Those words I remember well, and those were the last he ever spoke to me. I dread to think they were his last on earth. The feeling I had wrestled against mastered me now. I could restrain myself no longer, and struck at him with a knife. He clutched my left hand in his teeth like a tiger-cat. For a second we were grappling together for life or death, but he had no chance against me; and when I had breath to look at him next he was lying on his back, the hands that he had tried to parry my blows with cut and bleeding, and red stains on the broad mimosa leaves around. Oh, God! what a reproach there was in all the calm and silence of the night! How the deep quiet of the sky spoke to my heart, so troubled, dark, and guilty! As on the first dread day by sin polluted, the voice of God in Eden drove Adam forth abashed, so spoke the still small voice of holy Nature with more than earthquake tones to me, and straight I fled away. 66 My Bertha does not know the whole. She only knows that Brian had me in his power, owing to some money transactions. If she did know it, my conscience tells me she would not now be sleeping here. There all will be well in England. Pray Heaven we get there safe. I will go up on deck a few minutes. Writing it down has brought the whole affair so fresh before me, that it is useless trying to sleep in this fever. But yet I am glad it is written. "October 15th.-We entered the Channel this afternoon. It is my wife's birthday; she took it as a happy omen, and seemed so pleased with the glitter and joyance of the busy river, that for a whole hourthe first since I left Rio-the dreadful secret hidden 'mid those leaves was absent from my mind. "October 16th.-The first news that meets me on entering London is, that my uncle has died suddenly, and left all his affairs frightfully embarrassed. My chief dependence was on him. This is a sad beginning; indeed, I feel that all these things are against me.'" Several pages were here torn from the unfortunate Darke's manuscript; and in the succeeding ones the entries were scanty, and with long intervals between each other. They detailed the sufferings of the writer and his wife on their arrival in London; his repeated efforts to obtain employment, and the difficulties he met with, owing to his uncle's death, and his own inability to refer any one to the directors of the mine at Rio. For more than a year (judging from the dates, by no means regularly affixed) he appeared to have struggled on thus, until, when his hopes were fast sinking, and his health rapidly giving way under this succession of disappointments, he obtained a situation on a recently-opened line of railway in the north, through the interest of an old schoolfellow, whom he accidentally met, and who retained in manhood schoolboy heart enough to show gratitude for many kindnesses in olden days. The language was strangely impassioned and earnest in which he expressed his joy at this change of fortune; and the full-hearted thankfulness with which he described telling his wife the good news, seemed to prove that affliction had exerted a calming and blessed influence on his passion-tossed mind. But the clergyman could not help noticing that the spirit pervading the latter part of the diary was strangely different from that which animated the commencement, it being written apparently with the firm conviction of an inevitable destiny hanging over the writer; and this, like the shadow of an unseen cloud in a fair picture, gave a sombre meaning to his self-communings. After briefly mentioning the fact of his taking up his abode with Bertha and one little child at the cottage provided by the company, and that he had heard by chance that his enemy was still alive, he proceeded : "I like this new home much. It is a tiny, sheltered cottage, with beehives in the garden, and honeysuckles peeping in at the lattice, nestling innocently amongst the pine-trees, like a fairy islet. The railway runs for about a mile parallel with the canal, and the two modes of travelling contrast curiously. The former, with all its brightness, freshness, and precision; the latter, a very sluggard. I often have long talks with Huntly, my assistant here, and try to make him see the change it will work; but he is not over shrewd; or, rather, fate did not give him a bookworm uncle like it did me, and so reasoning is hard work to him; it always is to the untaught. The canal is picturesque, certainly. Let me try a description. The surface of the water is overlaid with weeds, rank and luxuriant, save where the passage of a boat has preserved a trench, stagnant, and cold, and deep. There is not a human habitation near except ours. Scarcely any paths, the thickets are so tangled. This does not read an inviting account, I know, but there is a charm to me in the leaves of myriad shapes, in fern, and moss, and rush, in every sylvan nook and glittering hedgerow-above all, in the dark slumberous pines, those giant sentinels round our dear home. Bertha smiled quite like her old self when she saw it. Oh, how, in all the wrack of this last year, has her love upheld me! always lightening, never adding to our weight of grief. She has, indeed, been faithful, true, and beautiful-like the Indian tree, that has its flower and fragrance best by night. I cannot explain why it is that my love seems to grow each hour, but with a kind of tremble in its intensity, as though there were a separation coming. Perhaps it is only the result of the change in my fortunes. "March 10th.-Two years ago I should have laughed had any one told me that a dream would give me a second thought, much less that I should sit down to write what I remember of one; but I must write down last night's, nevertheless. I thought that it was a clear moonlight night, and that I rose as usual to signal to the latest luggage train. I had got to the accustomed place, and stood waiting a long time. For days, for months, I knew this, because the trees were budding when I began my watch-were bare as winter when, with a roar and quaking all around, the night train came. At first, I held a lantern in my hand, to signal all was well. Strange as it may appear, I felt no weariness, for I was fixed as by a wizard's rod. It passed at length; but, not, thank God! as it has ever passed before; for from the carriage window, like a mask, glared Marcliffe's vengeful face. I said I held a light; but, as the smoke and iron hurtled by, the lamp was dashed to atoms, and in my outstretched hand I grasped a knife! There was a yell of demons in my ear, with Brian's jeering laugh above it all. I moaned awhile in horror, and woke to find my Bertha's eyes on mine. She has been soothing and kind as mercy to me all the day, and I, alas! wayward, almost cruel. I saw it pained her, but I could not help it. Oh, would that this world had no concealments, no divisions, no estrangement of hearts! I dread the night; there is something tells me it will come again, for when I took the Bible down to read, it opened at the words: "I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.' in "A thrill went through me as I read. It sounded like a death-knell. "The next day.-As I foresaw, it came again last night; the same every terrible particular, and with the same consolation on awaking. But what I have seen to-day gives it a meaning that I tremble at. Huntly returned from D- He brought a birthday present for little Harry; it happened to be wrapped in an old newspaper. As it was opened, I saw his name, and a moment after read this: "NEXT OF KIN.-If any child or children of the late Ehud Marcliffe, Gentleman, of Cranholm Manse, who died September 5, 18-, be yet surviving, it is desired that he or they will forthwith put themselves in communication with Messrs. Faulk and Lockerby, Solicitors, D' ** * * * "This leaves me no hope; and knowing, as I do, the unfaltering steadfastness of his hate, I feel the days of this security and peace are numbered. "A whole month has gone since I opened this last. There is no fear now. He is dead. But how? The eye that reads this record alone will know. That fatal Thursday went by, a phantasm of dark thoughts; and then I lay down, as usual, for a couple of hours, before going to watch. I did this, for there was a kind of instinct in me (the feeling deserves no higher name) which made me go about my avocations in the accustomed way, and seem as little disturbed as possible. I lay down, and in my dream, as distinct as ever it passed by day, for the third time that awful freight swept like a whirlwind by. I awoke. It wanted only three minutes to the hour when the night-train usually passed. I staggered to the door, but, instead of coming out into the light, an inky shadow lay across the road. It was a car left by Huntly's carelessness on the up-rail. I stood like one of stone, thinking of the tranquil happiness of the last months, of Bertha's smile and Harry's baby-laugh-of all the sun and pleasure of our home, and how this precious fabric, wove by love, was to be rent and torn; and how one word from him would ruin all, and send my wife and child to poverty again. And that man's life was in my hand. Well may we daily pray against temptation. "A white cloud curled up above the pines. "There was no delay. I caught up a lantern, and ran down the line. A throbbing, like the workings of a giant's pulse, smote my ear. I reached the signal-post, and laid my hand upon the bell. But there was no time for thought. "The murmur deepened to a roar. The clouds of steam rose high above the pines, and, girt about with wreathing vapour, the iron outline, with its blood-red lamps and Hecla glow beneath, came on. "My eyes were strangely keen, for at that distance I could discern a man leaning out of the nearest window. I knew who it must be, and almost expecting to see the last dreadful particular fulfilled, held out my hand-the sign that all was safe. The driver signalled that he understood, and quickened pace. I shut my eyes when it drew near, but, as it passed, distinctly heard my name called thrice. "There was a moment that seemed never-ending. Then a clatter as of a hundred anvil strokes, a rush of snow-white steam, a shower of red-hot ashes scattered far, the hum of voices, and the clanging of the bell. Then, and not till then, I ventured to look up and hurry to the spot. The train, a series of shapeless wrecks, luggage-vans, trucks, carriages in wild confusion, lay across the road; live coals from the engine-fire were hissing in the black canal stream; the guard was bleeding and crushed beneath a wheel; twining wreaths of white steam, like spirits, melted into air above. Huntly was stooping over a begrimed corpse. The glare of the lantern, as it flashed upon the face, showed every omen true. It was Marcliffe. "I can bear to chroncle my own temptations, yielding, guilt, but not to write down the separation that I dreaded most, and tried to avert, alas! so fatally. It is indeed a lesson of the nothingness of man's subtlest plans to avoid the penalty his crimes call down. How vain have all my efforts been to preserve our hearth inviolate, to keep our home in blessed security. Indeed, that night God's peace and favour departed from the threshold of the house' for ever." The misfortune alluded to was thus briefly mentioned at the end of the newspaper report of the accident, enclosed with the other papers of the dead man : "We are sorry to say that the wife of the station-keeper, Darke, whose dangerous state we noticed a week ago, expired last night, after giving birth to a child, still-born." With the sentence given above Darke's diary closed. Here and there the curate read a verse of a psalm, or a heart-broken ejaculation, but no continued narrative of his after-sufferings. From what he could glean, it appeared that he was put on his trial on the charge of manslaughter, and acquitted, but that he had lost his situation in consequence of the want of presence of mind he had evinced; after, it seemed, that he had led a miserable vagrant life, earning just enough by chance-work to support himself and his little Harry, the constant attendant of his wanderings. The boy was at the inn on the night of the father's wretched death, though the landlady's kindness removed him from the sight of the troublous parting. An asylum was soon found for him by my friend's kindness, and when I was at the parsonage last Christmas, as I read the history of his father's fitful life, the unconscious son sat by with little Faith, gazing with his large melancholy eyes at the strange faces in the fire. 204 THE DEMON RIDE. BY JOSEPH ANTHONY, JUN. BRAVE, I doubt not, courage thine, Two winters past, one night I stood Bright stars were out, but seemed to dread That night had changed their minstrelsey. And as I musing lonely stood Scarce passed that thought, when o'er the stream, A bark shot out-it touched the strand, On mine was press'd another's hand! 'Twas but a moment, and I stood In that strange bark on Lantha's flood. Away, away, no helm or sail Away, away, in fearless flight, Away, away, oh! what delight, |