in his face, and his look out to sea-exactly the same look as I remembered in connection with the morning after Emily's flight-awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand!

Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lowest of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.

Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. "Mas'r Davy," he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, "if my time is come, 't is come. If 'tan't, I'll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a going off!"

I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trowsers; a rope in his hand, or slung to his wrist; another round his body; and several of the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.

The wreck, even to my unpracticed eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still he clung to it. He had a singular red cap on,-not like a sailor's cap, but of a finer color; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction rolled and bulged, and his anticipated death-knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and thought I was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend.

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily.

He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free-or so I judged from the motion of his arm-and was gone as before.

And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in toward the shore, borne on toward the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,-when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving

on shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet-insensible-dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled forever.

As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done, a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and ever since, whispered my name at the door.

"Sir," said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face, which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, "will you come over yonder?"

The old remembrance that had been recalled to me was in his look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support me: "Has a body come ashore?" He said, "Yes." "Do I know it?" I asked.

then. He answered nothing.

But he led me to the shore. And on that part where she and I had looked for shells, two children-on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind-among the ruins of the home he had wronged-I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.

No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together in that hour which I so little deemed to be our parting-hour-no need to have said, "Think of me at my best!" I had done that ever; and could I change now, looking on this sight!

They brought a hand-bier and laid him on it, and covered him with a flag, and took him up and bore him on toward the houses. All the men who carried him had known him, and gone sailing with him, and seen him merry and bold. They carried him through the wild roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult; and took him to the cottage where Death was already.

But when they sat the bier down on the threshold they looked at one another, and at me, and whispered. I knew why. They felt as if it were not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.

The following exercise must be carefully studied with regard to the various passions exhibited. It is not to be acted, but presented:

III. THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF STEERFORTH'S DEATH.

The house was so still that I heard the girl's light step up stairs. On her return she brought a message to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth was an invalid and could not come down; but that if I would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me. In a few moments I stood before her.

She was in his room; not in her own. I felt of course that she had taken to occupy it in remembrance of him; and that the many tokens of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was surrounded, remained there, just as he had left them, for the same reason. She murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that she was out of her own chamber because its aspect

was unsuited to her infirmity; and with her stately look repelled the least suspicion of the truth.

At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She withdrew herself a step behind the chair to keep her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth's observation; and scrutinized me with a piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.

"I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir," said Mrs. Steerforth. "I am unhappily a widower," said I.

"You are very young to know so great a loss," she replied. "I am grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to you."

"I hope Time," said I, looking at her, "will be good to all of us. Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that in our heaviest misfortunes."

The earnestness of my manner and the tears in my eyes alarmed her. The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop and change.

I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled. She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then, addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:

"My son is ill."

"Very ill."

"You have seen him?"

"I have."

"Are you reconciled?

I could not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her head toward the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips to Rosa-"Dead!"

That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read, plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with the vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them on her face.

The handsome lady-so like, oh, so like!—regarded me with a fixed look, and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.

"When I was last here," I faltered, "Miss Dartle told me he was sailing here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he was; vessel that was seen should really be the ship which—" "Rosa," said Mrs. Steerforth, "come to me!"

and if the

Now has he

She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh. "Now," she said, "is your pride appeased, you madwoman? made atonement to you—with his life! Do you hear?-His life!” Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair and making no sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.

"Aye!" cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, "look at me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!" striking the scar, "at your dead child's handiwork!"

The moan the mother uttered from time to time went to my heart. Always

the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face. Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.

Do you remember when he did this?" she proceeded. "Do you remember when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his high displeasure; and moan and groan for what you made him!"

"Miss Dartle," I entreated her. "For Heaven's sake-"

"I will speak," she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. "Be silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false-son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him,-moan for your loss of him,-moan for mine!"

She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure as if her passion were killing her by inches.

"You, resent his self-will!" she exclaimed. You, injured by his haughty temper! You, who opposed,-when your hair was gray, the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! You, who-from his cradle reared him to be what he was,-and stunted-what he should have been! Are you rewarded now for your years of trouble?"

"O Miss Dartle, shame! O cruel!"

"I tell you," she returned, "I will speak to her. No power on earth should stop me! Have I been silent all these years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved him!" turning on her fiercely. "I could have loved him,—and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting, proud,-punctilious,— selfish. My love would have been devoted-would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!"

With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did it. "Look here!" she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand. "When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done he saw it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show the ardor that I felt in all he did, and attain with labor to such knowledge as most interested him; and I-attracted him. When he was freshest and truest he loved-me. Yes, he did! Many a time when you-were put off with a slight word he has taken Me to his heart!"

She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy-for it was little less-yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.

"I descended—as I might have known I should-into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humor took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I had than I would have married him on his being forced to take me for his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. Since then I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no remembrances.

Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your love. I tell you that the time was when I loved him better than you ever did!"

She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare and the set face; and softened no more when the moaning was repeated than if the face had been a picture.

"Miss Dartle," said I, “if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted mother-"

"Who feels for me?" she sharply retorted. "She has sown this. Let her moan for the harvest that she reaps to-day!"

"And if his faults-" I began.

"Faults!" she cried, bursting into passionate tears. "Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!"

“No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance, than I," I replied. "I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his afflicted mother; or if his faults-you have been bitter on them-" "It's false," she cried, tearing her black hair; "I loved him!"

"-can not," I went on, "be banished from your remembrance in such an hour, look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some help!"

All this time the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless,-rigid,-staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it and began to loosen the dress.

"A curse upon you!" she said, looking round at me, with a mingled expression of rage and grief. "It was in an evil hour that you ever came here! A curse upon you! Go!"

After passing out of the room I hurried back to ring the bell, the sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again; and alarmed the house as I went out.

Later in the day I returned, and we laid him in his mother's room. She was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her; doctors were in attendance; many things had been tried; but she lay like a statue, except for the low sound now and then.

I went through the dreary house and darkened the windows. The windows of the chamber where he lay I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden hand and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed death-and silence, broken only by his mother's moaning.

IV.-A SINGULAR COINCIDENCE.

The noise and bustle which ushered in the morning were sufficient to dispel from the mind of the most romantic visionary in existence any associations but those which were immediately connected with the rapidly-approaching election. The beating of drums, the blowing of horns and trumpets, the shouting of men, and tramping of horses echoed and re-echoed through the streets from the earliest dawn of day, and an occasional fight between the light skirmishers of