Listen; you are one of those men who attempt to stifle their ownimagination. But in all completed intellect, imagination exists, and willforce its way; deny it healthful vents, and it may stray into morbidchannels. The death-room of Dr. Lloyd deeply impressed your heart, farmore than your pride would own. This is clear from the pains you took toexonerate your conscience, in your generosity to the orphans. As theheart was moved, so was the imagination stirred; and, unaware to yourself, prepared for much that subsequently appealed to it. Your sudden love, conceived in the very grounds of the house so associated withrecollections in themselves strange and romantic; the peculiar temperamentand nature of the girl to whom your love was attracted; her own visionarybeliefs, and the keen anxiety which infused into your love a deeper poetryof sentiment, --all insensibly tended to induce the imagination to dwell onthe Wonderful; and, in overstriving to reconcile each rarer phenomenon tothe most positive laws of Nature, your very intellect could discover nosolution but in the Preternatural. 

"You visit a man who tells you he has seen Sir Philip Derval's ghost; onthat very evening, you hear a strange story, in which Sir Philip's name ismixed up with a tale of murder, implicating two mysterious pretenders tomagic, --Louis Grayle and the Sage of Aleppo. The tale so interests yourfancy that even the glaring impossibility of a not unimportant part of itescapes your notice, --namely, the account of a criminal trial in whichthe circumstantial evidence was more easily attainable than in all therest of the narrative, but which could not legally have taken place astold. Thus it is whenever the mind begins, unconsciously, to admit theshadow of the Supernatural; the Obvious is lost to the eye that plungesits gaze into the Obscure. Almost immediately afterwards you becomeacquainted with a young stranger, whose traits of character interest andperplex, attract yet revolt you. All this time you are engaged in aphysiological work which severely tasks the brain, and in which youexamine the intricate question of soul distinct from mind. 

"And, here, I can conceive a cause deep-hid amongst what metaphysicianswould call latent associations, for a train of thought which disposed youto accept the fantastic impressions afterwards made on you by the scene inthe Museum and the visionary talk of Sir Philip Derval. Doubtless, whenat college you first studied metaphysical speculation you would haveglanced over Beattie's 'Essay on Truth' as one of the works written inopposition to your favourite, David Hume. "

"Yes, I read the book, but I have long since forgotten its arguments. "

"Well in that essay, Beattie[1] cites the extraordinary instance of SimonBrowne, a learned and pious clergyman, who seriously disbelieved theexistence of his own soul; and imagined that, by interposition of Divinepower, his soul was annulled, and nothing left but a principle of animallife, which he held in common with the brutes! When, years ago, athoughtful imaginative student, you came on that story, probably enoughyou would have paused, revolved in your own mind and fancy what kind of acreature a man might be, if, retaining human life and merely humanunderstanding, he was deprived of the powers and properties whichreasoners have ascribed to the existence of soul. Something in this youngman, unconsciously to yourself, revives that forgotten train of meditativeideas. His dread of death as the final cessation of being, his brute-likewant of sympathy with his kind, his incapacity to comprehend the motiveswhich carry man on to scheme and to build for a future that extends beyondhis grave, --all start up before you at the very moment your reason isovertasked, your imagination fevered, in seeking the solution of problemswhich, to a philosophy based upon your system, must always remaininsoluble. The young man's conversation not only thus excites yourfancies, --it disturbs your affections. He speaks not only of drugs thatrenew youth, but of charms that secure love. You tremble for your Lilianwhile you hear him! And the brain thus tasked, the imagination thusinflamed, the heart thus agitated, you are presented to Sir Philip Derval, whose ghost your patient had supposed he saw weeks ago. 

"This person, a seeker after an occult philosophy, which had possiblyacquainted him with some secrets in nature beyond the pale of ourconventional experience, though, when analyzed, they might prove to bequite reconcilable with sober science, startles you with an undefinedmysterious charge against the young man who had previously seemed to youdifferent from ordinary mortals. In a room stored with the dead things ofthe brute soulless world, your brain becomes intoxicated with the fumes ofsome vapour which produces effects not uncommon in the superstitiouspractices of the East; your brain, thus excited, brings distinctly beforeyou the vague impressions it had before received. Margrave becomesidentified with the Louis Grayle of whom you had previously heard anobscure and, legendary tale, and all the anomalies in his character areexplained by his being that which you had contended, in your physiologicalwork, it was quite possible for man to be, --namely, mind and body withoutsoul! You were startled by the monster which man would be were your owntheory possible; and in order to reconcile the contradictions in this verymonster, you account for knowledge, and for powers that mind without soulcould not have attained, by ascribing to this prodigy broken memories of aformer existence, demon attributes from former proficiency in evil magic. My friend, there is nothing here which your own study of morbididiosyncracies should not suffice to solve. "

"So, then, " said I, "you would reduce all that have affected my senses asrealities into the deceit of illusions? But, " I added, in a whisper, terrified by my own question, "do not physiologists agree in this: namely, that though illusory phantasms may haunt the sane as well as the insane, the sane know that they are only illusions, and the insane do not. "

"Such a distinction, " answered Faber, "is far too arbitrary and rigid formore than a very general and qualified acceptance. Muller, indeed, who isperhaps the highest authority on such a subject, says, with prudentreserve, 'When a person who is not insane sees spectres and believes, themto be real, his intellect must be imperfectly exercised. '[2] He would, indeed, be a bold physician who maintained that every man who believed hehad really seen a ghost was of unsound mind. In Dr. Abercrombie'sinteresting account of spectral illusions, he tells us of a servant-girlwho believed she saw, at the foot of her bed, the apparition of Curran, ina sailor's jacket and an immense pair of whiskers. [3] No doubt thespectre was an illusion, and Dr. Abercrombie very ingeniously suggests theassociation of ideas by which the apparition was conjured up with thegrotesque adjuncts of the jacket and the whiskers; but the servant-girl, in believing the reality of the apparition, was certainly not insane. When I read in the American public journals[4] of 'spirit manifestations, 'in which large numbers of persons, of at least the average degree ofeducation, declare that they have actually witnessed various phantasms, much more extraordinary than all which you have confided to me, andarrive, at once, at the conclusion that they are thus put into directcommunication with departed souls, I must assume that they are under anillusion; but I should be utterly unwarranted in supposing that, becausethey credited that illusion, they were insane. I should only say withMuller, that in their reasoning on the phenomena presented to them, 'theirintellect was imperfectly exercised. ' And an impression made on thesenses, being in itself sufficiently rare to excite our wonder, may bestrengthened till it takes the form of a positive fact, by variouscoincidences which are accepted as corroborative testimony, yet which are, nevertheless, nothing more than coincidences found in every day mattersof business, but only emphatically noticed when we can exclaim, 'Howastonishing!' In your case such coincidences have been, indeed, verysignal, and might well aggravate the perplexities into which your reasonwas thrown. Sir Philip Derval's murder, the missing casket, the excitingnature of the manuscript, in which a superstitious interest is alreadyenlisted by your expectation to find in it the key to the narrator'sboasted powers, and his reasons for the astounding denunciation of the manwhom you suspect to be his murderer, --in all this there is much toconfirm, nay, to cause, an illusion; and for that very reason, whenexamined by strict laws of evidence, in all this there is but additionalproof that the illusion was--only illusion. Your affections contributeto strengthen your fancy in its war on your reason. The girl you sopassionately love develops, to your disquietude and terror, the visionarytemperament which, at her age, is ever liable to fantastic caprices. Shehears Margrave's song, which you say has a wildness of charm that affectsand thrills even you. Who does not know the power of music? and of allmusic, there is none so potential as that of the human voice. Thus, insome languages, charm and song are identical expressions; and even when acritic, in our own sober newspapers, extols a Malibran or a Grisi, youmay be sure that he will call her 'enchantress. ' Well, this lady, yourbetrothed, in whom the nervous system is extremely impressionable, hears avoice which, even to your ear, is strangely melodious, and sees a form andface which, even to your eye, are endowed with a singular character ofbeauty. Her fancy is impressed by what she thus hears and sees; andimpressed the more because, by a coincidence not very uncommon, a facelike that which she beholds has before been presented to her in a dreamor a revery. In the nobleness of genuine, confiding, reverential love, rather than impute to your beloved a levity of sentiment that would seemto you a treason, you accept the chimera of 'magical fascination. ' Inthis frame of mind you sit down to read the memoir of a mysticalenthusiast. Do you begin now to account for the Luminous Shadow? Adream! And a dream no less because your eyes were open and you believedyourself awake. The diseased imagination resembles those mirrors which, being themselves distorted, represent distorted pictures as correct. 

"And even this Memoir of Sir Philip Derval's--can you be quite sure thatyou actually read the part which relates to Haroun and Louis Grayle?You say that, while perusing the manuscript, you saw the LuminousShadow, and became insensible. The old woman says you were fast asleep. May you not really have fallen into a slumber, and in that slumberhave dreamed the parts of the tale that relate to Grayle, --dreamed thatyou beheld the Shadow? Do you remember what is said so well by Dr. Abercrombie, to authorize the explanation I suggest to you: 'Aperson under the influence of some strong mental impression falls asleepfor a few seconds, perhaps without being sensible of it: some scene orperson appears in a dream, and he starts up under the convictionthat it was a spectral appearance. '" [5]

"But, " said I, "the apparition was seen by me again, and when, certainly, I was not sleeping. "

"True; and who should know better than a physician so well read asyourself that a spectral illusion once beheld is always apt to returnagain in the same form? Thus, Goethe was long haunted by one image, --thephantom of a flower unfolding itself, and developing new flowers. [6]Thus, one of our most distinguished philosophers tells us of a lady knownto himself, who would see her husband, hear him move and speak, when hewas not even in the house. [7] But instances of the facility with whichphantasms, once admitted, repeat themselves to the senses, are numberless. Many are recorded by Hibbert and Abercrombie, and every physician inextensive practice can add largely, from his own experience, to the list. Intense self-concentration is, in itself, a mighty magician. Themagicians of the East inculcate the necessity of fast, solitude, andmeditation for the due development of their imaginary powers. And I haveno doubt with effect; because fast, solitude, and meditation--in otherwords, thought or fancy intensely concentred--will both raise apparitionsand produce the invoker's belief in them. Spinello, striving to conceivethe image of Lucifer for his picture of the Fallen Angels, was at lastactually haunted by the Shadow of the Fiend. Newton himself has beensubjected to a phantom, though to him, Son of Light, the spectre presentedwas that of the sun! You remember the account that Newton gives to Lockeof this visionary appearance. He says that 'though he had looked at thesun with his right eye only, and not with the left, yet his fancy beganto make an impression upon his left eye as well as his right; for if heshut his right and looked upon the clouds, or a book, or any bright objectwith his left eye, he could see the sun almost as plain as with the right, if he did but intend his fancy a little while on it;' nay, 'for somemonths after, as often as he began to meditate on the phenomena, thespectrum of the sun began to return, even though he lay in bed atmidnight, with his curtains drawn!' Seeing, then, how any vividimpression once made will recur, what wonder that you should behold inyour prison the Shining Shadow that had first startled you in a wizard'schamber when poring over the records of a murdered visionary? The moreminutely you analyze your own hallucinations--pardon me the word--the morethey assume the usual characteristics of a dream; contradictory, illogical, even in the marvels they represent. Can any two persons bemore totally unlike each other, not merely as to form and years, but as toall the elements of character, than the Grayle of whom you read, orbelieve you read, and the Margrave in whom you evidently think that Grayleis existent still? The one represented, you say, as gloomy, saturnine, with vehement passions, but with an original grandeur of thought and will, consumed by an internal remorse; the other you paint to me as a joyous andwayward darling of Nature, acute yet frivolous, free from even theordinary passions of youth, taking delight in innocent amusements, incapable of continuous study, without a single pang of repentance for thecrimes you so fancifully impute to him. And now, when your suspicions, soromantically conceived, are dispelled by positive facts, now, when it isclear that Margrave neither murdered Sir Philip Derval nor abstracted thememoir, you still, unconsciously to yourself, draw on your imagination inorder to excuse the suspicion your pride of intellect declines to banish, and suppose that this youthful sorcerer tempted the madman to the murder, the woman to the theft--"

"But you forget the madman said 'that he was led on by the Luminous Shadowof a beautiful youth, ' that the woman said also that she was impelled bysome mysterious agency. "

"I do not forget those coincidences; but how your learning would dismissthem as nugatory were your imagination not disposed to exaggerate them!When you read the authentic histories of any popular illusion, such as thespurious inspirations of the Jansenist Convulsionaries, the apparitionsthat invaded convents, as deposed in the trial of Urbain Grandier, theconfessions of witches and wizards in places the most remote from eachother, or, at this day, the tales of 'spirit-manifestation' recorded inhalf the towns and villages of America, --do not all the superstitiousimpressions of a particular time have a common family likeness? What onesees, another sees, though there has been no communication between thetwo. I cannot tell you why these phantasms thus partake of the nature ofan atmospheric epidemic; the fact remains incontestable. And strange asmay be the coincidence between your impressions of a mystic agency andthose of some other brains not cognizant of the chimeras of your own, still, is it not simpler philosophy to say, 'They are coincidences of thesame nature which made witches in the same epoch all tell much the samestory of the broomsticks they rode and the sabbats at which they danced tothe fiend's piping, ' and there leave the matter, as in science we mustleave many of the most elementary and familiar phenomena inexplicable asto their causes, --is not this, I say, more philosophical than to insistupon an explanation which accepts the supernatural rather than leave theextraordinary unaccounted for?"

"As you speak, " said I, resting my downcast face upon my hand, "I shouldspeak to any patient who had confided to me the tale I have told to you. "

"And yet the explanation does not wholly satisfy you? Very likely: tosome phenomena there is, as yet, no explanation. Perhaps Newton himselfcould not explain quite to his own satisfaction why he was haunted atmidnight by the spectrum of a sun; though I have no doubt that some laterphilosopher whose ingenuity has been stimulated by Newton's account, has, by this time, suggested a rational solution of that enigma. [8] To returnto your own case. I have offered such interpretations of the mysteriesthat confound you as appear to me authorized by physiological science. Should you adduce other facts which physiological science wants the datato resolve into phenomena always natural, however rare, still hold fast tothat simple saying of Goethe: 'Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. 'And if all which physiological science comprehends in its experiencewholly fails us, I may then hazard certain conjectures in which, byacknowledging ignorance, one is compelled to recognize the Marvellous (foras where knowledge enters, the Marvellous recedes, so where knowledgefalters, the Marvellous advances); yet still, even in those conjectures, Iwill distinguish the Marvellous from the Supernatural. But, for thepresent, I advise you to accept the guess that may best quiet the feveredimagination which any bolder guess would only more excite. "

"You are right, " said I, rising proudly to the full height of my stature, my head erect and my heart defying. "And so let this subject be renewedno more between us. I will brood over it no more myself. I regain theunclouded realm of my human intelligence; and, in that intelligence, Imock the sorcerer and disdain the spectre. "

[1] Beattie's "Essay on Truth, " part i. C. Ii. 3. The story ofSimon Browne is to be found in "The Adventurer. "

[2] Miller's Physiology of the Senses, p. 394. 

[3] Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 281. (15th edition. )

[4] At the date of Faber's conversation with Allen Fenwick, the(so-called) spirit manifestations had not spread from America over Europe. But if they had, Faber's views would, no doubt, have remained the same. 

[5] Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, p. 278. (15th edition. )

This author, not more to be admired for his intelligence than his candour, and who is entitled to praise for a higher degree of original thoughtthan that to which he modestly pretends, relates a curious anecdoteillustrating "the analogy between dreaming and spectral illusion, which hereceived from the gentleman to which it occurred, --an eminent medicalfriend:" "Having sat up late one evening, under considerable anxiety forone of his children, who was ill, he fell asleep in his chair, and had afrightful dream, in which the prominent figure was an immense baboon. Heawoke with the fright, got up instantly, and walked to a table which wasin the middle of the room. He was then quite awake, and quite consciousof the articles around him; but close by the wall in the end of theapartment he distinctly saw the baboon making the same grimaces which hehad seen in his dreams; and this spectre continued visible for about halfa minute. " Now, a man who saw only a baboon would be quite ready to admitthat it was but an optical illusion; but if, instead of a baboon, he hadseen an intimate friend, and that friend, by some coincidence of time, haddied about that date, he would be a very strong-minded man if he admittedfor the mystery of seeing his friend the same natural solution which hewould readily admit for seeing a baboon. 

[6] See Muller's observations on this phenomenon, "Physiology of theSenses, " Baley's translation, p. 1395. 

[7] Sir David Brewster's Letters on Natural Magic, p. 39. 

[8] Newton's explanation is as follows: "This story I tell you tolet you understand, that in the observation related by Mr. Boyle, theman's fancy probably concurred with the impression made by the sun'slight to produce that phantasm of the sun which he constantly saw inbright objects, and so your question about the cause of this phantasminvolves another about the power of the fancy, which I must confess istoo hard a knot for me to untie. To place this effect in a constantmotion is hard, because the sun ought then to appear perpetually. Itseems rather to consist in a disposition of the sensorium to move theimagination strongly, and to be easily moved both by the imagination andby the light as often as bright objects are looked upon. "--Letter from SirI. Newton to Locke, Lord Kinq's Life of Locke, vol. I. Pp. 405-408. 

Dr. Roget (Animal and Vegetable Physiology considered with reference toNatural Theology, "Bridgewater Treatise, " pp. 524, 525) thus refers tothis phenomenon, which he states "all of us may experience ":--

"When the impressions are very vivid" (Dr. Roget is speaking of visualimpressions), "another phenomenon often takes place, --namely, their_subsequent recurrence after a certain interval, during which they are notfelt, and quite independently of any renewed application of the causewhich had originally excited them. "_ (I mark by italics the words whichmore precisely coincide with Julius Faber's explanations. ) "If, forexample, we look steadfastly at the sun for a second or two, and thenimmediately close our eyes, the image, or spectrum, of the sun remains fora long time present to the mind, as if the light were still acting on theretina. It then gradually fades and disappears; but if we continue tokeep the eyes shut, the same impression will, after a certain time, recur, and again vanish: and this phenomenon will be repeated at intervals, thesensation becoming fainter at each renewal. It is probable that thesereappearances of the image, after the light which produced the originalimpression has been withdrawn, are occasioned by spontaneous affections ofthe retina itself which are conveyed to the sensorium. In other cases, where the impressions are less strong, the physical changes producingthese changes are perhaps confined to the sensorium. "

It may be said that there is this difference between the spectrum of thesun and such a phantom as that which perplexed Allen Fenwick, --namely, that the sun has been actually beheld before its visionary appearance canbe reproduced, and that Allen Fenwick only imagines he has seen theapparition which repeats itself to his fancy. "But there are grounds forthe suspicion" (says Dr. Hibbert, "Philosophy of Apparitions, " p. 250), "that when ideas of vision are vivified to the height of sensation, acorresponding affection of the optic nerve accompanies the illusion. "Muller ("Physiology of the Senses, " p. 1392, Baley's translation) statesthe same opinion still more strongly; and Sir David Brewster, quoted byDr. Hibbert (p. 251) says: "In examining these mental impressions, Ihave found that they follow the motions of the eyeball exactly like thespectral impressions of luminous objects, and that they resemble them alsoin their apparent immobility when the eye is displaced by an externalforce. If this result (which I state with much diffidence, from havingonly my own experience in its favour) shall be found generally true byothers, it will follow that the objects of mental contemplation may beseen as distinctly as external objects, and will occupy the same localposition in the axis of vision, as if they had been formed by the agencyof light. " Hence the impression of an image once conveyed to the senses, no matter how, whether by actual or illusory vision, is liable to renewal, "independently of any renewed application of the cause which hadoriginally excited it, " and the image can be seen in that renewal "asdistinctly as external objects, " for indeed "the revival of the fantasticfigure really does affect those points of the retina which had beenpreviously impressed. "

CHAPTER XLVI. 

Julius Faber and Amy Lloyd stayed in my house three day, I and in theirpresence I felt a healthful sense of security and peace. Amy wished tovisit her father's house, and I asked Faber, in taking her there, to seizethe occasion to see Lilian, that he might communicate to me his impressionof a case so peculiar. I prepared Mrs. Ashleigh for this visit by aprevious note. When the old man and the child came back, both brought mecomfort. Amy was charmed with Lilian, who had received her with thesweetness natural to her real character, and I loved to hear Lilian'spraise from those innocent lips. 

Faber's report was still more calculated to console me. 

"I have seen, I have conversed with her long and familiarly. You werequite right, --there is no tendency to consumption in that exquisite, ifdelicate, organization; nor do I see cause for the fear to which yourstatement had pre-inclined me. That head is too nobly formed for anyconstitutional cerebral infirmity. In its organization, ideality, wonder, veneration, are large, it is true, but they are balanced by other organs, now perhaps almost dormant, but which will come into play as life passesfrom romance into duty. Something at this moment evidently oppresses hermind. In conversing with her, I observe abstraction, listlessness; but Iam so convinced of her truthfulness, that if she has once told you shereturned your affection, and pledged to you her faith, I should, in yourplace, rest perfectly satisfied that whatever be the cloud that now restson her imagination, and for the time obscures the idea of yourself, itwill pass away. "

Faber was a believer in the main divisions of phrenology, though he didnot accept all the dogmas of Gall and Spurzheim; while, to my mind, therefutation of phrenology in its fundamental propositions had beentriumphantly established by the lucid arguments of Sir W. Hamilton. [1]But when Faber rested on phrenological observations assurances in honourof Lilian, I forgot Sir W. Hamilton, and believed in phrenology. As irongirders and pillars expand and contract with the mere variations oftemperature, so will the strongest conviction on which the human intellectrests its judgment vary with the changes of the human heart; and thebuilding is only safe where these variations are foreseen and allowed forby a wisdom intent on self-knowledge. [2]

There was much in the affection that had sprung up between Julius Faberand Amy Lloyd which touched my heart and softened all its emotions. Thisman, unblessed, like myself, by conjugal and parental ties, had, in hissolitary age, turned for solace to the love of a child, as I, in the prideof manhood, had turned to the love of woman. But his love was withoutfear, without jealousy, without trouble. My sunshine came to me in afitful ray, through clouds that had gathered over my noon; his sunshinecovered all his landscape, hallowed and hallowing by the calm of decliningday. 

And Amy was no common child. She had no exuberant imagination; she washaunted by no whispers from Afar; she was a creature fitted for theearth, --to accept its duties and to gladden its cares. Her tenderobservation, fine and tranquil, was alive to all the important householdtrifles by which, at the earliest age, man's allotted soother asserts herprivilege to tend and to comfort. It was pleasant to see her moving sonoiselessly through the rooms I had devoted to her venerable protector, knowing all his simple wants, and providing for them as if by themechanism of a heart exquisitely moulded to the loving uses of life. Sometimes when I saw her setting his chair by the window (knowing, as Idid, how much he habitually loved to be near the light) and smoothing hispapers (in which he was apt to be unmethodical), placing the mark in hisbook when he ceased to read, divining, almost without his glance, somewish passing through his mind, and then seating herself at his feet, oftenwith her work--which was always destined for him or for one of her absentbrothers, --now and then with the one small book that she had carried withher, a selection of Bible stories compiled for children, --sometimes when Isaw her thus, how I wished that Lilian, too, could have seen her, and havecompared her own ideal fantasies with those young developments of thenatural heavenly Woman!

But was there nothing in that sight from which I, proud of my arid reasoneven in its perplexities, might have taken lessons for myself?

On the second evening of Faber's visit I brought to him the draft of deedsfor the sale of his property. He had never been a man of business out ofhis profession; he was impatient to sell his property, and disposed toaccept an offer at half its value. I insisted on taking on myself thetask of negotiator; perhaps, too, in this office I was egotisticallyanxious to prove to the great physician that which he believed to be my"hallucination" had in no way obscured my common-sense in the dailyaffairs of life. So I concluded, and in a few hours, terms for hisproperty that were only just, but were infinitely more advantageous thanhad appeared to himself to be possible. But as I approached him with thepapers, he put his finger to his lips. Amy was standing by him with herlittle book in her hand, and his own Bible lay open on the table. He wasreading to her from the Sacred Volume itself, and impressing on her theforce and beauty of one of the Parables, the adaptation of which hadperplexed her; when he had done, she kissed him, bade him goodnight, andwent away to rest. Then said Faber thoughtfully, and as if to himselfmore than me, --

"What a lovely bridge between old age and childhood is religion! Howintuitively the child begins with prayer and worship on entering life, andhow intuitively on quitting life the old man turns back to prayer andworship, putting himself again side by side with the infant!"

I made no answer, but, after a pause, spoke of fines and freeholds, title-deeds and money; and when the business on hand was concluded, askedmy learned guest if, before he departed, he would deign to look over thepages of my ambitious Physiological Work. There were parts of it on whichI much desired his opinion, touching on subjects in which his specialstudies made him an authority as high as our land possessed. 

He made me bring him the manuscript, and devoted much of that night andthe next day to its perusal. 

When he gave it me back, which was not till the morning of his departure, he commenced with eulogies on the scope of its design, and the manner ofits execution, which flattered my vanity so much that I could not helpexclaiming, "Then, at least, there is no trace of 'hallucination' here!"

"Alas, my poor Allen! here, perhaps, hallucination, or self-deception, ismore apparent than in all the strange tales you confided to me. For hereis the hallucination of the man seated on the shores of Nature, and whowould say to its measureless sea, 'So far shalt thou go and no farther;'here is the hallucination of the creature, who, not content with exploringthe laws of the Creator, ends with submitting to his interpretation ofsome three or four laws, in the midst of a code of which all the rest arein a language unknown to him, the powers and free-will of the LawgiverHimself; here is the hallucination by which Nature is left Godless, because Man is left soulless. What would matter all our speculations on aDeity who would cease to exist for us when we are in the grave? Why meteout, like Archytas, the earth and the sea, and number the sands on theshore that divides them, if the end of this wisdom be a handful of dustsprinkled over a skull!

 "'Nec quidquam tibi prodest Aerias tentasse dornos, animoque rotundum Percurrisse polum naorituro. '

"Your book is a proof of the soul that you fail to discover. Without asoul, no man would work for a Future that begins for his fame when thebreath is gone from his body. Do you remember how you saw that littlechild praying at the grave of her father? Shall I tell you that in hersimple orisons she prayed for the benefactor, --who had cared for theorphan; who had reared over dust that tomb which, in a Christianburial-ground, is a mute but perceptible memorial of Christian hopes; thatthe child prayed, haughty man, for you? And you sat by, knowing nought ofthis; sat by, amongst the graves, troubled and tortured with ghastlydoubts, vain of a reason that was sceptical of eternity, and yet shakenlike a reed by a moment's marvel. Shall I tell the child to pray for youno more; that you disbelieve in a soul? If you do so, what is theefficacy of prayer? Speak, shall I tell her this? Shall the infant prayfor you never more?"

I was silent; I was thrilled. 

"Has it never occurred to you, who, in denying all innate perceptions aswell as ideas, have passed on to deductions from which poor Locke, humbleChristian that he was, would have shrunk in dismay, --has it neveroccurred to you as a wonderful fact, that the easiest thing in the worldto teach a child is that which seems to metaphysical schoolmen theabstrusest of all problems? Read all those philosophers wrangling about aFirst Cause, deciding on what are miracles, and then again deciding thatsuch miracles cannot be; and when one has answered another, and left inthe crucible of wisdom a caput mortuum of ignorance, then turn your eyes, and look at the infant praying to the invisible God at his mother's knees. This idea, so miraculously abstract, of a Power the infant has never seen, that cannot be symbolled forth and explained to him by the most eruditesage, --a Power, nevertheless, that watches over him, that hears him, thatsees him, that will carry him across the grave, that will enable him tolive on forever, --this double mystery of a Divinity and of a Soul, theinfant learns with the most facile readiness, at the first glimpse of hisreasoning faculty. Before you can teach him a rule in addition, beforeyou can venture to drill him into his horn-book, he leaps, with oneintuitive spring of all his ideas, to the comprehension of the truthswhich are only incomprehensible to blundering sages! And you, as youstand before me, dare not say, 'Let the child pray for me no more!' Butwill the Creator accept the child's prayer for the man who refuses prayerfor himself? Take my advice, pray! And in this counsel I do not overstepmy province. I speak not as a preacher, but as a physician. For healthis a word that comprehends our whole organization, and a just equilibriumof all faculties and functions is the condition of health. As in yourLilian the equilibrium is deranged by the over-indulgence of a spiritualmysticism which withdraws from the nutriment of duty the essential pabulumof sober sense, so in you the resolute negation of disciplined spiritualcommunion between Thought and Divinity robs imagination of its noblestand safest vent. Thus, from opposite extremes, you and your Lilian meetin the same region of mist and cloud, losing sight of each other and ofthe true ends of life, as her eyes only gaze on the stars and yours onlybend to the earth. Were I advising her, I should say: 'Your Creator hasplaced the scene of your trial below, and not in the stars. ' Advisingyou, I say: 'But in the trial below, man should recognize education forheaven. ' In a word, I would draw somewhat more downward her fancy, raisesomewhat more upward your reason. Take my advice then, --Pray. Yourmental system needs the support of prayer in order to preserve itsbalance. In the embarrassment and confusion of your senses, clearness ofperception will come with habitual and tranquil confidence in Him whoalike rules the universe and reads the heart. I only say here what hasbeen said much better before by a reasoner in whom all Students of Naturerecognize a guide. I see on your table the very volume of Bacon whichcontains the passage I commend to your reflection. Here it is. Listen:'Take an example of a dog, and mark what a generosity and courage he willput on when he finds himself maintained by a man who, to him, is insteadof a God, or melior natura, which courage is manifestly such as thatcreature, without that confidence of a better nature than his own, couldnever attain. So man, when he resteth and assureth himself upon Divineprotection and favour, gathereth a force and faith which human naturecould not obtain. '[3] You are silent, but your gesture tells me yourdoubt, --a doubt which your heart, so femininely tender, will not speakaloud lest you should rob the old man of a hope with which your strengthof manhood dispenses, --you doubt the efficacy of prayer! Pause andreflect, bold but candid inquirer into the laws of that guide you callNature. If there were no efficacy in prayer; if prayer were as mere anillusion of superstitious fantasy as aught against which your reason nowstruggles, do you think that Nature herself would have made it amongst themost common and facile of all her dictates? Do you believe that if therereally did not exist that tie between Man and his Maker--that linkbetween life here and life hereafter which is found in what we call Soulalone--that wherever you look through the universe, you would behold achild at Prayer? Nature inculcates nothing that is superfluous. Naturedoes not impel the leviathan or the lion, the eagle or the moth, to pray;she impels only man. Why? Because man only has soul, and Soul seeks tocommune with the Everlasting, as a fountain struggles up to its source. Burn your book. It would found you a reputation for learning andintellect and courage, I allow; but learning and intellect and couragewasted against a truth, like spray against a rock! A truth valuable tothe world, the world will never part with. You will not injure the truth, but you will mislead and may destroy many, whose best security is in thetruth which you so eruditely insinuate to be a fable. Soul and Hereafterare the heritage of all men; the humblest, journeyman in those streets, the pettiest trader behind those counters, have in those beliefs theirprerogatives of royalty. You would dethrone and embrute the lords of theearth by your theories. For my part, having given the greater part of mylife to the study and analysis of facts, I would rather be the author ofthe tritest homily, or the baldest poem, that inculcated that imperishableessence of the soul to which I have neither scalpel nor probe, than be thefounder of the subtlest school, or the framer of the loftiest verse, thatrobbed my fellow-men of their faith in a spirit that eludes thedissecting-knife, --in a being that escapes the grave-digger. Burn yourbook! Accept This Book instead; Read and Pray. "

He placed his Bible in my hand, embraced me, and, an hour afterwards, theold man and the child left my hearth solitary once more. 

[1] The summary of this distinguished lecturer's objections to phrenologyis to be found in the Appendix to vol i. Of "Lectures on Metaphysics, " p. 404, et seq. Edition 1859. 

[2] The change of length of iron girders caused by variation oftemperature has not unfrequently brought down the whole edifice into whichthey were admitted. Good engineers and architects allow for such changesproduced by temperature. In the tubular bridge across the Menai Straits, a self-acting record of the daily amount of its contraction and expansionis ingeniously Contrived. 

[3] Bacon's "Essay on Atheism. " This quotation is made with admirablefelicity and force by Dr. Whewell, page 378 of Bridgewater Treatise onAstronomy and General Physics considered with reference to NaturalTheology. 

CHAPTER XLVII. 

That night, as I sat in my study, very thoughtful and very mournful, Iresolved all that Julius Faber had said; and the impression his words hadproduced became gradually weaker and weaker, as my reason, naturallycombative, rose up with all the replies which my philosophy suggested. No; if my imagination had really seduced and betrayed me into monstrouscredulities, it was clear that the best remedy to such morbid tendenciestowards the Superstitious was in the severe exercise of the faculties mostopposed to Superstition, --in the culture of pure reasoning, in the scienceof absolute fact. Accordingly, I placed before me the very book whichJulius Faber had advised me to burn; I forced all my powers ofmind to go again over the passages which contained the doctrines that hisadmonition had censured; and before daybreak, I had stated the substanceof his argument, and the logical reply to it, in an elaborate addition tomy chapter on "Sentimental Philosophers. " While thus rejecting thepurport of his parting counsels, I embodied in another portion of my workhis views on my own "illusions;" and as here my commonsense was in concordwith his, I disposed of all my own previous doubts in an addition to myfavourite chapter "On the Cheats of the Imagination. " And when the pendropped from my hand, and the day-star gleamed through the window, myheart escaped from the labour of my mind, and flew back to the image ofLilian. The pride of the philosopher died out of me, the sorrow of theman reigned supreme, and I shrank from the coming of the sun, despondent. 

CHAPTER XLVIII. 

Not till the law had completed its proceedings, and satisfied the publicmind as to the murder of Sir Philip Derval, were the remains of thedeceased consigned to the family mausoleum. The funeral was, as may besupposed, strictly private, and when it was over, the excitement caused byan event so tragical and singular subsided. New topics engaged the publictalk, and--in my presence, at least--the delicate consideration due to onewhose name had been so painfully mixed up in the dismal story forbore atopic which I could not be expected to hear without distressful emotion. Mrs. Ashleigh I saw frequently at my own house; she honestly confessedthat Lilian had not shown that grief at the cancelling of our engagementwhich would alone justify Mrs. Ashleigh in asking me again to see herdaughter, and retract my conclusions against our union. She said thatLilian was quiet, not uncheerful, never spoke of me nor of Margrave, butseemed absent and pre-occupied as before, taking pleasure in nothing thathad been wont to please her; not in music, nor books, nor that tranquilpastime which women call work, and in which they find excuse to meditate, in idleness, their own fancies. She rarely stirred out, even in thegarden; when she did, her eyes seemed to avoid the house in which Margravehad lodged, and her steps the old favourite haunt by the Monks' Well. Shewould remain silent for long hours together, but the silence did notappear melancholy. For the rest, her health was more than usually good. Still Mrs. Ashleigh persisted in her belief that, sooner or later, Lilianwould return to her former self, her former sentiments for me; and sheentreated me not, as yet, to let the world know that our engagement wasbroken off. "For if, " she said, with good sense, "if it should prove notto be broken off, only suspended, and afterwards happily renewed, therewill be two stories to tell when no story be needed. Besides, I shoulddread the effect on Lilian, if offensive gossips babbled to her on amatter that would excite so much curiosity as the rupture of a union inwhich our neighbours have taken so general an interest. "

I had no reason to refuse acquiescence in Mrs. Ashleigh's request, but Idid not share in her hopes; I felt that the fair prospects of my lifewere blasted; I could never love another, never wed another; I resignedmyself to a solitary hearth, rejoiced, at least, that Margrave had notrevisited at Mrs. Ashleigh's, --had not, indeed, reappeared in the town. He was still staying with Strahan, who told me that his guest hadensconced himself in Forman's old study, and amused himself withreading--though not for long at a time--the curious old books andmanuscripts found in the library, or climbing trees like a schoolboy, andfamiliarizing himself with the deer and the cattle, which would groupround him quite tame, and feed from his hand. Was this the description ofa criminal? But if Sir Philip's assertion were really true; if thecriminal were man without soul; if without soul, man would have noconscience, never be troubled by repentance, and the vague dread of afuture world, --why, then, should not the criminal be gay despite hiscrimes, as the white bear gambols as friskly after his meal on humanflesh? These questions would haunt me, despite my determination to acceptas the right solution of all marvels the construction put on my narrativeby Julius Faber. 

Days passed; I saw and heard nothing of Margrave. I began half to hopethat, in the desultory and rapid changes of mood and mind whichcharacterized his restless nature, he had forgotten my existence. 

One morning I went out early on my rounds, when I met Strabanunexpectedly. 

"I was in search of you, " he said, "for more than one person has told methat you are looking ill and jaded. So you are! And the town now is hotand unhealthy. You must come to Derval Court for a week or so. You canride into town every day to see your patients. Don't refuse. Margrave, who is still with me, sends all kind messages, and bade me say that heentreats you to come to the house at which he also is a guest!"

I started. What had the Scin-Laeca required of me, and obtained to thatcondition my promise?" If you are asked to the house at which I also am aguest, you will come; you will meet and converse with me as guest speaksto guest in the house of a host!" Was this one of the coincidences whichmy reason was bound to accept as coincidences, and nothing more? Tut, tut! Was I returning again to my "hallucinations"? Granting that Faberand common-sense were in the right, what was this Margrave? A man towhose friendship, acuteness, and energy I was under the deepestobligations, --to whom I was indebted for active services that had saved mylife from a serious danger, acquitted my honour of a horrible suspicion. "I thank you, " I said to Strahan, "I will come; not, indeed, for a week, but, at all events, for a day or two. "

"That's right; I will call for you in the carriage at six o'clock. Youwill have done your day's work by then?"

"Yes; I will so arrange. "

On our way to Derval Court that evening, Strahan talked much aboutMargrave, of whom, nevertheless, he seemed to be growing weary. 

"His high spirits are too much for one, " said he; "and then sorestless, --so incapable of sustained quiet conversation. And, cleverthough he is, he can't help me in the least about the new house I shallbuild. He has no notion of construction. I don't think he could build abarn. "

"I thought you did not like to demolish the old house, and would contentyourself with pulling down the more ancient part of it?"

"True. At first it seemed a pity to destroy so handsome a mansion; butyou see, since poor Sir Philip's manuscript, on which he set such store, has been too mutilated, I fear, to allow me to effect his wish with regardto it, I think I ought at least scrupulously to obey his other whims. And, besides, I don't know, there are odd noises about the old house. Idon't believe in haunted houses; still there is something dreary instrange sounds at the dead of night, even if made by rats, or windsthrough decaying rafters. You, I remember at college, had a taste forarchitecture, and can draw plans. I wish to follow out Sir Philip'sdesign, but on a smaller scale, and with more attention to comfort. "

Thus he continued to run on, satisfied to find me a silent and attentivelistener. We arrived at the mansion an hour before sunset, the westeringlight shining full against the many windows cased in mouldering pilasters, and making the general dilapidation of the old place yet more mournfullyevident. 

It was but a few minutes to the dinner-hour. I went up at once to theroom appropriated to me, --not the one I had before occupied. Strahan hadalready got together a new establishment. I was glad to find in theservant who attended me an old acquaintance. He had been in my own employwhen I first settled at L----, and left me to get married. He and hiswife were now both in Strahan's service. He spoke warmly of his newmaster and his contentment with his situation, while he unpacked mycarpet-bag and assisted me to change my dress. But the chief object ofhis talk and his praise was Mr. Margrave. 

"Such a bright young gentleman, like the first fine day in May!"

When I entered the drawing-room, Margrave and Strahan were both there. The former was blithe and genial, as usual, in his welcome. At dinner, and during the whole evening till we retired severally to our own rooms, he was the principal talker, --recounting incidents of travel, always veryloosely strung together, jesting, good-humouredly enough, at Strahan'ssudden hobby for building, then putting questions to me about mutualacquaintances, but never waiting for an answer; and every now and then, asif at random, startling us with some brilliant aphorism, or somesuggestion drawn from abstract science or unfamiliar erudition. The wholeeffect was sparkling, but I could well understand that, if long continued, it would become oppressive. The soul has need of pauses ofrepose, --intervals of escape, not only from the flesh, but even from themind. A man of the loftiest intellect will experience times when mereintellect not only fatigues him, but amidst its most original conceptions, amidst its proudest triumphs, has a something trite and commonplacecompared with one of those vague intimations of a spiritual destiny whichare not within the ordinary domain of reason; and, gazing abstractedlyinto space, will leave suspended some problem of severest thought, oruncompleted some golden palace of imperial poetry, to indulge in hazyreveries, that do not differ from those of an innocent, quiet child! Thesoul has a long road to travel--from time through eternity. It demandsits halting hours of contemplation. Contemplation is serene. But withsuch wants of an immortal immaterial spirit, Margrave had no fellowship, no sympathy; and for myself, I need scarcely add that the lines I havejust traced I should not have written at the date at which my narrativehas now arrived. 

CHAPTER XLIX. 

I had no case that necessitated my return to L---- the following day. Theearlier hours of the forenoon I devoted to Strahan and his building plans. Margrave flitted in and out of the room fitfully as an April sunbeam, sometimes flinging himself on a sofa, and reading for a few minutes one ofthe volumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip's library was sorich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read that crabbed anddifficult Greek with a fluency that surprised me. "I picked up theancient Greek, " said he, "years ago, in learning the modern. " But thebook soon tired him; then he would come and disturb us, archly enjoyingStrahan's peevishness at interruption; then he would throw open the windowand leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs; and in another momenthe was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broad lime-tree, amidst theantlers of deer that gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my hostwas called away to attend some visitors of importance, and I found myselfon the sward before the house, right in view of the mausoleum and alonewith Margrave. 

I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein rested the corpseof the last lord of the soil, so strangely murdered, with a strong desireto speak out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself that tortured me. But--setting aside the promise to the contrary, which I had given, ordreamed I had given, to the Luminous Shadow--to fulfil that desire wouldhave been impossible, --impossible to any one gazing on that radiantyouthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him then: a white doe, thateven my presence could not scare away from him, clung lovingly to hisside, looking up at him with her soft eyes. He stood there like theincarnate principle of mythological sensuous life. I have before appliedto him that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned. Impossible, Irepeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, "Art thou the master ofdemoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?" As if fromredundant happiness within himself, he was humming, or rather cooing, astrain of music, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike the music onehears from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my hand over myforehead in bewilderment and awe. 

"Are there, " I said unconsciously, --"are there, indeed, such prodigies inNature?"

"Nature!" he cried, catching up the word; "talk to me of Nature! Talk ofher, the wondrous blissful mother! Mother I may well call her. I am herspoiled child, her darling! But oh, to die, ever to die, ever to losesight of Nature!--to rot senseless, whether under these turfs or withinthose dead walls--"

I could not resist the answer, --

"Like yon murdered man! murdered, and by whom?"

"By whom? I thought that was clearly proved. "

"The hand was proved; what influence moved the hand?"

"Tush! the poor wretch spoke of a Demon. Who can tell? Nature herself isa grand destroyer. See that pretty bird, in its beak a writhing worm!All Nature's children live to take life; none, indeed, so lavishly as man. What hecatombs slaughtered, not to satisfy the irresistible sting ofhunger, but for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcelytaste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying! We speak withdread of the beasts of prey: what beast of prey is so dire a ravager asman, --so cruel and so treacherous? Look at yon flock of sheep, bred andfattened for the shambles; and this hind that I caress, --if I were thepark-keeper, and her time for my bullet had come, would you think her lifewas the safer because, in my own idle whim, I had tamed her to trust tothe hand raised to slay her?"

"It is true, " said I, --"a grim truth. Nature, on the surface so lovingand so gentle, is full of terror in her deeps when our thought descendsinto their abyss!"

Strahan now joined us with a party of country visitors. "Margrave is theman to show you the beauties of this park, " said he. "Margrave knowsevery bosk and dingle, twisted old thorn-tree, or opening glade, in itsintricate, undulating ground. "

Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition; and as he led us throughthe park, though the way was long, though the sun was fierce, no oneseemed fatigued. For the pleasure he felt in pointing out detachedbeauties which escaped an ordinary eye was contagious. He did not talk astalks the poet or the painter; but at some lovely effect of light amongstthe tremulous leaves, some sudden glimpse of a sportive rivulet below, hewould halt, point it out to us in silence, and with a kind of childlikeecstasy in his own bright face, that seemed to reflect the life and thebliss of the blithe summer day itself. 

Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret nature faded away, --all myhorror, all my hate; it was impossible to resist the charm that breathedround him, not to feel a tender, affectionate yearning towards him as tosome fair happy child. Well might he call himself the Darling of Nature. Was he not the mysterious likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful asApollo in one aspect, direful as Typhon in another?

CHAPTER L. 

"What a strange-looking cane you have, sir!" said a little girl, who wasone of the party, and who had entwined her arm round Margrave's. "Let melook at it. "

"Yes, " said Strahan, " that cane, or rather walking-staff, is worth lookingat. Margrave bought it in Egypt, and declares that it is very ancient. "

This staff seemed constructed from a reed: looked at, it seemed light, inthe hand it felt heavy; it was of a pale, faded yellow, wrought with blackrings at equal distances, and graven with half obliterated characters thatseemed hieroglyphic. I remembered to have seen Margrave with it before, but I had never noticed it with any attention until now, when it waspassed from hand to hand. At the head of the cane there was a largeunpolished stone of a dark blue. 

"Is this a pebble or a jewel?" asked one of the party. 

"I cannot tell you its name or nature, " said Margrave; "but it is said tocure the bite of serpents[1], and has other supposed virtues, --a talisman, in short. "

He here placed the staff in my hands, and bade me look at it with care. Then he changed the conversation and renewed the way, leaving the staffwith me, till suddenly I forced it back on him. I could not haveexplained why, but its touch, as it warmed in my clasp, seemed to sendthrough my whole frame a singular thrill, and a sensation as if I nolonger felt my own weight, --as if I walked on air. 

Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went away; I re-entered thehouse through the sash-window of Forman's study. Margrave threw his hatand staff on the table, and amused himself with examining minutely thetracery on the mantelpiece. Strahan and myself left him thus occupied, and, going into the adjoining library, resumed our task of examining theplans for the new house. I continued to draw outlines and sketches ofvarious alterations, tending to simplify and contract Sir Philip's generaldesign. Margrave soon joined us, and this time took his seat patientlybeside our table, watching me use ruler and compass with unwontedattention. 

"I wish I could draw, " he said; "but I can do nothing useful. "

"Rich men like you, " said Strahan, peevishly, "can engage others, and arebetter employed in rewarding good artists than in making bad drawingsthemselves. "

"Yes, I can employ others; and--Fenwick, when you have finished withStrahan I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; thetask I would impose will not take you a minute. "

He then threw himself back in his chair, and seemed to fall into a doze. 

The dressing-bell rang; Strahan put away the plans, --indeed, they were nowpretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our host leftthe room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in the room, placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointing to anold woodcut, said, "I will ask you to copy this for me; it pretends to be a facsimile ofSolomon's famous seal. I have a whimsical desire to have a copy of it. You observe two triangles interlaced and inserted in a circle?--thepentacle, in short. Yes, just so. You need not add the astrologicalcharacters: they are the senseless superfluous accessories of the dreamerwho wrote the book. But the pentacle itself has an intelligible meaning;it belongs to the only universal language, the language of symbol, inwhich all races that think--around, and above, and below us--can establishcommunion of thought. If in the external universe any one constructiveprinciple can be detected, it is the geometrical; and in every part of theworld in which magic pretends to a written character, I find that itshieroglyphics are geometrical figures. Is it not laughable that the mostpositive of all the sciences should thus lend its angles and circles tothe use of--what shall I call it?--the ignorance?--ay, that is theword--the ignorance of dealers in magic?"

He took up the paper, on which I had hastily described the triangles andthe circle, and left the room, chanting the serpent-charmer's song. 

[1] The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as anantidote to the venom of the serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminentscholar and legal functionary in that island:--

DESCRIPTION of THE BLUESTONE. --This stone is of an oval shape 1 2/10 in. Long, 7/10 broad, 3/10 thick, and, having been broken formerly, is now setin gold. 

When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be opened by acut of a lancet or razor longways, and the stone applied withintwenty-four hours. The stone then attaches itself firmly on the wound, and when it has done its office falls off; the cure is then complete. Thestone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poison it hasabsorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the stone isthen again fit for use. 

This stone has been from time immemorial in the family of Ventura, ofCorfu, a house of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasantsimmediately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been impaired by thefracture. Its nature or composition is unknown. 

In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the stone wasapplied to one, who recovered; but the other, for whom it could not beused, died. 

It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-fourhours. 

Its colour is so dark as not to be distinguished from black. 

 P. M. COLQUHOUN. 

Corfu, 7th Nov. , 1860. 

Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent work on Ceylon, gives anaccount of "snake stones" apparently similar to the one at Corfu, exceptthat they are "intensely black and highly polished, " and which areapplied, in much the same manner, to the wounds inflicted by thecobra-capella. 

QUERY. -Might it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical properties ofthese stones, and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of venomconveyed by a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to the biteof a mad dog as to that of a cobra-capella?

CHAPTER LI. 

When we separated for the night, which we did at eleven o'clock, Margravesaid, --

"Good-night and good-by. I must leave you to-morrow, Strahan, and beforeyour usual hour for rising. I took the liberty of requesting one of yourmen to order me a chaise from L----. Pardon my seeming abruptness, but Ialways avoid long leave-takings, and I had fixed the date of my departurealmost as soon as I accepted your invitation. "

"I have no right to complain. The place must be dull indeed to a gayyoung fellow like you. It is dull even to me. I am meditating flightalready. Are you going back to L----?"

"Not even for such things as I left at my lodgings. When I settlesomewhere and can give an address, I shall direct them to be sent to me. There are, I hear, beautiful patches of scenery towards the north, onlyknown to pedestrian tourists. I am a good walker; and you know, Fenwick, that I am also a child of Nature. Adieu to you both; and many thanks toyou, Strahan, for your hospitality. "

He left the room. 

"I am not sorry he is going, " said Strahan, after a pause, and with aquick breath as if of relief. "Do you not feel that he exhausts one? Anexcess of oxygen, as you would say in a lecture. "

I was alone in my own chamber; I felt indisposed for bed and for sleep;the curious conversation I had held with Margrave weighed on me. In thatconversation, we had indirectly touched upon the prodigies which I had notbrought myself to speak of with frank courage, and certainly nothing inMargrave's manner had betrayed consciousness of my suspicions; on thecontrary, the open frankness with which he evinced his predilection formystic speculation, or uttered his more unamiable sentiments, rathertended to disarm than encourage belief in gloomy secrets or sinisterpowers. And as he was about to quit the neighbourhood, he would not againsee Lilian, not even enter the town of L----. Was I to ascribe thisrelief from his presence to the promise of the Shadow; or was I notrather right in battling firmly against any grotesque illusion, andaccepting his departure as a simple proof that my jealous fears had beenamongst my other chimeras, and that as he had really only visited Lilianout of friendship to me, in my peril, so he might, with his characteristicacuteness, have guessed my jealousy, and ceased his visits from a kindlymotive delicately concealed? And might not the same motive now havedictated the words which were intended to assure me that L---- containedno attractions to tempt him to return to it? Thus, gradually soothed andcheered by the course to which my reflections led me, I continued to musefor hours. At length, looking at my watch, I was surprised to find it wasthe second hour after midnight. I was just about to rise from my chairto undress, and secure some hours of sleep, when the well-remembered coldwind passed through the room, stirring the roots of my hair; and before mestood, against the wall, the Luminous Shadow. 

"Rise and follow me, " said the voice, sounding much nearer than it hadever done before. 

And at those words I rose mechanically, and like a sleepwalker. 

"Take up the light. "

I took it. The Scin-Laeca glided along the wall towards the threshold, and motioned me to open the door. I did so. The Shadow flitted onthrough the corridor. I followed, with hushed footsteps, down a smallstair into Forman's study. In all my subsequent proceedings, about to benarrated, the Shadow guided me, sometimes by voice, sometimes by sign. Iobeyed the guidance, not only unresistingly, but without a desire toresist. I was unconscious either of curiosity or of awe, --only of a calmand passive indifference, neither pleasurable nor painful. In thisobedience, from which all will seemed extracted, I took into my hands thestaff which I had examined the day before, and which lay on the table, just where Margrave had cast it on re-entering the house. I unclosed theshutter to the casement, lifted the sash, and, with the light in my lefthand, the staff in my right, stepped forth into the garden. The night wasstill; the flame of the candle scarcely trembled in the air; the Shadowmoved on before me towards the old pavilion described in an earlier partof this narrative, and of which the mouldering doors stood wide open. Ifollowed the Shadow into the pavilion, up the crazy stair to the roomabove, with its four great blank unglazed windows, or rather arcades, north, south, east, and west. I halted on the middle of the floor: rightbefore my eyes, through the vista made by breathless boughs, stood outfrom the moonlit air the dreary mausoleum. Then, at the command conveyedto me, I placed the candle on a wooden settle, touched a spring in thehandle of the staff; a lid flew back, and I drew from the hollow, first alump of some dark bituminous substance, next a smaller slender wand ofpolished steel, of which the point was tipped with a translucent material, which appeared to me like crystal. Bending down, still obedient to thedirection conveyed to me, I described on the floor with the lump ofbitumen (if I may so call it) the figure of the pentacle with theinterlaced triangles, in a circle nine feet in diameter, just as I haddrawn it for Margrave the evening before. The material used made thefigure perceptible, in a dark colour of mingled black and red. I appliedthe flame of the candle to the circle, and immediately it became lambentwith a low steady splendour that rose about an inch from the floor; andgradually front this light there emanated a soft, gray, transparent mistand a faint but exquisite odour. I stood in the midst of the circle, andwithin the circle also, close by my side, stood the Scin-Laeca, --no longerreflected on the wall, but apart from it, erect, rounded into moreintegral and distinct form, yet impalpable, and from it there breathed anicy air. Then lifting the wand, the broader end of which rested in thepalm of my hand, the two forefingers closing lightly over it in a lineparallel with the point, I directed it towards the wide aperture beforeme, fronting the mausoleum. I repeated aloud some words whispered to mein a language I knew not: those words I would not trace on this paper, could I remember them. As they came to a close, I heard a howl from thewatch-dog in the yard, --a dismal, lugubrious howl. Other dogs in thedistant village caught up the sound, and bayed in a dirge-like chorus; andthe howling went on louder and louder. Again strange words were whisperedto me, and I repeated them in mechanical submission; and when they, too, were ended, I felt the ground tremble beneath me, and as my eyes lookedstraight forward down the vista, that, stretching from the casement, wasbounded by the solitary mausoleum, vague formless shadows seemed to passacross the moonlight, --below, along the sward, above, in the air; and thensuddenly a terror, not before conceived, came upon me. 

And a third time words were whispered; but though I knew no more of theirmeaning than I did of those that had preceded them, I felt a repugnance toutter them aloud. Mutely I turned towards the Scin-Laeca, and theexpression of its face was menacing and terrible; my will became yet morecompelled to the control imposed upon it, and my lips commenced theformula again whispered into my ear, when I heard distinctly a voice ofwarning and of anguish, that murmured "Hold!" I knew the voice; it wasLilian's. I paused; I turned towards the quarter from which the voice hadcome, and in the space afar I saw the features, the form of Lilian. Herarms were stretched towards me in supplication, her countenance was deadlypale, and anxious with unutterable distress. The whole image seemed inunison with the voice, --the look, the attitude, the gesture of one whosees another in deadly peril, and cries, "Beware!"

This apparition vanished in a moment; but that moment sufficed to free mymind from the constraint which had before enslaved it. I dashed the wandto the ground, sprang from the circle, rushed from the place. How I gotinto my own room I can remember not, --I know not; I have a vaguereminiscence of some intervening wandering, of giant trees, of shroud-likemoonlight, of the Shining Shadow and its angry aspect, of the blind wallsand the iron door of the House of the Dead, of spectral images, --aconfused and dreary phantasmagoria. But all I can recall withdistinctness is the sight of my own hueless face in the mirror in my ownstill room, by the light of the white moon through the window; and, sinking down, I said to myself, "This, at least, is an hallucination or adream!"

CHAPTER LII. 

A heavy sleep came over me at daybreak, but I did not undress nor go tobed. The sun was high in the heavens when, on waking, I saw the servantwho had attended me bustling about the room. 

"I beg your pardon, sir, I am afraid I disturbed you; but I have beenthree times to see if you were not coming down, and I found you so soundlyasleep I did not like to wake you. Mr. Strahan has finished breakfast, and gone out riding; Mr. Margrave has left, --left before six o'clock. "

"Ah, he said he was going early. "

"Yes, sir; and he seemed so cross when he went. I could never havesupposed so pleasant a gentleman could put himself into such a passion!"

"What was the matter?"

"Why, his walking-stick could not be found; it was not in the hall. Hesaid he had left it in the study; we could not find it there. At last hefound it himself in the old summerhouse, and said--I beg pardon--he saidhe was sure you had taken it there: that some one, at all events, had beenmeddling with it. However, I am very glad it was found, since he seems toset such store on it. "

"Did Mr. Margrave go himself into the summer-house to look for it?"

"Yes, sir; no one else would have thought of such a place; no one likes togo there, even in the daytime. "

"Why?"

"Why, sir, they say it is haunted since poor Sir Philip's death; and, indeed, there are strange noises in every part of the house. I am afraidyou had a bad night, sir, " continued the servant, with evident curiosity, glancing towards the bed, which I had not pressed, and towards theevening-dress which, while he spoke, I was rapidly changing for that whichI habitually wore in the morning. "I hope you did not feel yourself ill?"

"No! but it seems I fell asleep in my chair. "

"Did you hear, sir, how the dogs howled about two o'clock in the morning?They woke me. Very frightful!"

"The moon was at her full. Dogs will bay at the moon. "

I felt relieved to think that I should not find Strahan in thebreakfast-room; and hastening through the ceremony of a meal which Iscarcely touched, I went out into the park unobserved, and creeping roundthe copses and into the neglected gardens, made my way to the pavilion. Imounted the stairs; I looked on the floor of the upper room; yes, therestill was the black figure of the pentacle, the circle. So, then, it wasnot a dream! Till then I had doubted. Or might it not still be so far adream that I had walked in my sleep, and with an imagination preoccupiedby my conversations with Margrave, --by the hieroglyphics on the staff Ihad handled, by the very figure associated with superstitious practiceswhich I had copied from some weird book at his request, by all the strangeimpressions previously stamped on my mind, --might I not, in truth, havecarried thither in sleep the staff, described the circle, and all the restbeen but visionary delusion? Surely, surely, so common-sense, and soJulius Faber would interpret the riddles that perplexed me! Be that as itmay, my first thought was to efface the marks on the floor. I found thiseasier than I had ventured to hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacleaway from the boards with the sole of my foot, leaving but anundistinguishable smudge behind. I know not why, but I felt the morenervously anxious to remove all such evidences of my nocturnal visit tothat room, because Margrave had so openly gone thither to seek for thestaff, and had so rudely named me to the servant as having meddled withit. Might he not awake some suspicion against me? Suspicion, what of? Iknew not, but I feared!

The healthful air of day gradually nerved my spirits and relieved mythoughts. But the place had become hateful to me. I resolved not to waitfor Strahan's return, but to walk back to L----, and leave a message formy host. It was sufficient excuse that I could not longer absent myselffrom my patients; accordingly I gave directions to have the few thingswhich I had brought with me sent to my house by any servant who might begoing to L----, and was soon pleased to find myself outside the park-gatesand on the high-road. 

I had not gone a mile before I met Strahan on horseback. He received myapologies for not waiting his return to bid him farewell withoutobservation, and, dismounting, led his horse and walked beside me on myroad. I saw that there was something on his mind; at last he said, looking down, --

"Did you hear the dogs howl last night?"

"Yes! the full moon!"

"You were awake, then, at the time. Did you hear any other sound? Didyou see anything?"

"What should I hear or see?"

Strahan was silent for some moments; then he said, with greatseriousness, --

"I could not sleep when I went to bed last night; I felt feverish andrestless. Somehow or other, Margrave got into my head, mixed up in somestrange way with Sir Philip Derval. I heard the dogs howl, and at thesame time, or rather a few minutes later, I felt the whole house tremble, as a frail corner-house in London seems to tremble at night when acarriage is driven past it. The howling had then ceased, and ceased assuddenly as it had begun. I felt a vague, superstitious alarm; I got up, and went to my window, which was unclosed (it is my habit to sleep with mywindows open); the moon was very bright, and I saw, I declare I saw alongthe green alley that leads from the old part of the house to themausoleum--No, I will not say what I saw or believed I saw, --you wouldridicule me, and justly. But, whatever it might be, on the earth withoutor in the fancy within my brain, I was so terrified, that I rushed back tomy bed, and buried my face in my pillow. I would have come to you; but Idid not dare to stir. I have been riding hard all the morning in order torecover my nerves. But I dread sleeping again under that roof, and nowthat you and Margrave leave me, I shall go this very day to London. Ihope all that I have told you is no bad sign of any coming disease; bloodto the head, eh?"

"No; but imagination overstrained can produce wondrous effects. You doright to change the scene. Go to London at once, amuse yourself, and--"

"Not return, till the old house is razed to the ground. That is myresolve. You approve? That's well. All success to you, Fenwick. I willcanter back and get my portmanteau ready and the carriage out, in time forthe five o'clock train. "

So then he, too, had seen--what? I did not dare and I did not desire toask him. But he, at least, was not walking in his sleep! Did we bothdream, or neither?