from me since my imprisonment. I knew at the first glance that I was no longer an outlaw beyond the pale of human friendship. And proudly, sternly, as I had supported myself hitherto in solitude and anxiety, when I felt warm hands clasping mine, heard joyous voices proffering congratulations, saw in the eyes of all that my innocence had been cleared, the revulsion of emotion was too strong for me-the Fathers of his Church! He was intent on solving some problem of theological casuistry. In France, an antiquarian esteemed not more for his learning, than for amiable and gentle qualities, murdered his most intimate friend for the possession of a medal, without which his own collection was incomplete. These, and similar anecdotes, tending to prove how fatally any vehement desire, morbidly cherished, may suspend the normal operations of reason and con-room reeled on my sight-I fainted. I pass, as science, were whispered about by Dr. Lloyd's vindictive partisan, and the inference drawn from them and applied to the assumptions against myself, was the more credulously received, because of that over-refining speculation on motive and act which the shallow accept, in their eagerness to show how readily they understand the profound. I was known to be fond of scientific, especially of chemical experiments; to be eager in testing the truth of any novel invention. Strahan, catching hold of the magistrate's fantastic hypothesis, went about repeating anecdotes of the absorbing passion for analysis and discovery which had characterised me in youth as a medical student, and to which, indeed, I owed the precocious reputation I had acquired. Sir Philip Derval, according not only to report, but according to the direct testimony of his servant, had acquired in his travels many secrets in natural science, especially as connected with the healing art-his servant had deposed to the remarkable cures he had effected by the medicinals stored in the stolen casket-doubtless Sir Philip, in boasting of these medicinals in the course of our conversation, had excited my curiosity, influenced my imagination, and thus, when I afterwards suddenly met him in a lone spot, a passionate impulse had acted on a brain heated into madness by curiosity and covetous de sire. All these suppositions, reduced into system, were corroborated by Strahan's charge that I had made away with the manuscript supposed to contain the explanations of the medical agencies employed by Sir Philip, and had sought to shelter my theft by a tale so improbable, that a man of my reputed talent could not have hazarded it if in his sound senses. I saw the web that had thus been spread around me by hostile prepossessions and ignorant gossip: how could the arts of Margrave scatter that web to the winds? I knew not, but I felt confidence in his promise and his power. Still, so great had been my alarm for Lilian, that the hope of clearing my own innocence was almost lost in my joy that Margrave, at least, was no longer in her presence, and that I had received his pledge to quit the town in which she lived. quickly as I can, over the explanations that crowded on me when I recovered, and that were publicly given in evidence in Court next morning. I had owed all to Margrave. It seems that he had construed to my favour the very supposition which had been bruited abroad to my prejudice. For," said he, "it is conjectured that Fenwick committed the crime of which he is accused on the impulse of a disordered reason. That conjecture is based upon the probability that a madman alone could have committed a crime without adequate motive. But it seems quite clear that the accused is not mad; and I see cause to suspect that the accuser is." Grounding this assumption on the current reports of the witness's manner and bearing since he had been placed under official surveillance, Margrave had commissioned the policeman, Waby, to make inquiries in the village to which the accuser asserted he had gone in quest of his relations, and Waby had, there, found persons who remembered to have heard that the two brothers named Walls lived less by the gains of the petty shop which they kept than by the proceeds of some property consigned to them as the nearest of kin to a lunatic who had once been tried for his life. Margrave had then examined the advertisements in the daily newspapers. One of them, warning the public against a dangerous maniac who had effected his escape from an asylum in the west of England, caught his attention. To that asylum he had repaired. There he learned that the patient advertised was one whose propensity was homicide, consigned for life to the asylum on account of a murder, for which he had been tried. The description of this person exactly tallied with that of the pretended American. The medical superintendent of the asylum, hearing all particulars from Margrave, expressed a strong persuasion that the witness was his missing patient, and had himself committed the crime of which he had accused another. If so, the superintendent undertook to coax from him the full confession of all the circumstances. Like many other madmen, and not least those whose propensity is to crime, the fugitive maniac was exceedingly cunning, treacherous, secret, and habituated to trick and stratagem. More subtle than even the astute Thus, hours rolled on hours, till, I think, on in possession of all their faculties, whether to the third day from that night in which I had achieve his purpose or to conceal it, and fabrilast beheld the mysterious Shadow, my door cate appearances against another. But, while, in was hastily thrown open, a confused crowd pre- ordinary conversation, he seemed rational enough sented itself at the threshold the governor to those who were not accustomed to study of the prison, the police superintendent, Mr. him, he had one hallucination which, when Stanton, and other familiar faces shut out humoured, led him always, not only to betray himself, but to glory in any crime proposed or committed. He was under the belief that he had made a bargain with Satan, who, in return for implicit obedience, would bear him harmless through all the consequences of such submission, and finally raise him to great power and authority. It is no unfrequent illusion of homicidal maniacs to suppose they are under the influence of the Evil One, or possessed by a Demon. Murderers have assigned as the only reason they themselves could give for their crime, that "the Devil got into them," and urged the deed. But the insane have, perhaps, no attribute more in common than that of superweening self-esteem. The maniac who has been removed from a garret, sticks straws in his hair and calls them a crown. So much does inordinate arrogance characterise mental aberration, that, in the course of my own practice, I have detected, in that infirmity, the certain symptom of insanity, especially moral insanity, long before the brain had made its disease manifest even to the most familiar kindred. very few minutes was led to tell his own tale, with a gloating complacency both at the agency by which he deemed himself exalted, and at the dexterous cunning with which he had acquitted himself of the task, that increased the horror of his narrative. He spoke of the mode of his escape, which was extremely ingenious, but of which the details, long in themselves, did not interest me, and I understood them too imperfectly to repeat. He had encountered a seafaring traveller on the road, whom he had knocked down with a stone and robbed of his glazed hat and pea-jacket, as well as of a small sum in coin, which last enabled him to pay his fare in a railway that conveyed him eighty miles away from the asylum. Some trifling remnant of this money still in his pocket, he then travelled on foot along the high road till he came to a town about twenty miles distant from L; there he had stayed a day or two, and there he said "that the Devil had told him to buy a case-knife, which he did." "He knew by that order that Morbid self-esteem accordingly pervaded the the Devil meant him to do something great." dreadful illusion by which the man I now speak "His Master," as he called the fiend, then of was possessed. He was proud to be the directed him the road he should take. He came protected agent of the Fallen Angel. And to L, put up, as he had correctly stated if that self-esteem were artfully appealed to, before, at a small inn, wandered at night about he would exult superbly in the evil he held the town, was surprised by the sudden storm, himself ordered to perform, as if a special took shelter under the convent arch, overheard prerogative, an official rank and privilege; somewhat more of my conversation with Sir then, he would be led on to boast gleefully of Philip than he had previously deposed-heard thoughts which the most cynical of criminals, enough to excite his curiosity as to the casket: in whom intelligence was not ruined, would" While he listened, his Master told him that he shrink from owning. Then, he would reveal himself in all his deformity with as complacent and frank a self-glorying as some vain good man displays in parading his amiable sentiments and his beneficent deeds. must get possession of that casket." Sir Philip had quitted the archway almost immediately after I had done so, and he would then have attacked him if he had not caught sight of a policeman going his rounds. He had followed "If," said the superintendent, "this be the Sir Philip to a house (Mr. Jeeves's)." His patient who has escaped from me, and if his Master told him to wait and watch." He did propensity to homicide has been, in some way, so. When Sir Philip came forth, towards the directed towards the person who has been mur-dawn, he followed him, saw him enter a narrow dered, I shall not be with him a quarter of an street, came up to him, seized him by the arm, hour before he will inform me how it happened, demanded all he had about him. Sir Philip and detail the arts he employed in shifting his tried to shake him off-struck at him. What crime upon another-all will be told as minutely follows, I spare the reader. The deed was as a child tells the tale of some schoolboy exploit, done. He robbed the dead man, both of the in which he counts on your sympathy, and feels casket and of the purse that he found in the sure of your applause.' pockets; had scarcely done so when he heard footsteps. He had just time to get behind the portico of a detached house at angles with the street, when I came up. He witnessed, from his hiding-place, the brief conference between myself and the policemen, and when they moved on, bearing the body, stole unobserved away. He was going back towards the inn, when it occurred to him that it would be safer if the casket and purse were not about his person; that he asked his Master to direct him how to dispose of them; that his Master guided him to an open yard (a stone-mason's), The superintendent proved right in his sus-at a very little distance from the inn; that in picions, and verified his promises. My false accuser was his missing patient; the man recognised Dr. *** with no apparent terror, rather with an air of condescension, and in a Margrave brought this gentleman back to L- took him to the mayor, who was one of my warmest supporters; the mayor had sufficient influence to dictate and arrange the rest. The superintendent was introduced to the room in which the pretended American was lodged. At his own desire a select number of witnesses were admitted with him-Margrave excused himself; he said candidly that he was too intimate a friend of mine to be an impartial listener to aught that concerned me so nearly. this yard there stood an old wych-elm tree, from the gnarled roots of which the earth was worn away, leaving chinks and hollows, in one of which he placed the casket and purse, taking from the latter only two sovereigns and some silver, and then heaping loose mould over the hiding-place. That he then repaired to his inn, and left it late in the morning, on the pretence of seeking for his relatives-persons, indeed, who really had been related to him, but of whose death years ago he was aware. He returned to La few days afterwards, and, in the dead of the night, went to take up the casket and the money. He found the purse with its contents undisturbed; but the lid of the casket was unclosed. From the hasty glance he had taken of it before burying it, it had seemed to him firmly locked-he was alarmed lest some one had been to the spot. But his Master whispered to him not to mind, told him that he might now take the casket, and would be guided what to do with it; that he did so, and, opening the lid, found the casket empty; that he took the rest of the money out of the purse, but that he did not take the purse itself, for it had a crest and initials on it, which might lead to discovery of what had been done; that he therefore left it in the hollow amongst the roots, heaping the mould over it as before; that, in the course of the day, he heard the people at the inn talk of the murder, and that his own first impulse was to get out of the town immediately, but that his Master "made him too wise for that," and bade him stay; that passing through the streets, he saw me come out of the sash-window door, go to a stable-yard on the other side of the house, mount on horseback and ride away; that he observed the sashdoor was left partially open; that he walked by it, and saw the room empty; there was only a dead wall opposite, the place was solitary, unobserved; that his Master directed him to lift up the sash gently, enter the room, and deposit the knife and the casket in a large walnut-tree bureau which stood unlocked near the window. All that followed-his visit to Mr. Vigors, his accusation against myself, his whole tale-was, he said, dictated by his Master, who was highly pleased with him, and promised to bring him safely through. And here he turned round with a hideous smile, as if for approbation of his notable cleverness and respect for his high employ. Mr. Jeeves had the curiosity to request the keeper to inquire how, in what form, or in what manner, the Fiend appeared to the narrator, or conveyed his infernal dictates. The man at first refused to say; but it was gradually drawn from him that the Demon had no certain and invariable form; sometimes it appeared to him in the form of a rat; sometimes even of a leaf, or a fragment of wood, or a rusty nail; but, that his Master's voice always came to him distinct, whatever shape he appeared in; only, he said, with an air of great importance, his Master, this time, had graciously condescended, ever since he left the asylum, to communicate with him in a much more pleasing and imposing aspect than he had ever done before-in the form of a beautiful youth, or, rather, like a bright rose-coloured shadow, in which the features of a young man were visible, and that he had heard the voice more distinctly than usual, though in a milder tone, and seeming to come to him from a great distance. After these revelations the man became suddenly disturbed. He shook from limb to limb, he seemed convulsed with terror; he cried out that he had betrayed the secret of his Master, who had warned him not to describe his appearance and mode of communication, or he would give his servant up to the tormentors. Then the maniac's terror gave way to fury; his more direful propensity made itself declared; he sprang into the midst of his frightened listeners, seized Mr. Vigors by the throat, and would have strangled him but for the prompt rush of the superintendent and his satellites. Foaming at the mouth, and horribly raving, he was then manacled, a straitwaistcoat thrust upon him, and the group so left him in charge of his captors. Inquiries were immediately directed towards such circumstantial evidence as might corroborate the details he had so minutely set forth. The purse, recognised as Sir Philip's, by the valet of the deceased, was found buried under the wych-elm. A policeman despatched, express, to the town in which the maniac declared the knife to have been purchased, brought back word that a cutler in the place remembered perfectly to have sold such a knife to a seafaring man, and identified the instrument when it was shown to him. From the chink of a door ajar, in the wall opposite my sash window, a maid-servant, watching for her sweetheart (a journeyman carpenter, who habitually passed that way on going home to dine), had, though unobserved by the murderer, seen him come out of my window at a time that corresponded with the dates of his own story, though she had thought nothing of it at the moment. He might be a patient, or have called on business; she did not know that I was from home. The only point of importance not cleared up was that which related to the opening of the casket-the disappearance of the contents; the lock had been unquestionably forced. No one, however, could suppose that some third person had discovered the hiding-place and forced open the casket to abstract its contents and then rebury it. The only probable supposition was, that the man himself had forced it open, and, deeming the contents of no value, had thrown them away before he had hidden the casket and purse, and, in the chaos of his reason, had forgotten that he had so done. Who could expect that every link in a madman's tale would be found integral and perfect? In short, little importance was attached to this solitary doubt. Crowds accompanied me to my door, when I was set free, in open court, stainless; it was a triumphal procession. The popularity I had previously enjoyed, superseded for a moment by so horrible a charge, came back to me tenfold, as with the reaction of generous repentance for a momentary doubt. One man shared the public favour-the young man whose acuteness had delivered me from the peril, and cleared the truth from so awful a mystery; but Margrave to all hope of happiness for me. Lilian's wise that she-in whose nature I had al- she would welcome that release. Mournful but wholly gone from me; her very nature wholly warped. An union between us had become impossible. My love for her remained unshattered; the more tender, perhaps, for a sentiment of compassion. But my pride was shocked, my heart was wounded. My love was not mean and servile. Enough for me to think that she But for what conceivable purpose had I been would be at least saved from Margrave. Her life subjected as a victim to influences as much be- associated with his !-contemplation, horrible yond my control as the Fate or Demoniac Neces- and ghastly!-from that fate she was saved. sity of a Greek Myth? In the legends of the Later, she would recover the effect of an inclassic world some august sufferer is oppressed fluence happily so brief. She might form some by Powers more than mortal, but with an new attachment-some new tie. But love once ethical if gloomy vindication of his chastisement withdrawn is never to be restored-and her love -he pays the penalty of crime committed by his was withdrawn from me. I had but to release ancestors or himself, or he has braved, by arro-her, with my own lips, from our engagementgating equality with the gods, the mysterious calamity which the gods alone can inflict. But I, no descendant of Pelops, no Edipus, boastful of a wisdom which could interpret the enigmas of the Sphinx, while ignorant even of his own birth what had I done to be singled out from the herd of men for trials and visitations from IT was twilight when I entered, unannounced the Shadowland of ghosts and sorcerers? It (as had been my wont in our familiar interwould be ludicrously absurd to suppose that Dr. course), the quiet sitting-room in which I exLloyd's dying imprecation could have had a pected to find mother and child. But Lilian prophetic effect upon my destiny; to believe was there alone, seated by the open window, her that the pretences of mesmerism were spe- hands crossed and drooping on her knee, her cially favoured by Providence, and that to ques-eye fixed upon the darkening summer skies, in tion their assumptions was an offence of profanation to be punished by exposure to preternatural agencies. There was not even that congruity between cause and effect which fable seeks in excuse for its inventions. Of all men living, I, unimaginative disciple of austere science, should be the last to become the sport of that witchcraft which even imagination reluctantly allows to the machinery of poets, and science casts aside into the mouldy lumber-room of obsolete superstition. Rousing my mind from enigmas impossible to solve it was with intense and yet with most melancholy satisfaction that I turned to the image of Lilian, rejoicing, though with a thrill of awe, that the promise so mysteriously conveyed to my senses, had, here too, been already fulfilled-Margrave had left the town; Lilian was no longer subjected to his evil fascination. But an instinct told me that that fascination had already produced an effect adverse CHAPTER XLII. which the evening star had just stolen forth, Let any lover imagine the reception he 66 Lilian," I said, quietly, "you love me no longer. Is it not so ?" She raised her eyes to mine, looked at me . "What do I mean? Do you forget that we are betrothed? Do you forget how often, and how recently, our vows of affection and constancy have been exchanged ?" 66 love me!" But no such symptom of relenting showed itself in her, and with a groan I left the room. WHAT WINE DOES FOR US. IN a learned and able dissertation on The Vine and its Products, by the late Dr. Arthaud, of Bordeaux, in which the subject is treated of under the scientific heads of "Ampelography" and "Enology," terms derived from the Greek words for "the vine" and "wine," an inquiry is instituted as to what has been the real influence of a moderate use of wine on the phy No, I do not forget; but I must have de-sical and moral condition of nations, and the ceived you and myself "It is true, then, that you love me no more ?" 66 I suppose so." "But, oh, Lilian, is it that your heart is only closed to me? or is it-oh, answer truthfullyis it given to another ?-to him-to him-against whom I warned you, whom I implored you not to receive. Tell me, at least, that your love is not gone to Margrave "To him-love to him! Oh no-no"What, then, is your feeling towards him ?" Lilian's face grew visibly paler-even in that dim light. I know not," she said, almost in a whisper; "but it is-partly awepartly وو What ?" "Abhorrence!" she said, almost fiercely, and rose to her feet, with a wild, defying start. "If that be so," I said gently, "you would not grieve were you never again to see him"But I shall see him again," she murmured, in a tone of weary sadness, and sank back once more into her chair. question asked if it be true that wine has always proved one of the most active agents of civilisation. Dr. Arthaud is of opinion that this influence has been highly beneficial, and that civilisation would be, so to speak, "nowhere," without the assistance of the juice of the grape. Being very much of the doctor's way of thinking, though not disposed to agree with him in everything he says, we propose to show how he endeavours to demonstrate his proposition. Wherever the earth is not covered with ice and eternal snows, man has always been able to find the means of existence, and to make it out in one way or other, by the assistance of the plants and animals which he took away with him from the Garden of Eden. The dog, the horse, and corn, have followed him throughout the old world; but the vine, a plant which only prospers in temperate regions, abandoned him as soon as he established himself in high latitudes. It must, observes Dr. Arthaud, have been a cruel aggravation of the penalty inflicted on the posterity of Adam, thus to be obliged to separate from the joyous plant, whose fruit was able, in so great a degree, to mitigate the severity of "I think not," said I, "and I hope not. And man's punishment. Before the extension of now hear me and heed me, Lilian. It is enough commercial relations, when nations lived apart, it for me, no matter what your feelings towards was easy to draw the line of demarcation which another, to hear from yourself that the affec- divided the people who enjoyed the privilege of tion you once professed for me is gone. I re-growing wine from those who were by nature lease you from your troth. If folks ask why we two henceforth separate the lives we had agreed to join, you may say, if you please, that you could not give your hand to a man who had known the taint of a felon's prison, even on a false charge. If that seems to you an ungenerous reason, we will leave it to your mother to find a better. Farewell! For your own sake I can yet feel happiness-happiness to hear that you do not love the man against whom I warn you still more solemnly than before! Will you not give me your hand in parting-and have I not spoken your own wish ?" She turned away her face, and resigned her hand to me in silence. Silently I held it in mine, and my emotions nearly stifled me. One symptom of regret, of reluctance, on her part, and I should have fallen at her feet, and cried, "Do not let us break a tie which our vows should have made indissoluble; heed not my offers-wrung from a tortured heart. You cannot have ceased to deprived of it. They formed two distinct races of the human species: one barbarous, the other civilised; one stationary in ignorance, the other progressive in the search of knowledge. In the eyes of Zoroaster, Plato Aristotle, and Cicero, the barbarian he was who inhabited the regions where wine was unknown; and such, in their day, were the Scythian, and the Sarmatian, and the very Gaul himself, while for civilisation they turned to the wine-producing countries of the East. At this distance of time it does not much concern us to know who, amongst the many to whom the credit has been given, first taught mankind to drink wine. Bacchus may have planted the vine in India, Noah in Assyria, Osiris in Egypt, Saturn (always supposing there was such a gentleman) in Crete, and Geryon (of whose existence there are many doubts) in Spain; but whoever the first wine-grower may have been, he flourished in an eastern zone, outside |