sometimes yield up to plague the guilty or the usurper?

For all or any of these parts he seemed too young. Yet Beatrix fancied instinctively that he could be no other than the basilisk who had exercised so strange a spell over her grim, but withal kind old kinswoman. Was there not, she thought, something peculiar in the look he threw across the windows of old stonefronted Wardlock manor-reserved, curious, half smiling- as if he looked on an object which he had often heard described, and had somehow, from personal associations or otherwise, an interest in? It was but a momentary glance just as he took his leave; but there was, she thought, that odd character in it.

By this time the lamps were flashing on the village windows and shopfronts; and at the end of the corner and gabled street, under a canopy of dark trees, stood the great iron gate of Marlowe.

Sir Jekyl rubbed the glass and looked out when they halted at the gate. The structures of his fancy had amused him, rather fearfully indeed, and he was surprised to find that they were entering the grounds of Marlowe so soon.

He did not mind looking out, or speaking to the old gatekeeper, who pulled open the great barriers, but lay back in his corner sullenly, in the attitude of a gentleman taking a nap. Beatrix, however, looked out inquisitively, and saw by the misty moonlight a broad level studded with majestic timber-singly, in clumps, and here and there in solemn masses; and soon rose the broad-fronted gabled house before them, with its steep roofs and its hospitable clumps of twisted chimneys showing black against the dim sky.

Miss Marlowe's maid, to whom the scene was quite as new as to her mistress, descended from the back seat, in cloaks and mufflers, and stood by the hall-door steps, that shone white in the moonlight, before their summons had been answered.

Committing his daughter to her care, the baronet-who was of a bustling temperament, and never drank tea except from motives of gallantry-called for Mrs. Gwynn, the housekeeper, who presently appeared. She was an odd-looking woman VOL. LXV.NO, CCCLXXXV.

some years turned of fifty, thin, with a longish face and a fine, white, glazed skin. There was something queer about her eyes; you soon discovered it to arise from their light colour and something that did not quite match in their pupils.

On entering the hall, where the baronet had lighted a candle, having thrown his hat on the table, and merely loosed his muffler and one or two buttons of his outside coat, she smiled a chill glance of welcome with her pale lips, and dropped two sharp little courtesies.

"Well, old Donica, and how do ye do?" said the baronet, smiling, with a hand on each thin grey silk shoulder. "Long time since I saw you. But, egad, you grow younger and younger, you pretty old rogue;" and he gave her pale, thin cheek a playful tap with his fingers.

"Pretty well, please, Sir Jekyl, thank ye," she replied, receding a little with dry dignity. "Very welcome, sir, to Marlowe. Miss Beatrix looks very well, I am happy to see; and you, sir, also."

"And you're glad to see us, I know?"

"Certainly, sir, glad to see you," said Mrs. Gwynn, with another short courtesy.

"The servants not all come? No, nor Ridley with the plate. He'll arrive to-morrow; and-and we shall have the house full in little more than a week. Let us go up and look at the rooms; I forget them almost, by Jove-I really do-it's so long since. Light you another, and we'll do very well."

"You'll see them better by daylight, sir. I kept every thing well aired and clean. The house looks wonderful-it do," replied Mrs. Gwynn, accompanying the baronet up the broad oak stairs.

"If it looks as fresh as you, Donica, it's a miracle of a house--egad! you're a wonder. How you skip by my side, with your little taper, like a sylph in a ballet, egad!”

You wear pretty well yourself, Sir Jekyl," drily remarked the whitefaced sylph, who had a sharp perpendicular line between her eyebrows, indicative of temper.

"So they tell me, by Jove. We're pretty well on through, Donnie-eh? Every one knows my age-printed

you know in the red book. You've the advantage of me there -- eh, Don "

"I'm just fifty-four, sir, and I don't care if all the world knewd it.”

"All the world's curious, I dare say on the point; but I shan't tell them, old Gwynn," said Sir Jekyl

"Curious or no, sir, its just the truth, and I don't care to hide it. Past that folly now, sir, and I don't care if I wor seventy, and a steppin' like a-"

"A sylph," supplied he.

"Yes - a sylph-into my grave. It's a bad world, and them that's suffered in it, soon tires on it, sir." "You have not had a great deal to trouble you. Neither chick, nor child, nor husband, egad! So here we are."

They were now standing on the gallery at the head of the great stair

case.

"These are the rooms your letter says are not furnished-eht Let us come to the front gallery."

So, first walking down the gallery in which they were, to the right, and then entering a passage by a turn on the left, they reached the front gallery which runs parallel to that at the head of the stairs.

"Where have you put Beatrix ?" "She wished the room next mine, please, sir, up stairs," answered the housekeeper.

"Near the front-eh ?"

"The left side, please, sir, as you look from the front," replied she. "From the front " he repeated. "From the front," she reiterated. "Over there, then he said, pointing upward to the left.

"That will be about it, sir," she answered.

"How many rooms have we here in a row ?" he asked, facing down the gallery, with its pile of doors at each side.

"Four bed-rooms and three dressing-rooms at each side."

"Ay, well now, I'll tell you who's coming, and how to dispose of them." So Sir Jekyl quartered his friends, as he listed, and then said he

"And the large room at the other end, here to the right --come along." And Sir Jekyl marched briskly in the direction indicated.

"Please, sir," said the slim, pale housekeeper, with the odd leer in her eye, overtaking him quietly.

Ay, here it is," said he, not minding her, and pushing open the door of a dressing room at the end of the gallery. Inside this, I remember."

"But that's the green chamber, sir," continued Mrs. Gwynn, gliding beside him as he traversed the floor.

"The room we call Sir Harry's room, I know - capital room - cht

“I don't suppose,” began the pale lady, with a sinister sharpness,

"Well " he demanded, looking down in her face a little grimly.

"It's the green chamber, sir," she said, with a hard emphasis.

"You said so before, eh !" he replied.

“And I did not suppose, sir, you'd think of putting any one there," she continued.

Then you're just as green as the chamber," said Sir Jekyl, with a chuckle.

And he entered the room, holding the candle high in air, and looking about him a little curiously, the light tread, and sharp pallid face of Donica Gwynn following him.

state, though somewhat quaint and faded, was wonderfully gay and cozy. "This is the green chamber, sir," she repeated, with her brows raised and her eyes still lowered askance, and some queer wrinkles on her forehead, as she nodded a sharp bitter emphasis. "To be sure it is, damme-why not?" he said, testily, and then burst into a short laugh.

"You're not a going, I suppose, Sir Jekyl, to put any one into it?" said she. "I don't see, for the life of me, why I should not-eh ? a devilish comfortable room."

"Hem! I can't but suppose you are a joking me, Sir Jekyl," persisted the gray silk phantom.

"Egad! you forget how old we're growing; why the plague should I quiz you? I want the room for old General Lennox, that's all-though I'm not bound to tell you for whom I want it am I?"

"There's a plenty o' rooms without this one, Sir Jekyl," persevered the lady, sternly.

Plenty, of course; but none so good," said he, carelessly.

"No one ever had luck that slept in it," answered the oracle, lifting her odd eyes and fixing them on Sir Jekyl. "I don't put them here for luck. We want to make them comfortable," answered Sir Jekyl, poking at the furniture as he spoke.

"You know what was your father's wish about it, sir?" she insisted.

"My father's wish-egad he did not leave many of his wishes unsatisfied-eh?" he answered, with anther chuckle.

"And your poor lady's wish," she said, a good deal more sharply.

"I don't know why the devil I'm talking to you, old Gwynn," said the baronet, turning a little fiercely about. "Dying wishes," emphasized she. "It is time, heaven knows, all that stuff should stop. You slept in it yourself, in my father's time. I remember you, here, Donica, and I don't think I ever heard that you saw a ghost-did I?" he said, with a sarcastic chuckle.

She darted a ghastly look to the far end of the chamber, and then with a strange half-frozen fury, she said"I wish you good-night, Sir Jekyl." And glided like a shadow out of the

room.

"Saucy as ever, by Jupiter," he

ejaculated, following her with his glance, and trying to smile; and as the door shut, he looked again down the long apartment as she had just done, raising the candle again.

The light was not improved of course by the disappearance of Mrs. Gywnn's candle, and the end of the room was dim and unsatisfactory. The great four-poster, with dark curtains, and a plume at each corner, threw a vague shadow on the back wall and up to the ceiling, as he moved his candle, which at the distance gave him an uncomfortable sensation, and he stood for a few seconds sternly there, and then turned on his heel and quitted the room, saying aloud as he did so

"What a d-d fool that old woman is-always was!"

If there was a ghost there, the baronet plainly did not wish it to make its exit from the green chamber by the door, for he locked it on the outside, and put the key in his pocket. Then, crossing the dressing-room I have mentioned, he entered the passage which crosses the gallery in which he and Mrs. Gwynn, a few minutes before, had planned their dispositions. The dressing-room door is placed close to the window which opens at the end of the corridor in the front of the house. Standing with his back to this he looked down the long passage, and smiled.

For a man so little given to the melodramatic, it was a very well expressed smile of mystery. The smile of a man who knows something which others don't suspect, and would be surprised to learn.

It was the baronet's fancy, as it had been his father's and his grandfather's before him, to occupy very remote quarters in this old house. Solitary birds, their roost was alone.

Candle in hand, Sir Jekyl marched down this long gaunt passage, which strikes rearward so inflexibly; crossing the gallery he had just visited, and then the second great gallery which runs parallel to the first, and at last reaching the head of a back staircase after a march of a hundred and forty feet, which I have measured.

Here was a door at his left which he opened, and found himself in his own bed-room.

You would have said on looking about you that it was the bed-room

of an old campaigner or of a natty gamekeeper-a fellow who rather liked roughing it, and had formed tastes in the matter like the great Duke of Wellington. The furniture was slight and plain, and looked like varnished deal; a French bed, narrow, with chintz curtains, and a plain white coverlet, like what one might expect in a barrack dormitory or an hospital; a little strip of carpet lying by the bed, and a small square of Turkey carpet under the table by the fire, hardly broke the shining uniformity of the dark oak floor; a pair of sporting prints decorated the sides of the chimney-piece; and an oil portrait of a gray hunter hung in the middle. There were fishing-rods and gun-cases, I dare say the keys were lost of many, they looked so old and dingy.

The baronet's luggage, relieved of it's black japanned casings, lay on the floor, with his hat case and travelling desk. A pleasant fire burnt in the grate, and a curious abundance of wax-lights, without which Sir Jekyl, such was his peculiarity, could not exist, enlivened the chamber.

As he made his toilet at his homely little dressing-table, he bethought him suddenly, and rang the bell in his shirt sleeves.

The baronet's tastes, as we might see, were simple. He could dine on a bit of roust mutton, and a few glasses of sherry, Bat his mutten was eight years old, and came ad the way from Dartbroke, and h ́s sherry est more than other men's Madeira, and he now lighted one of those priceless cigars, which so many fellows envied, and inhaled the disembodied aroma of a tobacco which, perhaps, Jove smokes in his easy chair on Olympus, but which I have never smelt on earth, cxcept when Sir Jekyl

dispensed the inestimable treasures of his cigar-case.

Now, the baronet stood over his table, with a weed between his lips, tall in his flowered silk dressing. gown, his open hands shoving apart the pile of letters, as a conjuror at an exhibition spreads his pack of cards.

"Ha! poor little thing!" he murmured, with a sly simper, in a petting tone, as he plucked an envelope, addressed in a lady's hand, between two fingers, caressingly, from the miscellaneous assortment.

He looked at it, but reserved it as a bon-bouche in his waistcoat pocket, and pursued his examination.

There were several from invited guests, who were either coming or not, with the customary expressions, and were tossed together in a little isolated litter for conference with Mrs. Gwynn in the morning.

"Not a line from Pelter and Crowe! the d-d fellows don't waste their ink upon me except when they furnish their costs. It's a farce paying fellows to look after one's business-no one ever does it but yourself. If those fellows were worth their bread and butter they'd have known all about this thing, whatever it is, and I'd have had it all here, d-- it, to-night.”

Sir Jekyl, it must be confessed, was not quite consistent about this affair of the mysterious young gentleman, for, as we have seen, he himself had a dozen times protested against the possibility of there being anything in it, and now he was seriously censuring his respectable London attornevs for not furnishing him with the solid contents of this "wind bag?"

But it was only his talk that was contradictory, Álmost from the moment of his first seeing that young gentleman, on the open way under the sign of the "Plough," there lowered a fantastic and clyclopean picture drawn in smoke or vapour, volcane and thunderous, all over his horizon, like those prophetic and retrospective pageants with which Dorce loves to pant his mystic skies. It was wonderful and presaged unknown evil; and only cowed him the more that it baffled analysis and seemed to mock at reason.

“Pretty fellows to keep a look-out! It's well I can do it for myself who knows where we're driving to, or what's coming! Signs enough