post-horses; but finding a seat high up on the root, at last, I busied myself with gazing down the road, and conjecturing what a cloud of dust might contain, which, in an opposite direction from that which we had come, was slowly creeping onward to the inn.

Four roughly harnessed horses at length appeared, with their traces tied over their backs-one of them ridden by a man in a farmer's frock. They struck me at first as fine specimens of the German breed of draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks and long manes; but while they drank at the trough which stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone in which the man checked their greedy thirst, and the instant obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened at once my suspicions that we were to become better acquainted. A more narrow examination convinced me that, covered with dust and disguised with coarse harness as they were, they were four horses of such bone and condition, as were never seen in a farmer's stables. The rider dismounted at the inn door, and very much to the embarrassment of my suppositions, the landlord, a stupid and heavy Boniface, greeted him with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, and he in answer, apparently to an inquiry, pointed to my carriage, and led him into the house.

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"Monsieur Tyrell," said Iminild, coming out to me a moment after, servant whom I had expected has arrived with my horses, and, with your consent, they shall be put to your carriage immediately."

"To take us where ?"

"To our place of destination."

"Too indefinite, by half, countess! Listen to me! I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving the postroad to Trieste, I shall leave the society of honest men. You and your minions of the moon' may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe, companions; and having really a wish to die quietly in my bed

The countess burst into a laugh.

"If you will have the character of the gentleman you are about to visit from the

landlord here

"Who is one of your ruffians himself, I'll be sworn!"

"No, on my honour! A more innocent old beer-guzzler lives not on the road. But I will tell you thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles

to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who, the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale He lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers occasionally from all countries, for he has been a traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate, (who, by the way, has no objection to pass for father of the young lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach,) and he has sent you his horses, like a generous host, to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was a retreat of Yvain's, where he would live quietly and play bon citoyen, and you have nothing earthly to fear in accompanying me thither. And now will you wait and eat the greasy meal you have ordered, or will you save your appetite for la fortune de pot at Mynheer Krakenpate's, and get presently on the road ?**

I yielded rather to the seducing smile and captivating beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any confidence in the honesty of Mynheer Krakenpate; and Percie being once more ceremoniously handed in, we left the village at the sober trot becoming the fat steeds of a landholder. A quarter of a mile of this was quite sufficient for Iminild, and a word to the postillion changed, like a metamorphosis, both horse and rider. From a heavy, unelastic figure, he rose into a gallant and withy horseman, and, with one of his low-spoken words, away flew the four compact animals, treading lightly as cats, and with the greatest apparent ease putting us over the ground at the rate of fourteen miles in the hour.

The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was created by the motion, and when at last we turned from the main road, and sped off to the right at the same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild's arch look of remonstrance with my best-humoured smile and an affectionate je me fie à vous! Miss Krakenpate, I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight pressure of the countess's arm, looking very innocently out of the window all the while.

A couple of miles, soon done, brought us round the face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of a hill, and with a continuation of the turn, we drew up at the gate of a substantial-looking building, something between a villa and a farm house, built against the rock, as if for the purpose of shelter from the north winds. Two beautiful Angora hounds

sprang out at the noise, and recognized Iminild through all her disguise, and presently, with a look of forced courtesy, as if not quite sure whether he might throw off the mask, a stout man of about fifty, hardly a gentleman, yet above a common peasant in his manners, stepped forward from the garden to give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in alighting.

Dinner in half an hour!" was Iminild's brief greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant and Percie, she led the way into the house. I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce above the common style of a German inn, where I made a hungry man's despatch in my toilet, and descended at once to the parlour. The doors were all open upon the ground floor, and, finding myself quite alone, I sauntered from room to room, wondering at the scantiness of the furniture and general air of discomfort, and scarce able to believe that the same mistress presided over this and the singular paradise in which I had first found her at Vienna. After visiting every corner of the ground floor with a freedom which I assumed in my character as guardian, it occurred to me thatI had not yet found the dining-room, and I was about making a new search, when Iminild entered.

I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the additional gorgeousness of gold embroidery, which might distinguish the favourite child of a chief of Suli. It was the male attire, with a snowy white juktanilla reaching to the knee, a short jacket of crimson velvet, and a close-buttoned vest of silver cloth, fitting admirably to her girlish bust, and leaving her slender and pearly neck to rise bare and swan-like into the masses of her clustering hair. Her slight waist was defined by the girdle of fine linen edged with fringe of gold, which was tied coquettishly over her left side and fell to her ankle, and below the embroidered legging appeared the fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this long train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper, with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A feronière of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back from her temples, and this was the only confinement to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines, and in the richest profusion, fell almost to her feet. The only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to

her memory.

"I am about to disclose to you secrets," said she, laying her hand on my arm, "which have never been revealed but to the most trusty of Yvain's confederates. To satisfy those whom you will meet, you must swear to me on the same cross which he pressed to your lips when dying, that you will never violate, while I live, the trust we repose in you."

"I will take no oath," I said; "for you are leading me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the assurance that

I can betray no confidence which honour would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet dine in Planina."

"Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman. And now I have a favour, not to beg, but to insist upon-that from this moment you consider Percie as dismissed from your service, and treat him, while here at least, as my equal and friend."

"Willingly!" I said; and as the word left my lips, enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild, with a silversheathed ataghan at his side, and the blueish muzzles of a pair of Egg's hairtriggers peeping from below his girdle. To do the rascal justice, he was as handsome in his new toggery as his mistress, and carried it as gallantly. They would have made the prettiest tableau as Juan and Haidée!

"Is there any chance that these 'persuaders' may be necessary?" I asked, pointing to his pistols, which awoke in my mind a momentary suspicion.

"No-none that I can foresee-but they are loaded. A favourite, among men whose passions are professionally wild," she continued, with a meaning glance at Piercie, "should be ready to lay his hand on them, even if stirred in his sleep!"

I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speaking, that an oldfashioned clock, which stood in a niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to admit one person at a time was disclosed when it had made its entire revolution, and in it stood, with a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate. Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my surprise.

"Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?" she said, at last, with a laugh.

"If we are to follow Mynheer Von Krakenpate," I replied, "give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla, rather, and let me follow! Do we dine in the cellar?"

I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take advantage of my hesitation to precede me, and followed the countess into the opening, which, from the position of the house, I saw must lead directly into the face of the rock. Two or three descending steps convinced me that it was a natural opening enlarged by art; and after one or two sharp turns, and a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer, deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering from my amazement I stepped over the threshold of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of innumerable lamps flooding the air around, and a long snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect stretching downward before me. Two ridges of the calcareous strata, running almost parallel over our heads, formed the cornices of the descending corridor, and from these, with a regularity that seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting on the peaks of corresponding stalygmites, which, of a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed designed as bases to a new order of architectural columns. The reflection from the pure crystalline rock gave to this singular gallery a splendour which only the palace of Aladdin could have equalled. The lamps were hung between in irregular but effective ranges, and in our descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed his dazzled eyes in the desert of snow, by looking on the green wings of the spirit-bird, I was compelled to bend my eyes perpetually for relief upon the soft, dark masses of hair which floated upon the lovely shoulders of Iminild.

At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to the right, and followed an irregular passage, sometimes so low that we could scarce stand upright, but all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and formed of the same glittering and snow-white substance. We had been rambling on thus far perhaps ten minutes, when suddenly the air, which I had felt uncomfortably chill, grew warm and soft, and the low reverberation of running water fell delightfully on our ears. Far a-head we could see two sparry columns standing close together, and apparently closing up the way.

"Courage! my venerable guardian !''

cried Iminild, laughing over her shoulder; "you will see your dinner presently. Are you hungry, Percie?"

"Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse!" answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive tact at his new vocation.

We stood at the two pillars which formed the extremity of the passage, and looked down upon a scene of which all description must be faint and imperfect. A hundred feet below ran a broad subterraneous river, whose waters sparkling in the blaze of a thousand torches, sprang into light from the deepest darkness, crossed with foaming rapidity the bosom of a vast illuminated cavern, and disappeared again in the same inscrutable gloom. Whence it came or whither it fled was a mystery beyond the reach of the eye. The deep recesses of the cavern seemed darker for the intense light gathered about the centre.

After the first few minutes of bewilderment, I endeavoured to realize in detail the wondrous scene before me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but all studded above with the same sparry incrustation, thousands upon thousands of pendant stalactites glittering on the roof, and showering back light upon the clusters of blazing torches fastened everywhere upon the shelvy sides. Here and there vast columns, alabaster white, with bases of gold colour, fell from the roof to the floor, like pillars left standing in the ruined aisle of a cathedral, and from corner to corner ran their curtains of the same brilliant calcareous spar, shaped like the sharp edge of a snow-drift, and almost white. It was like laying bare the palace of some king-wizard of the mine to gaze down upon it.

"What think you of Mynheer Krakenpate's taste in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell?" asked the countess, who stood between Percie and myself, with a hand on the shoulder of each.

I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad platform, rising high above the river on its opposite bank, the rear of which was closed in by perhaps forty irregular columns, leaving between them and the sharp precipice on the river side an area, in height and extent of about the capacity of a ball-room. A rude bridge, of very light construction, rose in a single arch across the river, forming the only poss

ible access to the platform from the side where we stood, and, following the path back with my eye, I observed a narrow and spiral staircase, partly of wood and partly cut in the rock, ascending from the bridge to the gallery we had followed hither. The platform was carpeted richly, and flooded with intense light, and in its centre stood a gorgeous array of smoking dishes, served after the Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon the floor and surrounded with cushions and ottomans of every shape and colour. A troop of black slaves, whose silver anklets glittered as they moved, were busy bringing wines and completing the arrangements for the meal.

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'Allons, mignon!" cried Iminild, getting impatient, and seizing Percie's arm, "let us get over the river, and perhaps Mr. Tyrell will look down upon us with his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you will come with us! Suivez donc !"

An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed, let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and Mynheer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow staircase and reached the edge of the river, where the warm air from the open sunshine came pouring through the cavern with the current, bringing with it a smell of green fields and flowers, and removing entirely the chill of the cavernous and confined atmosphere I had found so uncomfortable above. We crossed the bridge, and, stepping upon the elastic carpets piled thickly on the platform, arranged ourselves about the smoking repast, Mynheer Von Krakenpate sitting down, after permission from Iminild, and Percie, by order of the same imperative dictatress, throwing his graceful length at her feet.

"Take a lesson in flattery from Percie, Mr. Tyrell, and be satisfied with your bliss in my society without asking for explanations. I would fain have the use of my tongue (to swallow) for ten minutes, and I see you making up your mouth for a question. Try this pilau! It is made by a Greek cook, who fries, boils, and stews in a kitchen with a river for a chimney."

"Precisely what I was going to ask you. I was wondering how you cook without smoking your snow-white roof." "Yes, the river is a good slave, and steals wood as well. We have only to cut it by moonlight and commit it to the current."

"The kitchen is down stream, then ?" "Down stream; and down stream lives jolly Perdicaris the cook, who having lost his nose in a sea-fight, is reconciled to forswear sunshine and mankind, and cook rice for pirates."

"Is it true, then, that Yvain held command on the sea?"

"No, not Yvain, but Tranchcoeurhis equal in command over this honest confederacy. By the way, he is your countryman, Mr. Tyrell, though he fights under a nom de guerre. You are very likely to see him, too, for his bark is at Trieste, and he is the only human being besides myself (and my company here) who can come and go at will in this robber's paradise. He is a lover of mine, parbleu! and since Yvain's death, heaven knows what fancy he may bring hither in his hot brain! I have armed Percie for the hazard!"

The thin nostrils of my friend from Cranbourne Alley dilated with prophetic dislike of a rival thus abruptly alluded to, and there was that in his face which would have proved, against all the nurses' oaths in christendom, that the spirit of a gentleman's blood ran warm through his heart. Signor Tranchcœur must be gentle in his suit, I said to myself, or he will find what virtue lies in a hair trigger! Percie had forgot to eat since the mention of the pirate's name, and sat with folded arms and his right hand on his pistol.

A black slave brought in an omelette soufflée, as light and delicate as the chefd'œuvre of an artiste in the Palais Royal. Iminild spoke to him in Greek, as he knelt and placed it before her.

"I have a presentiment," she said, looking at me as the slave disappeared, that Tranchcœur will be here presently. I have ordered another omelette on the strength of the feeling, for he is fond of it, and may be soothed by the attention." "You fear him, then?"

"Not if I were alone, for he is as gentle as a woman when he has no rival near him-but I doubt his relish of Percie. Have you dined?" "Quite."

"Then come and look at my garden, and have a peep at old Perdicaris. Stay here, Percie, and finish your grapes, mon mignon! I have a word to say to Mr. Tyrell.'

We walked across the platform, and passing between two of the sparry columns forming its boundary, entered upon a low passage which led to a large opening,

resembling singularly a garden of low shrubs turned by some magic to sparkling marble. Two or three hundred of these stalagmite cones, formed by the dripping of calcareous water from the roof, (as those on the roof were formed by the same fluid which hardened them,) stood about in the spacious area, every shrub having an answering cone on the roof, like the reflection of the same marble garden in a mirror. One side of this singular apartment was used as a treasury for the spoils of the band, and on the points of the white cones hung pitchers and altar-lamps of silver, gold drinking-cups, and chains, and plate and jewellery of every age and description. Farther on were piled, in unthrifty confusion, heaps of velvets and silks, fine broadcloths, French gloves, shoes and slippers, brocades of Genoa, pieces of English linen, damask curtains still fastened to their cornices, a harp and mandolin, cases of damaged bonsbons, two or three richly-bound books, and, (last and most valuable in my eyes,) a miniature bureau, evidently the plunder of some antiquary's treasure, containing in its little drawers antique gold coins of India, carefully dated and arranged, with a list of its contents half torn from the lid.

"You should hear Tranchcoeur's sermons on these pretty texts," said the countess, trying to thrust open a bale of Brusa silk with her Turkish slipper. "He will beat off the top of a stalactite with his sabre-hilt, and sit down and talk over his spoils and the adventures they recall, till morning dawns."

with the current of the river. At the nearest fire stood Perdicaris, a fat, longhaired and sinister-looking rascal, his noseless face glowing with the heat, and at his side waited, with a silver dish, the Nubian slave who had been sent for Tranchcoeur's omelette.

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"One of the most bloody fights of my friend the rover," said Iminild, was with an armed slaver, from whom he took these six pages of mine. They have reason enough to comprehend an order, but too little to dream of liberty. They are as contented as tortoises, ici bas."

"Is there no egress hence but by the iron door?"

"None that I know of, unless one could swim up this swift river like a salmon. You may have surmised by this time, that we monopolize an unexplored part of the great cave of Adelsberg. Common report says it extends ten miles under ground, but common report has never burrowed as far as this, and I doubt whether there is any communication. Father Krakenpate's clock conceals an entrance, discovered first by robbers, and handed down by tradition, heaven knows how long. But-hark! Tranchcoeur, by heaven! my heart foreboded it!"

I sprang after the countess, who, with her last exclamation, darted between two of the glittering columns separating us from the platform, and my first glance convinced me that her fullest anticipations of the pirate's jealousy were more than realized. Percie stood with his back to a tall pillar on the farther side, with his pistol levelled, calm and un

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By the perfume. The river brings news of it, and fills the cavern with the sun's first kisses. Those violets kiss and tell,' Mr. Tyrell! Apropos des bottes, let us look into the kitchen."

We turned to the right, keeping on the same level, and a few steps brought us to the brow of a considerable descent, forming the lower edge of the carpeted platform, but separated from it by a wall of close stalactites. At the bottom of the descent ran the river, but just along the brink, forming a considerable crescent, extended a flat rock, occupied by all the varied implements of a kitchen, and lighted by the glare of two or three different fires blazing against the perpendicular limit of the cave. The smoke of these followed the inclination of the wall, and was swept entirely down

sabre drawn and his eyes flashing fire, a tall powerfully-built man in a sailor's dress, was arrested by Iminild in the act of rushing on him.

"Stop! or you die, Tranchcoeur !" said the countess, in a tone of thrilling command. "He is my guest!"'

"He is my prisoner, madame!" was the answer, as the pirate changed his position to one of perfect repose, and shot his sabre into his sheath, as if a brief delay could make little difference.

"We shall see that," said the countess, once more, with as soft a voice as was ever heard in a lady's boudoir; and stepping to the edge of the platform, she touched with her slipper a suspended gong, which sent through the cavern a shrill reverberation, heard clearly over the rushing music of the river.

In an instant the click of forty mus