was quite enough to satisfy him; and after the day that she met him in the glen, and besought him of her own accord, with tears and blushes, to climb a neighbouring crag in search of a pet lamb that had strayed, Eichen felt as if he never should despair again.

Hugh's arrival and subsequent pretensions were a cruel blow to poor Eichen. The feebleness of his own claims stared him in the face immediately, for what were a stout arm and a faithful heart when balanced against money and lands like Hugh's. The answer was not far to seek, and, accordingly, Eichen began to hate his rival with all the fervour and fidelity of the Gael. Our mountaineer, however, flattered himself that he had a better reason for his dislike of Hugh than the obvious one of Hugh's better fortune. He argued himself into believing that Hugh was cold, griping, and avaricious; and in a late transaction, by which he had trebled his favour with his master through his activity in investigating the circumstances of a robbery by which Colonel Munro had lost a casket of valuable jewels, Eichen persuaded himself that the worst passions had been displayed; for though the box was never discovered, Hugh had tracked the thief and secured him with a cool satisfaction that revolted the free-born and untutored soul of the Highlander. At all events, Eichen was at no loss to account for his dislike to the man, and, as is very generally the case on such occasions, the sentiment was returned with interest.

One evening in the end of harvest, Eichen Dhu took his melancholy way down the margin of Loch Boyochd at that witching season when the griefs of the sorrowful hang heaviest and the joy of the happy is most intense, the soft dim starlight vesper hour before the moon has yet come forth to chase away all minor influences with her own cold majesty. Eichen was sadder even than his wont, and there was a something desperate in his heart which made it rise proudly and bitterly against the world and its meanness. He had wandered up towards the mill, as he often did at milking-time, in hopes of kind good even, or at all events a passing nod, from his bashful mistress as she followed the cows which the herd-boy was driving before him, but she had passed at a little distance without remarking him, and a few minutes after, Hugh jumped over the stile, and he and Annie entered the house together.

Eichen walked homeward angry and disappointed. The hot, bitter pang of jealousy was at his heart, and it swelled in his bosom with a rebellious recklessness that made him feel as if he could have dared the world. Half an hour with Hugh, hand to hand upon the green sward, would have settled the turmoil in his breast, but that fair trial was denied him, and in its stead he felt his very being absorbed in the overflowing anxiety to circumvent his rival by other means. Eichen weighed the chances of his unhappy suit with as much and more of reason and judgment than people in his humour often display, and the result was anything but satisfactory. Annie had given him nothing like direct encouragement, yet his own heart whispered hope of her approval on grounds too subtle to be analyzed-his brave and tender constancy-his handsome person-his very misfortunes, or most of all, perhaps, the strange fatalism of human sympathy would not suffer him to believe that Annie would really prefer to him a man so stern and warworn and ungenial as her wealthier suitor; but with this conviction came the proud contemptuous consciousness that gold would

buy her truth, or parental authority compel it. His fiery spirit writhed and chafed at the conclusion; he opened his broad chest and stretched his stout arm, and felt that if wealth could be won by honourable exertion, it might yet be his; but to seek it, he must leave Annie the uncontested prize of his rival, and the thought was not to be endured. Oh! why could not some kind spirit bestow upon him a portion of this filthy lucre, if but for a time; and Annie once his, and settled in a home that might set Hugh's vaunted farmhouse at defiance. Eichen felt that the very pith and substance of his frame should be expended to repay it.

The shadows had fallen and deepened, and a cloud was on the moon; and as Eichen Dhu pursued his painful revery, he stumbled slightly over the long heather in his path, and found, on looking round him, that he had wandered from the pathway, and got among the cliffs exactly overhanging the Linn of the Caldron. At the moment in which he discovered his mistake, the fair moon shone out bright and clear upon the Loch, and revealed the black pool of the goblin's treasure, lying still, and dark, and waveless at his feet. A cold shiver shook the young man's well-strung nerves as he observed this; and with the ready superstition of his country, he felt that the spell of the water spirit was upon him. He had been guided directly to the spot, evil and unholy as it was, where his petulant yearning might be satisfied. His first impulse was to fly, but the clear white moonlight was so re-assuring that he lingered on the crag in reverential dependence on the shelter of its beams. In a few minutes came the first whisper of the tempter. Why should he cast aside the good so thrust upon him? Who could tell that, if the pot of gold were really there, the Kelpie meant evil to him who found it? Did not the prophecy imply that no dishonour could cling to the individual so favoured? And was not the present opportunity a direct intervention of the spirit in his behalf? Then the vision of the naked swords passed across him. Well! but how could even swords work doom unwielded? and what arm was there to put them to the proof save his, whose first effort would be to cast them back again to their unholy resting-place. Eichen's conscience pulled one way, and his inclination another, with the usual alternation of success in like cases, till his moral vision became obscured, and he fairly began to doubt if it were not treason to his love that he should shun a risk so slender. One bright golden vision of the consequence of his success turned the scale, and in a few minutes he had stripped and taken his leap from the edge of the rock.

The cliff was a high one, even for so experienced a head; and Eichen had forgotten that the depth of the Linn had never yet been fathomed. Down, down he went with a velocity and perseverance that seemed as if it were taking him to the very bowels of the earth ; and so completely had the length of the dive deprived him of his presence of mind, that on emerging again he was incapable of deciding whether the heavy substance which he grasped between his hands had been lifted from the bed of the Linn itself, or dragged from some of the ledges of rock that reposed under the surface of the water, and over which he had scrambled as he rose again to the air. His breath came fresh and heartily, and with a sensation of devout gratitude for his escape from the horrors of the enchanted pool; and it was not till after many an ejaculation of satisfaction and thanksgiving, that he

turned to examine the mysterious fruits of his expedition to the domain of the water Kelpie.

A caldron it assuredly was not; and it needed no clearer light than the cloudless moon afforded, to discover to our adventurer a vessel of infinitely less romantic pretensions in the form of a small strong box, well secured by hasps of iron and bolts of oak. The hasps, which were evidently intended to be secured by padlocks, had lost their fastenings, which were supplied by two skean-dhus-the small dagger of the Highlander-which had been thrust through the iron loops, and kept the casket perfectly water-tight. With a little difficulty, because of the rust which their immersion had produced, Eichen pulled out the knives and opened the lid of the little chest, his heart throbbing and bounding with the expectation of identifying the treasure of the Kelpie. Folds of strong linen covered the mouth of the casket; and hastily removing these, he saw the pale and quiet moon-beams glisten softly over a brilliant mass-not of coins or bars of gold-but of jewelled rings, stars, buckles, and sword-hilts, and of articles of modern finery, of which poor Eichen could not so much as surmise the use. He stood for a few minutes in a trance of stupid bewilderment, as if at a loss to account for the caprice of the water spirit in so misnaming the nature of his treasure; and then the mists of superstition and surprise passed slowly from the intelligent mind of the young Gael, and the conviction flashed across him that he had discovered the jewel-box of Colonel Munro, the plunderer of which it had cost himself and Hugh such pains to trace. The discovery was scarcely a disappointment. He was grateful for the removal of the guilt he had fancied himself to have incurred in the appropriation of the Kelpie's caldron; and a certain hope of reward for his good fortune came gleaming over him on the restoration of the jewels to their proper owner. After a few minutes' inspection of the glittering heap, Eichen reclosed the lid of the strong box, and turned to look for the skean-dhus which had fastened it. On lifting these from the grass, the moonlight shone full upon them both; and in the size, material, and peculiar mounting of the one nearest to him, he had not a moment's difficulty in recognising that which had constantly been used by Colonel Munro's confidential servant-even Hugh himself.

Eichen sprang to his feet with a deep exclamation, something be tween surprise and the confirmation of a previous suspicion; and then stooped hastily for the other little weapon which he had dropped, and examined it long and earnestly by the moonlight. Eichen's blood ran cold within his veins as he identified the stout buck's horn handle and well-worn blade of the familiar weapon of the stout miller of Imer Veolan.

There was no room for a doubt of its identity; for on one side the haft Eichen recognised the impression of a wheel, which his own eyes had seen Donald Bane scratch, by way of crest, upon the horn. The suspicion that the miller participated in the guilt which Eden scrupled not in laying upon Hugh, did not find one moment's rest in his mind; but the appearance of the skean-dhu in a place so likely to implicate its owner beyond all reach of counterproof, filled him with apprehension, and already Eichen began to experience the evil consequence of little Kelpie's triumph. His first impulse was to return the heavy box and glittering treasure once more into the deep Linn, and leave the future discovery of the real culprit to some other chance or destiny;

but a vague sense of justice to Colonel Munro, and an indefinable apprehension of mixing himself up with the perpetrators of so base a deed, restrained him; and after long and painful reflection on the best means of proceeding, Eichen folded the unlucky chest in his plaid, hid it carefully under the hanging ferns that festooned the face of the crag, and took his way in deep and sorrowful meditation to his home.

So great and terrible a secret had never before burdened the conscience of the simple Highlander, and he tossed all night upon his sleepless pillow without being able to substitute one lighter image for the new and frightful vision that hung upon his brain. He assimilated again and again the goblin's prophecy, and the strange reading of it which his imagination conjured out of the circumstances of the night; the small skean-dhus personified the naked swords in the mind's eye; and he felt as if it were beyond a question that the doom of Annie's father and lover was to finish the parallel and be wrought by their agency. His heart grew cold as it pondered his own instrumentality in the affair, for though the prediction embraced his own ultimate good fortune, yet Eichen's nature revolted, with all the energy of his generous youth, from the means by which the triumph would be gained; and so deeply did the matter affect his happiness, that the early dawn saw him once more on his way to the Kelpie's crag.

The morning was yet in its first blush of autumn beauty-the air was soft and dewy-the water slumbered under the gentle shadow of the cloudy hills, and the mist wreath twined and curled like a veil of gossamer round the rugged forehead of Skian Var. As he sprang over the face of the rock and let himself down upon the cliff where he had deposited the treasure, the flutter of a female garment caught Eichen's eye, and the next moment revealed to him the figure of Annie, with the glittering contents of the jewel-box spread out upon her lap. She smiled and blushed as he approached, and as the gloomy and anxious expression of his countenance became apparent, she said in a pleasant tone, and with the graceful and poetic idiom of the uncouth Gaelic, "I knew the plaid of Eichen, and the pretty things are all safe. Did Eichen get them from the Sassenach ?"

The young man stood astounded at the untoward discovery; and for a few moments his look of perplexity might have seemed one of displeasure. Annie had so interpreted it, for she rose slowly and began to replace the jewels in their order, and did not repeat her salutation. "Annie," said Eichen at last, with a smile, at the same time shutting down the lid, and flinging his plaid over it again," Annie, guess ye where I took that box from? I got it in the Kelpie's Linn last night." The girl uttered an exclamation of horror, and drew back pale and shuddering from the unclean thing, as if its very presence might contaminate her, and then turned appealingly to her companion, as if to learn the cause of its appearance in his keeping.

Eichen felt that the maiden knew already too much to render it safe that she should know no more. He accordingly seated himself beside her on the grass, and by reminding her of the late transaction in reference to the Colonel's jewels, endeavoured to make her understand that they were one and the same with the toys she had been admiring. He found it almost impossible, however, to make her comprehend the suspicion which rested on his own mind. All insinuations of the guilt of Hugh were thrown away upon her; and it was not till her informant had explained in broad terms the evidence of his de. linquency, and the accident through which suspicion might rest upon

her father, that she sprang to her feet with a shriek of horror,-her small hands clenched, and her eyes on fire with indignation and surprise. "The black villain !" exclaimed Annie, passionately; "Donald Bane would as soon steal the moon from heaven as one of those glittering stones from his master's house. It is to screen his own foul deed that he has stolen my father's skean. I knew he was a villain : the spirit within me rose against him. And is it of him they would make a farmer in Glenore? Is it to him that my father opens his heart and his home?-he that will make me turn my back on Eichen Dhu?" and seeming to have forgotten his presence in her violent ex citement, after another burst of passionate indignation, she turned flushed and panting with some unspoken purpose to descend the cliff.

Eichen sprang before her, and wiled her back with words of reasoning and entreaty. He trembled for the consequence of her precipitation, and exerted his utmost efforts of persuasion to soothe her natural anger, and engraft prudence and discretion on its youthful violence. It was long before Annie could be induced to defer her appeal to her father till it might be made with most effect. She would have sought him out on the instant, in the face of the whole community-would have brought him to the spot where lay the evidence of his favourite's treason, and bidden him proclaim himself an honest man, and his secret enemy a thief and a villain. But Eichen prevailed at last, and she promised that her father should hear her strange news in private-that the name of the discoverer should be suppressed-and that beneath the pine shadow of St. Anne's, Eichen should meet her in the gloaming to hear the miller's opinion of the discovery, and the course he intended to pursue with regard to it. It was the best arrangement which Annie's unexpected admission into the fatal secret would permit; and the young people parted with an additional tie to each other, and a sort of tacit understanding that Hugh's place at Imer Veolan might not long be vacant.

Eichen proceeded slowly and thoughtfully about his morning's occupations; and if the labour of the youthful mountaineer had been often as imperfectly performed, the reputation of his superiority would have stood but on feeble ground. His very consciousness seemed absorbed by the anticipation of his meeting with Annie, and the possible results of her interview with her father; and he turned up his face again and again to the lazy sun, with the most impatient glance he had ever cast upon its onward progress. At last the red orb of the lingering autumn leant his fiery disk upon Skian Var-the still wave lay crim. soned by his glance-and before the glowing clouds of the west had lost one tittle of their transitory glory, Eichen took his way to the trysting place of St. Anne's, and cast his keen and earnest glance along the winding pathway that led to the mill of Imer Veolan. The eve was wearing on, and Eichen would have thankfully exchanged a portion of his scanty hopes for the certainty that she would come at all ;— night was at hand-the stars grew clearer and more intense in the deep blue heavens, and the dim twilight darkened into approaching nightthe last note of the blackbird had died away, and even the melancholy booming of the cushat came at intervals of more lengthened distance. By and by the dull ominous hooting of the owl and the startling croak of the raven were all the symptoms of companionship left to Eichen, and his heart grew heavy with the breathless solitude and the dim vague influence of superstition. He would not leave the spot, however, while it was possible for Annie still to reach it, and he walked