this visit to the place which the beautiful Alice once adorned; he then walked forward and knocked for admittance at the door of the cottage. Several minutes elapsed before any notice was taken of his application; at length, a small grating opened inside, and the head of the old woman was protruded through it, while she asked who stood there. Dungarvon desired her to open the door for him; and Fanga Maund, with tottering steps, came down from the loft above, and unbarred the entrance.

It was many years since these two, the proud and lofty statesman, and the withered dweller in the hut, had confronted each other, and those years had pressed with a heavy hand over each. The once glittering eye and unruffled brow of Dungarvon were changed by mental distress; while the features, no less than the form of the woman, showed deep traces of the power of time, passion, and disease. She threw back the door without sign of respect or favour, and received the Earl with a glare of mingled hatred and defiance. Dungarvon put his purse into her skinny fingers, and inquired for the

VOL. III.

D

chamber of Joyce. The purse was clutched, but the question remained unanswered. The Earl looked at her for a moment, a waiting some reply, and then walked forward into a dark and narrow passage, where, upon pushing open a door, at the further end, he found himself in the sick man's chamber.

Joyce was lying on a wretched straw mattress, raised from the floor by four large logs of wood; and, at the present hour, the long rays of the declining sun were streaming on his pallid face. He was well enough to recognise the person who now stood by the side of his couch, and looked in his face; but his scheme was to feign insensibility, in order to avoid answering the questions which his injured patron would be eager, he knew, to put to him; and Fanga was not unaware of his purpose. If the steward was a good actor, Dungarvon proved himself to be not less skilled in the developement of the devices of the cunning; and he had not been many minutes in the room ere he discovered the fact that Joyce's faculties of observation were as keen, and as much on the alert, as his own.

He resolved, however, on keeping his knowledge of this fact to himself, and felt inexpressibly relieved at the thought that the guilty steward would recover from his wound, and might make some atonement, by confessing the crimes he had committed.

When Fanga followed the Earl into the sick chamber, she made signs to Joyce, intimating that he need not fear, and then turned her eyes with the same fixed and sullen glare upon the Earl. "Your patient is better," he said, in a low voice. "Attend him carefully, Fanga, and your skill shall be amply rewarded."

"Do you set a price upon him?" inquired Fanga. The steward trembled as he lay, and heard the temptation of money offered to his companion in crime. He had less and less confidence in Fanga; for who can trust the wicked? and his ghastly visage grew still more ghastly at the thought that she would betray him. "Keep him very quiet," began the Earl,-when Joyce burst forth into a wild scream, which was followed by divers uncouth and unintelligible imitations of insanity. It did not require Dun

garvon's penetration to perceive that he was feigning delirium, and very awkwardly; but it was necessary to preserve his self-command to restrain a reprimand at the unnatural sounds. "Do you believe him really deranged?" asked the Earl, addressing her.

"What matters it what I may think," answered Fanga, more softly, touched by the gentle voice and the serious air of the once loved peer. "I have no voice now to speak the

truth to man."

"But you are an excellent doctor and nurse," answered Dungarvon, "and you can judge from the features and the general appearance how the sick feel. This you can do, good wo

"I have no cunning craft whereby to prolong a life and keep it from extinction," cried the crone, excited; "and it signifies little, methinks, how speedily a man may die. Could I save her? did she not perish, the only one I ever prayed for? I could not find remedies for her disease,why should I trouble myself about another now? Have I not lived with reptiles ever since?"

she continued, wandering from the subject, "have I not listened to their hissings, sought them in their crevices, dabbled for them in the muddy pool? Oh! I have lived a brave life since then!" and she burst into a hollow, vacant laugh.

"She must certainly be mad," thought the Earl: "it is vain to reckon on her testimony. My only hope, then, rests on his repentance."

He sat silently musing for a time: the woman got up and stirred the decaying embers of the fire. While she was busied in preparing some mess for the sick man, Dungarvon cast his eyes round the apartment. The contents were of a nature sufficiently strange and varied to excite curiosity. A quantity of dried plants were arranged round the walls, with systematic care, interspersed here and there with the bodies of twisted snakes, preserved to the life in colours. In the centre of the floor stood an old marble font, once the ornament of some sacred edifice, now converted, by the aid of a few old planks, into a picturesque table. A large knife, a curious sort of box, fastened with a slender