"It grieves you to see me distressed, Mr. | after she was dead, so settled was her determinWrayburn; it grieves me to see you distressed. ation. What she did, I can do. Mr. WrayI don't reproach you. Indeed I don't reproach burn, if I believed-but I do not believe-that you. You have not felt this as I feel it, being you could be so cruel to me as to drive me from so different from me, and beginning from an- place to place to wear me out, you should drive other point of view. You have not thought. But me to death and not do it." I entreat you to think now, think now!" "What am I to think of?" asked Eugene, bitterly. "Think of me." He looked full at her handsome face, and in his own handsome face there was a light of blended admiration, anger, and reproach, which she -who loved him so in secret-whose heart had "Tell me how not to think of you, Lizzie, and long been so full, and he the cause of its overyou'll change me altogether." flowing-drooped before. She tried hard to retain her firmness, but he saw it melting away under his eyes. In the moment of its dissolution, and of his first full knowledge of his influence upon her, she dropped, and he caught her on his arm. "I don't mean in that way. Think of me, as belonging to another station, and quite cut off from you in honor. Remember that I have no protector near me, unless I have one in your noble heart. Respect my good name. If you feel toward me, in one particular, as you might if I was a lady, give me the full claims of a lady upon your generous behavior. I am removed from you and your family by being a working girl. How true a gentleman to be as considerate of me as if I was removed by being a Queen!" He would have been base indeed to have stood untouched by her appeal. His face expressed contrition and indecision as he asked: "Have I injured you so much, Lizzie ?" 66 No, no. You may set me quite right. I don't speak of the past, Mr. Wrayburn, but of the present and the future. Are we not here now, because through two days you have followed me so closely where there are so many eyes to see you, that I consented to this appointment as an escape ?" "Lizzie! Rest so a moment. Answer what I ask you. If I had not been what you call removed from you and cut off from you, would you have made this appeal to me to leave you ?" "I don't know, I don't know. Don't ask me, Mr. Wrayburn. Let me go back." "I swear to you, Lizzie, you shall go directly. I swear to you, you shall go alone. I'll not accompany you, I'll not follow you, if you will reply." "How can I, Mr. Wrayburn? How can I tell you what I should have done if you had not been what you are ?" "If I had not been what you make me out to be," he struck in, skillfully changing the form of words, "would you still have hated me?" "O Mr. Wrayburn," she replied appealingly, and weeping, "you know me better than to think I do!" "If I had not been what you make me out to be, Lizzie, would you still have been indifferent to me?" "O Mr. Wrayburn," she answered as before, "you know me better than that too!" There was something in the attitude of her whole figure as he supported it, and she hung her head, which besought him to be merciful and not force her to disclose her heart. He was not merciful with her, and he made her do it. "If I know you better than quite to believe "You will drive me away. I live here peacefully and respected, and I am well employed here. You will force me to quit this place as I quitted London, and--by following me again-| will force me to quit the next place in which I (unfortunate dog that I am!) that you hate me, may find refuge, as I quitted this." "Are you so determined, Lizzie-forgive the word I am going to use, for its literal truth-to fly from a lover?" or even that you are wholly indifferent to me, Lizzie, let me know so much more from yourself before we separate. Let me know how you would have dealt with me if you had regarded me as being what you would have considered on equal terms with you." "I am so determined," she answered resolutely, though trembling, "to fly from such a lover. There was a poor woman died here but a "It is impossible, Mr. Wrayburn. How can little while ago, scores of years older than II think of you as being on equal terms with me? am, whom I found by chance, lying on the wet If my mind could put you on equal terms with earth. You may have heard some account of me, you could not be yourself. How could I her?" remember, then, the night when I first saw you, "I think I have," he answered, "if her name and when I went out of the room because you was Higden." "Her name was Higden. Though she was so weak and old, she kept true to one purpose to the very last. Even at the very last, she made me promise that her purpose should be kept to, looked at me so attentively? Or, the night that passed into the morning when you broke to me that my father was dead? Or, the nights when you used to come to see me at my next home? Or, your having known how uninstructed I was, and having caused me to be taught better? Or, | seemed to see, for the second time, in the apmy having so looked up to you and wondered at peal and in the confession of weakness, a little you, and at first thought you so good to be at fear. all mindful of me?" "Only at first' thought me so good, Lizzie? What did you think me after at first?' bad?" So "And she loves me. And so earnest a character must be very earnest in that passion. She can not choose for herself to be strong in this fancy, wavering in that, and weak in the other. "I don't say that. I don't mean that. But She must go through with her nature, as I must after the first wonder and pleasure of being no-go through with mine. If mine exacts its pains ticed by one so different from any one who had and penalties all round, so must hers, I supever spoken to me, I began to feel that it might pose." have been better if I had never seen you." "Why?" "Because you were so different,” she answered in a lower voice. "Because it was so endless, so hopeless. Spare me!" Pursuing the inquiry into his own nature, he thought, "Now, if I married her. If, outfacing the absurdity of the situation in correspondence with M. R. F., I astonished M. R. F. to the utmost extent of his respected powers, by inform"Did you think for me at all, Lizzie?" he ing him that I had married her, how would M. asked, as if he were a little stung. R. F. reason with the legal mind? You wouldn't "Not much, Mr. Wrayburn. Not much un-marry for some money and some station, because til to-night." "Will you tell me why ?" "I never supposed until to-night that you needed to be thought for. But if you do need to be; if you do truly feel at heart that you have indeed been toward me what you have called yourself to-night, and that there is nothing for us in this life but separation; then Heaven help you, and Heaven bless you!" The purity with which in these words she expressed something of her own love and her own suffering, made a deep impression on him for the passing time. He held her, almost as if she were sanctified to him by death, and kissed her, once, almost as he might have kissed the dead. "I promised that I would not accompany you, nor follow you. Shall I keep you in view? You have been agitated, and it's growing dark." "I am used to be out alone at this hour, and I entreat you not to do so." "I promise. I can bring myself to promise nothing more to-night, Lizzie, except that I will try what I can do." "There is but one means, Mr. Wrayburn, of sparing yourself and of sparing me, every way. Leave this neighborhood to-morrow morning." "I will try." you were frightfully likely to become bored. Are you less frightfully likely to become bored, marrying for no money and no station? Are you sure of yourself?' Legal mind, in spite of forensic protestations, must secretly admit, 'Good reasoning on the part of M. R. F. Not sure of myself."" In the very act of calling this tone of levity to his aid he felt it to be profligate and worthless, and asserted her against it. "And yet," said Eugene, "I should like to see the fellow (Mortimer excepted) who would undertake to tell me that this was not a real sentiment on my part, won out of me by her beauty and her worth, in spite of myself, and that I would not be true to her. I should particularly like to see the fellow to-night who would tell me so, or who would tell me any thing that could be construed to her disadvantage; for I am wearily out of sorts with one Wrayburn who cuts a sorry figure, and I would far rather be out of sorts with somebody else. Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business.' Ah! So go the Mortimer Lightwood bells, and they sound melancholy to-night." Strolling on, he thought of something else to take himself to task for. "Where is the analo As he spoke the words in a grave voice, shegy, Brute Beast," he said impatiently, "between put her hand in his, removed it, and went away by the river-side. a woman whom your father coolly finds out for you and a woman whom you have found out for "Now, could Mortimer believe this?" mur-yourself, and have ever drifted after with more mured Eugene, still remaining, after a while, and more of constancy since you first set eyes where she had left him. "Can I even believe upon her? Ass! Can you reason no better it myself?" than that?" He referred to the circumstance that there were tears upon his hand, as he stood covering his eyes. "A most ridiculous position this to be found out in!" was his next thought. And his next struck its root in a little rising resentment against the cause of the tears. "Yet I have gained a wonderful power over her, too, let her be as much in earnest as she will!" But again he subsided into a reminiscence of his first full knowledge of his power just now, and of her disclosure of her heart. To try no more to go away, and to try her again, was the reckless conclusion it turned uppermost. And yet again, "Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business!" And, "I wish I could stop the Lightwood peal, for it sounds like a knell." Looking above, he found that the young moon The reflection brought back the yielding of was up, and that the stars were beginning to her face and form as she had drooped under shine in the sky from which the tones of red and his gaze. Contemplating the reproduction, he | yellow were flickering out, in favor of the calm blue of a summer night. He was still by the river-side. Turning suddenly, he met a man so close upon him that Eugene, surprised, stepped back to avoid a collision. The man carried something over his shoulder which might have been a broken oar, or spar, or bar, and took no notice of him, but passed on. Lizzie Hexam, too, had avoided the noise, and the Saturday movement of people in the straggling street, and chose to walk alone by the water until her tears should be dry, and she could so compose herself as to escape remark upon her looking ill or unhappy on going home. The peaceful serenity of the hour and place, having 66 Halloa, friend!" said Eugene, calling after no reproaches or evil intentions within her breast him, "are you blind?" The man made no reply, but went his way. Eugene Wrayburn went the opposite way, with his hands behind him and his purpose in his thoughts. He passed the sheep, and passed the gate, and came within hearing of the village sounds, and came to the bridge. The inn where he staid, like the village and the Mill, was not across the river, but on that side of the stream | on which he walked. However, knowing the rushy bank and the back-water on the other side to be a retired place, and feeling out of humor for noise or company, he crossed the bridge and sauntered on: looking up at the stars as they seemed one by one to be kindled in the sky, and looking down at the river as the same stars seemed to be kindled deep in the water. A landing-place overshadowed by a willow, and a pleasure-boat lying moored there among some stakes, caught his eye as he passed along. The spot was in such dark shadow that he paused to make out what was there, and then passed on again. The rippling of the river seemed to cause a correspondent stir in his uneasy reflections. He would have laid them asleep if he could, but they were in movement, like the stream, and all tending one way with a strong current. As the ripple under the moon broke unexpectedly now | and then, and palely flashed in a new shape and with a new sound, so part of his thoughts started, unbidden, from the rest, and revealed their wickedness. "Out of the question to marry her," said Eugene, "and out of the question to leave her. The crisis!" He had sauntered far enough. Before turning to retrace his steps he stopped upon the margin to look down at the reflected night. In an instant, with a dreadful crash, the reflected night turned crooked, flames shot jaggedly across the air, and the moon and stars came bursting from the sky. Was he struck by lightning? With some incoherent, half-formed thought to that effect, he turned under the blows that were blinding him and mashing his life, and closed with a murderer, whom he caught by a red neckerchief-unless the raining down of his own blood gave it that hue. to contend against, sank healingly into its depths. She had meditated and taken comfort. She, too, was turning homeward when she heard a strange sound. It startled her, for it was like a sound of blows. She stood still and listened. It sickened her, for blows fell heavily and cruelly on the quiet of the night. As she listened, undecided, all was silent. As she yet listened, she heard a faint groan and a fall into the river. Her old bold life and habit instantly inspired her. Without vain waste of breath in crying for help where there were none to hear, she ran toward the spot from which the sounds had come. It lay between her and the bridge, but it was more removed from her than she had thought; the night being so very quiet, and sound traveling far with the help of water. At length she reached a part of the green bank much and newly trodden, where there lay some broken splintered pieces of wood and some torn fragments of clothes. Stooping, she saw that the grass was bloody. Following the drops and smears, she saw that the watery margin of the bank was bloody. Following the current with her eyes, she saw a bloody face turned up toward the moon and drifting away. Now merciful Heaven be thanked for that old time, and grant, O Blessed Lord, that through thy wonderful workings it may turn to good at last! To whomsoever the drifting face belongs, be it man's or woman's, help my humble hands, Lord God, to raise it from death and restore it to some one to whom it must be dear! It was thought, fervently thought, but not for a moment did the prayer check her. She was away before it welled up in her mind, away, swift and true, yet steady above all-for without steadiness it could never be done-to the landing-place under the willow-tree, where she also had seen the boat lying moored among the stakes. A sure touch of her old practiced hand, a sure step of her old practiced foot, a sure light balance of her body, and she was in the boat. A quick glance of her practiced eye showed her, even through the deep dark shadow, the sculls in a rack against the red-brick garden-wall. Another moment and she had cast off (taking the line with her), and the boat had shot out into the moonlight, and she was rowing down the stream as never other woman rowed on En Eugene was light, active, and expert; but his arms were broken, or he was paralyzed, and could do no more than hang on to the man, with his head swung back, so that he could see no-glish water. thing but the heaving sky. After dragging at the assailant, he fell on the bank with him, and then there was another great crash, and then a splash, and all was done. Intently over her shoulder, without slackening speed, she looked ahead for the driving face. She passed the scene of the struggle-yonder it was, on her left, well over the boat's stern-she passed on her right the end of the village street, a hilly street that almost dipped into the river; its sounds were growing faint again, and she slackened; looking as the boat drove every where, every where for the floating face. She merely kept the boat before the stream now, and rested on her oars, knowing well that if the face were not soon visible it had gone down, and she would overshoot it. An untrained sight would never have seen by the moonlight what she saw at the length of a few strokes astern. She saw the drowning figure rise to the VOL XXXI.-No 185.-Xx surface, slightly struggle, and as if by instinct turn over on its back to float. Just so had she first dimly seen the face which she now dimly saw again. Firm of look and firm of purpose, she intently watched its coming on, until it was very near; then, with a touch, unshipped her sculls, and crept aft in the boat, between kneeling and crouching. Once, she let the body evade her, not being sure of her grasp. Twice, and she had seized it by its bloody hair. It was insensible, if not virtually dead; it was mutilated, and streaked the water all about it with dark red streaks. As it could not help itself, it was impossible for her to get it on board. She bent over the stern to secure it with the line, and then the river and its shores rang to the terrible cry she uttered. But, as if possessed by supernatural spirit and strength, she lashed it safe, resumed her seat, and rowed in, desperately, for the nearest shallow water where she might run the boat aground. Desperately, but not wildly, for she knew that if she lost distinctness of intention all was lost and gone. She ran the boat ashore, went into the water, released him from the line, and by main strength lifted him in her arms and laid him in the bottom of the boat. He had fearful wounds upon him, and she bound them up with her dress torn into strips. Else, supposing him to be still alive, she foresaw that he must bleed to death before he could be landed at his inn, which was the nearest place for succor. This done very rapidly, she kissed his disfigured forehead, looked up in anguish to the stars, and blessed him and forgave him, "if she had any thing to forgive." It was only in that instant that she thought of herself, and then she thought of herself only for him. Now, merciful Heaven be thanked for that old time, enabling me, without a wasted moment, to have got the boat afloat again, and to row back against the stream! And grant, O Blessed Lord God, that through poor me he may be raised from death, and preserved to some one else to whom he may be dear one day, though never dearer than to me! She rowed hard-rowed desperately, but never wildly and seldom removed her eyes from him in the bottom of the boat. She had so laid him there, as that she might see his disfigured face; it was so much disfigured that his mother might have covered it, but it was above and beyond disfigurement in her eyes. The boat touched the edge of the patch of inn lawn, sloping gently to the water. There were lights in the windows, but there chanced to be no one out of doors. She made the boat fast, and again by main strength took him up, and never laid him down until she laid him down in the house. Surgeons were sent for, and she sat supporting his head. She had oftentimes heard in days that were gone how doctors would lift the hand of an insensible wounded person, and would drop it if the person were dead. She waited for the awful moment when the doctors might lift this hand, all broken and bruised, and let it fall. The first of the surgeons came, and asked, before proceeding to his examination, "Who brought him in ?" "I think I could not, at another time, Sir; but I am sure I did." The surgeon looked at her with great attention, and with some compassion. Having with a grave face touched the wounds upon the head, and the broken arms, he took the hand. O! would he let it drop? He appeared irresolute. He did not retain it, but laid it gently down, took a candle, looked more closely at the injuries on the head, and at the pupils of the eyes. That done, he replaced the candle and took the hand again. Another surgeon then coming in, the two exchanged a whisper, and the second took the hand. Neither did he let it fall at once, but kept it for a while and laid it gently down. "Attend to the poor girl," said the first surgeon then. "She is quite unconscious. She sees nothing and hears nothing. All the better for her! Don't rouse her, if you can help it; only move her. Poor girl, poor girl! She must be amazingly strong of heart, but it is much to be feared that she has set her heart upon the dead. Be gentle with her." CHAPTER VII. BETTER TO BE ABEL THAN CAIN. DAY was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or color, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead. Perhaps it was so likened by the lonely Bargeman, standing on the brink of the lock. For certain, Bradley Headstone looked that way, when a chill air came up, and when it passed on murmuring, as if it whispered something that made the phantom trees and water tremble-or threaten-for fancy might have made it either. He turned away, and tried the Lock-house door. It was fastened on the inside. "Is he afraid of me?" he muttered, knocking. Rogue Riderhood was soon roused, and soon undrew the bolt and let him in. "Why, T'otherest, I thought you had been and got lost! Two nights away! I a'most believed as you'd giv' me the slip, and I had as good as half a mind for to advertise you in the newspapers to come for'ard." Bradley's face turned so dark on this hint that Riderhood deemed it expedient to soften it into "I brought him in, Sir," answered Lizzie, at a compliment. whom all present looked. "But not you, governor, not you," he went "You, my dear? You could not lift, far less on, stolidly shaking his head. "For what did carry, this weight." I say to myself arter having amused myself with |