The wand was shivered into splinters, and the Logan rang with the violence of the concussion: but it remained fixed as a rock!

A momentary pause ensued, during which every breath was suspended with anxiety, and which was at last broken by a groan of the Arch Druid's, who knew too well that fraud had been practised, but dared not expose it.

No.-He

He spake

His too

What were the feelings of Pudens during this moment? Did he rave with desperation? No.-Did he tremble with terror? felt neither desperation nor terror. not-he moved not-he felt not. sanguine disposition had construed the kind advice of the Arch Druid into a promise of success; and disappointment, coming with the suddenness and violence of a thunderbolt, had stunned him. There he stood, with his right arm advanced, as though the lance had hardly left it, and his right foot raised behind him ; bereft of all thought and notion like the statue of Apollo when the fatal quoit had brought his favourite Hyacinthus to the ground. The heaven-rending shout of the multitude seemed to recall his life, but not his senses; and he was carried off unresisting, and almost unconscious.

The sacred torches, which had been borne in procession, were now laid on the altar, and the fire rekindled. The priests resumed their places, and the bards their harps. In the meantime they proceeded to divest Pudens of his helmet and breast-plate, and to bare the upper part of his body; and while some of the Flamens were thus employed, others prepared the leathern thongs to bind his limbs, and the chief of the Ovates placed a chaplet of mistletoe on his brows.

On tearing aside his tunic, some object met the view of the officiating priest, which seemed to excite his astonishment; and the Augur having had his attention directed to it, no sooner beheld it than he let fall his divining rod, and tore his hair. The Arch Druid was now sent for; and he having gazed an instant, uttered a wild sound, something between a shriek and a groan, and fell powerless to the ground!

The cause of this extraordinary emotion was, that on Pudens's breast appeared the figure of a crown, surmounted with an oak leaf, and having a cipher below; all rudely traced in minute punctures of the skin, which had been afterwards stained with woad.(A)

The mark of a crown was frequently impressed by the Kings of Britain upon their sons; and if they were of the druidical order, the oakleaf was superadded; forming together one of the most honourable insignia of royal birth. In the present instance, it not only conveyed this mysterious information to the Augur; but it convinced the Arch Druid, at a glance, that the victim about to be immolated was none other than his own son !

The Arch Druid had formerly been King of the Hædui, or people of Somersetshire; but his territories had been ravished from him by the Belgæ, who, in their invasion, had carried off his infant son. The chief of the Belgians, having afterwards been summoned away hastily to Gaul, where the far larger portion of his dominions lay, had taken Pudens with him; and his countrymen having meanwhile risen in insurrection against the Romans, and been obliged to deliver up hostages of the chief of the nation, he had dispatched him to Rome in the place of his own son. As all this had happened nearly twenty years ago, this long interval had elapsed since the unhappy father had received any intelligence of his lost child.

But we must recall our attention from the

past adventures of the father and son to their present situation. The father had just strength enough to whisper, almost inaudibly, but in an agony of emotion, "Save him!-save him!" a behest which, however, involved a task not so easy of accomplishment as it might at first appear; for the fire was burning fearfully, the people were waiting impatiently, and the sacrifice could not be deferred without assigning some reason, while, as yet, no reason could be devised. A council of the Druids was, therefore, immediately called to advise upon the emergency; and all was mystery and confusion, discord and irresolution.

Happily, the Augur thought of an expedient which seemed to meet all the difficulties of their present embarrassment. The body of the Roman which Pudens had seen, and which had thrilled him with such horror, having, as above stated, fallen from the car unconsumed; it was proposed to substitute this in the place of their intended victim. As the people were at a distance, and as the fitful glare of the flames was frequently intercepted by different persons passing to and fro in the exercise of their functions, there was sufficient obscurity to favour the fraud, and to render it undiscoverable.

It might here be proper to observe, that this corpse was the body of the Roman Centurion, Valens, who had been slain in the morning rencontre, and which had been dragged hither at the command of some of the Ovates, to subserve the purposes of augury.

Pudens had, by this time, become sensible of the reality of his horrible situation, and had just begun to look wildly around him, in hopeless anguish; when he felt the leathern thongs which confined him loosened, and a white garment thrown around him. A voice at the same time whispered, "If thou art silent thou art safe; follow me :" and he was led by the hand, hastily, and almost unconsciously, to a little distance, where he was told to remain concealed.

From this hiding-place he had an indistinct view of what was passing around him; and he used afterwards to describe his feelings as being of the most extraordinary nature. The adventures of the evening had been of such an appalling character, and had succeeded each other with such an overwhelming rapidity-they had been so fraught with horrors, and, at the same time, so unlike anything real, that he had ever experienced or heard of-that he felt bewildered. He was, indeed, so unable to connect his present