dreadful effect upon Mr. Harding than the sad reality before him. He trembled, sickened, fainted, and fell senseless on the ground.

Assistance was promptly procured, and the wounded sufferers were carefully removed to their respective dwellings. Frederick Langdale's sufferings were much greater than those of his companion, and in addition to severe fractures of two of his limbs, the wound upon the head presented a most terrible appearance, and excited the greatest alarm in his medical attendants.

Mr. Harding, whose temperate course of life was greatly advantageous to his case, had suffered comparatively little: a simple fracture of the arm and dislocation of the collar-bone, (which was the extent of his misfortune), were, by skil. ful treatment and implicit obedience to professional commands, soon pronounced in a state of improvement; but a wound had been inflicted which no doctor could heal. The conviction that the woman, whose anger he had incurred, had, if not the power of producing evil, at least a prophetic spirit, and that he had twice again to see her before the fulfilment of her prophecy, struck deep into his mind: and although he felt himself more at ease when he had communicated to Mrs. Harding the fact of having seen the gipsy at the moment of the accident, it was impossible for him to rally from the shock which his nerves had received. It was in vain he tried to shake off the perpetual apprehension of again beholding her.

Frederick Langdale remained for some time in a very precarious state. All visitors were ex

cluded from his room, and a wretched space of two months passed, during which his affectionate Maria had never been allowed to see him, nor to write to, nor to hear from him. While her constitution, like that of my poor Fanny Meadows, was gradually giving way to the constant operation of solicitude and sorrow.

Mr. Harding meanwhile recovered rapidly, but his spirits did not keep pace with his mending health the dread he felt of quitting his house, the tremor excited in his breast by a knocking at the door, or the approach of a footstep, lest the intruder should be the basilisk Martha, were not to be described; and the appearance of his poor Maria did not tend to dissipate the gloom which hung over his mind.

When Frederick at length was sufficiently recovered to receive visitors, Maria was not sufficiently well to visit him: she was too rapidly sinking into an early grave, and even the physician himself appeared desirous of preparing her parents for the worst, while she, full of the symptomatic prospectiveness of the disease, talked anticipatingly of future happiness, when Frederick would be sufficiently reestablished to visit her.

At length, however, the doctors suggested a change of air-a suggestion instantly attended to, but alas! too late; the weakness of the poor girl was such, that upon a trial of her strength it was found inexpedient to attempt her removal.

In this terrible state, separated from him whose all she was, did the exemplary patient linger, and life seemed flickering in her flushing cheek;

and her eye was sunken, and her parched lip quivered with pain.

It was at length agreed, that on the following day Frederick Langdale might be permitted to visit her:-his varied fractures were reduced, and the wound on the head had assumed a favourable appearance. The carriage was ordered to convey him to the Hardings at one, and the physician advised by all means, that Maria should be apprized of and prepared for the meeting, the day previous to its taking place. Those who are parents, and those alone, will be able to understand the tender solicitude, the wary caution with which both her father and mother proceeded in a disclosure, so important as the medical men thought, to her recovery-so careful that the coming joy should be imparted gradually to their suffering child, and that all the mischiefs resulting from an abrupt announcement should be avoided.

They sat down by her-spoke of FrederickMaria joined in the conversation-raised herself in her bed-by degrees, hope was excited that she might soon again see him-this hope was gradually improved into certainty-the period at which it might occur spoken of—that period again progressively diminished: the anxious girl caught the whole truth--she knew it—she was conscious that she should behold him on the morrow-she burst into a flood of tears and sank down upon her pillow.

At that moment the bright sun, which was shining in all its splendour, beamed into the room, and fell strongly upon her flushed coun

tenance.

"Draw the blind down, my love," said Mrs. Harding to her husband. Harding rose and proceeded to the window.

A shriek of horror burst from him-" She is there!" exclaimed he.

"Who?" cried his astonished wife.

"She-she-the horrid she!"

Mrs. Harding ran to the window and beheld on the opposite side of the street, with her eyes fixed attentively on the house-MARTHA, THE GIPSY.

"Draw down the blind, my love, and come away; pray come away," said Mrs. Harding. Harding drew down the blind.

"What evil is at hand?" sobbed the agonized

man.

A loud scream from Mrs. Harding, who had returned to the bedside, was the horrid answer to his painful questions.

Maria was dead!

Twice of the thrice had he seen the dreadful fiend in human shape; each visitation was (as she had foretold) to surpass the preceding one, in its importance of horror-What could surpass this?

Before the afflicted parents lay their innocent child stretched in the still sleep of death; neither of them believed it true-it seemed like a horrid dream. Harding was bewildered, and turned from the corpse of his beloved, to the window he had just left. Martha was gone-and he heard her singing a wild and joyous air at the other end of the street.

The servants were summoned-medical aid was called in-but it was all too late! and the

wretched parents were doomed to mourn their loved, their lost Maria. George, her fond and affectionate brother, who was at Oxford, hastened from all the academic honours which were waiting him, to follow to her grave his beloved sister. The effect upon Frederick Langdale was most dreadful, it was supposed that he would never recover from a shock so great, and at the moment so unexpected; for, although the delicacy of her constitution was a perpetual source of uneasiness and solicitude, still the immediate symptoms had taken rather a favourable turn during the last few days of her life, and had reinvigorated the hopes which those who so dearly loved her, entertained of her eventual recovery. Of this distressed young man I never indeed heard any thing, till about three years after, when I saw it announced in the papers that he was married to the only daughter of a rich west-country baronet, which, if I wanted to work out a proverb here, would afford me a most admirable opportunity of doing so.

The death of poor Maria, and the dread which her father entertained of the third visitation of Martha, made the most complete change in the affairs of the family. By the exertion of powerful interest, he obtained an appointment for his son to act as his deputy in the office which he held, and having achieved this desired object, resolved on leaving England for a time, and quitting a neighbourhood where he must be perpetually exposed to the danger which he was now perfectly convinced was inseparable from his next interview with the weird woman.