least, scrupulously to obey his other whims. And, besides, I don't know, there are odd noises about the old house. I don't believe in haunted houses, still there is something dreary in strange sounds at the dead of night, even if made by rats, or winds through decaying rafters. You, I remember at college, had a taste for architecture, and can draw plans. I wish to follow out Sir Philip's design, but on a smaller scale, and with more attention to comfort." to that condition my promise? "If regard to it, I think I ought, at you are asked to the house at which I also am a guest, you will come; you will meet and converse with me as guest speaks to guest in the house of a host!" Was this one of the coincidences which my reason was bound to accept as coincidences, and nothing more? Tut, tut! Was I returning again to my "hallucinations?" Granting that Faber and common sense were in the right, what was this Margrave? A man to whose friendship, acuteness, and energy I was under the deepest obligations-to whom I was indebted for active services that had saved my life 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. You will have done your day's work by then?" "Yes; I will so arrange." On our way to Derval Court that evening, Strahan talked much about Margrave, of whom, nevertheless, he seemed to be growing weary. "His high spirits are too much for one," said he; "and then so restless -so incapable of sustained quiet conversation. And, clever though he is, he can't help me in the least about the new house I shall build. He has no notion of construction. I don't think he could build a barn." "I thought you did not like to demolish the old house, and would content yourself with pulling down the more ancient part of it?" "True. At first it seemed a pity to destroy so handsome a mansion; but you 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 Thus he continued to run on, satisfied to find me a silent and attentive listener. We arrived at the mansion an hour before sunset, the westering light shining full against the many windows cased in mouldering pilasters, and making the general dilapidation of the old place yet more mournfully evident. It was but a few minutes to the dinner-hour. I went up at once to the room appropriated to me-not the one I had before occupied. Strahan had already got together a new establishment. I was glad to find in the servant who attended me an old acquaintance. He had been in my own employ when I first settled at L, and left me to get married. He and his wife were now both in Strahan's service. He spoke warmly of his new master and his contentment with his situation, while he unpacked my carpet-bag and assisted me to change my dress. But the chief object of his talk and his praise was Mr. Margrave. "Such a bright young gentleman, like the first fine day in May!" When I entered the drawingroom, 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 princi pal talker; recounting incidents of something trite and commonplace travel, always very loosely strung compared with one of those vague together, jesting, good-humouredly intimations of a spiritual destiny enough, at Strahan's sudden hobby which are not within the ordinary for building, then putting questions domain of reason; and, gazing abto me about mutual acquaintances, stractedly into space, will leave susbut never waiting for an answer; pended some problem of severest and every now and then, as if at thought, or uncompleted some random, startling us with some bril- golden palace of imperial poetry, liant aphorism, or some suggestion to indulge in hazy reveries, that do drawn from abstract science or un- not differ from those of an innocent familiar erudition. The whole effect quiet child! The soul has a long was sparkling, but I could well road to travel-from time through understand that, if long continued, eternity. It demands its halting it would become oppressive. The hours of contemplation. Contemsoul has need of pauses of repose-plation is serene. But with such intervals of escape, not only from the flesh, but even from the mind. A man of the loftiest intellect will experience times when mere intellect not only fatigues him, but amidst its most original conceptions, amidst its proudest triumphs, has a wants of an immortal immaterial spirit, Margrave had no fellowship, no sympathy; and for myself, I need scarcely add that the lines I have just traced I should not have written at the date at which my narrative has now arrived. CHAPTER XLIX. I HAD no case that necessitated my return to L- the following day. The earlier 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 of the volumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip's library was so rich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read that crabbed and difficult Greek with a fluency that surprised me. "I picked up the ancient Greek," said he, "years ago, in learning the modern." But the book soon tired him; then he would come and dis turb us, archly enjoying Strahan's peevishness at interruption; then he would throw open the window and leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs; and in another moment he was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broad limetree, amidst the antlers of deer that gathered fondly round him. In the afternoon my host was called away to attend some visitors of importance, and I found myself on the sward before the house, right in view of the mausoleum and alone with Margrave. I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein rested the corpse of the last lord of the soil, so strangely murdered, with a strong | desire to speak out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself that tortured me. But-setting aside the promise to the contrary, which I had given, or dreamed I had given, to the Luminous Shadow-to fulfil | that desire would have been impossible-impossible to any one gazing on that radiant youthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him then a white doe, that even my presence could not scare away from him, clung lovingly to his side, looking up at him with her soft eyes. He stood there like the incarnate principle of mythological sensuous life. I have before applied to him that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned. Impossible, I repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, "Art thou the master of demoniac arts, and the instigator of secret murder?" As if from redundant happiness within himself, he was humming, or rather cooing, a strain of music, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike the music one hears from tutored lips in crowded rooms! I passed my hand over my forehead in bewilderment and awe. "Are there," I said, unconsciously are there, indeed, such prodigies in Nature?" "Nature!" he cried, catching up the word; "talk to me of Nature! Talk of her, the wondrous blissful mother! Mother I may well call her. I am her spoiled child, her darling. But oh, to die, ever to die, ever to lose sight of Nature! to rot, senseless, whether under these turfs or within those dead walls-" I could not resist the answer. "Like yon murdered man! murdered, and by whom?" "Tush! the poor wretch spoke of a Demon. Who can tell? Nature herself is a 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 of hunger, but for the wanton ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcely taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in destroying. We speak with dread of the beasts of prey: what beast of prey is so dire a ravager as man?-so cruel and so treacherous? Look at yon flock of sheep, bred and fattened for the shambles; and this hind that I caress,—if I were the parkkeeper, and her time for my bullet had come, would you think her life was the safer because, in my own idle whim, I had tamed her to trust to the hand raised to slay her?" "It is true," said I-"a grim truth. Nature, on the surface so loving and so gentle, is full of terror in her deeps when our thought descends into their abyss!" Strahan now joined us with a party of country visitors. "Margrave is the man to show you the beauties of this park," said he. 'Margrave knows every bosk and dingle, twisted old thorn-tree, or opening glade, in its intricate, undulating ground." Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition; and as he led us through the park, though the way was long, though the sun was fierce, no one seemed fatigued. For the pleasure he felt in pointing out detached beauties which escaped an ordinary eye was contagious. He did not talk as talks the poet or the painter: but at some lovely effect of light "By whom? I thought that was amongst the tremulous leaves, some clearly proved." sudden glimpse of a sportive rivulet "The hand was proved; what in- below, he would halt, point it out fluence moved the hand ?" to us in silence, and with a kind of childlike ecstasy in his own bright | breathed round him, not to feel a face, that seemed to reflect the life and the bliss of the blithe summerday itself. Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret nature faded away-all my horror, all my hate; it was impossible to resist the charm that tender, affectionate yearning towards him as to some fair happy child. Well might he call himself the Darling of Nature. Was he not the mysterious likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful as Apollo in one aspect, direful as Typhon in another? CHAPTER L. "WHAT a strange-looking cane you and graven with half-obliterated have, sir!" said a little girl, who was one of the party, and who had entwined her arm round Margrave's. "Let me look at it." "Yes," said Strahan; "that cane, or rather walking-staff, is worth looking at. Margrave bought it in Egypt, and declares that it is very ancient." This staff seemed constructed from a reed: looked at, it seemed light, in the hand it felt heavy; it was of a pale, faded yellow, wrought with black rings at equal distances, *The following description of a stone at Corfu, celebrated as an antidote to the venom of the serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminent scholar and legal functionary in that island: "DESCRIPTION OF THE BLUE STONE.This stone is of an oval shape 12 in. long, broad, thick, and, having been broken formerly, is now set in gold. "When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake, the bite must be opened by a cut of a lancet or razor longways, and the stone applied within twenty-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. The stone must then be thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poison it has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the milk, and the stone is then again fit for use. characters that seemed hieroglyphic. I remembered to have seen Margrave with it before, but I had never noticed it with any attention until now, when it was passed from hand to hand. At the head of the cane there was a large unpolished 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 to cure the bite of serpents,* "This stone has been from time immemorial in the family of Ventura, of Corfu, a house of Italian origin, and is notorious, so that peasants immediately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been impaired by the fracture. Its nature or composition is unknown. "In a case where two were stung at the same time by serpents, the stone was applied to one, who recovered; but the other, for whom it could not be used, died. "It never failed but once, and then it was applied after the twenty-four hours. "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 an account of "snake stones" apparently and has other supposed virtues—a others, and are better employed 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 staff with me, till, suddenly, I forced it back on him. I I could not have explained why, but its touch, as it warmed in my clasp, seemed to send through my whole frame a singular thrill, and a sensation as if I no longer felt my own weight-as if I walked on air. in rewarding good artists than in making bad drawings themselves." "Yes, I can employ others; and -Fenwick, when you have finished with Strahan, I will ask permission to employ you, though without reward; the task 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 now pretty well finished and decided on. Margrave woke up as our host left the room to dress, and drawing me towards another table in the room, placed before me one of his favourite mystic books, and, pointing to an old woodcut, said: Our rambles came to a close; the visitors went away; I re-entered the house through the sash-window of Forman's study: Margrave threw his hat and staff on the table, and amused himself with examining minutely the tracery on the mantelpiece. Strahan and myself left him thus occupied, and, going into the "I will ask you to copy this for adjoining library, resumed our task me; it pretends to be a fac-simile of examining the plans for the new of Solomon's famous seal. I have a house. I continued to draw out-whimsical desire to have a copy lines and sketches of various altera- of it. You observe two triangles tions, tending to simplify and con- interlaced and inserted in a circle? tract Sir Philip's general design. Margrave soon joined us, and, this time, took his seat patiently beside our table, watching me use ruler and compass with unwonted attention. "I wish I could draw," he said, "but I can do nothing useful.” "Rich men like you," said Strahan, peevishly, can engage similar to the one at Corfu, except that they are "intensely black and highly polished," and which are applied, in much the same manner, to the wounds inflicted by the cobra-capella. Query.-Might it not be worth while to ascertain the chemical properties of these stones, and, if they be efficacious in the extraction of venom conveyed by a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to the bite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra-capella P -the pentacle, in short. Yes, just |