longer, when, if the "muckle siller bell" was still silent, she would run the risk of Lady Libberton's displeasure, and return to her lodging, not wishing to be alone in the streets after dark, although in the absence of the soldiers, which Eppie so much deplored, the thoroughfares had become in every way safer and more agreeable to traverse, especially at night. Meanwhile, as she was very tired, and had been suffering from violent headache increased by the unusual and oppressive mildness of the spring weather, she ensconced herself in the most comfortable of the wizard-like arm-chairs; and, what with fatigue, and the soothing effect of the twilight stillness in the sombre apartment, she had not sat there ten minutes before every idea which had passed through her mind that evening lost all distinct outline, and became jumbled together in a confusion which, little by little, as her slumber grew deeper, cleared away into a vision more distinct and more vivid than Alice had ever dreamed before.

She was walking with Flora in the haunts of her girlhood, a child no longer, but her own very self, conscious, even in sleep, of the transformation which had cast childish things far behind. Their careless steps had led them through the waving, sunny woodshow familiar the rich fragrance seemed to her!-down to a favourite spot on the banks of the Carrig Burn; and she remembered how Flora had once compared the liquid lustre of her handsome kinsman's eyes to the brown, brown current" of its shady pools. As they stood together, Flora's arm round her waist, and her head on Flora's shoulder, idly gazing into the clear

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profundity,-watching the trembling glimpses of deep blue sky which glanced through the overhanging trees, like a shy beauty half frightened to part her dark locks from her face and behold her own azure orbs in her mirror-lo! from the depths of the lovely waters a form seemed to arise-a head with stern, glazed, dead eyes that froze her blood, and livid lips that writhed, and gibbered, and mocked her. She shrieked, and shuddered, and hid her face, but, turn where she would, it threatened her-that "shape which shape had none "-now in the dim semblance of her father, with brow of awe and condemnation, now in the likeness of Norman, with words of shame and scorn, which echoed through her brain like the trump of an avenging angel. Then, suddenly, she knew not how, the figure beside her became that of Lord Dundee; and, all fear forgotten at once, she clung to him, and lay upon his breast in a rapture of love—a speechless, unutterable agony of happiness-such as is never vouchsafed to us but in dreams, lest it might make us forget heaven. Time-such time as mortal joys are measured byseemed annihilated in the long, passionate kiss, which drew her very soul to his-the tremor of mortal terror swallowed up in the quiver which awoke every chilled pulse, as his long, perfumed hair swept over her cheek, as his breath stirred the light curls on her neck, and his strong arm held her in a clasp which seemed to challenge the whole world to part them, while he told her that he was free to love her now, and whispered in her entranced ear words which seemed echoes of Paradise. And she wept in his fond embrace, and

sobbed in the very extremity of her ecstacy, telling him how long and silently she had suffered for his dear sake; but, looking up to meet that smile which could make all sorrow precious, she saw his face change from its glow of ardour and beauty into the hideous image which haunted her; the eloquent lips became those of a corpse, the lustrous eyes sank from their sockets, the noble features faded to ghastly skin and bone, the detaining arms, in which she had nestled like a tender bird in its home, changed to the fleshless limbs of a skeleton, and stifled her with their spectral pressure. Sick, wild, desperate with horror, she strove to scream, to struggle forth into flight; but the air had grown cold and dank as in a charnel-vault, the sky black as midnight, a loud clap of thunder reverberated through the valley like the crack of doom, and Alice awoke, trembling and affrighted, to find herself alone in the empty room, with no soul by, whether friend or foe.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE LION AND THE MOUSE.

Mur. I am one, my liege,

Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world

Have so incensed, that I am reckless what
I do, to spite the world.

Macb. So he is mine; and in such bloody distance,

That every minute of his being thrusts
Against my near'st of life.

MACBETH.

ALICE awoke, as we said in our last chapter, to find her dream nothing but a dream, except in two particulars the darkness, and the noise which had so opportunely roused her. Not a glimmer of daylight was left; the very window-spaces were hardly distinguishable from the walls; but she had no leisure to speculate upon how long she had been there, for the crash of the iron-plated and massive street-door was immediately followed by the incontrovertible sounds of two men's voices. Angry with herself for giving way to slumber, and, perhaps, a little with Eppie for admitting her where in truth she had no right to be, she sprang up with all her wits about her, and tried to make her exit by one door while the new comers were unlocking that of the front apartment. Unluckily, as she thought, the key refused to move,

it was rusty and stiff; so, as time pressed, she stole across the room, and, by an impulse which considering its results might be termed providential, threw herself behind the group of chairs in the window embrasure, reducing herself to the smallest possible compass, and, with great presence of mind, drawing her black muffler entirely over her head, face, and arms, so that their light colour should not strike the eye of any person entering.

She had hardly stilled herself, and not had a moment to reflect whether she had done a wise thing in thus concealing herself, and whether it might not have been a great deal better and easier to have faced the owner at once, and obtained immediate egress, when the sound of heavy feet resounded in the adjacent apartment, and the clank of a broadsword, which rattled sharply in its iron sheath as the wearer stumbled against some article of furniture.

"Blood and fury! Why do you decoy one into this wolf's den of yours to break one's neck?” ejaculated the individual in question; adding to the inquiry a by no means flattering adjuration.

His companion, whoever he was, made no reply, but appeared, from various noises, to be groping about for the means of striking a light. But, if he were unmoved by the speaker's coarse accents, not so was Alice-for she instantly, and without a shadow of doubt, remembered tones which had been too closely associated with the great epoch of her life not to be familiar for ever after. It was the voice of Drummond.

"Now heaven help and deliver me, for I am in the