in whatever region or clime thy fancy may desire; but at the end of that time, though thou wert at the farthest verge of earth, hither must thou return-to this spot-and at the same hour of night as now-where I too shall be to meet thee. Speak-what wouldst thou have?"

""Revenge!" replied Richard.

"Thou shalt have it. Behold how."

'He struck upon the church doors with his crutch-stick: tey flew open. Richard saw, as in a vision, Grace Amos kneeling at the altar with his rival, and receiving the nuptial benediction.

"There is to-morrow," said the fiend.

"There is hell!" exclaimed Richard.

"And here is heaven-thy heaven!" continued the fiend, pointing in the direction of the entrance to the church-yard, where Richard beheld a funeral train approaching, and Grace Amos in her bridal dress following a coffin. The next moment the whole vanished.

""Come this way," said the demon. They walked into the middle of the church-yard. "Here," he continued, striking his crutch-stick into the ground, "is his grave! He will not lie in it, but he shall be ready for it by to-morrow night."

"In what manner?" asked Richard.

"In this manner. To-morrow he weds her who was thine. He is quarrelsome and choleric. As he leaves the church, with his bride upon his arm, do thou cross his path. Leave the rest to me."

"Will you be there?

"Yes-but unseen of any, save thyself."

"How then?"

""Question me no farther-I must be gone. Is it a bargain? I tell you he shall wed but never bed your mistress. Is not that revenge enough?"

"Ay-glorious revenge!" said Richard, clenching his teeth. "Well, then, is it a bargain?"

"It is."

"Your hand upon it."

Richard stretched out his hand, which the demon seized.

""Wear that mark," he exclaimed, “till I claim it."

'As he spoke, Richard felt the sinews of his right hand contract and knit together; at the same time he heard a chuckling laugh in the air. He looked up, but could see nothing. He turned towards the demonhe was gone!

"The next morning,' said the Major, 'Richard was awakened from a disturbed sleep by the merry chimes of the church bells. He arrived at the church just as the wedding party were leaving it. The bride trembled violently at the sight of him.

"Grace," said Richard, addressing her, taking no notice of Sergeant Wilkinson, "did I not declare you should rue this day, if there was a God in heaven or a Devil in hell?"

"Oh! Richard, Richard!" exclaimed the faithless girl, "I did not think to see you here. Why have you come?"

"To keep my word, Grace."

""Keep your distance," said the sergeant, thrusting him aside.

'A blow followed, which Richard struck with his right hand. It seemed to fall upon his rival's breast like a blow from a sledge

hammer, and he staggered beneath it. Richard, when relating the circumstance to my father, declared that it appeared to himself as if he had struck with some heavy instrument instead of his hand. The sergeant drew his sword and was about to rush upon his unarmed assailant. Grace hung upon his neck, and besought him not to move. His and her friends gathered round to prevent the effusion of blood. He flung his bride from him-he disengaged himself from the others his eyes flashed fire his pale lips quivered-he advanced towards Richard, who stood calm and unmoved; for now he saw the demon by his side, pointing with his crutch-stick in mockery and scorn at the uplifted sabre. He made a thrust at him-it was parried by the demon. Richard receded a few paces, followed by his infuriated antagonist, round whom his friends had again gathered, and to whom Grace again clung in an agony of terror, imploring him to be calm. She held him by one arm as he dragged her along, following Richard, who still retreated, and aiming furious blows at him, which were still turned aside by the demon. The screams and cries of the bridal party were terrific.

""Come on," said Richard, tauntingly. "Why don't you strike home ?"

'At that moment the sergeant stumbled on the very spot where, the night before, the demon had struck his crutch-stick into the ground, and said, "Here is his grave." He fell, dragging Grace with him; his sword slipped from his grasp, and Richard saw the demon turn its point so, that, as he fell, it pierced his heart. Scarcely uttering a groan, he rolled upon his face, (Grace lying partly beneath him, drenched with his blood,) and expired. A loud laugh, which none but Richard heard, rang through the air. The demon was no longer to be

seen.

'Horror was upon every countenance save Richard's, who surveyed the scene with a calm brow. Bitter upbraidings were heaped upon him by those who stood around.

""Why, what have I done?" said he. "I came to tell that perfidious woman, (pointing to Grace, who was lying insensible in the arms of her bridesmaids), "of what she had done-withered a heart which was hers or nothing. I forewarned her I would do so; and if that choleric fool could have been content to let a wronged man complain, this had not happened. He fell by his own hand not mine."

"You struck him, villain!" exclaimed old Giles Amos, the father of Grace. "It was that blow that was the cause of all."

""He might have returned it,” replied Richard, "and would have done so had he not been a coward, drawing his sword upon a defenceless man."

"God forgive you, Richard!" rejoined Giles. “You have had your revenge; and may God forgive you.'

'Laughter was heard, and a voice exclaimed, "He has had his revenge, and bought with it GOD'S CURSE!"

""Who is that?" cried several voices at once.

""Hearken to thy doom, Richard," said Grace, starting wildly up. "Hearken to thy doom! I heard it pronounced and I shall see it fulfilled-there-there!" pointing to the sky. "Oh! Richard, Richard, you have indeed kept your word; but why were you not merciful? Have I deserved this at your hands?" she continued, bursting into tears as her

eyes glanced upon the bleeding corpse of her husband.

"Could you not

have despised, hated me, for my falsehood, but spared me this? Oh! my heart will surely break!"

'She fell upon her knees by her husband's body, took his hand, and covered it with tears and kisses.

"When I loved you most," said Richard, gazing at her with a stern unpitying eye, "I never looked upon you with half the pleasure I do now. I bore hell's torments for thee, thou false one !-and I could have continued to bear them, or anything, except seeing you another's. That maddened and-"

"What?" demanded Grace, springing to her feet, as if the thought had suddenly flashed across her mind of what Richard had done.

"And," he continued, smiling contemptuously, "I resolved to welcome the new-made bride at the earliest moment, even as she came from the altar. I have done so; and now I leave you with the husband of your choice!" So saying, he turned upon his heel, and quitted the churchyard.'

'And what became of poor Grace?' inquired Mary.

Ah!' said the Major, shaking his head, there was a bad beginning, but a worse ending, to my mind. Who can explain a woman? Who can account for what she will do when she will? Who can understand the movements of that moral machinery which makes them such beautiful contradictions.'

'Beautiful fiddlesticks!' exclaimed Miss Grooby, violently agitated. 'I have no patience, brother, to hear you talk such nonsense. The creature was nothing better than a vile harlot,-a lewd minx, who did not care what she did so as she got a husband; and rightly was she served when she married that vile wretch, Richard Warbeck.'

'What!' said Mr. Carliel, did she afterwards marry Richard?'

'I can't deny it,' replied the Major, shaking his head again, as if he really felt for the honour of the sex; 'I can't deny it. She certainly did marry him; but I shall always think she was the victim of unholy practices. At first,' said the Major, she was like Calypso, inconsolable for the loss of her Ulysses,-but in time she took the Ephesian dame for her model. Seven years had elapsed, during which she never once laid aside her widow's weeds, and no one ever saw her smile. Many were the offers she had during this period, all of which she peremptorily and even sternly repulsed. What had become of Richard nobody knew; for immediately after the death of his rival he left the place without saying whither he was going; but it was generally thought he had gone to sea. At the expiration of seven years, however, he came back, and set up a school. His frame seemed shattered, and his deportment was that of a man ill at ease. If a stranger appeared in the town, he was the first to inquire whence he came, and whether any one knew his errand. Sometimes he would receive letters with a foreign post-mark, and these he examined intently, the seal, the folding, the writing, before he opened them. Then he always slept with two lighted candles in his room, and would never go to bed till after midnight, and in summer time not until the day had dawned. All these things were noted by his friends and acquaintance, the more charitably disposed of whom ascribed them to remorse for the fate of poor Wilkinson.

When, or under what circumstances, he renewed his intimacy with Grace I never heard; but within three months after his return, to the utter amazement of all who heard it, the banns of marriage between them were published one Sunday morning. Her father, who was present, started up, and in a voice of fury forbade them; but when the poor old man went into the vestry after service was over to assign his reasons, he could give none that amounted to a valid prohibition: so the marriage took place.

"You will repent this," said Giles to his daughter the evening before the wedding.

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"I know it, father," replied Grace. "I feel that I am about to do something terrible; but I have no power to resist. Richard has got hold of me. If he were to bid me hack my flesh off my bones, I should do it. He marries me, because it is his will. I do not marry him,

nor would I; but when he asked me if I would, I could as soon have trod the air as said anything but the one word he himself breathed into my ear,—' yes.' And ever since I have moved in a sort of waking dream, God help me! for I know I am a doomed woman, though I cannot explain what it is that makes me think so."

'Next morning they were married. Such a bride! and such a bridegroom! and such a marriage! Richard would not allow any one to accompany them, neither would he himself accompany her, but insisted upon their meeting at the church door, where she found him waiting. He forbade her to lay aside her widow's weeds; and he was dressed in exactly the same clothes he wore when he went to meet her the morning she was married to Sergeant Wilkinson. Well, the knot was tied, and as they were returning, Richard stopped at the spot where her first husband fell and died in that fatal scuffle. Looking sternly in her face, he said,

"Grief for the fool who lies buried there, not love for me, has kept you mine till now. There was a time when I would have married you -oh, how gladly!—for love; now I have married you for revenge. Goyour sight is hateful to me -worse: it calls up the past, and makes the horrible future stand before me. Go- treacherous devil! the wedded of two husbands, the wife of neither; and if I could bring down the curse of curses on your head, it should be that your heart may wither as mine has, in hopeless love,- that with a hand you dare not give, you may be tormented with longing desires to bestow it. Go- and quickly, or the thought of what your perfidy has driven me to will make me mad, and I shall be tempted to have thy blood upon my soul."

'Grace, who had stood with her head bent, her hands clasped, and her limbs trembling, while these terrible words were addressed to her, now, without once raising her eyes to look at Richard, slowly withdrew, and returned home.

'She went to her bed, from which she never rose again for three months. A violent fever with delirium came on, and the things she raved about were dreadful to hear. In the end she recovered her health; but her reason was gone, and that she never recovered. It was a gentle and harmless insanity, which showed itself chiefly in attending every wedding that took place, and presenting the bride with a nosegay composed of wild flowers. This she never failed to do, till at last Grace Amos (for the people continued to call her by her maiden name) was as regularly looked for in the churchyard-(the church itself

nothing could induce her to enter) — when there was a marriage, as the young couple who were going to be married. Her poor father died soon afterwards, and the little property he left was applied to her maintenance by a friend of the family; but gradually it wasted away; and gradually, too, charity, which at first supplied its place, wasted away, and grew cold and scant; and then poor Grace had no home but the workhouse. But, as I have said, this was only during the winter months; for the moment there were flowers to be seen she would beg to be let out, and she supported herself during the spring, summer, and autumn, by gathering and selling them.'

'And what became of the wretch who brought her to this condition?' inquired Mrs. Dagleish.

At first,' said the Major, 'he tried to bear up against the general scorn and indignation which his treatment of her excited; but it would not do. He was shunned by every one; his school went to decay; and at the end of a few years he left the place.

'Grace Amos, who lived to be nearly seventy, had been dead about two years, when one winter's evening my father was called out to visit an old gentleman who was staying at the principal inn, where he arrived only the day before. He went, and was shown into a room lighted with six large wax candles. On a sofa near the fire was lying the person who had sent for him, wrapped up in a black velvet cloak trimmed with sable fur, and seemingly in the last stage of debility. His hair was silver white, and hung loosely over his face and shoulders; a beard of the same colour descended to his breast. His face was wrinkled, his voice feeble, and everything about him denoted extreme age and decay, except his large prominent black eyes, which were full of youthful fire, and glanced incessantly round the room with a restless expression, that led my father to conclude he had a case of lunacy to deal with.

'When they were alone, the stranger inquired how long my father had lived in the town.

"Nearly twenty years," said he.

'The stranger seemed to be considering for a moment how far that would carry him back.

"Forty years ago," he continued, looking steadfastly at my father, "there lived in this place two persons whom I knew well. They were before your time; but perhaps you may have heard something of them,Richard Warbeck and Grace Amos?"

"I certainly have heard of both," replied my father, astonished at this address, "and one of them I knew, Grace Amos. The poor old creature died in the workhouse hard by, not more than two years since."

"Dead!" murmured the old man to himself, as he lay with his eyes closed, "dead! There is a comfort in that word which I can never know!" And he groaned heavily. "Now she is mistress of my secret. Only two years," he continued.

"Not more," replied my father. "But happy had it been for her, poor soul, had she died when that Richard Warbeck you spoke of betrayed her into a false marriage with himself. That was a foul business, I have heard."

"It was: but I was the fiend's-I was the fiend's, and had pawned my soul to him for revenge! Look here (pointing to the knotted