What pen can portray, what language describe the feelings of the haughty Lester, as he rode at furious speed towards Castle More? He could neither think nor reflect! His thoughts were confused and tempestuous. He could not realize that he had actually listened to the accursed tale with his own ears. He felt rather as if he had passed through some dreadful dream, and the idea flashed on his mind that she had thrown a dark spell upon his senses, and that the whole was an illusion, and altogether the result of her art.

By degrees his thoughts became more settled and run in a direct channel. He checked his headlong speed and began to reflect: to recall, word by word, the narrative of Elpsy; weigh each sentence; match fact with fact; each circumstance with its fellow; and trace the unbroken thread to the last damning proof. The result was irresistible. A thousand circumstances to corroborate the tale of infamy rose like phantoms to his shrinking memory.

He remembered how, in childhood, a neighbouring baron, who had been out against the insurgents, playfully laid his hand upon his head, and told him he looked so much like Hurtel of the Red-Hand that he must take good care, when he became a man, he did not lose his head for the likeness: he remembered, too, how his childish spirit took fire at the similitude, and that he resented the insult with a blow! He further called to mind how, later in life, the more aged country people, in passing him, would shake their heads significantly; and often the whispered words, "Hurtel of the Red-Hand," would reach his ears. He recollected, also, how Lady Lester (alas! no longer, if this tale were proved true, to be regarded as his mother, yet whom he had loved hitherto with the intensest filial affection) had reproved him in his angry moods, and forbade him to frown so like Hurtel of the Red-Hand. He called to mind, too, how that, in childhood (unthought of again till too faithful memory brought it back), it had more than once reached his ears through the menials, that Lady Lester, in her youthful days, had been made a prisoner in some old castle by a rebel chief; and he could remember he had listened with childish interest to its recital as to a tale of enchanted castles and cruel giants. Now he could invest it with a too vivid reality! He had heard, also, he knew not how, and what, at the time, left no distinct impression on his mind, a scandal which said that Lady Lester did penance for unfaithfulness in her early marriage days: this cottage gossip he could now easily trace to her imprisonment by—could he speak it?—his father! He, too, had been twice called by spirited peasants, who, on certain occasions, had resented his arbitrary will—a bastard!

All these things rushed to his mind. There was something in it beyond mere idle gossip—something independent of mere accident! The tale he had listened to was to him a key to the whole. The inference was overpowering! It was as plain to his mind as the noonday sun, that the story he had heard from the lips of Elpsy was founded in truth.

"'Tis true! 'tis true! 'tis TRUE!" he groaned, covering his face with his hands.

Oh, was not this an appalling and harrowing reflection for a proud spirit like his? Was it not a bitter, bitter cup that was presented to his lips? Alas, how cruelly barbed and how skilfully directed—how fatally sent, was the shaft of inexorable fate! It pierced the spot where alone it could penetrate; where its wound would be deepest, and the smart the keenest. Struck down from its high seat to the very ground was that pride of birth which constituted the basis of his character; and withered, dead, bruised in the dust lay the haughtiness of spirit, which, springing from that soil, had flourished like the green bay-tree.

"Not only lowborn—I could bear that, I could bear that! but, oh God! a bastard! Mercy! mercy! mercy!"

He hid his face as he gave utterance to these words, and sobbed audibly. He gave way for a few moments to the full tide of his strong and afflicting grief in the most agonizing manner! His soul was rent! his heart was broken! and, altogether, he presented a picture of moral desolation and mental wretchedness that was appalling to contemplate. What thoughts must then have passed through his mind and wrung his proud soul! The reflection that he must abandon all his plans and hopes as Lord of Lester; take leave of the luxuries to which he had been accustomed; descend from the rank of a noble to that of a peasant; be called "fellow" by the lowest hind; bear the scorn of the highborn and the jeers of the low; and, most of all, that he must for ever abandon, without hope, the love of Kate Bellamont, filled him with wo such as the heart of man hath seldom known.

"And need I forfeit all these?" he exclaimed, suddenly checking the current of his grief, his features lighting up at the same time with guilty exultation, and assuming an expression of deep determination; "need I make this sacrifice? May I not still be Lord of Lester?" he cried, rising in his stirrups and almost shouting with the force of his thoughts. "Ay, and will I! Ay, and will I! 'Tis but to silence, either with gold or true steel, this beldame, who is the sole depositary of the secret of my birth!"

For a moment after giving utterance to this guilty idea he rode silently along; his honourable nature and his inflexible pride both having instantly risen at the criminal suggestion, and revolted at a deception so vast. But there were two strong motives which threatened to weigh down these better promptings, though honour pointed to the course he should alone pursue. He could not bear—his proud spirit could never brook, that the despised fisher's lad—the humble, low-nurtured peasant—for such he was, notwithstanding his noble birth, should stand in his place, and he himself—oh, it was madness to think of it—sink into the fisher's boy!

"No! perish honour—perish truth—perish all that is noble or virtuous in my nature first!" he cried, with the reckless decision of one who has resolved to sustain wrong at the expense of right.

There was a second motive, the love of Kate Bellamont! Should he resign her for ever? Could he endure the scornful disdain with which he believed she would regard him? Above all, could he bear to have the handsome fisher's lad, whom he already looked upon, in some sort, in the light of a rival, sue successfully as Lord of Lester for her hand? Could he endure all this and be human? Could he resign all to become what he dared not contemplate, and live?

"No!" he cried, vehemently, "away with all justice and truth! let my heart be wrapped in a mesh of falsehoods first! But need there be falsehood? Silence, silence will effect it. Is there injustice when the victim is ignorant of his rights?" he asked, mentally, as if he were arguing with his own soul. "Yes, most foul! and silence will be a living tongue to torture me—a never-ending falsehood to degrade—and will cast over the soul a night that can never know a dawn! Shall I incur this load of guilt? Will what I gain by the purchase repay me for the sacrifice of truth and honesty? Shall I not even be happier, ay, and more noble, as the poor fisher's lad, having done justice, than as Lord of Lester and Castle More, convicted at my soul's tribunal of guilt, and knowing who and what I am?"

Such was the train of reasoning that insensibly passed through his mind, and to which he gave utterance at this extraordinary crisis of his fate, and which promised to overthrow his former criminal resolutions.

"But should I do as my better nature prompts," he continued, after galloping forward a few moments, reining up and pursuing his former train of reasoning, "I need not be compelled to take the place of this Lester in his fishing hut, nor need I to remain within the atmosphere of Castle More, to meet the scorn of the noble, the insults of the lowborn. The world is all before me; I have a ready spirit, and a hand to sustain it, and can carve my own way through it; and with honour, too! Ay, I may yet win a name with the noblest born!"

Suddenly in the midst of this expression of his laudable and honourable purpose he stopped; a gleam of terrible fire shot from his eyes, while his face glowed with crimson shame.

"Ha, ha, ha! honour! Ha, ha, ha! a name! I had forgot," he repeated, with an accent bitter, sarcastic, and scornful beyond expression, yet with a wretched look of hopeless despair and misery; "what has a bastard to do with honour? What is it to him? I had forgotten I was more than lowborn! I'faith, 'twas well thought of! So all my lofty feelings go for nothing." His manner now changed, and his voice rang with passion. "What have I to do with lofty aspirations, with honour, or a name among men? Am I not branded with infamy? infamous by birth; attainted by my father's—yes, for I will acknowledge him—my father's blood! base through my mother's! What have I to do with honour? 'Tis not for me. I know it not. Henceforward I will forget its sound and meaning. What have I to do with honour? Ha, ha, ha! A name? Yes, I will win a name; I will show myself the true son of Hurtel of the Red-Hand. He shall not be ashamed of his blood. No, no! I will win a name that, be he on earth or in hell, shall make him smile and own me as bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh."

The scornful energy, fierceness of spirit, and stern determination with which this guilty resolution was spoken, showed that at a single blow was crushed all pride of character; that the highborn loftiness of spirit in which he had been educated had fallen, and that honour was forever shipwrecked. He felt himself, in anticipation, already an outcast from the world; a shunned and despised alien; an object of the scorn and pity of mankind. And such he was. He felt it to his heart's core. Eventually, perhaps, he might have forgiven the lowness of his birth, and risen superior to this contingency; but he could not forget its illegitimacy. What had a bastard to do among men! What had he to do with the love of highborn maidens? What was to him the luxuries, the pleasures, the social joys of life? Nothing. The honours of earth were not for him; "a bastard shall not enter even into the kingdom of heaven." Who, then, shall condemn the resolution of a proud youth like Lester, without due cultivation of the moral sense; unrestrained by religious principle, and thinking, feeling only as a man? Who shall judge and not pity? Who shall censure and not sympathize with him in his terrible human trial, and regard with charity even the darkest aberrations from morality and virtue to which it might lead him; remembering that he had the moral heroism and godlike virtue to resolve to become his own executioner; the voluntary herald of the sentence that should cut him off from rank, title, wealth, yea, love, and brand him as an exile from his species?

Notwithstanding the array of proofs to substantiate the narrative of Elpsy; notwithstanding the irresistible connexion existing in his own mind in support of its truth, yet there lingered in his heart a faint hope that it might not be as he believed. It became so dreadful when calmly contemplated, that he began to conceive that it was impossible for it to be true. There was but one way of confirming it, viz., to confront Lady Lester, and learn from her lips the truth of what Elpsy had related in reference to herself. If it should prove correct, then he resolved finally to decide on the method he should pursue. Gathering up the reins and pressing his armed heels into his horse's flanks as he came to this determination, he said, as he dashed forward to Cattle More, the towers of which were now full in sight,

"From her lips—Lady Lester's (if I may not call her mother), will I have corroboration of this foul witch's words. Fly, my good horse; we will soon learn whether thou and I are to part! But, if it must be so, no other shall back thee after me, my faithful animal; my own hand shall slay thee first!"

The fleet hunter brought him in a few moments to the gate that led into the courtyard surrounding Castle More. At the sound of his approach it flew wide open, and, as he passed through, the porter removed his cap and bent low with servile respect.

"Ay," he muttered, "'tis so now! but he will be the first to scoff with a high head, and turn the key upon my back, when it shall be noised abroad that Robert of Lester is the brat of a peasant—the left-handed offspring of Hurtel of the Red-Hand!"

He threw himself from his horse, and cast his bridle to his groom, giving him orders to hold him in readiness for him to remount at any moment, and entered beneath the lofty arch of the castle, over which were elaborately sculptured in stone the ancient arms of Lester. He rapidly mounted the spacious stairs to a large and lofty hall, hung with armour, and adorned with figures of mailed warriors, ancestors of that warlike house. From childhood he had looked upon these with awe and pride. Now he curled his lip with haughty despair, and strode past them with a bitter smile. At its farther extremity he tapped lightly at a door, partly concealed by tapestry of velvet fringed with gold, and adorned with needlework representing figures and scenes of a scriptural character. He was commanded to enter. With a beating heart, and choking with the anticipated confirmation of what left scarce room for a doubt, and which he had already begun to contemplate as if there were no question of its truth, he obeyed.

The room into which he was admitted occupied a small octagonal wing of the building, and from its single Gothic window commanded a prospect of the mere below, the distant forest, and a blue, wavy line of hills skirting the northern horizon. It appeared to be used partly as a boudoir and library, partly as a chapel: a small altar; a marble font containing water; a crucifix at one end, with two lighted wax tapers burning before it, appertaining to it in its more sacred character. It was hung with brown silk tapestry, on which was worked, in yellow silk, the history of the martyrdoms of the apostles. Immediately about the altar the hangings were of black velvet, giving that part of the room a religious and gloomy character. A rich, but soft, light poured in through the stained glass of the window, and shed a pleasing glow over all.

Near the window, working with her needle flowers of gold on an altar-piece of snow white satin, sat the mistress of Castle More—"the Dark Lady of the Rock!" She was of a tall and stately figure, with an innate air of high birth and breeding: her features were strikingly noble, and still bore traces of eminent beauty. Her eyes were black and piercing; and her brows very dark and thick, yet not masculine, but giving rather softness and intellect to the expression of the eyes. Her hair was jet black, and confined beneath a close nun's cap, and her complexion was deep brown, which, with the general dark tinge of her face and features, had got for her from the peasants the appellation by which among them she was more commonly designated. The lustre of her fine eyes had given place to a melancholy hue; and the smile, which in youth had fascinated the gallant Lord of Lester, was sad and pensive. Calmness, gentle resignation, and devotion were now the characteristics of her countenance. She was evidently one who regarded this world as the path to that of a happier, and looked to that happier for the enjoyment which, without her deceased lord, she could not find in this. Twelve years had passed since the news was brought her that he had fallen before the walls of Saragossa, breathing her name in his last sigh. From that hour she seldom had been seen to smile; but, shunning all intercourse with those around her, she communed only with her priest and her God.

"I thought I knew the footfall of your horse, Robert, but did not expect you so soon," she said, in a quiet, subdued tone; "there is a quarter of an hour yet to sunset, and you seldom return from Castle Cor till it is very late. And Kate's birthday, too! How is this?"

She knotted her thread as she spoke, and looked up, showing a countenance chastened by widowed sorrow, and wearing, as she gazed upon him, a kindly look, rather than a smile, of welcome. The troubled expression of his features; his flushed brow; his excited manner, and nervous tread as he crossed the floor to the window, struck her with surprise and alarm.

"What has happened, Robert? your feelings are wounded, I fear. Come and tell me what that saucy maiden, Kate Bellamont, has been saying to give you such uneasiness."

This was spoken with maternal affection, and an approach to playfulness of manner.

The young man stood by the window and gazed down into the placid mere, fixing his eyes vacantly on a fleet of stately swans that sailed on its glassy breast, and remained silent. He knew not how to commence the subject—he knew not what to say!

"Robert, my son," she said, affectionately attempting to take his hand, "something has gone wrong with you to-day; make a confidant of your mother!"

"Would to God thou wert my mother!" he cried, almost suffocating.

"Thy mother, Robert! what do these words mean?"

"That my future happiness and misery depend on your lips," he replied, turning towards her and grasping her hands with strong emotion.

"Explain!" she said, alarmed and deeply moved by the distress and earnestness of his manner.

"Did you ever—(sustain me, Heaven, at this moment," he gasped) "ever, face to face, meet Hurtel of the Red-Hand?"

"Robert, what motive, so terrible in its effect on your mind, can have led you to ask this?"

"Answer me, my mother—speak, Lady Lester!"

"Yes!" and she shuddered, as if some painful incident of the past seemed to press upon her memory.

"Where? Speak, and tell me truly, if you love me!" he eloquently entreated.

"Heaven and the blessed saints preserve you, my son! 'Tis a sad story! Why would you seek to know this now? Be calm; you are ill—very ill!"

"No, I am not. Answer me—where?"

"He took me prisoner, and bore me on horse-back—"

"Whither?" he cried, impatiently interrupting her.

"To his tower."

"And, ere thy husband rescued thee, I was born there?"

"Yes. But how heard you this? I knew not that it was known to you, though I had no motive, surely, in keeping the knowledge of it from you," she said, with surprise. "Is it this, then, that has so strangely excited you, my son?"

"Who attended on thee at that crisis?"

"Robert—boy!"

"Answer me, Lady Lester, I conjure thee! in the presence of this holy symbol of our religion!" he added, with stern solemnity, taking a small diamond crucifix from her worktable and holding it up before her.

"A pale young woman: I fear me, a leman of that evil man."

"Was she a mother?"

"Who has taught thee to put such questions as these, young man?" she said, with something of severity in her voice.

"Answer me, Lady Lester, I pray thee!"

"She had an infant of three days' old."

"Was it with her in thy room ere thou becamest a mother?"

"It was."

"Did you see it?"

"No; she kept it swathed up, as if from shame."

"Who first gave your infant to your arms?"

"No one. I had fainted, and, when I came to my senses, I found my babe lying on the bed beside me; and," added the lady, with a mother's light rekindling in her eyes, "with all a young mother's first love, I clasped it to my bosom."

"And this woman and her child?"

"I never saw them more. That day my noble lord rescued me; and after he had seen and kissed the babe, I remember he pleasantly said to those around, 'In losing one I have gained two.' My poor, departed Lester! Heaven be merciful to his soul!"

"And I am that babe?"

"Thou art, my son!" she said, affectionately.

"I am not!" he cried, fiercely.

"Not my son?"

"Not thy son!"

"What mean you, insolent boy?"

"In one word, I will tell thee. The guilty paramour of that woman having resolved to put out of the world the living witness of the wrong he had done her, threatened also her life when she refused to surrender it. Prompted by the instinct of maternal love to save it, she laid it, while thou wert in a state of insensibility, by thy side, and gave thine to him, palming it off as her own, which, by this stratagem, was saved—and still lives. I am HE!"

"Robert of Lester!" cried the lady, rising up and fixing her piercing eyes, bright with unwonted fire, upon his face, "mock me not; spare thy mother's heart!"

"Before God I speak truly. I am not thy son."

"Holy Virgin! Mercy, Heaven! mercy!" shrieked the lady, and fell nearly lifeless into his arms.

For a few seconds there was a deep silence, like that of death, throughout that little chamber. He had not anticipated this! Absorbed in the contemplation of his own misery, he had not thought of the blow he should inflict, by the disclosure of the dreadful secret, upon the mind of Lady Lester. It suddenly occurred to him that there was yet a balm in the existence of her true son which might heal the wound he had made. Filial affection caused him immediately to address, and, by touching this chord, endeavour to restore her once more to life and hope.

"Lady!" he said, in a hoarse tone, that—so deep were the feelings that governed it—startled even himself.

"Ha! Robert! my son!" she cried, standing up and looking wildly in his face; "what is this I have heard? Is it a dream—some terrific dream?"

"Thou hast not dreamed, lady," he said, sadly.

"No, I have not," she cried, with energy, and with the sudden return of all her faculties; "no, I have heard thy lips deny me. Thou hast said I am not thy mother—that thou art not my own child!"

"Do you remember the tale I have told you, lady?" he asked, calmly.

"Remember? each word is seared into my heart!"

"And do you believe me to be your son?"

"Believe? believe! I know not what to believe. What should I believe! I believe thou art my own boy—mine, mine, mine!"

As she spoke she threw her arms with frantic wildness about his neck, and hugged him convulsively to her bosom.

"Lady, 'tis vain to shut your eyes to the truth. I am not your son—but your son lives!"

"He does, he does live, and I clasp him to my heart," she cried, energetically, folding him closer to her bosom.

"Nay—"

"Nay—nay, but I will hold thee! they shall not tear thee from me! No, no! they must take my heart too, for its strings are bound all about thee, and thou art tied too long and too strong to it by the thousand chords of a mother's love to be parted from it now. Ha, ha! They shall not part us! Shall they, boy?"

He looked up into her face and saw that her mind wandered; that reason was falling from its throne!

"Mother!" he said, in tones of gentle persuasion: "mother!" and he affectionately kissed her cheeks; "mother!" he repeated a third time, in the most touching tones of filial love—"I am, I will be, your own dear son!"

The softer feelings of her soul came back; all the mother rushed from the heart to the eyes; and dissolved, melted by his appeal, she burst into tears, and wept freely and long upon his shoulder.

At length she became composed; when, embracing his opportunity, though he had been severely tempted in the interval to let it rest for ever, he spoke again with cautious delicacy upon the fatal subject. She listened in silence. She heard him with calmness as he went on and explained to her the successive steps by which the exchange was effected, and unfolded to her, link by link, the connected chain of the witch's narrative. He convinced her—not of its probability, but of its possibility. Collecting all her strength of mind, she tried to contemplate the subject with composure. She succeeded: weighed it well, in all its parts and bearings; nicely balanced each particle, and sifted each doubtful circumstance. Suddenly she turned to him, and said eagerly, and with an eye kindling with hope,

"It may not be so, Robert! She may, in the agitation of the moment, when both were swathed, have caught up her own child!"

"At such a moment, above all, would a mother know her own!" he said, firmly, but looking as if he would, if he dared, still cherish a hope.

"Yes, yes; and she must, too, have seen it afterward," she said, in a tone of deep despondency. "But who told thee this fatal tale?" she asked, quickly.

"Elpsy, the sorceress!"

"Ha!" exclaimed the lady, turning pale. "I fear, then, it is too true! This fearful woman has knowledge of hidden and wondrous things through her unholy art. Oh, God! that she had used it to a better end! But, then, there may have been a mistake! Malice—her hatred of her species may have caused her to give the facts this frightful turn! Dreadful being! thus to loose, even by raising a doubt of thy birthright, my last hold on earthly happiness, and wreck all my hopes in thee. Her face ever has haunted me as if for evil! It seems to me as if I had seen it in the dreams of my childhood. I know not how it is, but I never looked upon her without presentiments of evil and vague sensations of suffering, as if her very presence was associated with scenes of terror. Now are they all, indeed, realized! But I will not give thee up, Robert, my son—my own son!" she cried, frantically! "I will cling to the hope that the fatal exchange was not made!"

He suffered her to embrace him again and again, and then, after a few moments' silence, and speaking in an indifferent tone, he said,

"Lady Lester! Was thy noble husband of fair complexion?"

"No, dark as the Spaniard's, yet it was exceedingly rich to the eye with its bright blood!" she said, with conjugal pride.

"Were his eyes blue?"

"Black as night, large and staglike, yet soft as a fawn's in the gentleness of their expression—but terrible as the eagle's when roused."

"Were his locks golden?"

"The plumage of the raven not more black and glossy!"

"Was he tall of stature and strongly-framed?"

"Scarce even as tall as thyself now; his frame was light and elegant, but manly: to sum him up in all," she said, carried away by the prideful recollections awakened by these allusions to him, "he was a statesman; a patron of letters and the arts; a gallant knight, a brave soldier, and an accomplished scholar: he was called the handsomest man of his time: above all, he was a Christian!"

"Am I like him?" asked Lester, startling her with the depth of his voice, and at once showing her the drift of his seemingly aimless questions. "Is my stature slight? are these locks raven? are these eyes black? is the hue of the Spaniard on my cheek?"

The lady shrunk from his words, covered her face with her hands, and despairingly shook her head.

"Say," he added, with increasing energy, "is there the faintest lineament in my face—a scarce perceptible cast of the eye—a bend of the brow—a movement of the lip—a motion of arm or finger—aught in my carriage, walk, or voice, that reminds thee of thy noble husband?"

"No, no, no! Stop, stop, you will kill me!"

"One word more! Answer me truly, Lady Lester, as you stand before Heaven, have I not the same fair skin—the same light flowing hair—the same blue eyes—the stature, the very voice—ay, the very selfsame frown of Hurtel of the Red-Hand?"

"Ha! now I see it! Oh, Jesu Maria! Thou art his very image! Mercy, mercy, mercy!" and, with a shriek wrung from a breaking heart, she fell, as if dead, upon the floor.

For a few moments he stood gazing upon her with the cool, decisive smile of a man for whom fate has done her worst, and who defies and laughs to scorn her farther triumphs over his soul. His fixed countenance was more fearful than phrensied agitation or tremendous wrath. It was the dark, still cloud that rests upon the crater ere the volcano bursts into flame. Gradually, as he gazed on that beloved countenance, pale and deathly in its aspect, he sunk on his knees beside her, took her insensible hands within his own, and kissed her unconscious brow, while fast and thick dropped the heavy tears upon her face.

"Mother, for mother thou art, indeed!" said he, feelingly, "I would not have struck this blow to thy heart; but I could not stand before thee a deceiver, an impostor! I could not encounter the affectionate glance of thy pure eyes, meet thy gaze of maternal love, and know they were not mine. Yet thou art my mother! all the mother I have ever known. Have I not drawn life from that breast? Has not my infant head been pillowed from the first on that maternal bosom? Didst thou not hear me when my infant lips first lisped thy maternal name? Hast thou ever known other son than me—I other parent? Thou art my mother! I am thy son, though the blood of strangers, whom I have never known, flows in my plebeian veins! Mother, we must part! The house of Lester may not have a baseborn lord! Would to God I could have turned aside this stroke from thee! But it is past! Henceforward thou art nothing to me—I nothing to thee. Farewell, farewell, my own, my beloved mother!"

He bent over her, and affectionately and passionately embraced her, pressing his lips to hers, and bathing her face with his hot tears. She seemed to be awakened to sudden consciousness by the act; and throwing her arms about him, she faintly articulated, "My son! my son!" and relapsed into insensibility. He clasped her unconscious form in one more long embrace, kissed her for the last time, and gently disengaged himself from her arms.

His movements became now direct and decided. He approached the escritoir, and hastily wrote on a leaf of her missal,

"Lady Lester—nay, mother—dearest MOTHER! I have just taken my last leave of you. I go forth into the world and commit my fortune to its currents. Baseborn—guilty-born—attainted by my father's crimes, I am unworthy your love or a place in your thoughts. Henceforward let me be nothing to thee! Forget that I have ever existed. Though I depart, yet is Lester not without an heir! you not without a son! Thy child thou wilt find with the fisherman Meredith, at Castle Cor. He is the perfect semblance of thy husband, Robert, Lord of Lester, as you have described him to me; and, when your eyes behold him, your heart will at once claim him. He is proud and high-spirited, and worthy of the name he is destined to bear. Seek him out; and may he fill the place in your heart from which I am for ever excluded. Farewell, my mother, for other mother than thee have I never known—will never know!

"Robert,

"Son of Hurtel of the Red-Hand."

He placed the paper open before the crucifix, where she was wont to pray, and was himself unconsciously in the act of kneeling to seek a blessing from Heaven, when he hastily recovered his erect attitude, saying, with a thrilling laugh of reckless hopelessness,

"Never more do I bend the knee to Heaven! What have I to do with prayer?"

He approached the door, and then turned back to gaze an instant with a melancholy look on the prostrate form of Lady Lester:

"Nay, I must not leave thee so!" he said: returning, he tenderly raised her up, and used means to restore her.

After a few moments she revived and gazed wildly around her.

"Robert, is it you? are you beside me? Oh, my son, I have had such a tale of horror revealed to me as I slept."

She pressed her fingers upon her eyelids as if to recall what appeared to her a dark dream. As she did so he stole from her towards the door—lingered—turned back—severed a bright lock from his temples, pressed it to his lips, and placed it within her hand; he then hastily kissed her pale forehead, saying, half aloud,

"Here I bury all human feelings!"

The next moment he precipitately fled from the room.

Roused by the sound of the closing door, she shrieked his name, and, hastening through the dark hall, called in tones of distressing anguish,

"Robert, my son! my boy! my dear boy! leave not your mother desolate!"

He stopped his ears to the sounds, quickened his steps, and threw himself into his saddle.

"'Tis full late, my lord, to ride forth alone," said the groom, as he held the stirrup.

"Lord me not, Tyrell. If thou hast chanced to be born in wedlock, thou hast better blood in thy veins than I!"

"How mean you, my lord?" said the astonished menial.

"Didst ever hold stirrup for a fisher's son?"

"No, my lord!"

"Thou liest. For thou hast but now done so. Your lord has found out that he is but a fisher-woman's brat; and a fisher's brat is about to find out that he is a lord."

"You speak in riddles, my lord."

"Set thy wits, and those of yonder gaping fellows, to work to unriddle them," was the reply of the degraded youth as he buried his spurs deep in his horse's flanks. "Give the compliments of the son of Hurtel of the Red-Hand to your new lord, knaves, and say he has taken the liberty to borrow his hunter for a time!" he cried, turning round in the saddle as he rode off.

The next moment he dashed across the drawbridge and disappeared in the twilight gloom of the forest, leaving the wonder-stricken retainers to pick the kernel from the difficult nut he had left them to crack; and, by putting their sage heads together, with the aid of some expressions dropped by the frantic Lady Lester, they were not long in arriving at a shrewd guess at the truth.

The night was fast approaching as the desolate outcast entered the forest. He hailed the gathering darkness with joy, for it was in unison with the gloom of his soul. The howl of the wildest storm would have been music to his ears! He could have mocked with shouts of gladness the rattling thunder, and played with the shafts of the glittering lightning.

He rode deep into the wood—whither he cared not so that he left behind him all that he had lost. For half an hour he thought of nothing but urging his horse forward at the top of his speed. He banished thought, reflection, sensation. He dared not think. He found relief only in animal action and rapid motion, and rode furiously onward without knowing or regarding the course taken by his horse, who instinctively followed the dark windings of the forest paths.

At length the moon rose and shone down upon him through the tree tops. Its light seemed to restore him to himself. He checked his rapid course, and gazed at her pale orb; as he looked, reflection returned, and he began to realise his situation, and to taste the full bitterness of the cup of which he had drunken. The past, the present, the future, flashed with all their naked colours upon his mind. The picture his imagination painted with the hues they lent was too appalling to contemplate; and, as if the fabled influence of the planet, the soft light of which had restored him to reflection, had acted upon his fevered brain, he was suddenly converted into a maniac. He rose upright in his stirrups, and shouted, shrieked, till the forests rang again. He shook his clinched fists at the placid moon, that seemed smilingly to mock his woes. He spurred on his horse till the animal groaned with pain, and plunged madly forward with his phrensied rider! He would then rein him up, and, gnashing his teeth, lift his hands above his head, and curse God and man. Then he would again shout with phrensy, and gore his steed till he became furious and snorted with rage, and ride once more forward with the speed of the wind.

These passions were too violent to last. His wild excitement gradually subsided; his horse was suffered to move at his own pace; and, with his arms folded moodily, and his chin drooping on his breast, he gave himself up to the stern and gloomy thoughts of his situation, and, for a time, buried in the depths of his own meditations, seemed to be wholly unconscious of external objects. He rode on in this way for more than an hour, when he was aroused by the sudden stopping of his horse. He looked up and saw before him a dilapidated gate, which barred his farther progress. Beyond, visible by the full flood of moonlight, was a lonely square tower, flanked by a single wing, topped with a battlement. He listened, and thought he heard the dashing of waves upon the beach. The whole scene was new to him! Where could his faithful steed have borne him? From the moment he had left Castle More behind all had seemed like a blank to him. How far, and whither, could he have ridden? He looked up at the moon. It had not risen when he left Castle More, yet it now rode high in the heavens! By her position it was near midnight.

Indifferent where he wandered, he leaped the sunken gate, and rode up to the tower. It was not in ruins, yet wore an aspect of desolation and neglect. Its loneliness harmonized with his own situation, and was grateful to him. He rode round the angle of a buttress, when the sea suddenly opened before him, and he saw that the tower stood on a rock thirty or forty feet above it, and that where it overhung the water projected a small balcony. A sudden thought flashed upon his mind as he discovered this.

"It must be!" he exclaimed, with animation; "'tis the tower of Hurtel of the Red-Hand! This moat, yonder ruined drawbridge, its situation, and, above all, that balcony, one and all, identify it with Elpsy's description. By the bones of my red-handed sire! thou knewest what thou wert about to bring me hither, sagacious animal!" he added, sarcastically, patting the noble horse on the neck; "'tis fitting I should take possession of my father's towers with the inheritance of his name. Ha, ha! I am not quite a vagabond!" and he laughed scornfully.

He started with surprise, for the laugh seemed to be echoed from the tower.

"'Twas a human voice, or else a spirit mocking! If demons do rejoice over the miseries of mankind, they may well hold a jubilee in honour of mine. Laugh on, imps! I am a fit subject for your merriment!" and he laughed with nervous derision.

Again he started, for he was answered by a laugh so wild that it chilled his blood. The sound seemed to proceed from an upper room in the wing of the building.

"Fiend or flesh, it shall rue this merriment!" he cried, leaping to the ground and hastening to the door of the tower.

It was ajar; he dashed it open with his heel, and found himself in a long, low hall, at the extremity of which was the window that opened on the balcony, through which he caught a glimpse of the glimmering sea. By the light it afforded he crossed the hall, and, standing on the balcony, glanced an instant over the vast moonlit expanse of water, and then, with a strange interest, the whole of Elpsy's story rushing vividly to his mind, he shudderingly cast his eyes down the rock which stood in deep shadow. Even by the indistinct light he could discern the sharp projection on which the garments of the infant had caught in its descent, and not four feet distant from him, on a level with the window, was the rock on which the fisher's daughter—his mother—was in the act of springing, when hurled into the sea by—his father. On that very balcony had he stood to do the deed! Strange, wonderful, overpowering were his sensations. He held his breath with the intensity of his thoughts.

"Here," said he, mentally, placing his hand on the balustrade, "has lain my unknown mother's hand; it warmed this senseless iron, which can give me back no warmth in return. Here pressed the foot of my father! Here they parted! How! ah, how? Where are they now? Where is he? does he live? Where is she? A fearful thought forces itself upon me that I dare not dwell upon! This strange tale of the sorceress; her wonderful and minute knowledge, that could be only known to the actor; her emotion at different portions of the story; a hundred things, light as air, that have insinuated themselves into my mind, have made me think she might be—fiends! it will out!—my mother! But, then, she told me that she was dead. Well, be it so, yet I can fall no lower! Were my mother living, could her lot be better than this fearful weird woman's? Ha, ha, ha! I have no pride now!" he added, with a hollow laugh of mingled despair and phrensy.

"Ha, ha, ha!" he heard repeated, in tones so unearthly that his heart ceased to beat, and a thrill like ice shot through his veins.

The next moment he was at the top of a flight of steps leading from one side of the hall to an upper room, from which the voice seemed to proceed. A stream of moonlight, falling through a window, showed him a door on the landing-place, which he threw open. He found himself in a small room, lighted by a lattice of crimson-stained glass looking south towards the sea: into it the moon, in its western circle, had just began to shine, its red-died beams tinting the twilight of the chamber with the hue of blood. Seated high in the recess of the window, he discovered the dark figure of a female; her knees drawn up to her chin, and her hands clasped together around them. As he opened the door she leaped down like a cat and sprang towards him. The sanguinary light of the room had affected his imagination, not untinged with the superstitious fears of his time; but this sudden apparition, though he had prepared himself to see something either human or supernatural, caused him to start back with an exclamation of surprise.

"Come in, Robert of Lester! I welcome you to the room which first welcomed you to the light," said she, in a voice which he at once recognised as that of the sorceress.

The singular information her words conveyed suspended for the moment all other emotions in his mind save curiosity at finding himself so unexpectedly in the chamber where he was born. He gazed about him for a few moments under the influence of the strange thoughts and emotions the circumstance called up, and then turning towards her, said,

"Why art thou here, wicked woman? Didst thou anticipate my presence, and art thou come to mock the misery thou hast wrought?"

"I fled lest thou shouldst do a deed of blood thy hand might rue. I fled not for myself, but for thee."

"You need not fear me now. There exists no longer any motive for secrecy," he said, gloomily.

"How mean you?" she eagerly asked.

"Ere to-morrow's sun, 'twill be in every boor's mouth, from Castle Cor to Kinsale, that I am no longer Lord of Lester!"

"Speak—explain!" she said, hoarsely, grasping his arm with both hands, and breathing quick and hard.

"I have told the Lady Lester that he whom she thought her son was not her son," he firmly replied.

"Ha! thou—thou hast told thy shame? Speak, Robert More—have you breathed to mortal ear what I have told thee of thy birth?" she demanded, with fearful energy of speech and manner.

"I have. 'Tis known to every servitor from hall to stable!"

"Didst give thy name?"

"Robert, son of Hurtel of the Red-Hand."

"And this did thine own lips, of thine own free will?"

"Never man spoke freer!"

"Then hell be thy portion! Accursed be ye, Robert Hurtel! Had I thought thou wouldst have become the trumpeter of thy shame—had I believed thou wouldst have breathed to mortal ear thine infamy, I would have seared my tongue with hot iron ere I would have told thee the secret of thy birth. The infernal demon has prompted thee to do this! Didst thou not seek to slay me, that thou shouldst be the sole keeper of the foul secret?"

"I did, at the moment, but thought better of it!"

"Base! lowborn! miserable that thou art! Why was not my tongue withered ere I told thee this?"

"Would to God it had been, woman. What was thy motive in ever letting it go from thy own breast?"

"Love of mischief—hatred of mankind; and to lower thy pride, knowing from what dunghill thou wert sprung. But I did not think thou wouldst use my secret thus; and wreck the gifts that—that thy mother's stratagem had purchased, and after secured to thee by years of absence, privation, and misery."

"How?"

"Did she not, for thy sake, keep the secret of thy birth—coming not even near thee—when, on the ninth day, Hurtel of the Red-Hand being gone over the sea, she might safely have claimed thee of Lady Lester, and given her back her own!" she said, vehemently.

"Rather for her own sake—from maternal pride at having her son sit among nobles," was the stern reply. "And if these were her motives, as I doubt not they were, at what price did she purchase this honour for her child? The price of the deepest guilt, by keeping the true heir from his birthright. I did not view it in this light before. By the cross! I am a well-born! a guilty mother, too! 'Tis well you told me she was no more; I should care little to meet her in my present mood."

As he spoke, the woman sunk her head upon her bosom, and deep groans escaped her, whether of defeated hopes, of sorrow, of shame, or of remorse, he knew not. Suddenly he laid his hand upon her arm, and looked impressively in her face, and said,

"Woman! who is my mother?"

"Thou wilt never know!"

"Art thou?"

"Ha, ha, ha! I? Do I look like the gentle maiden that won the love of Hurtel of the Red-Hand? Are these matted locks tresses of gold? Is this complexion like the blended ivory and rose? Is my voice soft and full of love? Are my eyes like the gazelle's, and gentle as the dove's in their expression? Is this hideous form such as would lure youth to embrace it? Wilt thou acknowledge thyself the son of 'the witch'—'the sorceress'—'the beldame Elpsy' (such were thy gentle terms)—the beleagued with demons—the familiar of the evil one—the—"

"No, no! Avaunt!" he shouted, with a furious gesture; "thank God! I am not sunk so low as that!"

"Ha, ha! Thy pride is fallen far indeed when it can enter thy thoughts, and even go from thy lips, that Elpsy of the Tower gave thee birth. Oh, ho! I am well avenged in this for thy mad folly in throwing away thy earldom. Oh, how I do hate thee for that act! for it thou shalt never know peace in body or soul!"

"I defy thee, woman, and all thy arts!"

"Yet the tales of my deeds have made thy human soul to shrink! Beware how thou speakest lightly of what thou knowest naught, and which is hid from mortal ken!" she added, with mysterious and solemn earnestness. "Whither turn thy footsteps now, Lord of Lester?" she asked, with chilling irony. "Doubtless thou hast come to take possession of thy fair lands here. They are not so broad, indeed, as the domains of Castle More, and thy castle needs some furnishing and repair. Doubtless thou wouldst like to fit it up ere thou bringest home to be its mistress the fair Kate of Bellamont!"

"Breathe that name again, woman, and I will take thy life!"

"Thou art now thy very father's image!" she said, with derision. "Even in this moonlight I can see that devilish shape of the eyes that his were wont to assume when he meditated murder! Ho! I dare to say thou wilt be like him in more than the glance of the eye. Dost mean to follow in his footsteps, and head a band of lawless insurgents; or wilt thou, as 'tis said his brother did—"

"His brother?"

"Thou didst not know before thou hadst once an uncle? So: thou shalt no longer be kept in ignorance. He was a bold, bad man, and therein true to his race; was called Black Hurtel, and roved the Danish seas a daring bucanier. 'Twas said he could float his ship in the blood of the men he had slain! He was killed on the French coast in a fierce fight; but his vessel was captured, and his dead body, with his living crew (for the captors would not leave one alive to blacken the face of the earth), were sunk in the deep sea. Perhaps, like him, thou wilt take to the wave, and carve thy fortune in blood! Blood is sweet, and there is music to the ear in its gurgle where it is shed with a free hand! Look you," she said, pointing through the window; "the sea is spread wide before you, and seems to invite thee with its glancing waves. It knows not of thy disgrace, nor has it voices to whisper thy infamy; while every bird, tree, and stone will nod and gossip to one another as thou passest by—

"'There goes he who was the Lord of Lester!'"

"Woman, you madden me!"

"Perhaps," she continued, in the same cutting tone, while he paced the little chamber with a phrensied step, "thou wilt rather come and share my tower i'the ruin, if the new Lord of Lester will give thee leave; doubtless he will honour thee by asking thee to hold his stirrup on occasion. But, if thou wilt rather habit in this tower, I will be thy seneschal. I love its old gray walls! many is the moonlight night I've sat in the window and looked on the sea, as it danced, and glimmered, and seemed to beck and nod, and laugh when I laughed. Ha, ha! I have had brave times here, gossipping with the sea!"

As she said this she looked from the window, and suddenly her eye seemed to be arrested by some unexpected sight. She gazed for a moment eagerly, and then said, in the enthusiastic tone and manner of a sibyl, skilfully assumed with the tact of one accustomed to turn to her own purpose every passing circumstance,

"Look thou, Robert Hurtel! I have had pity on thy state, and have, by the art thou hast dared to scorn, brought from many a far league away, to thy tower's foot, a ship to waft thee and thy fortunes! See how proudly it stands in towards the land, looking like a great white spirit, with the moon glancing on its canvass wings. Oh, 'tis a brave bark!"

The young man (her words taunting, malicious, and hateful as they were, not having been without some effect in influencing him in determining on his future course) sprang alertly to the window and gazed with interest on the approaching vessel. It was about a third of a mile from the land, standing directly towards the tower before a light breeze. It was apparently about seventy tons burden, short and heavily built, rising very high out of the water, with a very lofty stern. It had three masts, each consisting of one entire stick, tapering to a slender point, and terminated by a little triangular flag. On each mast was hoisted a huge, square lugger's sail, which, with a short jib, stretched from the head of the foremast to a stunted bowsprit, and a sort of tri-sail or spanker aft worked without a boom, was all the canvass she carried or that belonged to her peculiar class of craft.

He watched it with eager attention as it came bounding landward, flinging the glittering spray from its round bows, its wet sides shining in the moonlight as if sheathed with plates of silver. A chaos of hopes, wishes, and conflicting resolutions agitated his mind as it approached; after a short struggle, he resolved to throw himself on board if her master would receive him, and depart with her wherever the winds should waft her. Having come to this determination, he watched her motions with additional interest; and when, after coming in so close to the shore that he could discern that her decks were crowded with men, she wore round and stood northward, his heart sank within him; and, dashing his hand through the crimson glass, he was about to hail, when Elpsy checked him:

"Hold! see you not they are only coming up to wind to lie to! Look! they are already swinging round their clumsy sails."

The vessel came up slowly and heavily to the wind, and, by means of her mainsail, lay as still as if at anchor. In a few moments afterward, as they eagerly watched, they saw a boat let down, and several men descend over the side into it. He uttered a joyful exclamation when he saw this movement; and, without reflecting upon the character of the vessel, or the object it could have in view in landing on so retired a coast at such a time, he only thought of it as a means of bearing him from the hateful shore, and perhaps opening for him some path to action and mental excitement.

"See that flash of light on her deck! There is another gleam!" exclaimed Elpsy.

"'Tis the glancing of the moonbeams on steel!" he replied, in a gratified tone.

"There is a sound a man should know!" she said again.

"'Tis the ringing of arms!" he replied, in the same animated manner.

"What think you they are, young man?" asked she, with a peculiar smile, laying her hand impressively on his arm.

"I know not, nor care, so I may cast my fortune with them!"

"Thou art, of a truth, thy father's son!"

"And, by the cross, he shall not be ashamed to own me!" he replied, in a desperate and determined tone.

"I will tell thee what they are—for I have passed my life by the seaside, and know the nature, and have learned to know the occupation and nation of each ship by its fashion, as I would tell a tradesman's by his garb."

"What, then, is the nation of this barque?"

"He is a Dane."

"Its nature?"

"To sail in shallow waters, and run before the wind."

"Its business on the sea?"

"To rob, pillage, and slay!"

"Ha, a bucanier?"

"A Dane."

"'Tis but another name for pirate in these waters. By the cross! when I saw the glitter of steel in the hands of its crew, I half guessed it."

"Wilt thou now link thy fate with theirs?"

"Am I not fit to be their comrade? Are they outcasts; what am I? Are they branded with shame; who am I? Has society cast them from its bosom; was I not born in bastardy? Am I not fallen lower than the lowest he among them who hath been born in wedlock? Why should I hesitate to mate with my fellows? What has the honourable world to invite me to? What if I could bury in oblivion from the reach of my own thoughts the black stain upon my birth and hitherto noble name, and, under a new one, with a strong heart and virtuous resolves, throw myself into the arena of honourable contest, and should succeed in winning a name that men would do homage to—should I not wear it, feeling that a sword was suspended by a hair above my head?"

"How mean you?" she asked, struck with the impassioned and despairing tones of his voice.

"I mean that, if, after carrying the secret like a living serpent coiled in my heart for years, I should, without suspicion, chance to win a fair name, the time at length would come when some one, with a too faithful memory, would recognise the bastard Hurtel—the quondam Lester—in the successful adventurer; and then—No, no!" he said, bitterly, "no, no! It may not be! The presence of this ship points me to the course I should pursue. I obey the fate that has directed it hither!"

"Wilt thou become a pirate?" she said, with a natural and feeling manner, as if prompted by some suddenly-awakened interest in him. "Yesterday Lord of Lester—to-day a pirate!"

"Yes."

"Curse the tongue that told thee of thy birth! But," she continued, muttering with her usual quick tones and nervousness of manner, "it was so pleasant to tell him, for his father's sake, he looked so like him! And then it was a pleasure to humble his pride, which he made even me the victim of: and so, as my master would have it, I could not, for the life o' me, longer help telling him the love-story I had kept so many years in my heart for him. Ho! ho! ha! ha! and a pleasant tale it was, too!" she added in that phrensied strain which seemed to be most natural to her.

While she was speaking the boat, which appeared to be full of men, put off from the vessel, and they could distinctly hear the command to "let fall," followed by the splash of the falling sweeps.

"Give way!" in a stern, deep tone, came directly afterward distinctly to their ears; and, shooting out from the vessel's side, the boat moved in towards the cliff.

As it neared the shore, one of the men stood up in the stern, and was heard to command them to cease pulling; and, for a few seconds afterward, he seemed to be reconnoitring the beach. Apparently satisfied with his scrutiny, he ordered them to give way again, steered directly to the foot of the tower, and skilfully run the boat alongside of the rock almost beneath the window.

"Now lay off an oar's length from the shore, and wait for me," said the one who had steered the boat, and who appeared to be the leader. "Be on the alert against surprise, though there's little fear of any one being within a league of the old tower. Carl, you and Evan take the coil of rigging and come with me."

As he spoke he leaped on the projection of the rock; then measuring the cliff with his eye, he placed his cutlass between his teeth and began to ascend. By the aid of numerous fissures and bold spurs jutting out from the sides he reached the top, closely followed by his men. Here he paused a moment, resting on his cutlass, and looked about him. He stood directly beneath the window from which Elpsy and the young man were looking, and was plainly visible to them. He was a short, stout-built man, with a ruddy complexion, browned by the winds and suns of every clime. His hair was gray, and hung in straight locks about his ears; and, judging by the deeply-indented lines of his weather-worn visage, his age was about fifty; yet his compactly-built figure, his light motions, and athletic appearance, gave indications of many years less. His countenance, turned upward to their full gaze in his survey of the tower, wore an expression of careless jovialty, united with desperate hardihood. The most striking characteristic of his face was a thick red mustache covering his upper lip. He had on his head an immense fur cap, and wore a short, full frock of a dark shade, secured at the waist by a broad belt, stuck with large, heavy pistols of the kind known, at the period, as the hand-harquebuss. He wore, also, voluminous breeches of buff leather, buckled at the knee, red cloth gaiters, and high-quartered shoes with pointed toes, and garnished with sparkling buckles of immense size. By his side hung the empty sheath of the sabre on which he leaned. His men, save the fur cap, for which they substituted red woollen ones of a conical form, and the frock, instead of which they wore long jackets, were—breeches, buckler, shoes, and gaiters—his counterpart in apparel.

"'Tis the very spot I once knew it! The unchanged sea—the rock—this gray tower! It seems as if but a day, and not eighteen years, had passed since I banqueted here with Hurtel of the Red-Hand," he said to himself, gazing round with revived recollections at each object. "Well, strange things have happened since! He is dead, or an exile with a price on his head; all our brave band scattered; and I, only, am left to stand once more on this familiar spot. The old rookery looks desolate enough, and seems to sympathize with its master's fortunes! Open your lantern, Carl, and let us enter! This moon will scarce afford light where I wish to penetrate! Heaven grant no evil spirit haunts here to keep guard over the treasure I have come to carry off! But, if it still remains, I will e'en cross blades with the devil for it, and win it, will he, nil he."

He passed as he spoke round the tower, and the next moment the listeners heard the heavy footsteps of the three men echoing through the hall. The young man was about to spring from the room to meet them, when Elpsy held him back.

"Would you run upon death! They would sheathe their cutlasses in your body ere you could open your lips. Hold, and hush! There is time enough. We will see what their purpose is. I have half a guess, from his words, at their business here."

"What!"

"Hurtel of the Red-Hand, the story goes, had secreted in some part of the tower large sums of silver and gold, with which to aid the conspiracy he headed. He had neither time nor means to take it away with him, and doubtless it still remains here, and this bucanier is acquainted with the secret."

"Ha!" he exclaimed, with surprise, "who told thee this?"

"Rumour, said I not!" she replied, after a moment's hesitation.

"And how should these know where to look for what has been concealed for years?"

"Hark!" she cried, as a heavy noise reached them from a distant part of the building, "they have opened the trap of the tower, and will descend into the vaults. He is one that knows well the place."

"Doubtless, from his language, some one of my hospitable parent's fellow-chiefs, who used to revel here in the days you tell of. I will see what they do, and take opportunity of forming good fellowship with my father's friend. Nay—but let me go, woman!"

He broke from her as she attempted to detain him, and, cautiously opening the door, descended with a cautious and rapid step into the hall. At its opposite extremity he saw, by the glimmer of a lamp held by one of them, the two men standing over an opening in the floor, and their leader just in the act of letting himself down into the subterranean chamber beneath.

"Hold the ladder steady, Evan!" he said. "Thrust your lantern down at arm's length, Carl, so that I can see where to place my foot. Ha! there, I find bottom," he added, his voice sounding hollow from the depth; "'tis dark and damp as a Calcutta blackhole! Faith, it's more like a tomb than an honest underground apartment. I hope I shall not see Hurtel's ghost guarding his box. Tumble down here, boys, and be ready to hand above decks as soon as I find out where it's stowed away!"

The others, leaving their cutlasses behind, followed him into the vault. Their heads had no sooner disappeared than the young man crossed the hall with a free step to the trapdoor, and looked fearlessly after them. He had from the first, when the vessel came in sight, deliberately resolved to attach himself to the party; and now the frank, blunt manner of the old sea-rover struck his fancy, and confirmed him in his resolution. But he was at a loss how to make his intentions known—how first to address men ready to shed blood on the instant without question, and among whom, at such a time, the very discovery of his presence might be fatal ere he could make known to the chief his intentions. While watching them as they groped about through the vast vault, an idea, characteristic of his now reckless disposition, suggested by the ghostly apprehensions of the leader, entered his mind. He paused for an instant, and then, favoured by the darkness, dropped noiselessly into the chamber. With a step that gave back no sound, he approached them as they moved in an opposite direction from him, throwing the light all forward, and waited the opportunity he had chosen for discovering himself.

"'Tis twelve paces to the south, eight paces to the east, and six paces to the west again—which will bring me to the wall, and on the very stone Red Hurtel and I placed over the gold," said the captain; "here are twelve paces, well told!" he added, placing his foot immediately afterward emphatically on the stone floor.

These words at once gave the youth a key to the course he should adopt. His quick eye, as the leader turned to pace east, comprehended the remaining angle at a glance, and, gliding away by the wall, he moved cautiously and noiselessly along till he felt his foot press upon a loose slab. He knew he must be on or near the spot; and drawing himself to his full height, and unconsciously assuming a stern and resolute look, called up by the novelty and danger of his situation, he waited the angular advance of the captain, who, with his men, was too intent on accurately marking his steps to look up even for a moment.

"Now west!" said the leader; and, turning as he spoke, he had counted on to four, five, and was about to take the last step to the wall, when, pronounced in a deep tone, that rung hollow through the vault, he heard the word,

"Forbear!"

He lifted his eyes and fell back upon his men as the lantern shone full upon the object, exclaiming,

"The ghost of Hurtel, by all that's good! Evan, come back here, you villain! Carl, give me that lantern, coward!" he shouted to his men, who turned and fled with affright.

He caught the light from the hand of the terrified Dane, and turned upon this apparition, which, notwithstanding his coolness, had not a little disconcerted him. He held the lamp, though standing off at a chosen distance, to the face of the supposed ghost, and said, with an odd mixture of natural boldness and superstitious fear,

"'Fore Heaven, comrade, you have grown full young in the other world! But there is no mistaking the cut of your eye. Faith, but you can smile, I see," he added, more freely. "There's no more mistaking your smile than your black, ugly frown! So, suppose we shake hands, and, after we get the chest aboard—for they say you don't want this sort of ballast in the seas down below—why, we'll empty a can together, and spin a yarn about old times before the cock crows!"

As the intrepid old sea-rover spoke, he extended his rough hand to grasp that of the other. The young man hesitated to take it, for he was scarce sure of his reception when it should be discovered that he was flesh and blood.

"Never mind if your fingers be a little cold or so, 'tis the nature o' ghosts. I can give you a grasp that'll put warmth into 'em, and last you till you get back where you hail from. Come, old friend, give us your digits, just to say you ain't offended at the liberty I am about to take with your chest o' sparklers; and afterward I will just thank you to step one side a bit!"

The young man smiled at the intrepidity of the seaman, and took the proffered hand.

"Warm! by the bones of St. Nick! The old fellow below has been keeping you over a hot fire, messmate. Well, you must confess, you lived a wonderfully wicked life; and so, as the priests say, the devil will fry it out of you. Sorry for you, on my word! Will lay by fifty of these guilders in prayers for your soul! So take heart. Now just step aside off that slab, which you stick to as if 'twas a tombstone, and we'll bear a hand and bouse this old box out in the snapping of a bolt-rope."

"I am no spirit, but a habitant of this world, like thyself!" he said, with firmness, and a straight-forward frankness that he wisely calculated would have its effect; "I am a young adventurer, without name or family, weal or wealth. I would take service with thee, and follow thy fortunes on the sea!"

The bucanier listened with surprise; and as he became convinced, from his words and manner, that he was no shade from the land of spirits, which shadowy beings he seemed to fear no more than mortal substance, his countenance instantly changed, and he surveyed him with a puzzled look of surprise and doubt.

"So! this alters the case! Who art thou, then? what art thou doing here—and on this particular stone? 'Tis mysterious, i'faith! Guarding this treasure, which no man save Hurtel and I saw laid here; so like him, and not be he! Yet thou canst not be Red Hurtel in the flesh, for his hair would be as gray as mine by this time. Thou sayest thou art not his spirit. Who, and what, then, in the name of St. Barnabas, may you be?"

"His son."

"Ha! ho! There it is, as plain as my hand!" he said, slapping the flat of his cutlass into his left palm. "Priest never had aught to do with thy begetting or thy christening, I'll be sworn! I now remember he had a leman-lady in the tower when I knew him. A proper youth," he added, looking at him with interest, "and as like your father as one marlin-spike is like another! So you inherit the old tower, I dare say, and follow in his steps. St. Claus and the apostles! I would not be surprised if you laid claim to the gold here!"

"I care neither for tower nor gold, good captain. To follow your fortunes I alone ask."

"Do you know what fortunes I follow?" inquired the other, significantly.

"I care not, so there is work for the free hand and ready spirit."

"A chip of the old block! There's my hand to it. You shall have your will, my brave one! Your father and I were comrades in that cursed affair that made the country too hot to hold us. I have been a rover since, and, trusting to my gray head, have ventured back to carry off what gold I heard he had not time to remove. Thou shalt go with me for thy father's sake, boy."

He grasped the old man's offered hand, and, for the moment, felt that he was less alone in the world. What a change had one brief day made in the feelings and destinies of this haughty young man!

"Bear a hand, you pale runaways!" cried the captain to the men, who, seeing that their spirit had proved of flesh and blood, returned, scowling darkly on the cause of their discomfiture. "Take hold of the edge of that stone, and lift it from its bed. Place your hands on the right spot, and it will come up like a cork."

The men made several ineffectual efforts to lift it, though even assisted in their last attempt by their captain.

"How is this?" he said; "it should move with a finger's touch. Ha, I have it! I had forgot. You might heave till you were gray, boys, and it wouldn't stir a hair. Look at some of my magic."

He stooped as he spoke, and pressing the stone horizontally towards the wall, it moved from its bed, and slid away slowly, as if on wheels, beneath it exposing a cavity two feet square and about three feet deep, containing an oaken box, bound with strong bands of rusted steel.