or woe in the term of its tenure here—as for my life, your aid is now idle; my own vision obscure; on my life a dark and cold shadow is resting. I cannot foresee if it will pass away. When I strive to look around, I see but my Allen-""

rightly, recognises the powers for the real cause-viz., that when I self-cure which the condition of visited her at sunrise, she was not trance will sometimes bestow on in sleep but in trance, and in that the sufferer, 'where' (says the father trance she told me that she had of our art) the sight being closed nothing more to suggest or reveal; to the external, the soul more truth- that on the complete restoration of fully perceives the affections of the her senses, which was at hand, the body.' In short-I own it-in this abnormal faculties vouchsafed to instance, the skill of the physician trance would be withdrawn. 'As has been a compliant obedience for my life,' she said quietly, as if to the instinct called forth in the unconscious of our temporary joy patient. And the hopes I have hitherto permitted myself to give you, were founded on my experience that her own hopes, conceived in trance, had never been fallacious or exaggerated. The simples that I gathered for her yesterday she had described; they are not in our herbal. But as they are sometimes used by the natives, I had the curiosity to analyse their chemical properties shortly after I came to the colony, and they seemed to me as innocent as lime-blossoms. They are rare in this part of Australia, but she told me where I should find them-a remote spot, which she has certainly never visited. Last night, when you saw me disturbed, dejected, it was because, for the first time, the docility with which she had hitherto, in her waking state, obeyed her own injunctions in the state of trance, forsook me. She could not be induced to taste the decoction I had made from the herbs; and if you found me this morning with weaker hopes than before, this is

"And so," said I, mastering my emotions, "in bidding me hope, you did not rely on your own resources of science, but on the whisper of nature in the brain of your patient ?" "It is so."

We both remained silent some moments, and then, as he disappeared within my house, I murmured:

"And when she strives to look beyond the shadow, she sees only me! Is there some prophet-hint of Nature there also, directing me not to scorn the secret which a wanderer, so suddenly dropt on my solitude, assures me that Nature will sometimes reveal to her seeker? And oh! that dark wanderer-has Nature a marvel more weird than himself ?"

CHAPTER LXXVI.

I gathered rapidly and succinctly as your hint to Faber clearly retogether all that I knew and all that vealed-were you aware that, in yon I guessed of Margrave's existence house, where the sorrow is veiled, and arts. I commenced from my where the groan is suppressed, Vision in that mimic Golgotha of where the foot-tread falls ghostlike, creatures inferior to man, close by there struggles now between life the scene of man's most trivial and and death my heart's twin, my meaningless pastime. I went on- world's sunshine? Ah! through Derval's murder; the missing con- my terror for her, is it a demon that tents of the casket; the apparition tells you how to bribe my abhorseen by the maniac assassin guiding rence into submission, and supple him to the horrid deed; the lumi- my reason into use to your ends ?" nous haunting Shadow; the positive charge in the murdered man's memoir connecting Margrave with Louis Grayle, and accusing him of the murder of Haroun; the night in the moonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful influence on Lilian; the struggle between me and himself in the house by the seashore;-The strange All that is told in this Strange Story.

Margrave had listened to me throughout with a fixed attention, at times with a bewildered stare, at times with exclamations of surprise, but not of denial. And when I had done, he remained for some moments silent, seemingly stupefied, passing his hand repeatedly over his brow, in the gesture so familiar to him in former days.

At length he said, quietly, without evincing any sign either of resentment or humiliation :

"In much that you tell me I recognise myself: in much I am as lost in amazement as you in wild doubt or fierce wrath. Of the effect that you say Philip Derval produced on me I have no recollection. Of himself I have only this-that he was my foe, that he came to England intent on schemes to shorten my life or destroy its enjoyments. All my faculties tend to self-preservation; there, they converge as rays in a focus; in that focus they illume and

But, warming as I spoke, and in a kind of fierce joy to be enabled thus to free my own heart of the doubts that had burdened it, now that I was fairly face to face with the being by whom my reason had been so perplexed and my life so tortured, I was restrained by none of the fears lest my own fancy deceived me, with which in his absence I had striven to reduce to natural causes the portents of terror and wonder. I stated plainly, directly, the beliefs, the impressions which I had never dared even to myself to own without seeking to-they burn. I willed to destroy my explain them away. And coming at last to a close, I said: "Such are the evidences that seem to me to justify abhorrence of the life that you ask me to aid in prolonging. Your own tale of last night but confirms them. And why to meto me-do you come with wild entreaties to lengthen the life that has blighted my own? How did you even learn the home in which I sought unavailing refuge? How

intended destroyer. Did my will enforce itself on the agent to which it was guided? Likely enough. Be it so. Would you blame me for slaying the tiger or serpent-not by the naked hand, but by weapons that arm it? But what could tiger and serpent do more against me than the man who would rob me of life? He had his arts for assault-I had mine for self-defence. He was to me as the tiger that creeps through

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CHAPTER LXXV I.

I STRAYED through the forest till noon, in debate with myself, and strove to shape my wild doubts into purpose, before I could nerve and compose myself again to face Margrave alone.

imminent danger, and if gratitude were the attribute of man, as it is of the dog, I should claim your aid to serve mine as a right. Ask me what you will. You must have seen enough of me to know that I do not

others. I regard both with so supreme an indifference, that I believe I am vicious or virtuous unawares. I know not if I can explain what seems to have perplexed you, but if I cannot explain I have no intention to lie. Speak-I listen! We have time enough now before us."

I re-entered the hut. To my sur-affect either the virtues or vices of prise, Margrave was not in the room in which I had left him, nor in that which adjoined it. I ascended the stairs to the kind of loft in which I had been accustomed to pursue my studies, but in which I had not set foot since my alarm for Lilian had suspended my labours. There I saw Margrave quietly seated before the manuscript of my Ambitious Work, which lay open on the rude table just as I had left it, in the midst of its concluding sum

mary.

"I have taken the licence of former days, you see," said Margrave, smiling, "and have hit by chance on a passage I can understand without effort. But why such a waste of argument to prove a fact so simple? In man, as in brute, life once lost is lost for ever; and that is why life is so precious to man."

I took the book from his hand, and flung it aside in wrath. His approval revolted me more with my own theories than all the argumen

tative rebukes of Faber.

"And now," I said, sternly, "the time has come for the explanation you promised. Before I can aid you in any experiment that may serve to prolong your life, I must know how far that life has been a baleful and destroying influence ?"

"I have some faint recollection of having saved your life from an

So saying, he reclined back in the chair, stretching out his limbs wea rily. All round this spoilt darling of Material Nature the aids and appliances of Intellectual Science! Books, and telescopes, and crucibles, with the light of day coming through a small circular aperture in the boarded casement, as I had constructed the opening for my experimental observation of the prismal rays.

While I write, his image is as visible before my remembrance as if before the actual eye-beautiful even in its decay, awful even in its weakness, mysterious as is Nature herself amidst all the mechanism by which our fancied knowledge attempts to measure her laws and analyse her light.

But at that moment no such subtle reflections delayed my inquisitive eager mind from its immediate purpose-who and what was this creature boasting of a secret through which I might rescue from death the life of her who was my all upon the earth?

!

there struggles now between life and death my heart's twin, my world's sunshine? Ah! through my terror for her, is it a demon that tells you how to bribe my abhorrence into submission, and supple my reason into use to your ends ?"

I gathered rapidly and succinctly as your hint to Faber clearly retogether all that I knew and all that vealed-were you aware that, in yon I guessed of Margrave's existence house, where the sorrow is veiled, and arts. I commenced from my where the groan is suppressed, Vision in that mimic Golgotha of where the foot-tread falls ghostlike, creatures inferior to man, close by the scene of man's most trivial and meaningless pastime. I went onDerval's murder; the missing contents of the casket; the apparition seen by the maniac assassin guiding him to the horrid deed; the luminous haunting Shadow; the positive charge in the murdered man's memoir connecting Margrave with Louis Grayle, and accusing him of the murder of Haroun; the night in the moonlit pavilion at Derval Court; the baneful influence on Lilian; the struggle between me and himself in the house by the seashore;-The strange All that is told in this Strange Story.

Margrave had listened to me throughout with a fixed attention, at times with a bewildered stare, at times with exclamations of surprise, but not of denial. And when I had done, he remained for some moments silent, seemingly stupefied, passing his hand repeatedly over his brow, in the gesture so familiar to him in former days.

At length he said, quietly, without evincing any sign either of resentment or humiliation :

"In much that you tell me I recognise myself: in much I am as lost in amazement as you in wild doubt or fierce wrath. Of the effect that you say Philip Derval produced on me I have no recollection. Of himself I have only this-that he was my foe, that he came to England intent on schemes to shorten my life or destroy its enjoyments. All my faculties tend to self-preservation; there, they converge as rays in a focus; in that focus they illume and

But, warming as I spoke, and in a kind of fierce joy to be enabled thus to free my own heart of the doubts that had burdened it, now that I was fairly face to face with the being by whom my reason had been so perplexed and my life so tortured, I was restrained by none of the fears lest my own fancy deceived me, with which in his absence I had striven to reduce to natural causes the portents of terror and wonder. I stated plainly, directly, the beliefs, the impressions which I had never dared even to myself to own without seeking to-they burn. I willed to destroy my explain them away. And coming at last to a close, I said: "Such are the evidences that seem to me to justify abhorrence of the life that you ask me to aid in prolonging. Your own tale of last night but confirms them. And why to meto me-do you come with wild entreaties to lengthen the life that has blighted my own? How did you even learn the home in which I sought unavailing refuge? How

intended destroyer. Did my will enforce itself on the agent to which it was guided? Likely enough. Be it so. Would you blame me for slaying the tiger or serpent-not by the naked hand, but by weapons that arm it? But what could tiger and serpent do more against me than the man who would rob me of life? He had his arts for assault-I had mine for self-defence. He was to me as the tiger that creeps through

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