"You speak of a letter to the man who had deceived her, as affording evidence of derangement. Be so good," continued I, "as to inform me how it does this?"

"You shall judge for yourself," replied he. Then drawing something from his coat-pocket, he added, "Here it is; for I have kept it since the inquest. You can read it, whilst I go forward to inform the bearers that we have the clergyman's permission to pass through his grounds, instead of going away round Clihonger-lane.'

I took the letter from his hands, and by the aid of a lanthorn read as follows:

"Dear James,

"To MR. JAMES HUGHES.

"I write this lest something bad might happen to me, and I should never see you again to say how freely I forgive you. I thought you loved me-oh! I was sure of it. Since I found you did not, I feel as though there was nothing now worth living for in this world; but, dear James, I sincerely forgive you; and indeed I wish you may be always happy.

"My mind now often becomes confused, and strange, bad thoughts come into it so strong that they almost madden me. Last night, I was alone, as I am now, and I had them. They drove me into a fit or something of that like; and when I awoke from it, I was vexed it didn't last for ever. When I seek of God to strengthen me against them, and to make me resigned to my lot, I can't even pray as I used to. But He will have mercy on me, when it is worse needed.

"Dear James, if any bad comes to me I hope you will not grieve. For perhaps it was my fault to flatter myself you lovedme, when you did not mean anything more than kindness; and I am sure you were always kind. Should I die, I have nothing worth leaving you. My poor mother's ring, the paper with her hair, and the Bible in which the date of my birth is wrote down by my dear father, I should wish buried with me. The other Bible, with my prayer-book, and a pair of black gloves I have made with many a tear, I hope you will accept and keep in memory of me. Perhaps we shall meet again in a better place; oh, how I wish we may ! I shall never forget the day we spent-"

Here the letter broke off abruptly; but sufficient is given to prove that she had experienced attacks of derangement; a circumstance that would have justified a more charitable verdict than her remains received. It would even seem as though, at the moment she ceased writing, some tender reminiscence had again shaken the reins of reason from her grasp. The devotion to him who had deceived her which she shows throughout the whole, is touching; the manner wherein she exculpates him, at the expense of her own strength of character, extremely so.

The question as to her insanity thus settled to my satisfaction, I felt a tranquil pleasure at having determined to join the funeral. Whilst I was still meditating upon the nature and singular aspect of the scene we were engaged in, a respectable female addressed me, expressing her surprise and gratification at seeing me there.

66

"Dear Mrs. Trokes," said I, on recognising that estimable woman, 'my attendance is little better than accidental."

"You must have had the will to come," rejoined she, not see you here."

66 or I should

I then related to her how it happened; and in return she explained to me the little sacrifice she had made in order to be present.

"You are a churchman, I know," said she; "and probably unacquainted with the customs of our sect. This is our watch-night; on which we are enjoined to meet at chapel, to pass the last minutes of the old year in prayer and to welcome the new with praise (hymns). For nine-and-thirty years I have punctually observed this injunction; but to-night I thought my duty to the dead had a stronger claim on my attention, therefore I am here, as also is my husband, and our supernumerary minister, whom I have prevailed upon to read the burial-service over Margaret Bourne's remains. I should not have wished this had I not been fully persuaded she destroyed herself during a fit of derangement."

"It was a dreadful fate!" ejaculated I, involuntarily.

"Truly it was!" sighed she; then added-" I am not unacquainted with death; for, to say nothing of friends whose last moments I have witnessed, three of my dear children passed away in my arms. God bless them! they were always dutiful and pious, and I am sure are now in a better place. But of all the thrilling scenes of the kind I have ever known, that of the night before last, when I attended this poor girl, was the most insupportable. Excepting about twenty minutes before her death, she was delirious during the eight hours I was with her. She raved almost incessantly about James Hughes: he seemed constantly present to her imagination in a visible form, and her broken sentences were addressed to him as if to move his pity for her distress.

"Once only she named her mother; this was after the violent retching which at first distracted her had passed away, and she was evidently dying. I never shall forget it. Raising herself suddenly in the bed, she placed one arm behind her as a support, and with the other pointed to the candle, at which she directed an intense and unfaltering gaze, as though she perceived something there of unusual interest. At last, without once removing her eyes from it, she exclaimed, "Do you see that?'

"See what, my dear?' reiterated I; there is nothing there, but the candle upon the table.'

"It is my poor mother! What a blaze of light she is in! See, she is crying! Don't cry for me, dear mother, I shall be happy again.' "Although I thought my disbelief in supernatural appearances had been so strong, that what I knew to be the mere phantoms of delirium could never alarm me, in that I was deceived. There was such a startling earnestness in this address to her mother, that for a moment I felt a cold shudder run through me. I could no longer remain with her alone; so I sent for a poor widow who is here, and who, with the kindhearted doctor and myself, were the only persons who approached her. Shortly afterwards she sank into a kind of lethargy, occasionally muttering something we could not understand. From this she awoke a

few minutes before her death. She then articulated faintly, and with great difficulty,

"I see how it is. God bless you both.'

"I was much affected. Speech then left her; but I am satisfied she still continued sensible, for when I moistened her lips with wine and water, she absolutely looked thanks. Knowing what she was suffering, I felt a heavy load removed from me with the long sigh in which she expired."

By this time we had reached the church-yard. But no solemn toll of bell floated forth on the air, proclaiming to the world the inhumation of a Christian corpse; no white-robed priest was there to greet the dead with the usual solemnities. Nevertheless, the beautiful and impressive service of the English church was not wholly omitted. The Wesleyan minister present, kindly read a selection from it. He met the funeral at the gates; and every head was reverently uncovered whilst he performed the affecting ritual. We moved round to the north side of the church, where, by the side of her parents under a widespreading yew-tree, the deep yawning grave had been excavated. Contrasted against the snow, the black chasm, with its heap of earth, looked unusually chilling and repulsive; but darkness, and damp, and cold, were no longer for Margaret Bourne.

They had placed the coffin on its brink, the grave-cords had been run, and they were waiting that part of the service where the body is committed to the earth, when Hughes, who could no longer subdue his feelings, fell upon the coffin and clasped it with frantic affection. He charged himself with the poor girl's death, again declared his sincere penitence, and implored forgiveness of God for his cruel perfidy. So great and vehement was his anguish, that ere the ceremony could be completed, it was necessary to remove him by force.

"Surely," said I, on witnessing this compunction of conscience, "the misfortune of this man would seem to be, not that the sense whereby we discriminate between right and wrong is either warped or hebetated by contact with the world, but that his disposition is so facile and feeble, that he may be moulded by designing people to whatever form they wish hence the catastrophe this weakness had brought about."

At the conclusion of the burial-service, an extempore prayer was offered up; and we sang a penitential hymn. Its wailing cadences fell upon the susceptible silence of the night with a mournful effect, awakening echoes both far and near. The daws, unaccustomed to such sounds at this belated hour, rushed out in clusters from the belfry, and affrighted betook themselves to a distance, like a troop of hellspirits at the bidding of the Redeemer.

The mourners at that funeral had been self-bidden it is true, but their conduct was in keeping with the occasion; it was decorous and dutiful. The behaviour of the watermen, who, without hope of fee or earthly reward, but out of respect for the memory of her father, had performed the laborious office of bearers, was strikingly creditable. Their rugged natures seemed touched and softened by the sacred character of the duty they had undertaken, and they joined cordially in the hymn, with voices, it was to be feared, seldom used so worthily.

Soon the earth rattled on the coffin-lid, and her grave was heaped up. There in her everlasting home we left her; the night-wind moaning in the hearse-plumed yew a fitting requiem, the black sky overhead her pall-like canopy.

Ere I passed the church-yard gates on my return, lost in conjecture as to the condition of her soul, I chanced to cast my eyes heavenward. The clouds still scowled darkly; but whilst I yet looked a star peeped through, and though it shone but for a moment, and that dimly and watery, like the eye of a weeping angel, I hailed it with an emotion of joy, for to me it gave assurance that happiness was the portion of the departed.

About eight months afterwards, on a calm autumnal evening, I was passing that way, and turned aside to visit her grave. I found it turfless, and almost flattened by the action of the weather. The drooping blades of lank, dark grass, which had grown through the crumbled mould at its sides, had almost embraced over the neglected spot.

"Poor Margaret Bourne!" sighed I; "in death as in life, thou hast had little attention. The loud protestations of penitence, the emotions of remorse we witnessed in him whose cruelty had caused thy death, of what value were they when the only testimony of respect it was left him to bestow, had been so disgracefully omitted.

I turned from the spot, and made a call upon the sexton, who lived hard by.

"What is the charge," I inquired of him, "for sodding a grave?" "Eighteenpence, sir," was the reply.

"Here are two shillings for you, and be sure that Margaret Bourne's grave is raised, turfed, and neatly wyth-bound by next Sunday." "I won't fail to do so," said he, pocketing the money.

This duty performed, I left the neighbourhood.

"At least," thought I, " if no stone marks her resting-place, it will henceforward be green like other graves, and indicate by its shapely form that human dust reposes beneath."

Such then is the unaffected story of Margaret Bourne. To have heightened its interest for the reader, by gratuitous touches of invention, had not been difficult. As far as facts are concerned, I have preferred giving it inartificially; feeling that what might be gained in pathos or picturesque effect, would be at the sacrifice of truth, and for that reason objectionable.

A VISIT TO GERBE.

BY THE HON. AND REV. CHARLES BATHURST.

THE steamer and its steward, its nausea and its noises, the douane and the diligence, the passports and the posting, and sundry other agrémens pertaining to continental travelling have been so often seen, felt, heard, and described by others, that we shall at once suppose the sportsman arrived, no matter how, at Bagnères de Bigorre some day early in September, but not later than the 4th of November, that being the season for the "chasse aux ramiers," a sport peculiar to this part of France, if not to Gerbe alone, as some have asserted. Bird-catching in England would seem now to have fallen into disuse as a "gentleman's recreation," though in the olden time it was a favourite pastime. Among the ancient Egyptians fowling of all kinds was a sport much. exercised by all classes, and the Italians in more modern times appear to have paid great attention to bird-netting, having fitted up their pleasure-grounds with artificial groves, bushes, trees, glades, and various nets for the purpose; for, in the words of old Burton, they would take any paines to satisfie their delight in that kinde.” At Bagnères the chasse aux ramiers is followed up solely as a trade by the fowlers who farm the palomberie, as the vεpelola oia, or place where the nets are set up, is termed. It is well worth the time and the climb for the traveller who may be curious in observing the

"Manners, mysteries, and trades,

Degrees, observances, customs and laws,"

of men and nations, to visit the heights of Gerbe-which take their name from a little village at the foot of the hill about three miles from Bagnères when the preparations are in progress for this chasse previously to the expected arrival of the birds, inasmuch as he will then have more leisure to examine the apparatus and modus operandi than when the sport is actually begun; and it may be here observed, that it is of great importance to the success of the season that there be no appearance of hurry or bustle when the pigeons come, for being of a very shy nature their suspicions are easily aroused by any, however slight, unusual appearances or sounds; hence everything must be completely set up and in proper place before the flights are expected. Towards the end of August honest Jacques Pierron, with his assistants, commences putting up his nets and their concomitants, all which are constructed and arranged with the most careful regard to the habits of the animals which it is intended to catch; and they present to the naturalist and mechanic beauties in their disposition which they who only take a hasty view would not notice, or noticing, might be inclined to condemn as blemishes. The engines and devices are, in truth, rude and rough, but they are not made without labour or devised without skill, nevertheless; and although perhaps they may be capable of improvement in some respects, poor Jacques Pierron pays too high a rent to make him able to speculate upon an increase of the annual coups or takes of his nets, were he to use more costly gear; his present system