"Ask her what has come about, and see if she will tell thee, harridan," answered Norman, ferociously. "Go and take thy share of the gold with which her lover bought her; it has been well earned! See if she will tell thee with what curse I have cursed her, and whether our mother's corpse will lie quiet in its grave when she is laid near it!"

"Monster! blackest villain! deevil incarnate!" cried Janet's shrill, quavering, voice. "I'll tear the heart frae yer breist wi' my ten talons gif ye hae dared to harm her!"

One or two early passengers were very naturally attracted by this furious threat, and the gestures as energetic which accompanied it; she saw this, and, subduing herself with much difficulty, glared at the object of her wrath with something not unlike the expression of a lioness defending her young from a rattlesnake.

"Go home!" said Norman, "go home to her, and play the motherly protectress, the staid guardian ! Do all that is left to do now-save her blasted life if thou can'st-repentance may yet come at the eleventh hour; then let her die, like some fair, noisome weed that poisons the air and cumbers the ground with its flaunting beauty, which men pluck up and cast upon a dunghill. Bury her dishonour deep; let the earth hide it and her, that none may ever speak of it, nor bring it to mind, while I-my task lies before me, and I thirst to fulfil it!"

The burden of this parting salutation-disgrace, vengeance, and woe-rang in Janet's ears like the

tolling of her darling's funeral knell; but her worst conjectures were exceeded by the reality she found on arriving at home.

Alice was still perfectly insensible, and poor Mrs. Morison, never famed for presence of mind, crying over her in the greatest distress and perplexity. Janet bid the kind, simple woman assist her, but made no inquiries, expressed no astonishment-setting about such measures as the occasion demanded in a grim, hard way that quite frightened her timid gossip. Mrs. Morison once offered to enter upon explanations, but Janet shut her mouth.

"Haud yer clavers, cummer; it's no when the deidgrip is on my bairn that I hae the will for speiring or hearkening to tales o' them that's murdered her."

They laid her in her bed, and sent for a physician, an old man who had attended Madam Scott in her last sickness; but the most vigorous remedies failed to produce the desired effect, and during the whole day Alice gave no evidence of animation except a slight spasmodic quivering of the hands and the almost imperceptible breathing. Janet was induced by the very alarm which the patient's condition created to pay some attention to her friend's account of the extraordinary nocturnal visit which had been the beginning of sorrows, of Alice's abandonment of sudden despair, and the altercation which had signalised her short interview with Norman.

The description was as accurate as could be expected from the mental constitution of the witness; and the dark, curled locks, haughty bearing, and high rank

of the unknown immediately fixed Janet's suspicions upon the Earl of Glencarrig; but the motive of such a visit, his communication to Alice, the connection of these with Norman's violence-every thing else in fact-was one inextricable mystery, which as yet she cared little to fathom. After extracting the last scrap of information from the woman, Janet bade her go; she could suffice for all that was required, and she resented, almost jealously, that a comparative stranger should interfere in the smallest service between herself and the darling of her old age-the child who had replaced her buried children, and had been as the last flower left in a wintry garden, more beloved for its fragile loneliness than the gayest ornaments of a gaudier season.

Mrs. Morison rather reluctantly obeyed, and, fain to rest contented with a permission to join her in keeping the night-watch, left Janet supporting the girl in her arms, and bathing a large, livid bruise, caused by her heavy fall, which darkened one snowy temple.

"Come back! come back! see ye here!" she cried, "Oh Bessy Morison, woman! was ever sae waeful a thing seen on sae young a head!”

She might well say it, and weep so fast and freely, and kiss those rich brown locks with such fervent pity! Lifting their soft clusters from the pillow where they strayed, she bade her neighbour approach and look. The angel of death had swept over that fair head of eighteen summers, and his scathing pinion had set there a mark by which to seal her for his own. The

dusky gold of her thick tresses were streaked with silver grey.

Night fled away, a second day rose, and life, long dormant, burst at length through the stupor which had all of death but its eternal and perfect rest, racking the tender frame with a torture of mind and body which we have no courage to imagine, still less to depict.

And at that self-same hour-while Alice in the fiercest delirium of brain fever lay tossing on her miserable bed of fire and thorns-the man whom this strong, faithful heart had loved too well, rode out from the city on his gallant but desperate enterprize—proud and undismayed as a conqueror marching to assured victory, with exultant energy and tameless vigour bounding through every vein-but dogged by a foe as irreconcileable, as inevitable, as deadly, as the sullen doom which hung over the fabled heroes of an elder world-embodied for him in the shape of Norman

Scott.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.

Elle n' attendit pas un second avenir,
Elle ne languit pas de doute en espérance,
Elle ne disputa pas sa vie à la souffrance,
Elle but d'un seul trait le vase de douleur.

LAMARTINE.

Ir is impossible for any reflecting person to have passed through the world without observing the remarkable providence by which the great events of our existence, the intense joys and equally intense sorrows which seem intended to give us a foretaste of our capacity for perfect bliss or unutterable woe, are mercifully confined to such short periods of time that we do not sink beneath the latter, nor cling too exclusively to the former. Were it otherwise--were such happiness as we are sometimes permitted rather to perceive than to feel more lasting than it is ever known to be-earth would become our home, and the better country, that is, the heavenly, only a change from one sphere of rapture to another-we should cease to long for it; while if, as in mercy is forbidden, the maddening bitterness of some anguish could be prolonged, with the sensibility which endures it, what better image could we have of that fearful reality--living death? But both such gifts, the one scarcely more fatal than the other, are denied by a wisdom which is foolishness