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She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety, that had long been kindling, burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down, the border of her garment was dipped into the pool; she laid her forehead on the old woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, so that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer, in the midst of which she started, and would have arisen.

"Let me flee,— let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon me!" she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself, and was still as death.

For it seemed as if other voices,-familiar in infancy, and unforgotten through many wanderings, and in all the vicissitudes of her heart and fortune-were mingling with the accents of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct, not rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book, which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices strengthen upon the ear; till at length the petition ended, and the conversation of an aged man, and of a woman broken and decayed like himself, became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three hills. Their voices were encompassed and re-echoed by the walls of a chamber, the windows of which were rattling in the breeze; the regular vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire, and the tinkling of the embers as they fell among the ashes, rendered the scene almost as vivid as if painted to the eye. By a melancholy hearth sat these two old people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful, and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her, and leaving shame and affliction to bring their gray heads to the grave. They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk, their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among the autumn leaves; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills.

"A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked the old woman, smiling in the lady's face.

"And did you also hear them ?" exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear. "Yea; and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman. "Wherefore, cover thy face quickly."

Again the withered hag poured forth the monotonous words of a prayer that was not meant to be acceptable in Heaven; and soon, in the pauses of her breath, strange murmurings began to

thicken, gradually increasing so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound, and were succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which in their turn gave way to a wild roar of laughter, broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth. Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats, and the scourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish every soft and dreamy accent of the love songs, that died causelessly into funeral hymns. She shuddered at the unprovoked wrath which blazed up like the spontaneous kindling of flame, and she grew faint at the fearful merriment, raging miserably around her. In the midst of this wild scene, where unbound passions jostled each other in a drunken career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious voice it might once have been. He went to-and-fro continually, and his feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company, whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world, he sought an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted their laughter and tears as his reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman's perfidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful, and uneven sound of the wind, as it fought among the pine trees on those three lonely hills. The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her face.

"Could'st thou have thought there were such merry times in a mad-house?" inquired the latter.

"True, true," said the lady to herself; "there is mirth within its walls, but misery, misery without."

"Would'st thou hear more ?" demanded the old woman. "There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied the lady, faintly.

"Then lay down thy head speedily upon my knees, that thou may'st get thee hence before the hour be past."

The golden skirts of day were yet lingering upon the hills, but deep shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to overspread the world. Again that evil woman began to weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knolling of a bell stole in among the intervals of her words, like a clang that had travelled far over valley and rising ground, and was just ready to die in the air. The lady shook upon her companion's knees, as she heard that boding January, 1849.-VOL. LIV.-NO. CCXIII.

I

sound. Stronger it grew and sadder, and deepened into the tone of a death-bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cottage, to the hall, and to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom appointed in turn to them. Then came a measured tread, passing slowly, slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trailing on the ground, so that the ear could measure the length of their melancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading the burial service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the breeze. And though no voice but his was heard to speak aloud, still there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women and from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of her parents, the wife who had betrayed the trusting fondness of her husband, --the mother who had sinned against natural affection, and left her child to die. The sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away like a thin vapour, and the wind, that just before had seemed to shake the coffin-pall, moaned sadly round the verge of the Hollow between three Hills. But when the old woman stirred the kneeling lady, she lifted not her head.

"Here has been a sweet hour's sport," said the withered crone, chuckling to herself.

STANZAS.

On reading Mrs. Crawford's "Four Ages."

99 66

BY THE AUTHOR OF RATTLIN THE REEFER, OLD
""
COMMODORE.' ETC., ETC.

THERE's a spirit on earth has left its sphere,
To bless with its presence the dwellers here;
To instruct mankind, by example given,
What manner of beings inhabit heaven-

'Tis Crawford's spirit.

There's an eye looks into the hearts of men,
And reads all there with an angel's ken-

Their sorrows, their errors, their passions' throes,

And smiles at their follies, and weeps for their woes

Tis Crawford's eye.

There's a ruby lip, where the soul of song
Sits and sings like a bird the whole day long;
And the soul of love with a folded wing
Sits and listens to hear that sweet bird sing-
"Tis Crawford's lip.

There's a kindly hand, a soft, white hand,
That openeth still at the heart's command;
No libertine's hand ever pressed it lightly,
But the poor man's prayer blesses it nightly-

'Tis Crawford's hand.

But the eye will fade, and the lip will pale,
And the kindly, soft white hand will fail :
And love will list for the song of the bird,
And weep that its voice is no longer heard-

Then farewell, Crawford!

For the spirit that left the sphere of its birth,
To bless for a season the dwellers on earth,
Will be summon'd once more to string its lyre,
And resume its place in its own bright choir-

Then farewell, Crawford !

(84)

THE STORM AND THE CONFLICT.

A TALE OF THE FIRST REBELLION.

BY MRS. CHARLES TINSLEY.

CHAPTER IX.*

ALTHOUGH few persons were better capable of acting jesuitically than Ephraim Oates, wherever worldly interest could give to double dealing the outward semblance of wisdom, there were times when his passions, naturally strong, over-leaped every prudential restraint, to the no small detriment of his temporal well-being. The non-appearance of the expected Nehemiah Snufflegrace during the space of four or five hours, and the apparent unconsciousnesss of Betty Oates, who quietly continued to labour at her wheel, as if with regard to every other object she had been deaf, dumb, and blind, increased his rage till it became indeed too ungovernable to be kept within reasonable bounds. A stout heart, under that apathetic exterior, must Betty have possessed, and a strange firmness of purpose, supposing her manner to have been assumed in order to achieve an object, for the threats held out by her husband were well calculated to have made the stoutest of female hearts quail. Thus when Nehemiah Snufflegrace at length made his appearance, he found the hosier too much exhausted by mental and bodily struggles to give any intelligible account of the strange guise in which he was found. Neither from his wife could any clue to the mystery be obtained; for Betty, having silently put aside her wheel, merely pointed out the spot where Laithwaye had deposited the key, through means of which he had placed his father in bonds, and immediately quitted the apartment.

Ephraim Oates, like many others, was apt enough at forget

* Continued from page 431, vol. liii.

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