we may not aspire. Therefore let us kneel down and humbly pray to God."

They all knelt; and the adept, commencing with the Prayer Book collect for the festival of St. Michael, recited several other prayers, all for extreme and spotless purity of life.

He then rose, the two others continuing on their knees, and struck a small bell, upon which the boy whom they had before seen entered the room by a concealed door in the wainscot. He was a pretty boy, with a fair and clean skin, and was dressed in a surplice similar to those worn by choristers. He took up a position by the crystal, and waited his master's orders.

"I have said," continued the adept, "that these visions can be seen only by the pure, and by those who, by long and intense looking into the spiritual world, have at last penetrated somewhat into its gloom. I have found these mostly to be plain and simple people, of an earnest faith,-country people, grave-diggers, and those employed to shroud the dead, and who are accustomed to think much upon objects connected with death. This boy is the child of the sexton of Lambeth Church, who is himself a godly man. Let us pray to God."

Upon this he knelt down again and remained for some time engaged in silent prayer. He then rose and directed the boy to look into the crystal, saying, "One of these gentlemen desires. news of his wife."

The boy looked intently into the crystal for some moments, and then said, speaking in a measured and low voice:

"I see a great room, in which there is a bed with rich hangings; pendent from the ceiling is a silver lamp. A tall dark man, with long hair, and a dagger in his belt, is bending over the bed with a cup in his hand."

"It is my wife's room," said Eustace in a whisper, "and it is no doubt the Italian: he is tall and dark."

The boy continued to look for some time into the crystal, but said nothing; then he turned to his master and said, "I can see nothing; some one more near to this gentleman must look; this other gentleman," he said suddenly, and turning to John Inglesant, "if he looks, will be able to see."

The astrologer started. "Ah!" he said, "why do you say that, boy?"

"I can tell who will see aught in the crystal, and who will not," replied the boy: "this gentleman will see."

The astrologer seemed surprised and skeptical, but he made a sign to Inglesant to rise from his knees, and to take his place by

the crystal.

He did so, and looked steadily into it for some seconds; then he shook his head.

"I can see nothing," he said.

"Nothing!" said the boy: "can you see nothing?"

"You have been engaged," said the boy, "in something that was not good-something that was not true; and it has dimmed the crystal sight. Look steadily, and if it is as I think, that your motive was not false, you will see more."

Inglesant looked again; and in a moment or two gave a start, saying, "The mist is breaking! I see;-I see a large room, with a chimney of carved stone, and a high window at the end; in the window and on the carved stone is the same coat many times repeated, three running greyhounds proper, on a field vert."

"I know the room," said Eustace: "it is the inn parlor at Mintern, not six miles from Oulton. It was the manor of the Vinings before the wars, but is now an

inn; that was their coat."

"Do you see aught else?" said the adept.

Inglesant gave a long look; then he stepped back, and gazed at the astrologer, and from him to his brother, with a faltering and ashy look.

"I see a man's figure lie before the hearth, and the hearthstone is stained, as if with blood. Eustace, it is either you or I!" "Look again," said the adept eagerly, "look again!"

"I will look no more!" said Inglesant fiercely; "this is the work of a fiend, to lure men to madness or despair!"

As he spoke, a blast of wind-sudden and strong-swept through the room; the lamp burned dim; and the fire in the brazier went out. A deathly coldness filled the apartment, and the floor and the walls seemed to heave and shake. A loud whisper, or muffled cry, seemed to fill the air; and a terrible awe struck at the hearts of the young men. Seizing the rod from the table, the adept assumed a commanding attitude, and waved it to and fro in the air; gradually the wind ceased, the dread coldness abated, and the fire burned again of its own accord. The adept gazed at Inglesant with a stern and set look.

"You are of a strange spirit, young sir," he said: "pure in heart enough to see things which many holy men have desired XXIII-837

in vain to see; and yet so wild and rebellious as to anger the blessed spirits with your self-will and perverse thoughts. You will suffer fatal loss, both here and hereafter, if you learn not to give up your own will, and your own fancies, before the heavenly will and call."

Inglesant stared at the man in silence. His words seemed to him to mean far more than perhaps he himself knew. They seemed to come into his mind, softened with anxiety for his brother, and shaken by these terrible events, with the light of a revelation. Surely this was the true secret of his wasted life, however strange might be the place and action which revealed. it to him. Whatever he might think afterwards of this night, it might easily stand to him as an allegory of his own spirit, set down before him in a figure. Doubtless he was perverse and headstrong under the pressure of the Divine Hand; doubtless he had followed his own notions rather than the voice of the inward monitor he professed to hear; henceforth, surely, he would give himself up more entirely to the heavenly voice.

Eustace appeared to have seen enough of the future, and to be anxious to go. He left a purse of gold upon the wizard's table; and hurried his brother to take his leave.

Outside, the air was perfectly still; a thick motionless fog hung over the marsh and the river; not a breath of wind stirred.

"That was a strange wind that swept by as you refused to look," said Eustace to his brother: "do you really think the spirits were near, and were incensed ? »

Inglesant did not reply: he was thinking of another spirit than that the wizard had evoked.

They made their way through the fog to Lambeth, and took boat again to the Temple Stairs.

I'

JOHN INGLESANT MAKES A JOURNEY, AND MEETS HIS
BROTHER'S MURDERER

From John Inglesant'

WAS long before sunrise that Inglesant set out, accompanied by his train, hoping to cross the mountains before the heat began. His company consisted of several men-at-arms, with their grooms and horse-boys, and the Austrian page. They ascended the mountains in the earlier part of the night, and

towards dawn they reached a flat plain. The night had been too dark to allow them to see the steep and narrow defiles, full of oaks and beech; and as they passed over the dreary plain in the white mist, their figures seemed vast and indistinct in the dim light: but now, as the streaks of the dawn grew brighter in the east behind them, they could see the fir-trees clothing the distant slopes, and here and there one of the higher summits still covered with white snow. The scene was cold and dead and dreary as the grave. A heavy mist hung over the mountain. plain, and an icy lake lay black and cold beneath the morning sky. As they reached the crest of the hill the mist rose, stirred by a little breeze at sunrise, and the gorges of the descent lay clear before them. The sun arose behind them, gilding the mountain-tops, and tracing streaks and shades of color on the rising mist sparkling with glittering dewdrops; while dark and solemn beneath them lay the pine-clothed ravines and sloping valleys, with here and there a rocky peak; and farther down still the woods and hills gave place at last to the plain of the Tiber, at present dark and indistinguishable in the night.

As the sun arose behind them, one by one the pine ravines became lighted, and the snowy summits, soft and pink with radi ant light, stood out against the sky, which became every instant of a deeper blue. The sunlight, stealing down the defiles and calling forth into distinct shape and vision tree and rock and flashing stream, spread itself over the oak woods in the valleys, and shone at last upon the plain, embossed and radiant with wood and green meadow, and marble towers and glistering water -the waters of the Tiber running onward towards Rome. Mysterious forms and waves of light, the creatures of the morning and of the mist, floated before the sight, and from the dark firtrees murmurs and mutterings of ethereal life fell upon the ear. Sudden and passionate flushes of color tinted the pine woods and were gone; and beneath the branches and across the paths, fairy lights played for a moment and passed away.

The party halted more than once, but it was necessary to make the long descent before the heat began, and they commenced carefully to pick their way down the stony mountain road, which wound down the ravines in wild unequal paths. The track, now precipitous, now almost level, took them round corners and masses of rock sometimes hanging above their heads, revealing continually new reaches of valleys and new defiles clothed

with fir and oak. Mountain flowers and trailing ivy and creeping plants hung in festoons on every side, lizards ran across the path, birds fluttered above them or darted into the dark recesses where the mountain brooks were heard; everything sang the morning psalm of life, with which, from field and mountain solitudes, the free children of nature salute the day.

The Austrian boy felt the beauty of the scene, and broke out into singing.

"When the northern gods," he said to Inglesant, "rode on their chevisance, they went down into the deep valleys singing magic songs. Let us into this dark valley, singing magic songs, also go down: who knows what strange and hidden deity, since the old pagan times lost and forgotten, we may find among the dark fir dingles and the laurel shades?"

And he began to sing some love ditty.

Inglesant did not hear him. The beauty of the scene, ethereal and unreal in its loveliness, following upon the long dark mountain ride, his sleepless nights and strange familiarity with approaching death by the couch of the old duke, confused his senses, and a presentiment of impending fate filled his mind. The recollection of his brother rose again in his remembrance, distinct and present as in life; and more than once he fancied that he heard his voice, as the cry of some mountain beast or sound of moaning trees, came up the pass. No other foreshadowing than this very imperfect one warned him of the approaching crisis of his life.

The sun was fully up, and the light already brilliant and intense, when they approached a projecting point where the slope of wood ended in a tower of rock jutting upon the road. The path by which they approached it was narrow and ragged; but beyond the rock the ground spread itself out, and the path was carried inward towards the right, having the sloping hillside on the one hand covered with scattered oaks, while on the other a slip of ground separated it from the ravine. At the turning of the road, where the opening valley lay before them as they reached the corner, face to face with Inglesant as he checked his horse was the Italian, the inquisitive stranger of the theatre at Florence, the intruder into the Conclave, the masque of the Carnival ball, the assassin of the Corso,- that Malvolti who had treacherously murdered his brother and sought his own life. Alone and weary, his clothes worn and threadbare, he came