. one by one from the scene of their unrest, put a gradual end to my volubility, and seemed likewise to rouse my companion to a keener sense of external things. His fixity of aspect began to give way to the play of many phases of thought. I never saw a face that more perfectly reflected the inner-workings of the mind. I could see that he was revolving all the bearings of the mysterious story, and in quick succession building up hopes and pulling them down, planning and rejecting, rejoicing and sorrowing, At length he rose, and turned from me, and after pacing up and down the deck for some time, threw himself on his knees with his face to the just-appearing sun, and remained in this attitude, regardless of several astonished spectators, long enough to accomplish a very considerable orison. On rising, he resumed his walk, and it was not until I, rather puzzled with his strange behaviour, made a move as if to go below, that he strode rapidly up to me, and taking me by the hand, drowned a faint attempt to speak, in a flood of tears. I did not wonder that his pent-up emotion on a subject so tender should have forced him, at length, to play the woman; so, placing my arm in his, I turned with him, and we walked up and down for some time in silence. "You will think me very strange," he said, at length-" very ungrateful; but oh, sir, you will not take her from me?" little of the world, but I have read of the ways of God. You and I shall see her; but, ah, when I have only looked at her, you will take her away!" "Nay, nay; it would be years before I could marry your sister." "Years! yes, when years shall have taught me to love her more and more-when from being my hope she shall have become my joywhen from being my distant beckoning star, she shall have become the sun of my life: then you will come, so much wiser, so much more to be desired than I; you will come to claim her promise, and take her away from me, and I shall be alone again!" "I will not take her heart from you. It is possible for a wife to love a husband without altering her love for a brother. If you take her all to yourself, she will be nothing to me; but if in due time you yield her up to me, she will still be to you all that a sister can be." "Do you believe this, sir?" "I do." I certainly was a little puzzled to hear such a matter discussed with reference to reading, instead of ordinary experience. Notwithstanding I felt called upon for an explanation. because of something in which they differ from ordinary women; and if the husband is heard of, it is because the wife must bear his name, which thus shares in her celebrity. But the love of sister and brother-and my own home beamed on me-is, thank God, an ordinary thing, too ordinary for history.' This was a view of the subject, certainly, which had not dawned on me till now. Within the plenitude and compass of my own love I had readily included him, forgetting that I was an "Perhaps," said I "that is owing to the imintruder upon his. His sister was his life-object; perfection of all history, which, dwelling only in and the mere fact that she was to be happy with broad results, cannot reach into the inner feelme would not satisfy him. And in spite of my-ings. These women you have read of are great self, many little selfish, but thoroughly prudent and practical thoughts, drove me all of a sudden into a very calculating state of mind. For it did seem as impossible for me to yield up Stephanie to the utter ownership of her brother as to enlarge the pecuniary details of the matrimonial sacrament so as to include them both. Here was a dilemma, horned and horrid. Natural for him, after a life of weary waiting, of hope deferred and struggles endured, to desire to realize undivided possession! Natural for me, on whom had dawned the life of a higher love than that of brotherhood itself, to cling to the new revelation, and press on to its daily sanctities! There was nothing for it now but to leave the matter to time. I would not shatter a brother's hopes; I could not shatter my own. "You will not take her from me, will you?" he again inquired, with a heart-rending earnest ness that constrained me to cast about for a speedy reply. "We have not found your sister yet," was the only one that suggested itself. "Ah, but we shall find her. I may not teach you, but why are all these strange lines, which begin so far asunder, wearing to a centre? Surely not to cross each other without purpose, and go out again into infinite darkness. I know I was glad to run into abstractions, however out of place at the time, to escape from the practical question that stood like a barrier between us; and by way of still farther evading it, I begged to know how it was that he, at his age (which was not much less than my own), professed so little of the ordinary experience of life. "I think I may say," he replied, "judging from what I have read, and from what I have lately seen of the ways of other men, that mine has been strangely different from most of them," Glad to get him on the subject, I expressed my anxious desire to know whatever he could remember of his previous life. "I have not much to tell," he began, as we seated ourselves, not altogether unopposed, a considerable way out on the bowsprit, which unusual position we had chosen in order to avoid the disagreeables connected with that most merciless of operations, washing decks'; "I have not much to tell, but what I do remember I shall relate to you the more readily, as it may help you to excuse in me much of, 6 began to feel a little reassured, though my first idea had been that all these formidable weapons were intended for my immediate destruction. After I had drunk freely, he laid me as gently back again, and then whispered to me in Italian, Sleep again, little one: you are going to be well soon. He now sat watching me till he thought I was asleep, when he proceeded to divest himself of his arms, and his fine clothing, for which, to my further bewilderment, he substituted a long coarse frock, with a girdle of rope, a hat like an ordinary beaver, without rim, and shoes of the coarsest description. When he had completed his new attire, he next set himself to secrete the garments and arms he had just laid down. The garments he folded up and placed under the palet on which I was lying: the arms he hid deep in the heap of nuts. In the weakness of my mind and body at the time, I was quite unable to adhere to any one course of thought, or any one course of observation; and just at this point I slid off into a state of wonder as to where such a quantity of nuts could have been found, and was deep in a dream of a forest of nuts, with numberless little children sporting on the boughs, when, all of a sudden, I was startled by the voice of some one singing, and, looking up, saw the same man seated on the outer threshold of the door, swaying himself backwards and forwards as an accompaniment or stimulant to one of the most mournful of imaginable chants. It was, indeed, a strange,wild song : and as I lay and listened to him in that fevered excitement which makes us one-half eye and ear and the other half fancy, as he sang and swayed himself, and swayed himself and sang, it seemed to me as if his voice were now mourning in rocky hollows, now quivering among the sobbing leaves of many forests, now joining in the plaint of little brooks, and now swelling with the murmur of the moaning_sea. How long he sang I know not, for when I awoke from a dream that I "I tried to rise, but could not: my strength was quite gone. I tried to cry out, but it seemed to me as if I had utterly lost the use of my voice. I lay long in a state of utter amazement, and so weak, that I thought I should have died --and indeed I wished to die. I could not think what had come over me. I could not even remember who or what I was. The very effort to think wearied me out, and I fell asleep again. It was dark when I awoke, and my state was more than ever a perfect blank to me. I was in a burning thirst, and remembering the jug of water I had seen near my head, I managed with a great effort to pass my hand over to it, and slide it a little closer to me. It was too heavy for me to lift, but I managed to bend it down so as to spill a little of the water over my lips. was a lark pursuing his voice through the I felt considerably refreshed, but in no way en- heights of air, I found that he was lying in the lightened. I must have lain awake during straw pallet, and I on his breast. It was broad several hours, which were past in bootless ques- daylight, and I did hear a lark! Oh, how I tionings, when I heard a grating sound as of longed to be up, and to climb up to that bright some one unlocking the door. It was very window, and to look out and see whither I had slowly and cautiously done, and presently the come! How I wearied till the strange man door opened, almost noiselessly, and a man en- would wake, that I might question him as to tered bearing a lantern. After carefully securing the things that were bewildering me! He did the bolts inside, he turned suddenly towards me, not seem unkind, and perhaps he would tell me directing the light full on my face. I was al- who and where I was, and whose were the kind most frightened to death by his startling appear-faces that I seemed to miss, and that came and ance. He was a very tall, powerful man, fiercely bearded and armed to the teeth. His head was covered with a shawl of green and gold, wound round like a turban. Underneath a huge rough capote, beautifully mounted pistols and daggers flashed from a gorgeous girdle. A rich sabre hung by his side, and on his knees were plates of steel. "When he saw that I was awake, he placed his finger on his lips, and, advancing towards me, laid down the lantern and lifted the water to my mouth. As he raised my head very gently to enable me to drink more easily, I went like shadowy spectres, which would not come nearer me to let me embrace them, nor yet leave me alone with the stranger. At length he awoke, and perceiving that I was awake also, put his finger to his lips as before, and then stroked my head as gently as a mother might have done, saying at the same time, very kindly, Not yet, my little one. You must sleep today, still; and to-morrow we shall go out and gather flowers.' "I was in a frame of mind to be comforted with anything, and one of unquestioning obedience; so that when he rose, and kindled a fire with his flint and steel, and removed an unsuspicious stone from one corner of the floor, and drew from a wonderful little cavern beneath materials for coffee-making, &c., &c., and busied himself in the preparation of a comfortable breakfast, of which he made me partake, though sparingly, and then told me he was going to leave me for a little, but that I was on no account to stir-up to the last item of all this, and all through that day, I was as silent and as peacefully puzzled as any child could well be. Towards the evening he came in again-not alone this time, but accompanied by three or four aged monks, clad very much like himself, but in much richer material, and one of them carrying a long silver-headed staff. They looked on me so kindly, and showed me so many little dainties they had brought for me, some of which they allowed me to taste, that I never dreamed of being afraid of them. They talked long with my friend, in a tongue then unknown to me: but I afterwards learned that he had told them of his having found me floating on the waves, and that they were then disputing as to whether this were not a special Providence which had sent this child to the holy hermit to be brought up for God. The hermit stood all the while be fore the heap of nuts, and seemed very much satisfied with the result of their conversation, but still more so with their departure, which took place after each in turn had patted and stroked me, with saintly looks, that filled my dreams all the night long. if there be a fairy-land, it surely cannot be more "Yes, that is where I have lived since the time I speak of, until lately." "And have you actually passed your life among the monks?" "Yes. I suppose this explains much that may have seemed to you strange about me. But I am glad you have interrupted me, as I was forgetting myself in the intensity of my own recollections. I must cut my story shorter. Suffice it to say, then, that I passed the next three years of my life as the hermit's child. Night after night I heard him sing his wondrous song, though it was only now and again that he appeared in the dress in which I had first seen him. I passed my days chiefly in the pathless woods, leading the life of a Faun rather than that of a child of man. And no wonder. Oh, sir, if you knew that land, the glory of its forests, and the purple of its vineyards-if you had climbed its highest peak as I have done, and plucked the amaranth that grows on its summit if you had searched as I have the shadowy depths of its valleys, and found every day some new and curious nook, full of mystery and dreams-if, like me, you had daily enjoyed the companionship of its brooks, of its birds, of its flowers, nay, of the very breezes that whisper through its woods, you would not wonder that, before the world of books was opened up to me, I found more fellowship in the waving of Among other good things, the kind monks boughs and the converse of waters than in the had made me take a little of some very choice ways of men. A new cavern, moss-grown and wine, and they were not long gone before I was leaf-screened; a new cascade, stammering the again asleep under the influence of it. It must same tale that all the waters told; a new gorge, have been long past midnight when I awoke, dark and deep, with the fragmentary sheen of and then, as before, there was the grating of the brooks flashing through capricious gaps in great lock, the light of the lantern, the flash of arms, regions of foliage; a new labyrinth of nut-laden and the green and gold. Then there was the boughs; a new flower, hiding its unnoted beauty same changing and hiding of dress, and pre- under the dripping canopy of projecting cliffs; sently the same swaying to and fro, and in the a tree, heaven-blasted, stretching out its giant many windings of the song, the same moaning arnis like a maniac suddenly conscious of in the hollows of rocks, the quiver of sobbing nakedness, and grasping at the drapery of its leaves, the plaint of little brooks, and the moan-rich-robed brothers; a withered trunk, whose ing of the sea. I slept again, and awoke on his heart the vulture-ages had eaten out, and in breast. The room was full of light, and I whose hollow I could sit, and watch the greenlonged more than ever to look out on the fresh-clad procession of the hours; these, and ness of the world. I felt myself stronger too, and even longed to play, though with a strange sensation of the absence of wonted companions. 66 My wish was gratified at last. By gradual stages, and with the gentleness of a woman, the kind hermit half-carried me to the door, where he had formed for me a little seat of turf. As you may guess, I surveyed the scene with curious eyes. Just beneath me, and far as the eye could reach, the sea lay gleaming. All around where I sat were craggy rocks, rising abruptly from the water. Just over me, and luxuriating up into the very sky, woods upon woods towered gloriously, from the depths of which innumerable little streams ran prattling to the sea: and above all this, a great white rock, high and majestical, lifted its head into the serenest heavens. I felt as if in fairy-land-and indeed, such as these, were the incidents of my life. Besides, my uncle (as the hermit had taught me to call him) had cautioned me against being much in the company of the monks. In a land so thickly studded with monasteries, it was of course impossible to avoid them altogether; but I was strictly forbidden to answer any questions they might put regarding my uncle's way of life. I therefore, as I said, kept as much as possible in the pathless woods, and in the solitary places of the rocks. My uncle was very kind-never harsh, except when I questioned him as to how I had got there, and how long I was to remain. In a short time I began to learn that it was in vain so to question him; and during the rest of the time that we passed together, we were as loving as father and son. But our parting came; and a sad one it was. "One night, my uncle (whom I had observed to be very much agitated during the whole of the preceding day, and, contrary to his kindly wont, too much absorbed within himself to give heed to my most importunate demands on his attention, after having sat for hours, silently watching the approach of darkness, turned suddenly to me, and addressed me in a tone of nervous haste, such as he had never before used to me. "Boy,' said he, 'can I trust you with a secret?' "What secret, Uncle?' I asked. "No matter what. Do you love me?' "You know I do, Uncle,' said I, rushing forward and throwing myself into his arms. "I felt a tear drop on my cheek, and looking up in his face, saw with astonishment that he was weeping. I did not know how to comfort him, except by embracing him all the more closely. "If I were to leave this place hurriedly and secretly,' said he at length, would you go with me, Iveron?' "(I should have told you that he had named me after two of the monasteries in whose neighbourhood we dwelt.) "I would,' I replied, most willinglyanywhere you like.' "But would you go if I told you it was a dangerous life I was about to lead, and that you would see none but rough and daring, though honest, men?-that you would many times have to hide with me in dark caverns, and to be often very hungry, and without anything to satisfy your hunger, and perhaps have to see blood shed, and well-known friends falling in fight, and, after all, see me carried away from you to die a cruel death, without being able to leave you anything but a bad name?' "But why are you going away, Uncle,' asked, if all that is before you?' "I only say it is possible, Iveron. I hope, my child, for better things-ay, for glorious things!' green light that at first half-frightened me; but I looked at the stars and at the sea, and felt strong again. I sat down on a stone, and at first amused myself with dropping pebbles on the green reflection of the torch in the water, and watching the beautiful undulations. Then gradually as this ceased to be novel, I set myself (for the sake of shortening the time, which was now beginning to feel rather long) to count the faint recurrences of the low sigh that seemed to me to speak of some great grief hid in the heart of the ocean long ago. I thus fell into a dreamy state, in which I continued for a considerable time, when of a sudden I became aware of a boat at a very few yards from the shore. It was slowly approaching, and as the oars rose and fell without the slightest plash, it seemed like a spectral boat in a soundless sea. was standing in the bows making signs to me; instead of waiting to interpret which, I threw down the torch in dreadful alarm, and rushed wildly up to the hut. My uncle opened the door as soon as he heard my footsteps. I saw that he was dressed as I had first seen him, and that he had an air of defiant nobleness such as I had never seen him assume before. I told him of what I had seen, and that the boat was already by the shore. 6 A man "It is well,' he said, calmly. "Then you may go to bed, my child.' "But am I not to go with you, dear Uncle?' I asked, in alarm. "Not this night, Iveron. I shall be back to this place before morning. To-morrow we will leave it together. Fear nothing, my child. The good God watches over such as you.' "It was the first time he had spoken to me of God. I made some remonstrance; but he took ine in his arms, laid me on my bed, and, kissing me affectionately, left the hut without a word. II felt that I did not dare to follow him, and being now quite accustomed to find myself alone in the darkest nights (for it had always been in the darkest nights that I had missed my uncle) I soon fell asleep without fear. "Then if you go, I will go.' "But would you not rather stay with the good monks? They are kind men, and they all love you." "Yes, but none of them love me as you do, Uncle.' "When I said this, he embraced me tenderly, and said that nothing would separate me from him. He then told me to go outside the little hut, and down by a well-known path to the seashore, there to strike a light, and by this means to kindle a torch with which he provided me. This I was to hold until I should see anything unusual; upon which I was to hurry up to the hut again as soon as possible, and inform him of what I saw. "I did as I was directed. It was a moonless night, but the stars were twinkling brightly, and the sea had no utterance save now and again a long-drawn sigh, that fell on the ear more like the memory of an ancient sorrow than a sensible sound. I lit the torch, which emitted a strange "I had slept for some hours, when the door of the hut suddenly opened, and my uncle, staggering in, threw himself, groaning, on the bed. I started up in great alarm, struck a light hurriedly, and held the lamp forward to his face. To my horror I saw that there was a great gash on his brow, from which the blood was fast flowing, and another stream of blood welling out on his beautiful girdle from some wound in his breast. I screamed out, and nearly fainted; but he raised his hand, and merely whispered: "Hush, for the love of God!' "It was the second time he had spoken to me of God. "What can I do for you, dear dear Uncle?' I said, striving to control my agony of alarm and sorrow. "Come near me, my child,' he said, 'for I have not long to live. The villains whom I should have slain have murdered me.' "It is too late. Come nearer me still. They will tell you bad things of me, Iveron... but I loved you, my child... I loved you indeed!' "A long pause succeeded-I, sobbing like to break my heart, and the dying man, breathing harder and harder. "I cannot lift my arm, Iveron,' he at length whispered, with great difficulty; but do you put your hand... into my breast. . . a little further up... there. . . open my shirt, and ... take that cross from my neck.... Nay, my boy, I cannot lift my head... take my dagger and cut the string. . . . There . . . that is yours. wear it... it may help you to find out who you are... I know nothing except that I took you from men... more wicked than myself. Come nearer me still, Iveron . . .' ... "And I lay in his blood, pressed against his last heart-heavings, and choking with my own tears. Suddenly, with a huge effort, he raised himself, held me from him a little way, looked with his gory eyes upon me for a moment or two, then clasped me to his bosom again, and lay down to die. 66.6 'Iveron,' he whispered, with his last breathing, such as you can pray say... God forgive him!' ... It was the last time that he spoke to me of God, and the words had hardly crossed my lips, when I knew that my uncle was dead. "I was alone in that dreary hut with the bloody corpse of the only being I loved on earth. Oh, sir, I believe there have been many lifetimes spent in the busy world, without ever such an experience of terror and woe as shook and tore my child-heart on that fearful night! Oh, if you had seen how awful he looked when the grey dawn paled the poor lamp, and set the seal of more terrible reality on the horror of his ghastly wounds! A ray from the rising sun lit up the diamond of the cross which was lying on the bed, and, remembering what my poor uncle had told me, I rose and secreted it in my bosom. It was my first return to sober thought, and I began to reason, child that I was, as to how I should act. I thought that, if I told the monks what had happened, they might find wherefrom to say evil things of him, and this I resolved should not be. I thought I would dig for days and days till I had made a deep grave in the floor, in which I would bury him, then go to the monks and tell them that my uncle had But then I was afraid that, if discovered at the work, they would say I had murdered him while he slept. I was at my wits' end what to do, when I was thrown into new alarm by the sound of many footsteps rapidly advancing towards the hut. Presently the door was thrown open, and, looking up, I saw the Abbot of Iveron. I had seen him several times before; indeed, he was one of those who had visited the hut as I before related. He was attended by a great crowd of the brethren, one of whom, standing close to the abbot, carried what I at once recognized as my uncle's sabre, now terrible with blood. Those who were near enough to obtain a glance of the gory spectacle left me. that the open door revealed, started back appalled, and a cry of horror passed over the whole crowd. I heard the abbot order them back, and then name a few of the elders who alone were to enter with him. I understood their language now. It was my uncle's language too, and he had taught it me. Three or four of the strongest of the lay brethren were then ordered to station themselves outside the door: the rest, with the exception of the few selected by the abbot, returned, as he had commanded, to their monastery. "The monks having entered, and having closed the door, stood for some time in speechless horror. At length the abbot spoke to me. I was now lying on the heap of nuts, with my face hid in my hands, greatly fearing lest they should think I had murdered him. "Come to me, child,' he said. 'Alas, poor boy, thou art bloody too! I will ask thee a few questions, and, as I am in the place of God, I charge thee, answer me words of truth.' "I will, father,' I replied, at once awed and encouraged. "Where is the holy hermit?' "That is he,' said Ï, pointing to the body. "At this the monks looked on one another like men bewildered. "Hath the Lord permitted this?' said the abbot at length. Father Emmanuel, do thou wash the face, and see if this be indeed the holy hermit.' "The monk did as he was desired, then slightly raised the head of the corpse, and showed the pallid features to the fathers, whose very beards shook with fear, when they saw that it was indeed the hermit. "Who hath done this?' said the abbot, again addressing himself to me. "I know not, father,' I answered; and thereupon I told him some of the circumstances of the preceding night. The monks again looked at each other in blank perplexity, which was only interrupted by Father Emmanuel shifting the disposition of the bed-clothes, and covering the face of the dead. "Come with us, child,' then resumed the abbot. This is no place for one of thy years. Thou hast begun early to know how wicked the world is. Sad, oh sad, that its curse should find its way even to our land of holy retirement ! .Come, thou shalt henceforth live with us.' "It was now that I became more than ever alive to the agony of parting. I flung myself on the bed, and clung frantically to the body; but harshly, but firmly. The abbot closed the door was soon lifted and led out by the monks-not behind us, and gave strict charges to the stalwart lay-brethren on no account to allow anyone to enter. |