"Poor child," said Nehemiah, " I remember her well. But she is better without him. His own life is forfeited

-let him go."

"If she knew where to follow him," said Smith.

"If all was done in the passion of the moment, in a childish quarrel about a lie,— Thee tells a lie,-I say, thee lies,' and so forth,-doubt not but Arnold will soon find means of communicating with his wife. The man up stairs is not aware that he bears to him any ill will. If it is otherwise, however, if he have left thy friend Agnes in distrust and aversion, would thee recall him?"

The amiable Rector hesitated, "I know not," he said, at length.

Nehemiah smiled. "Well, I will do what I can," he answered, "but mind;-thee does not expect to hear from me unless my efforts are successful. Meanwhile, tell the poor young lady to remember the German proverb, The old God is still alive;' for, it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.' Happy are they who feel that the law of their destiny is a law of love,—that love is, as it were, the guiding star of their existence. And this Wallace Arnold is a skeptic, is he?"

"An Unbeliever to the very heart's core," said Smith, "and earnest in propagating his opinions."

"Ah, so it is," said Nehemiah. "It is strange, passing strange, that man is not tired of prating and drivelling against that system of divine truth which proposes to elevate him to happiness and immortality. Christianity is assailed as if, instead of humanizing and

blessing society, its influence was designed to make man a brute or a savage,-an outcast from his fellows,-like the miserable and loathed leper. Not a scheme of heathen philosophy, that has been laid by in the dust and corruption of by-gone ages, but some one finds it out,—his ingenuity purifies and modernises it, and tries to turn it to account in his attacks against the truth. Every new discovery in science is seized upon with greedy eagerness, pressed into the service, and made a fresh rallying point to the skeptic or the infidel. But they know not what they do. They have never beheld Christianity in the attractive loveliness of her nature;— they know not the holiness and divinity of that system which they would dishonor with their execrations, any more than the excited rabble, that gathered around the cross of our Saviour, and cried, Crucify him,' recognised in the condemned sufferer, the Son of God. Friend Smith, there is a spirit abroad,—but thee dwells on the 'delectable mountains,' and may not have noticed its influence. There is a spirit, stalking about our streets and cities ad libertum; nay, finding its way even to the most obscure cellars or garrets of the poor,-a spirit that once, I am willing to believe, has dwelt in a fair and happy form, but that has been so long bound in silence by the fetters of religious intolerance, that reason gave way; and though released from her shackles, she is at last come forth amongst us, a wild and furious demoniac, whom, even the light of heaven's sunshine dazzles and bewilders. Thee sees that I am meaning the spirit of enquiry, friend Smith,-free enquiry as it

6

is called.

But it is time that I returned to Montarre.

-My love to thy wife and boys."

They shook hands and separated. The Rector returned to the stable for his horse, and in a few seconds was again mounted, and riding on the road to Clifton; his face and heart turned towards the Rectory.

Nehemiah withdrew to the apartment of the invalid, and remained with him during the night. Montarre was frequently delirious, talked incoherently, but apparently suffered little. Two days afterwards the attending surgeons remarked that a slight change for the better was perceptible in their patient, and ventured to give some slight hope of his recovery. Nehemiah retired to rest in his own room, and the old woman slept in her arm chair.

She had slept long; and when she awoke it was past midnight. She started up, and would have mistaken the pale light of the moon for the shadows of declining evening, but that the busy sound of voices below was hushed, and the cry of the nightly watch fell harshly upon her ear. She approached the bed-side of the invalid. How pale he looked in the gloomy moonlight, and yet, how soundly he slept! She leant her ear close to his lips. With a cry of alarm she rushed to the room of Nehemiah; and in another second they were both by the bedside. Nehemiah held the patient's hand, but the pulse of life had ceased to beat,-his head had sunk heavily in his pillow. Poor Montarre was dead!

Nehemiah looked for the medicine phial containing his sleeping draught, which had been left upon the table

by the bed. He shook it,-it was empty. The feverish invalid had swallowed the contents of the bottle in a moment of delirium, and while the old woman slept. A few days afterwards the Coroner's verdict was returned accordingly. Nehemiah left B for London in the same week.

CHAPTER XIII.

-"To die;-to sleep ;

To sleep! perchance to dream ;"—

-"but O yet more miserable!

Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave."

IMMEDIATELY after the duel Wallace repaired with and having secured berths on

his servant to

board the Liverpool, a vessel bound for New York, awaited her departure in a small hotel, in one of the most obscure parts of the town.

There, in a dark room, overlooking the stables, we may see him as he stands alone, his head racked with agonizing thoughts of the future, his heart-for the Unbeliever had a heart-bleeding to death for the past.

He had glanced at self-destruction, for all that had rendered life desirable to him was now embittered; and nothing remained, but a yearning appetite for something which he had lost,-a feverish, unhealthy burning for pleasures which were gone. A letter written to a friend at a distance, and dated the day that he left Bperhaps best express his feelings.

66

will

"My friend,—if I have a friend on earth,-My dear L- can you say something to comfort me, or must my heart burst with the weight of its own life-blood? for I am undone,-I am lost to earth and happiness for ever.-I am miserable as Hell itself. My life, which