"Peace, woman! peace!" returned the tortured Ariano; "reproaches avail not; they cannot save me from the fate which in all probability awaits me. Farewell, my wife-my children!" he cried, alternately taking them in his arms; "cease not to petition heaven to restore me to you!"

The voice of weeping was audible on every side; but Pietro tore himself away, and commenced his long journey on foot to Rome. On the evening of the third day, he arrived at the magnificent city; but his thoughts were too much occupied by his own cares, and his body too much bowed down by fatigue, to notice any of the grand objects which saluted him on every side. He entered Rome as a criminal enters the condemned cell that he never more expects to leave, till the hour which fulfils his sentence. Seeking a small hostlery in the suburbs of the city, he partook of a scanty supper, and retired to bed, dreading, yet anxiously expecting the ensuing day. In the morning, he learned from his host that the Pope held a public levee in the great hall of the Vatican, to receive the French and German ambassadors; and that if he repaired thither early, and waited patiently till the crowd dispersed, he would be more likely to gain the speech of his Holiness. Unacquainted with the public edifices in Rome, poor Ariano wandered about for some time like a fool in a fair, bewildered in contemplating the august palaces which rose on every side, and imagining each in its turn a fit residence for a king; but, whilst he paused, irresolute how to act, a strange fancy entered his head, and he imagined that the Pope, who was Christ's vicegerent on earth, must reside in the grandest church in the city. Accordingly, he stopped on the steps leading to St. Peter's Church, and demanded of an ecclesiastic, who, like himself, seamed bound thither, "If that noble building were the Pope's palace ?"

"You must indeed be a stranger in Rome, my friend," returned the priest, with a good-natured smile, "not to

know the difference between St. Peter's Church and the Vatican.-What is your name?"

"Pietro Ariano, a poor shoemaker, of Marcerata."

"And your business with his Holiness, the Pope ?"

"Alas! reverend padre, with that I am at present unacquainted: his business, it should seem, is with me. I have none with him, unless it be to ask pardon for crimes unintentionally committed."

“Aha!” returned the priest, "you are the very man whom his Holiness wishes to see. He calls himself your debtor; and you will soon know in what coin he means to pay you. But, take heart of grace, Signor Scarpettáro; I will introduce you to the Pope."

Trembling from head to foot, Pietro followed his conductor into the great hall of audience. Sixtus was already in his chair, and the ambassadors of various nations were making their obeisance before him; but the splendor of the scene could not induce the terror-stricken Ariano to raise his eyes, and he stood shivering behind the priest, with his head bent down, and his arms folded dejectedly across his breast. At length the crowd gradually dispersed, and the Pope called out to the ecclesiastic, in a facetious tone, very different from the solemnity of manner with which he had addressed the ambassadors-" How now, Father Valentinian ! Whom have you got there?"

"Please your Holiness," returned the priest, striving to impel Pietro forward, "the poor shoemaker of Marcerata.”

At these words, Pietro uttered a loud groan, and fell prostrate at the feet of the Pope, who, after indulging in a long and hearty laugh, said, in a jocular tone, "Raise thy head, Ariano, that I may be sure of thy identity. By St. Peter! time has nearly worn out thy upper leathers, if it has spared thy sole. Is this panic-stricken craven the man who talked so largely, and uttered such bitter invectives

against holy mother church? By the mass! I fancy the pains of purgatory will be light when compared with the pangs he now endures!"

"Most holy, most blessed, most incomparable Pope !" groaned forth the prostrate Scarpettúro, "I was mad and drunk when I uttered such foul calumnies against your Holiness's brethren. Heaven has justly punished me for my impiety, by revealing my rash speeches to your Excellency."

"It needed no miraculous interposition of saints and angels, Pietro, to inform me of your iniquity; for I heard you with my own ears. But, stand up, man. It was not to call you to an account for your sins, which doubtless are many, that I sent for you hither, but to pay you the debt I owe you. Look me in the face, Signor Ariano. Hast thou forgotten St. John's Eve, and the young friar who called at your stall in his pilgrimage from Ascoli to Loretto?"

For the first time, Pietro ventured to raise his head, when he encountered the glance of the bright dark eyes, whose amorous expression he had so unceremoniously reprobated threeand-twenty years before. That face, once seen, could never be forgotten. Time had given to Felix Peretti a stern and haughty expression; and the eye that, in the heydey of youth, seemed lighted only by the fire of passion, now possessed the glance of an eagle, before which the monarchs of the earth trembled, when it flashed in wrath from beneath a brow that appeared formed to rule the world. "Ha! Ariano, I perceive you recognise the face of an old friend. Have you forgotten the promise I made you on that memorable night when I prophecied my own future grandeur? What was it, Pietro?"

"Please your Holiness," said Pietro, his eye brightening, and his hopes increasing in proportion as his fears diminished, "whatever you may think fit to give me."

"Come! come to the point, Signor Scarpettaro," returned Sixtus, in a stern voice, "I will have no interpo

kr

lations; what is the actual amount of the debt I owe you ?"

"One julio, please your sublime Excellency; the principal and interest of the said sum, if ever you should come to be Pope, which, God forgive my wickedness for doubting !"

"Amen!" ejaculated Father Valentinian.

"Right, Pietro; the sum shall be faithfully paid," returned Sixtus, drawing a paper from his bosom, on which he had spent some hours the preceding day in calculating the interest of one julio for three-and-twenty years. What the sum amounted to, the chronicler of this anecdote. does not condescend to inform us, but it was small enough to annihilate all Pietro Ariano's new and highly-raised expectations, and his golden visions melted into air. He received it from the Pope with a vacant stare, and still held open his hand, which disdained to close over so paltry a prize.

"Is not the sum correct?" demanded Sixtus.

Ariano remained immovable.

"Count it over again, my friend; and if one quartrini is wanting, it shall be faithfully paid. What, art thou moonstruck? Hast thou not re

ceived that which I owed thee?" "No," returned Pietro, gathering courage from disappointment; your Holiness is still my debtor."

"Prove your words," said Sixtus, while a slight flush of anger suffused his face.

"The julio I gave your Holiness credit for three-and-twenty years ago, when thou wast only a poor barefooted friar, I should never have walked to Rome to demand at thy hands.— The sum has been faithfully paid, but you have not remunerated me for loss of time-for the expenses I incurred, and the fatigue I suffered, at my years, in undertaking, at your command, so long a journey. The tears my wife and children have shed, and the anguish of mind I have endured, to make sport for your Holiness, are debts of conscience you have still to pay; and, to show you that a poor shoemaker of

Marcerata can exceed the mighty Sixtus in liberality, I absolve the Pope of his promise!"

Here Pietro made a low reverence, laid the money at the Pope's feet, and was about to depart, when Sixtus called out in a lively tone-" How, Signor Scarpettáro! have you the presumption to rival a pope in munificence? Pride has urged you, though a necessitous man, to reject the only sum which you were justly entitled to receive. It is not for me, as vicegerent for heaven, to reward a man for

CALUM DHU was the bravest warrior that followed the banners of the Chief of Colquhoun, with which clan the powerful and warlike M'Gregors were at inveterate feud. Calum lived in a sequestered glen in the vicinity of Ben Lomond. His cottage stood at the base of a steep ferny hill: retired from the rest of the clan, he lived alone. This solitary being was the deadliest foe of the M'Gregors, when the clans were in the red unyielding battle of their mountain chiefs. His weapon was a bow, in the use of which he was so skilful, that he could bring down the smallest bird when on the wing. No man but himself had ever bent his bow; and his arrows were driven with such resistless force, that their feathery wings were always drenched with his foeman's best blood. In the use of the sword, also, he had few equals; but the bow was the weapon of his heart.

The son of the chief of the M'Gregors, with two of his clansmen, having gone to hunt, and their game being wide, they wandered far, and found themselves, a little after mid-day, on the top of the hill at the foot of which stood Calum Dhu's cottage. "Come," said the young chief, "let us go down and try to bend Calum Dhu's bow.

Evan, you and I have got the name of being the best bowmen of our clan; it is said, no man but Calum himself can bend his bow: but it will go hard with us if we cannot show him that the M'Gregors are men of thews and sinews equal to the bending of his long bow, with which he has so often sent his arrows through and through our best warriors, as if they had been men of straw set up to practise on.Come, he will not know us—and if he should we are three to one; and I owe him something," added he, touching the hilt of his dirk, “since the last conflict, when he sent an arrow through my uncle's gallant bosom. Come, follow me down!" he continued, his eye gleaming with determined vengeance, and his voice quivering with suppressed passion. The will of a Highland chieftain was law at the time of which we speak. “We will go down, if a score of his best clansmen were with him," said Evan.

Aye, but be cautious." "We shall bend his bow, then break it," replied the young M'Gregor; and then-then for my uncle's blood." "He is good at the sword," said the third M'Gregor; "but this (showing his dirk,) will stretch him on the sward." "Strike him not behind,"

said the young chief: hew him down in front; he deserves honorable wounds, for he is brave, though an enemy."

They had been prevented by a rising knoll from being seen from the cottage, which they now reached. Knocking loudly at the door, after some delay they were answered by the appearance of a little, thick-set, grey-eyed, oldish-looking-man, with long arms and a black bushy beard hung with grey threads and thrums, as if he had been employed in weaving the coarse linen of the country and the time. But as he had none of the muscular symptoms of prodigious strength, which Calum Dhu was reported to possess, and which had often proved so fatal to their clan, they could not suppose this to be their redoubted foeman; and, to the querulous question of what they wanted, uttered in the impatient tone of one who has been interrupted in some necessary worldly employment, they replied by inquiring if Calum Dhu was at home. "Na, he's gane to the fishing; but an ye hae ony message for our chief, (Heaven guard him!) about the coming of the red M'Gregors, and will trust me with it, Calum will get it frae me. Ye may as well tell me as him; he stays lang when he gaes out, for he is a keen fisher." "We were only wanting to try the bending of his bow," said the disappointed young chief, "which we have heard no man can do save himself." "Hoo! gin that is a', ye might hae tell'd it at first, an' no keepit me sae lang frae my loom," said the old man: "but stop❞—and giving his shoulders an impatient shrug, which, to a keen observer, would have passed for one of satisfaction, triumph, and determination, he went into the house and quickly returned, bringing out a strong how, and a sheaf of arrows, and flung them carelessly on the ground, saying, "Ye'll be for trying your strength at a flight?" pointing to the "I hae seen Calum send an arrow over the highest point o' that hill, like a glance o' lightning; and 48 ATHENEUM, VOL. 1, 3d series.

arrows;

when the M'Gregors were coming raging up the glen, like red deevels as they are, mony o' their best warriors fell at the farthest entry o' the pass, every man o' them wi' a hole in his breast and its fellow at his back."

He had taken a long arrow out of the sheaf, and stood playing with it in his hand while speaking, seemingly ready to give to the first man who should bend the bow. The M'Gregors were tall muscular men, in the prime of youth and manhood. The young chief took up the bow, and after examining its unbending strength, laying all his might to it, strained till the blood rushed to his face, and his temples throbbed almost to burstingbut in vain ; the string remained slack as ever. Evan and the other M'Gregor were alike unsuccessful; they might as well have tried to root up the gnarled oaks of their native mountains.

"There is not a man," cried the young chief of M'Gregor, greatly chagrined at the absence of Calum Dhu, and his own and clansmen's vain attempts to bend the bow,-" There is not a man in your clan can bend that bow, and if Calum Dhu were here, he should not long bend it!". Here he bit his lip, and suppressed the rest of the sentence, for the third M'Gregor gave him a glance of caution. "Ha!" said the old man, still playing with the long arrow in his hand, and without seeming to observe the latter part of the McGregor's speech, "If Calum was here, he would bend it as easily as you wad bend that rush; and gin ony o' the M'Gregors were in sight, he wad drive this lang arrow through them as easily as ye wad drive your dirk through my old plaid, and the feather wad come out at the other side, wet wi' their heart's bluid. Sometimes even the man behind is wounded, if they are ony way thick in their battle. I once saw a pair of them stretched on the heather, pinned together with ane of Calum's lang arrows."

This was spoken with the cool com

posure and simplicity of one who is talking to friends, or is careless if they are foes. A looker-on could have discerned a chequered shade of pleasure and triumph cross his countenance as M'Gregor's lip quivered, and the scowl of anger fell along his brow at the tale of his kinsmen's destruction by the arm of his most hated enemy.

"He must be a brave warrior," said the young chief, compressing his breath, and looking with anger and astonishment at the tenacious and cool old man. "I should like to see this Calum Dhu."

"Ye may soon enough; an' gin ye were a M'Gregor, feel him too. But what is the man glunching and glooming at?

Gin ye were Black John hinsel, ye couldna look mair deevilish like. And what are you fidging at, man?" addressing the third M'Gregor, who had both marked and felt the anger of his young chief, and had slowly moved nearer the old man, and stood with his right hand below the left breast of his plaid, probably grasping his dirk, ready to execute the vengeance of his master, as it was displayed on his clouded countenance, which he closely watched. The faith

of the Gael is deeper than "to hear is to obey," the slavish obedience of the East his is to anticipate and perform-to know and accomplish or die. It is the sterner devotedness of the north.

But the old man kept his keen grey eye fixed upon him, and continued, in the same unsuspecting tone: "But is there ony word o' the M'Gregors soon coming over the hills? Calum wad like to try a shot at Black John, their chief; he wonders gin he could pass

an

arrow through his great hardy bulk as readily as he sends them through his clansmen's silly bodies. John has a son, too, he wad like to try his craft on; he has the name of a brave warrior-I forget his name. Calum likes to strike at noble game, though he is sometimes forced to kill that which is little worth. But I'm fearfu' that he o'errates his ain

strength; his arrow will only, I think, stick weel through Black John, but

Dotard, peace!" roared

the young chief, till the glen rang again; his brow darkening like midnight: "Peace! or I shall cut the sacrilegious tongue out of your head, and nail it to that door, to show Calum Dhu that you have had visitors since he went away, and bless his stars that he was not here."

A dark flash of suspicion crossed his mind as he gazed at the cool old tormentor, who stood before him, unquailing at his frowns; but it vanished as the imperturbable old man said, "Haoh! ye're no a M'Gregor-and though ye were, ye surely wadna mind the like o' me! But anent bending this bow," striking it with the long arrow, which he still held in his hand, "there is just a knack in it; and your untaught young strength is useless, as ye dinna ken the gait o't. I learned it frae Calum, but I'm sworn never to tell it to a stranger. There is mony a man in the clan I ken naething about. But as ye seem anxious to see the bow bent, I'll no disappoint ye; rin up to yon grey stane-stand there, and it will no be the same as if ye were standing near me when I'm doing it, but it will just be the same to you, for ye can see weel enough, and when the string is on the bow, ye may come down, an’ ye like, and try a flight; it's a capital bow, and that ye'll fin'."

A promise is sacred with the Gael; and as he was under one, they did not insist on his exhibiting his art while they were in his presence; but curious to see the sturdy bow bent, a feat of which the best warrior of their clan would have been proud, and which they had in vain essayed; and perhaps thinking Calum Dhu would arrive in the interval; and as they feared nothing from the individual, who seemed ignorant of their name, and who could not be supposed to send an arrow so far with any effect; they therefore walked away in the direction pointed out, nor did they once turn their faces till they reached the