then allows himself to be scoffed out of it by his unscrupulous queen. At last, it may be, maddened by the discovery of Eleanor's infidelity to himself, and agonised at the same moment by the tidings of Rosamond's holy death, Henry, in a temporary fit of insanity, speaks the frenzied words which his knights rashly accept as a command, and the first part closes, much as the drama before us, with the martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral.

Thus the destiny of the house of Anjou accomplishes itself as fearfully as does the fate of the house of Atreus, when Agamemnon falls by his own wife's hand. A crime more terrible than even hers, the murder of a father in God, lies at the King's door. The spectators feel that it cries for a greater punishment than that which befell the guilty Clytemnestra; and they await with awe and trembling the second part, in which it is to be expiated.

That second part will begin by exhibiting Henry's horror when he finds what he has almost unwittingly done. His penance at Canterbury will be a real expression of remorse, a sincere lamenta tion for the friend of his youth.

But the Furies who rise from the dark abyss as the avengers of parricide are not to be so appeased. They take possession of the minds of Henry's own sons, and set them in horrid, unnatural warfare against their own father. Then the wide dominions which the King's early ambition was content to pay so great a price for, prove the cause of perpetual conflict in his divided house. The wife whom he has wronged, and been wronged by, rouses his children against him. Victorious, but unhappy, he is summoned to the death-bed of his undutiful heir, and is persuaded

VOL. CXXXVIII.-NO. DCCCXXXVII.

not to put himself into the hands of one who may only be feigning sickness in order to make his father his prisoner. The often-described scene of his anguish when he hears that his son has died, craving vainly his injured sire's forgiveness, will be most pathetic in our hoped-for poet's hands. So likewise will be that in which Henry extends to Bertrand de Born the pardon which the man who, as Dante says, cleft him and his son asunder, had so little right to expect; when the troubadour, who had boasted that his wits were so good that half of them would be enough to extricate him from any peril, asked by his stern captor to see whether either half or the whole can now avail him, replies, "Neither the whole nor the half is left me, O King; they all departed when your son died;" and, so saying, opens the fount of tears, and finds the hand so lately raised to slay him grasping his, in loving memory of the dead.

By what underplot the dramatist will, in some degree, relieve the gloom of these scenes, it is hard to say. The love of a daughter of Henry and Rosamond for Bertrand is a possible expedient; or that of Richard Cœur de Lion for some beautiful Provençal lady, who, from passionate hatred to the King, whom she deems the alien and heartless oppressor of her native land, stirs the son to revolt against his father. But the main theme of the play must be Henry's sufferings at the hands of his undutiful children, the result and the punishment of his early contempt for the sanctities of married life.

At last the end comes. Two sons are dead; of the remaining two, one, in open arms against his father, has, with the help of the French king, constrained him to aç

E

cept unfavourable terms of peace; the youngest and best loved is discovered to be secretly in league with his father's enemies. The name of Prince John, standing at the head of the list of rebellious vassals to be amnestied, breaks that father's heart, who turns his face to the wall after reading it, with a cry of uttermost distress.

Accompanied only, out of all his numerous children, by Rosamond's son Geoffrey, he retires to Chinon to die. Dark visions haunt the bed where he tosses in the delirium of fever. The unhappy spirits of his two dead sons seem writhing before him under the curse which he hoped he had retracted. The witch-Countess appears to his distempered vision, summoning her unhappy descendant into the gloom which is now her everlasting habitation. Geoffrey prays beside him, and earnestly invokes the intercession of St Thomas of Canterbury. The delirium changes its character. The King's face lights up with unexpected joy. "Rosamond," he exclaims, as though he saw angel beckoning to him. Then, with recovered consciousness, he addresses "Geoffrey, my true son," and bids him have him carried to the adjoining church, and laid before

an

its high altar. There, round their dying sovereign, barons and menat - arms, attendant priests and bishops, foremost among whom is the dutiful Geoffrey, stand silent and amazed as Henry's voice in broken accents falters forth a confession,-mostly inaudible, but of which an occasional half-sentence reaches the audience. It is addressed to no one of the clergy present, but to some one, unseen by the rest, evidently supposed by the King to be standing close beside him. The shades of evening are falling, and in unison with their dimness a deeper and deeper awe falls on the assemblage. Suddenly the complete silence of the last few moments is broken, as the latest beam of the setting sun pierces the clouds and falls full on the dying man, who, raising himself as if to meet it, with his eyes still fixed as before, says in a clear, distinct voice, "And now, my Lord Archbishop, your blessing." Audibly to all comes the answer, "Absolvo te. Proficiscere in pace, anima Christiana;" and, as the King sinks back, smiling in death, and all present fall on their knees, one of the older barons whispers to his neighbour, "It is the voice of Becket."

WHEN Mr Winstanley walked up-stairs, Mr Venables strolled off to the smoking-room. And as he sauntered along the passage, already he was meditating much over his good friend's autobiographical sketches, and the useful lessons that had been read to him. He thought quickly, and already had made up his mind that much was depending on some prompt course of action, and that he might make a great opportunity or miss it. "The old gentleman likes me; that is very clear,”- so ran his reflections; "and while his gratitude is warm, and we are living almost en tête-à-tête, he would very willingly do anything to help me. Once in London again, among his many distractions, to say the least of it, it is quite upon the cards that gratitude may cool into civility. But if I could only show him that I lay his teaching to heart, if I could make a coup on the spot and prove that I might possibly help him, then he would be likely to help me to some purpose, and I might be partner for life in the money-making firm of Winstanley & Venables. Thank heaven, I have that £10,000 to start with ! But I am at Oban, and at the back of the world, worse luck, where I have every sort of facility for dreaming, but no chance of doing anything to the purpose." So the sanguine flashes of his ambition died down in momentary despondency, as his fingers were on the handle of the smoking-room door.

Now, as it chanced, the Dunolly Arms Hotel was a rather peculiarly conducted establishment. The season at Oban is brief at the

best, so that all the landlords are more or less autocratic. When families of tourists are scrambling for beds, in the fading sunsets of the long summer evenings, they will stoop to any servility to secure them. And necessarily the landlords, who are arbiters of their fates, abuse the advantages of their right of selection. But Mr M'Alpine of the Dunolly Arms was a despot among despots. A benevolent despot, it is true, with a kindly nature at bottom; but rough of manner and blunt in speech. Like Winstanley, he was an enthusiastic patron of the Fine Arts, and his public rooms and passages were hung with paintings and sketches, many of them of no inconsiderable merit, executed by artists he had entertained and befriended. He paid fair prices, when he did not take paintings in exchange for board and lodgings in the dead season; he sold these paintings again when he had the chance, and generally got back his money. He could afford to wait for it, as he could afford to lose it. Mr M'Alpine was a small wiry Celt, with a snarl at the corners of the lips, contradicted by a pair of kindly grey eyes, which seemed to say that his bark was worse than his bite. His domestic laws were like those of the Medes and Persians especially that which forbade tobacco anywhere except in the regular smoking-room. No doubt he knew very well on which side his bread was buttered, and, being pecuniarily independent, could afford to persist in a system which remunerated him handsomely in the long-run. And if he showed the

wealthy Mr Winstanley a certain consideration, it was more from sympathy with him as a wellknown connoisseur in the Arts, than from the idea that he might possibly become a purchaser of some of the masterpieces on the walls. Winstanley's valet had been blowing his master's trumpet: Jack Venables was always ready to talk with any one who either amused or instructed him; and M'Alpine was a well-informed man, with the local knowledge at his finger-ends. Jack had made great way in his good graces by showing him the pocket-book with the clever scratchings of the shipwreck. Old M'Alpine chuckled and criticised; he laughed especially at a portrait of Mr Winstanley in his ulster, sitting with turned-up trousers in the chair, amid the sea-wrack, the salt-water, and the limpets,-a clever study, which, by the way, the sketcher had never submitted to its subject: so that had not Jack been seemingly a gentleman of good estate, M'Alpine would assuredly have given him a commission.

And now Jack had passed the threshold of the door, and was peering through the haze of tobacco-smoke, fragrantly flavoured from beakers of steaming toddy, when the well-known accents of the host welcomed him out of the mist.

Step this way, Mr Venables; here's a chair for you, sir." And with unheard-of condescension, at which a knot of cronies opened their eyes, M'Alpine rose from the depths of an American rockingchair and pushed it towards the new-comer. Jack thanked him, protested and accepted, with an easy grace, which brought M'Alpine's allies metaphorically to his feet, and perhaps, in a measure, impressed the great man himself.

For though nothing could be pleasanter than Mr Venables's manner, somehow he had the knack of keeping his inferiors at arm's length, while treating them with encouraging familiarity; and while swearing he was the best fellow in the world, they would hardly have cared to take a liberty with him.

Jack called for refreshment, and handed round his cigar-case. "Don't let me interrupt you," he said, lying back easily in his chair; and one of the party, who had been primed with sundry tumblers, took him at his word, and continued the conversation.

Jack sat listening abstractedly, when suddenly he pricked his ears. A burly townsman was discoursing about sundry land lots, which he asserted to be going for a song, in the outskirts of the thriving watering-place.

"I wonder now that you don't make a bid for them yourself, Mister M'Alpine. The town is bound to grow; and ye ken well that before now, Dunclaverty has been getting £40-ay, £50-for his feus to the wast. I believe that these would fetch as much, were

you to bide your time: anyway, if

ye got but half the money, ye'd turn a pretty penny on them. It's the truth; and, Mr Baxter, I appeal to you now, sir?" addressing himself to the gentleman next him.

Mr Baxter muttered something that might pass for an assent; and even M'Alpine, who was often contradictory from sheer "cussedness," as the Americans say, did not seriously dispute the proposition. He contented himself with grumbling that he had more ground already than he well knew what to do with; and that when a man meant to add a wing, and maybe a stable-yard, to his hotel, it behoved him to see to the balance at his bankers. And so it chanced

that the conversation was changed when Mr Venables had asked some casual questions, apparently more out of politeness than for any better reason.

As a rule, he took things easily in the mornings; but next day he was up and about betimes. Finding M'Alpine admiring his flowerbeds, Jack praised the carnations and picotees, and offered him some rare cuttings from Sussex. Then, easily passing from flowers to shrubs and scenery and land lots, he resumed the talk of the night before to more practical purpose. Subsequently he extended his stroll along the beach, and surveyed certain sunny stretches of the shore, with an eye to house sites and ornamental gardening. He came back with an appetite, and fortified himself with an excellent breakfast. Still indefatigable, he went out again; and was closeted for a couple of hours with a lawyer and bank-agent, who, although he set a very sufficient value on his time, after dragging out title-deeds and plans from sundry tin boxes, insisted on escorting his visitor to the outer door of his office. And a little later, Mr Venables, with the dégagé air that sat so naturally on him, strolled into the private sitting-room, in which the companion of his travels was dawdling over a late French breakfast. After a few observations of course, he went straight to his point.

"And now, sir, if it won't interfere with your digestion, I have come to you for a piece of advice. The fact is, I am thinking of transacting a bit of business, and no one can counsel me better than you.'

"Spoil my digestion! Quite the contrary. There is something refreshing in the sound of business, when weeks of idleness are ending in ennui—or would have ended in ennui, at least, had it not been for

your charity and good company. Really, you excite my curiosity besides. What business can you possibly have to transact in this place? For when you were kind enough to tell me all about your affairs the other day, I thought we agreed that the investment of that money of yours was to stand over for our future consideration."

Jack liked the sound of the "our"; it was pleasantly suggestive of the speculative partnership he was contemplating.

"So we did, sir, and so I had intended. But chances will turn up, as you know, in strange places; and something suggested itself last night, which I have been inquiring into this morning.'

Then he told his tale, and produced the memorable pocket-book. There were some figures in pencil on one of the pages, which Winstanley examined with considerable interest, and which were the summing-up of the case that Jack submitted.

"It looks well on paper, I must confess," said Winstanley. "But of course all depends on prospective value; and you are locking up your money, remember that. But 'always distrust a vendor' is a golden rule. Why does this Mr Campbell, your lawyer's principal, wish to sell? He should know the worth of his prospects as well as anybody."

"It is not he, it is his creditors. They are getting impatient for their money, and decline to wait any longer. And M'Alpine and the other men last night, who never dreamed of me as a possible purchaser, agreed that there was no one on the spot with cash ready to pay down. If things are as straightforward as they seem, it appears to me that I can lose nothing, and may make a good deal. I should borrow a part of the purchase