return; and wo betide you if you again quit it without my permission!"

Rebecca retreated. Her importunities had prevailed upon Urfried to suffer her to quit the turret, and Urfried had employed her services where she herself would most gladly have paid them, by the bed-side of the wounded Ivanhoe. With an understanding awake to their dangerous situation, and prompt to avail herself of each means of safety which occurred, Rebecca had hoped something from the presence of a man of religion, who, she learned from Urfried; had penetrated into this godless castle. She watched the return of this supposed ecclesiastic, with the purpose of addressing him, and interesting him in favour of the prisoners; with what imperfect success the reader has been just acquainted.

CHAPTER IV.

Fond wretch! and what canst thou relate,
But deeds of sorrow, shame, and sin?
Thy deeds are proved-thou know'st thy fate;
But come, thy tale-begin-begin.

clamours and menaces

WHEN Urfried had with driven Rebecca back to the apartment from which she had sallied, she, proceeded to conduct the unwilling Cedric, into a small apartment, the door of which she heedfully secured. Then fetching from a cupboard a stoup of wine and two flagons, she placed them on the table and said, in a tone rather asserting a fact than asking a question, "Thou art a Saxon, fa ther-Deny it not," she continued, observing that Cedric hastened not to reply; "the sounds of my native language are sweet to mine ears, though seldom heard save from the tongues of the wretched and degraded serfs, on whom the proud Normans impose the meanest drudgery of this dwelling. Thou art a Saxon father a Saxon, and save as thou art a servant of God, a freeman-thine accents are sweet in mine ear."

"Do no Saxon priests visit this castle, then?" replied Cedric; "it were, methinks, their duty to comfort the outcast and oppressed children of the soil."

26 They come not-or if they come, they better love to revel at the boards of their conquerors," answered Urfrid, "than to hear the groans of their countrymen-so, at least, report speaks of them-of myself, I can say little. This castle, for ten years, has opened to no priest save the debauched Norman chaplain who partook the nightly revels of Front-de-Boeuf, and he has been long gone to render an account of his stewardship. But thou art a Saxon-a Saxon priest, and I have one question to ask at thee."

"I am a Saxon," answered Cedric, "but unworthy, surely, of the name of priest. Let me be gone on my way I swear I will return, or send one of our fathers more worthy to hear your confession."

"Stay yet a while," said Urfried; "the accents of the voice which thou hearest now, will soon be choaked with the cold earth, and I would not descend to it like the beast I have lived. But wine must give me strength to tell the horrors of my tale." She poured out a cup, and drank it with a frightful avidity, which seemed desirous of draining the last drop in the goblet. "It stupifies," she said, looking upwards as she finished her draught, “but it can not cheer-Partake it, father, if you would hear my tale without sinking down upon the pavement." Cedric would have avoided pledging her in this ominous conviviality, but the sign which she made to him expressed impatience and despair. He complied with her request, and answered her challenge in a large wine cup; she then continued her story, as if appeased by his complaisance.

"I was not born," said she, "father, the wretch, that thou now see'st me. I was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved. I am now a slave, miserable and degraded-the sport of my master's passions while I had yet beauty-the object of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, when it has passed away.-Dost thou wonder, father, that I should hate mankind, and, over all, the race that has

wrought this change in me? Can the wrinkled, decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent itself in impotent curses, forget she was once the daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?"

"Thou the daughter of Torquil Wolfganger!” said Cedric, receding as he spoke; " thou-thou the daughter of that noble Saxon, my father's friend and companion in arms!"

"Thy father's friend!" echoed Urfried; "then Cedric called the Saxon stands before me, for the noble Hereward of Rotherwood had but one son, whose name is well known ́among his countrymen. But if thou art Cedric of Rothevwood, why this religious dress?-Hast thou too despaired of saving thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in the shade of the convent?"

"It matters not who I am," said Cedric," proceed, unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and guilt! Guilt there must be-there is guilt in even thy living to tell it."

"There is there is," answered the wretched woman," deep, black, damning guilt-guilt, that lies like a load in my breast-guilt, that all the penitential fires of hereafter can not cleanse.-Yes, in these halls, stained with the noble and pure blood of my father and my brethern-in these very halls, to have lived the paramourof their murderer, the slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures, was to render every breath which I drew of vital air, a crime and a curse."

"And

"Wretched woman!" exclaimed Cedric. while the friends of thy father-while each true Saxon heart, as it breathed a requiem for his soul and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their prayers the murdered Ulrica-while all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit our hate and execration-lived to unite thyself with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearestwho shed the blood of infancy, rather than a male

of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger should survive with him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the bands of lawless love!"

"In lawless bands indeed, but not in those of love," answered the hag; "love will sooner visit the regions of eternal doom, than those unhallowed vaults. No, with that at least I can not reproach myself-hatred to Front-de-Bœuf and his race governed my soul most deeply, even in the hour of his guilty endearments."

"You hated him, and yet you lived," replied Cedric; "wretch! was there no poniard-no`knife-no bodkin? Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence that the secrets of a Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a true Saxon had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour."

"Wouldst thou, indeed have done this justice to the name of Torquil?" said Ulrica, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of Urfried; " thou art then the true Saxon report speaks thee! for even within these accursed walls, where, as thou well say'st, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of Cedric been sounded-and I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation.-I alsohave had my hours of vengeance-I have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken revelry into murderous broil-I have seen their blood flow -I have heard their dying groans!-Look on me Cedric are there not still left on this foul and faded face some traces of Torquil's features?"

"Ask me not of them, Ulrica," replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; "these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the grave of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse.

"Be it so," answered Ulrica; "yet wore these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder Front-de