"I shall endeavour to do so, uncle."

"Well. All that has happened, has happened well, perhaps, for his redemption. But I shall require your assistance, James, in making a salutary experiment upon him." James bowed, and bent his mind to listen. "It is my purpose almost immediately to visit the wretched boy in, I may call it, his prison-chamber."

James slightly started, and ventured to ask, with a subdued earnestness- Is it your opinion, uncle, that full forgiveness, so very suddenly, would be a judicious course ?”

"No, James, such is not my opinion, and I am glad to see by your question that you agree with me. Of forgiveness he shall not hear a word from me at present; he shall hear the very contrary-he shall hear me exhort him to prepare for a public trial, and all its dreadful consequences."

James Hutchinson brightened up. "That's the very way to take with him, sir," he observed; "but- -" and as James paused, his own reasonings on the subject were again hard at work.

"But what? Speak freely-'tis for that purpose we are sitting here together."

"Well, uncle, perhaps I cannot exactly say why, but I do think that a visit from me to him before you see him, might assist the views of your own proposed visit. For instance, building much upon your love and forgiving nature, he may not believe, if learned at first from your own lips, in the reality of your stern determinations towards him; but if, beforehand, I

"You anticipate me, nephew-it was part of my plan that you should go before me, and warn him of my intentions." James looked happier than ever.

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They play my game for me between them," was his thought. "You are his friend," continued Sir Miles, "his confidant, his adviser; and what you express yourself certain of, he cannot help crediting. So go and see him, James. Here is the key of the rooms. Make a sure impression on him; paint to him a verging and inevitable fate, brimful of public shame and horror."

"The course you are pursuing, Sir Miles, is most wisely-indeed I would say, most nobly and even religiously shaped."

"Oh, sir, nothing but terror alone-sheer animal terror-can have any effect upon him now; it asks the grasp of a giant, sir, to snatch him up out of the depths he has fallen into. But if I can brave it out with myself—and there is the battle I fight with my own heart— for I pray Heaven to pardon me, I am still weak in virtuous resolution ;"-his accents broke, and his eyes moistened.

"Love itself will lend you strength, uncle," said James Hutchinson, in a soft voice.

"Yes, or I will compel it to do so, nephew," and Sir Miles again manned himself. "Go, James, go; there is no time to be lost. I reckon much upon your timely assistance; prepare him to receive a wronged, an indignant, and an implacable father."

"I go, uncle and I will so prepare him."

"Well, Heaven speed you; while you speak with him I will visit poor Fanny's bedside, and for a moment there-but, alas! what

ove.

would I say? what do I rave about? I thought of sitting down and smiling with her, poor thing, and I could forget the wilderness around me!"

"One word, Sir Miles; she knows nothing, of course, of poor William's present position ?"

"Certainly she does not-who could be savage enough to acquaint her with it?"

"The intelligence might, indeed, prove very distressing if not dangerous to her; besides, she would, no doubt, insist upon seeing William, and interfering between you and him-and in that case you know, uncle

"Do not fear, James; but I have also a parting word. Your unhappy cousin is not yet aware of the shocking death of his little boy; when Fanny told me the fact in the dining-room, she spoke so faintly, and his miserable senses were so preoccupied, that he could not-did not hear her, in fact. And let the circumstance be still guarded from him. My reason for such a step is this—I wish to keep his mind undiverted in the slightest degree from his present feelings and situation; moreover, in a view of touching his heart, I may happen to find occasion to allude to the poor little creature, and the mentioning of it as living would best suit my purpose. So, James, farewell awhile."

James Hutchinson left the library, his heart much lighter than when he had entered it, for more reasons than one, but particularly for the following reason:-he had attended his uncle's summons under the half-formed but most chilling fear that it was he, his uncle, and not Mike Cassin, who had taken away "the certain little article from between the books on the shelf in his study; but Sir Miles's whole conversation and manner assured him that his apprehensions were groundless; and so, as we have intimated, he trod with buoyant spirits to do his uncle's last commission; quite able to still, for the present, the little flutter of yet unallayed terror which, at the very bottom of his soul, would throb into motion as he asked himself the question "but where, then, can it be?"

He stood before his cousin in a neglected and half-furnished room. When William Hutchinson had entered it, the shutters of all its windows were closed against the night, which then prevailed outside their limit, and a small lamp had been left with him upon a table. At present the lamp still burned, although the cold daylight was shiveringly gleaming in through the chinks of those window-shutters.

"Will you not speak to me, William ?" asked James, after a long pause had ensued between them. He received no answer. "William, will you not speak to me?" he repeated, after another chilling pause. "One word, William, I supplicate you!" Still the prisoner did not utter a word, nor change a muscle of his face or of his body, as he sat at the table on which the lamp dimly burned, leaning on his elbows, and supporting his head between his hands.

James walked slowly about the room, again confronted, and again addressed him, but in vain. Some time had worn away.

"Break this dreadful silence, William, and do let me hear the sound of your voice. Here have I stood watching the stony torpor of your face, and your scowling brow, so still and unchanging that it

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ather-Love.

seems as if it had been carved there. When first I came in, your widened eyes glared over me with such a passionless expression that they chilled me; and, ever since, they are only turned away, resting upon blank vacuity, as if you were alone on earth, and

"So I am," interrupted William, in a hoarse low growl, the utterance of which scarce disturbed the rigid expression of the muscles around his gaping mouth.

"By heaven, old mate, you are not, while James Hutchinson walks the deck of that world with you."

"Leave me,” again muttered William.

"I will not leave you in your present mental weakness," continued James; and while your ruin, from the four quarters of the compass, gathers round you, I will stay to nerve the one, and to share, if I cannot avert, the other."

"Leave me, I say, man."

"You hate me, then, too? No answer? but I can read your heart in your face; you hate me, as you hate all the others"

William suddenly sprang up, and exploded in a way that, to the nerves of any other man than James Hutchinson, would have had something startling and tremendous in it.

"Worm!-for you are a human creature-how in the name of the devil am I to answer you? There are two mighty instincts, we are told, in man's bosom, coiled up and knotted with the very roots of being; and one is the love of parents-and that is strong; and the other is the love of life-and that is strong, too; when these two climb for uppermost (it is frightful to think of it!)—but when they do so-must not one of them choke the other? Answer me !"

"It is but natural," answered James.

"Tame sycophant! it is not natural-but it is worse-inevitable. Hate you! ay, with the whole mass of your living brother-carrion ! Look on me!-I must hate-I do hate-he asks it at my hands—the man who calls me child; and there's a chasm for you-a gluttongaping in nature, that must gorge up all every-day affection! you!--do not call it hatred now-that means a contrast with some other co-existing feelings-call it rather my whole heart-brain— consciousness!"

Hate

"Anything that you like, William," said James, in a mournful voice; with the old serpent's wisdom he would let the hot fit work on ; "anything you like."

Yes, it is my only life, I say-my only sense, and grasp, and aim of life now!—with him-I hate my mother in her tomb-the wife whose bosom had so often been my head's pillow-our first-born boy -that wretched, wretched infant-the child I have not yet kissedyou-your kind—myself—the light that lets us see one another-the breath by which we are left the power of cursing one another-the heavens that will not fall to crush us, or to swathe us-the earth that will not crumble to jamb us in, and confound us!"

"I can understand your feelings, I repeat, William, and from my heart I pity you."

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Pity! give me your hate, too, instead, and I will grapple with it. He does! and henceforward it is the only love I ask from all of you,

and for all of you. Buried mother, become conscious within your tomb, and hate me !-young wife, hate me !-my little infant, if you could do it, hate me!-and each so love each! Let the betrothed girl, and the burdened matron, hate the chosen one, and the promised treasure-let the sucking babe get premature sense to draw out, cunningly, its mother's heart-drop with her milk-parents, watch your innocents while they lie smiling in their sleep, and stab them-and, toddling brats, with your arms twining round the necks of crippled grandfathers—strangle !"

"But how is it to be?" questioned James; "he has sent me here to prepare you for-death!"

"Worse than death! sculptured dishonour on my very name and memory-scorn, scoff, laughter-along with ignominy and wrong! Sent you, you say y? Sent you on such an errand ?”

"I feel a little exhausted," said James, momentarily evading the subject between them, as he took from a small basket, which old Martin had handed to him when he had entered the room, two bottles of wine and two large goblets; "with all the flutter of the night and the morning upon my nerves, I am, indeed, a little faintish, and will try a slight stimulant."

He poured out some wine, and seemed to drink freely. First eying the bottles askance, William wildly followed his example, swallowing draught after draught. And

"Sent you to me with that message ?" he resumed.

"William," answered his cousin, "it were useless to deceive you any longer. I implored-I prayed-I knelt to him-I thundered at nature's door in his heart

"But 'twas shut for ever-he wept no tear for me?"

“Tush, man; cruelty had frozen up the tears at their remotest source. It is the most unnatural, intense hatred !-men yet to be born will shudder as they hear it spoken of-and-that is, should you fall under its blow-blame you, and never pity you."

"I've

"Why?" asked William, more incoherently than ever. heard that sentiment before-or something very like it—either from you, or from some one who rose up to whisper it to me, in the dim light, here—why?-or answer me this. If a man-no matter what man-rush at my breast to strike his sword through it—what do the laws say-both, both-the human law and the divine law?"

"I thought all knew their mandate."

"Then, supposing, I say, any man-am I commanded to stand quietly to be murdered, purely out of my social respect for the murderer ?"

"It would, indeed, be a strange ordinance that should command you to do so."

"If he were my-king, my sovereign-suppose?" "You are bound to anticipate him."

"Or a-brother ?"

"Still the fixed fiat orders you to protect yourself, else must you be considered as a party to your own murder."

"It is true as truth. Terrible, but true. If I slept, and if he came scowling over me in his hatred, and struck me till I awoke

and then if I saw his features-frightful! but if it were so-must I lie still, or seem to sleep again, until blow follow blow, so that I never more waken!"

"And what distinction can be fancied between that case and this? A stranger pardons you-a father dooms you to death!"

Mon

"There is no distinction! Heaven and earth, there is not! strous, monstrous-but fated! I am whelmed in it—against my will, I am !"

"Demand his right to take your life under any circumstances, Why he only stewards for you a princely fortune-one, a hundred times enough for the present claims upon your honour-and should he-shall he

"No! I preserve my life, and my honour!" bellowed the madman ; -(still he had been draining goblet after goblet of the wine ;)"and yet, James-would not the halls of heaven echo with sighs, and be hung round with mourning? Would not our creation, here-the mute lumps and all-groan and shiver as I-Horrible !"

"Ay, but 'tis justly horrible."

"I will again implore him myself-I will kneel and cringe to himI will twine round his knees and grovel in the dust-weep like a fountain-put my anguished head under his feet-and send up nature's full cry for mercy!"

"Do so

-that he may trample on you-and at that very moment, perhaps, be the executioner of his own sentence !”

The brain-tortured wretch uttered a shrill, mad cry.

"I prayed-I wept-I grovelled in the dust at his feet, pledging myself that you should do the same, but”

"Come!" interrupted William, in a fearful whisper; "come with me out of this room, and we will talk more of it. 'Tis but a dull lamp," he continued, pointing to that which flickered on the table, "and yet it watches us. James, since I came in here, I think I slept a moment, and in my sleep I saw it doing. I saw a son washing his hands in thick blood-he thought it was water-and he seemed to wonder and wonder because he did not cleanse-as he was looking askance at an old man lying on the ground, stark and stiff;—and another time I heard them shriek together, as the one gave and the other took a cleaving blow!"

"Cousin!" cried James, drawing back a few steps; and even he shuddered at the raving victim of his own continuous and relentless plots ;- "be calmer, William; let us talk it over quietly."

"In yonder back-room, then, as I said-it is quite dark therepitch dark; and when we get in, we will shut the door; and with your good devil in company, James, arrange it all, quietly as you say-very quietly-come!"

Hasty steps were heard at the door of the outward room before William could leave it; it 'was unlocked, and Sir Miles Hutchinson confronted his son.

William now stood stock-still, his scowling eyes turned away from his father. James, however, disappeared into the inner chamber.

With all the studied, stern dignity he could assume, Sir Miles for some time regarded, at a distance, his unliappy companion; while the