The crescent moon hung in a pale clear sky over the mountain tops when Ishmael reached the inn. Greta stood at the door, or he would have passed it-weary, eager, planless. But her voice of alarmed surprise drew him aside. My father is gone!" he said, "and I must find him or I die. I heard his cry in the storm." "And may I never open my mouth again," said Martin the Farrier, who alone of the guests remained in the inn parlour-" may I never open my mouth again to take in this good liquor, if I did not see him open his mouth and see his beard shake in the wind. Hath he not curly white hair and a long grey beard?” "His hair truly is whiter than his beard," said Ishmael, eagerly. "Wreaths of mist, eh, mistress ?" said the triumphant Martin to the landlady. "Grey and white mist for you; grey and white hair for me. I tell you I saw his mouth open, and it was no black bit of cloud, but a dark hand seizing the beard, down yonder by the waterfall." "Greta! Greta! do not hold me thus by the neck!" The youth was gone, and madly breaking his way down into the gorge where none dared follow. The dark night soon closed over him, but in the inn there was the sound of Greta weeping and the mother's gentle coo of comfort over her. Weeks went by and no Ishmael returned. "There's a pot of money left up at the Peak, I'll be bound," said Christopher, sometimes. While other guests of the inn talked about that, Doctor Martin held his peace and made gulps in his throat, that caught the landlady's attention. "Husband," she said, at last, after a day's work, "if the farrier dared he would go up to the Death's Head one night, and look for Kerli's money-pot. If there be treasure there it will be lifted ere long, and it behoves us to take care of it for the lad Ishmael's sake. He will come back if he live, for is not Greta here? And if the old man be dead, his wealth is Ishmael's inheritance." "Ah, there's a pot of money, I'll be bound," said Christopher. "Shall we lift it, and bring it hither, now tonight ?" asked the dame. Martin has brought a new lantern from town, and has had a thick bit of candle blessed by the priest to-day. I do misdoubt him." "We could guard it here for the lad and his father, while we kept our secret," said Christopher. "But if what you say be true, we should meet Martin on the hill." "Good so," said the landlady. "He is a man of faint heart, and I plucked three grey geese yesterday. We can put our heads through sacks, and make them terrible with feathers. Here is the red wool, too, that has been dyed for winter spinning. Let us hope we may meet neighbour Martin, and cure him of night wandering upon the Death's Head Mountain." "But if we meet a worse than Martin-" "Giant Glum himself? Good man, I don't believe in him, neither do you. Greta's abed and asleep. She will lie quiet till dawn. Whist! Fetch me quietly two sacks and lanterns from the stable." Master and mistress of The Heart's Content were fearless mountaineers. They had good consciences and weak imaginations, that defied all princes and subjects of the powers of darkness. Martin the Farrier had a worse conscience and a livelier fancy. He was on the mountain with his holy candle. Christopher and his wife had not climbed far before they saw his light flitting through the oak wood. "Let us face him," they said, "before he gets upon the open bog, or he may see us climbing on." Martin was working his way up in solemn silence, when a horrible yell broke from the brushwood before him, and a feathered monster streaming blood at many pores was visible by a light from below, as well as by a light from his own lantern. Close at his side the yell was replied to by a piercing scream. Light shone from behind an oak stem. A dreadful figure behind him thrust a cold claw on the nape of his neck. In desperate fear he clapped his hands on his neck as he turned and fled, tearing the demon's claw away with him. "Dear heart," said the dame to Christopher, "that is unlucky. What'll he think when he sees it's but a goose's foot ?" "That the foul fiend has something of a goose about him. Come along, wife." Christopher and his wife climbed on, while Martin rushed back, claw in hand. Here were terrors! Here were triumphs! Here was news! Here was an urgent need of brandy that would justify the rousing of a thousand inns! In another hour he was hammering at the door of The Heart's Content, and, wakening Greta, called up to her that there was need of brandy for a person in extremity, who, he explained, when she opened the door, was himself. As maid of her mother's inn, Greta was always foremost in receipt of custom. "Here," said the farrier-" here's a tussle. I've had with the Prince of Darkness. But I was the better wrestler. See his claw that I tore from him! Where's Christopher? Call Christopher!" "Hush! Father works hard, and your knocking has not roused him. Here's the brandy, Martin. Drink it and go. To-morrow you can tell us all about the fiend." Martin drank his glass of brandy, but did not go. "You see I was on the Death's Head Mountain just now "Ah!" Martin dropped the goose-foot, and asked, trembling, for more brandy. The ther's room. Nobody was there, but there was tufts of grass that held only for half a minute litter; there were scattered goose feathers, the weight of the climber, forced to hang from there was the other claw. Familiar with the them. He leapt down the water-course, and course of household talk, she understood the reaching a turn in the valley, heard the thunder situation, and coming back to Martin, who still of the storm-cloud as it rolled in a thick, black stood in the room, holding the claw out at mist, lower yet towards a huge rift in a mountain arm's length, said, "This is very wonderful. base, and there seemed to have been swallowed My father is not astir. But can you go home down into the bowels of the earth. Ishmael had and go to bed, Martin, with that claw in your heard talk, in the inn parlour, of a wide and house? Might not the owner miss it, look for fearful gulf in the next valley, to the bottom of it, and come and fetch it ?" which no stone was ever heard to fall. smooth and herbless walls of rock on either side, that sauk, as it seemed, into the very bowels of the earth, were commonly known in those valleys as the Dumps, and, from far down in the Dumps, men said that they had heard wild cries and howlings, that reached even to the very mountain top. Beyond the inn parlour and the village market, Ishmael had never travelled since he lived with Kerli at the Peak. But this, surely, must be the gulf of which so many a wild tale was told; this, into which the stormcloud, and with it, he believed, the giant of the mountain who held Kerli in his clutch, had swept. "I will go down singing," said the youth to himself. "A cheerful song may scare "This little glass," said Greta; "then go home. We have no fear, you know, at The Heart's Content. Leave claw here to-night." "Well, yes," said Martin, "because Christopher could see it in the morning. The creature smelt so that he turned my stomach, and I fear I shall lie late to-morrow. But this bit of candle has been blessed by the priest. It will burn three hours yet, and by then it will be nearly dawn. See, I put the claw here and the blessed candle by the side of it. You have nothing to fear. Good night! How soundly Christopher sleeps. One doesn't hear so much as a snore in the house. See now, the moon is up. Good night "the gloom demon, if it be really Glum himself Night had for Greta no more terrors than day. With a clear sky and a full moon there were no dangers for her or hers upon the Death's Head Mountain; so she quietly put out her own light and the holy candle, and sat by the window, alone in the house, thinking of Ishmael, and looking out upon the moonlit road. who has seized my dear master. He has often said that while I left him alone by the Peak, there were moments when the gloom fiend might have power over him. He has often asked me to scare with my songs that Giant Glum, and, rather than all others, with the cheerful song that ended ever at one place, broken with the Two hours after midnight she saw two gro-weeping of us both; the place where it was tesque figures approaching, one of them loaded broken, when" with a heavy sack. That was her father, who Ishmael was sobbing aloud at the mouth of had really discovered Kerli's hoard of gold in the cavern. In his boyhood there had been no the innermost throat of the Death's Head mother in his house. She was away, he knew Cavern, under Kerli's Peak. Without taking not why, and he worshipped her only as the out one gold piece, Christopher buried the trea- memory of a face that had been often eye to eye sure-bag under his hearth-stone. At dawn the with him when he was but a little child. One household fires were lighted; the goose-claw day when he returned, as a lad, gaily singing to was burnt, and there was a bonfire of goose his father's house, he saw from afar something feathers made on the brick floor of the inn par- that lay still at its closed door. As he sang on, lour that caused it to smell horribly all day. he saw one come and knock again and again, to Martin, eager to tell his story, was the first whom the door remained closed. Then the guest of the day at The Heart's Content, and man took that something up, and bore it being much sickened by the smell of the burnt stretched upon his arms away from the house. feathers, and edified by the fact that his claw The lad was still in the midst of his carol when had disappeared in flames of fire, declared that he met the stranger with his burden. He was he recognised distinctly the smell that had dis-a tottering black-bearded man, tenderly carrying tressed him overnight. Every man then came from the village to turn his stomach, and drink brandy, and discuss for the next two months the remarkably tenacious and overpowering smell of the foul creature that Doctor Martin overcame. That was because the wicked landlady found for a while more profit in the feathers than in the flesh of her geese. By burning a few dozen of them whenever the inn parlour was empty she could fill it again with the gossips of the six adjoining parishes. But, during the next twelve months, where was Ishmael? He had hurried in pursuit of the storm down and down over the face of sharp crag and loose stone, through bramble, and by a white load that faintly stirred—a dying woman with a beautiful dark face. Her eye turned upon Ishmael as he sang, and the song stopped. It was his mother. There was a quiver of pain on her face. The man fell upon one knee and fanned her with his hand, but she was dead. Ishmael laid his hot wet check upon hers, but the man did not part them. Presently he stroked the boy's hair, and said in a faint voice, "She was false to me, in years long gone; and false to him. But it is I who love her-and you. Be with me when I lay her in the tomb." He saw his mother to the grave, and for that act his father cursed him. Kerli, who once had been his father's friend, spoke to the winds on his behalf. "It is a wicked, wicked world," at last said Kerli; "let us fly from it and dwell with rocks that are honest in their hardness, with eternal snows that are God's servants when they pinch us with their chill." The dead woman who was naught bound Kerli and the lad together. Kerli took treasure that they might not starve, and they fled far from their own land, until they climbed by night into their den upon the Death's Head Mountain. "I will sing," thought the lad, "the cheerful song that was unfinished when we met, and has been never finished since, although begun a thousand times. The faintest echo of that, Kerli will know. If luck is bad, for once, I shall finish it." Down, therefore, Ishmael climbed, singing lustily, and the song made the descent so easy that he sustained long falls unhurt, and swiftly passing between glimpses of caged men and women gnawing, heard presently again, but in a more joyous note, the cry of "Ishmael!" There was a fierce blast, as of wind from below, and the rush upward of the black Giant Glum, whom the song had unearthed. When he was gone, there was chattering and chirping in the dens, of which the cages were all torn open by that upward blast, and into which a ray or two of sunshine pierced. Far down in the Dumps, at the very foot of the gulf, sat Kerli smiling welcome to his friend. "Now, Ishmael," he said, "is not this better than yon peak. It is warmer down here. And you need never leave me. That sharp air of the peak gave one an appetite for carrot; but down in the Dumps no man wants anything to eat while he can get a bite out of his finger-nails." And for a whole year the obstinate old man made Ishmael live with him upon fingernail, refusing to come up out of the Dumps. It was pure obstinacy, for Giant Glum being gone and kept away by Ishmael's carolling, there was light enough in the pit to show an easy, circular stair to the top, by which anybody could walk up and get out if he chose. For a whole year Kerli did not choose. Everybody else in the pit had by that time given up complaints, shaken himself, and gone out, except one man, who had crept lower and lower down, taking possession always of the lowest empty den, and he, who seemed to be always listening when Ishmael sang, never so much as bit his nails, or took his two hands from before his face. He lived upon his sorrow. At last, when all others were gone, this man descended to Kerli and Ishmael with his hands not before his face, but stretched out to them, and Ishmael knew his father, Kerli his friend." All three, of course, went up out of the Dumps together, and the two old men then desired nothing better than to go with Ishmael to The Heart's Content, and bless his marriage there with Greta. The gaunt black-haired lad with the great eyes, followed by two aged, largely-bearded men, came into the inn parlour at noonday, when it should have been full; but it was empty, and outside the sign was taken down. Christopher, entering from the back, knew the lad instantly; guessed that, as Greta always said he would, he had brought Kerli home, but who was the other gentleman ? and where was his dame? and what had become of Greta? Trouble had come to The Heart's Content. The singed goose-feathers only improved business while there remained anybody who had not smelt them. Nobody cared to smell them twice, and all who had been to the house said that there must be evil wrought where the smell of the fiend had abided for so many weeks. Therefore, from being sought, the inn came suddenly to be avoided. The dame had been too clever, and had burnt away its good name with its goose-feathers. In despair, Christopher had taken the sign down, and sought other employment. Nobody would give him work. Furni ture had been seized for rent. He had no bed for the guests or even for himself, and wanted food to put before them. Nobody present had any money. Well, yes, Ishmael," said the dame, when she came in with the apronful of firewood she had been abroad to glean, "there is a large purse of your friend's under the hearthstone, no thinner than when he left it at the Peak for thieves to quarry. We were not an hour too early in fetching it down." 66 What," said Kerli, you have been sleeping on rags and starving, with my great moneybag under your hearth! Up with it, and give it to Greta for her marriage-portion." Kerli danced a fandango at the wedding. He was an immensely rich man in his own far country. So was Ishmael's father. But they gathered together their goods and came and made merry together for the rest of their days in a great stone house, built where the inn had stood. They made it glorious with gardens and spice-bowers, and still called it The Heart's Content. There Ishmael and Greta trained their children, and saw their children's children make holiday journeys up to Kerli's Peak, where they knew how to stir the echoes of the very Death's Head Cavern with their laughter. NEW WORK BY SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON. NEXT WEEK Will be continued (to be completed next March) A STRANGE STORY, BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c. &c. On THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, will be published, price Fourpence, TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND. FORMING THE EXTRA DOUBLE NUMBER FOR CHRISTMAS. The right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors. Published at the Office No. 20, Wellington Stree. Strand. Touted by C. WHITING, Beauton House, Strand. ALL THE YEAR ROUND. A WEEKLY JOURNAL. CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS. No. 138.] SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1861. A STRANGE STORY. [PRICE 2d. "I wished to speak of it before you saw her, and for that reason came to your house. It BY THE AUTHOR OF MY NOVEL," 66 RIENZI," &c. was on the morning in which we left her aunt's CHAPTER XLIII. I was just outside the garden-door, when I felt an arm thrown round me, my cheek kissed, and wetted with tears. Could it be Lilian? Alas, no! It was her mother's voice, that, between laughing and crying, exclaimed hysterically: "This is joy, to see you again, and on these thresholds. I have just come from your house; I went there on purpose to congratulate you, and to talk to you about Lilian. But you have seen her ?" "Yes; I have but this moment left her. Come this way." I drew Mrs. Ashleigh back into the garden, along the old winding walk, which the shrubs concealed from view of the house. We sat down on a rustic seat, where I had often sat with Lilian, midway between the house and the Monks' Well. I told the mother what had passed between me and her daughter; I made no complaint of Lilian's coldness and change; I did not hint at its cause. "Girls of her to return hither that I first noticed something peculiar in her look and manner. She seemed absorbed and absent, so much so that I asked her several times to tell me what made her so grave, but I could only get from her that she had had a confused dream which she could not recal distinctly enough to relate, but that she was sure it boded evil. During the journey she became gradually more herself, and began to look forward with delight to the idea of seeing you again. Well, you came that evening. What passed between you and her you know best. You complained that she slighted your request to shun all acquaintance with Mr. Margrave. I was surprised that, whether your wish were reasonable or not, she could have hesitated to comply with it. I spoke to her about it after you had gone, and she wept bitterly at thinking she had displeased you." "She wept! You amaze me. Yet the next day what a note she returned to mine!" "The next day the change in her became very visible to me. She told me, in an excited manner, that she was convinced she ought not to marry you. Then came, the following day, the news of your committal. I heard of it, but dared not break it to her. I went to our friend the mayor, to consult with him what to say, what do; and to learn more distinctly than I had done from terrified, incoherent servants, the rights of so dreadful a story. When I returned, I found, to "Do not be rash, my dear Allen," said Mrs. my amazement, a young stranger in the drawing. Ashleigh, in great distress. "I feel for you, I room; it was Mr. Margrave-Miss Brabazon had understand you; in your case I might act as you brought him at his request. Lilian was in the do. I cannot blame you. Lilian is changed-room, too, and my astonishment was increased changed unaccountably. Yet sure I am that the change is only on the surface, that her heart is really yours, as entirely and as faithfully as ever it was; and that later, when she recovers from the strange, dreamy kind of torpor which appears to have come over all her faculties and all her affections, she would awake with a despair which you cannot conjecture, to the knowledge that you had renounced her." "I have not renounced her," said I, impatiently; "I did but restore her freedom of choice. But pass by this now, and explain to me more fully the change in your daughter, which I gather from your words is not confined to me." when she said to me with a singular smile, vague but tranquil: 'I know all about Allen Fenwick; Mr. Margrave has told me all. He is a friend of Allen's. He says there is no cause for fear.' Mr. Margrave then apologised to me for his intrusion in a caressing, kindly manner, as if one of the family. He said he was so intimate with you that he felt that he could best break to Miss Ashleigh an information she might receive elsewhere, for that he was the only man in the town who treated the charge with ridicule. You know the wonderful charm of this young man's manner. I cannot explain to you how it was, but in a few moments I was as much at home with him as if he had been your brother. To be VOL. VI. 138 brief, having once come, he came constantly. He had moved, two days before you went to Derval Court, from his hotel to apartments in Mr.'s house, just opposite. We could see him on his balcony from our terrace; he would smile to us and come across. I did wrong in slighting your injunction, and suffering Lilian to do so. I could not help it, he was such a comfort to me-to her, too-in our tribulation. He alone had no doleful words, wore no long face; be alone was invariably cheerful. Everything,' he said, 'would come right in a day or two.' And Lilian could not but admire this young man, he is so beautiful." Beautiful? Well, perhaps. But if you have a jealous feeling you were never more mistaken. Lilian, I am convinced, does more than dislike him; he has inspired her with repugnance, with terror. And much as I own I like him, in his wild, joyous, careless, harmless way, do not think I flatter you if I say that Mr. Margrave is not the man to make any girl untrue to you-untrue to a lover with infinitely less advantages than you may pretend to. He would be an universal favourite, I grant; but there is a something in him, or a something wanting in him, which makes liking and admiration stop short of love. I know not why; perhaps, because, with all his good humour, he is so absorbed in himself, so intensely egotistical-so light; were he less clever, I should say so frivolous. He could not make love, he could not say in the serious tone of a man in earnest, 'I love you.' He owned as much to me, and owned, too, that he knew not even what love was. As to myself-Mr. Margrave appears rich; no whisper against his character or his honour ever reached me. Yet were you out of the question, and were there no stain on his birth, nay, were he as high in rank and wealth as he is favoured by Nature in personal advantages, I confess I could never consent to trust him with my daughter's fate. A voice at my heart would cry No! It may be an unreasonable prejudice, but I could not bear to see him touch Lilian's hand!" "Did she never, then-never suffer him even to take her hand ?" question me; only if we are separated, if he cast me off, or I reject him, tell him some dayperhaps when I am in my grave-not to believe appearances; and that I, in my heart of hearts, never ceased to love him! "She said that! You are not deceiving me ?" "Oh no; how can you think so ?” "There is hope still," I murmured; and I bowed my head upon my hands, hot tears forcing their way through the clasped fingers. "One word more," said I; "you tell me that Lilian has a repugnance to this Margrave, and yet that she found comfort in his visits-a comfort that could not be wholly ascribed to cheering words he might say about myself, since it is all but certain that I was not, at that time, uppermost in her mind. Can you explain this apparent contradiction?" I cannot, otherwise than by a conjecture which you would ridicule." "I can ridicule nothing now. What is your conjecture?" "I know how much you disbelieve in the stories one hears of animal magnetism and electro-biology, otherwise "You think that Margrave exercises some power of that kind over Lilian? Has he spoken of such a power ?" "Not exactly; but he said that he was sure Lilian possessed a faculty that he called by some hard name, not clairvoyance, but a faculty, which he said, when I asked him to explain, was akin to prevision-to second sight. Then he talked of the Priestesses who had administered the ancient oracles. Lilian, he said, reminded him of them, with her deep eyes and mysterious smile." "And Lilian heard him? What said she ?" Nothing; she seemed in fear while she lis tened." "He did not offer to try any of those arts practised by professional mesmerists and other charlatans " "I thought he was about to do so, but I forestalled him; saying I never would consent to any experiment of that kind, either on myself or my daughter." "And he replied?" "Never. Do not think so meanly of her as to "With his gay laugh, that I was very foolish; suppose that she could be caught by a fair face, a that a person possessed of such a faculty as he graceful manner. Reflect; just before, she had attributed to Lilian, would, if the faculty were refused, for your sake, Ashleigh Sumner, whom developed, be an invaluable adviser. He would Lady Haughton said 'no girl in her senses have said more, but I begged him to desist. could refuse; and this change in Lilian really Still I fancy at times-do not be angry--that began before we returned to L; before she he does some how or other bewitch her, unconhad even seen Mr. Margrave. I am convinced sciously to herself; for she always knows when it is something in the reach of your skill as he is coming. Indeed, I am not sure that he physician-it is on the nerves, the system. I does not bewitch myself, for I by no means will give you a proof of what I say, only do not justify my conduct in admitting him to an intibetray me to her. It was during your imprison-macy so familiar, and in spite of your wish; I ment, the night before your release, that I was awakened by her coming to my bedside. She was sobbing as if her heart would break. Oh, mother, mother!' she cried, pity me, help me-I am so wretched.' What is the matter, darling I have been so cruel to Allen, and I know I shall be so again. I cannot help it. Don't have reproached myself, resolved to shut my door on him, or to show by my manner that his visits were unwelcome; yet when Lilian has said, in the drowsy lethargic tone which has come into her voice (her voice naturally earnest and impressive, though always low), Mother, he will be here in two minutes-I wish to leave |