own life hung on a thread. If any wrecker espied me, the villains would not hesitate at another crime. But how could I go? I could carry the child with ease, but her poor mother!

Thank God! Juba, in person! I had quite forgotten that I had ordered the young negro to follow me; I had far outstripped him, but I looked up and saw his black face. He was dreadfully alarmed at the fierce shouts and excited gestures of the wreckers, and was on the point of making off when I caught him by the collar. Between us, we contrived to carry the young woman over the dreary sandhills between us and the lighthouse, the child being sufficiently recovered to walk. We laid our patient on my bed, and when Aunt Polly had exhausted her first transports of astonishment, she proved an excellent nurse. Thanks to the care and zeal of the kind negress, Mrs. Fairfax gradually revived. It was from her own lips that I learned her name and position in life. She was the young wife of a gentleman of good fortune in North Carolina, and nephew to the Governor of that State. But-poor thing!-I could not disguise from her that she was a widow, though I spared her the additional pang of knowing that her husband had been one of those who had been inhumanely thrust back into the sca to perish, although I had little doubt that one of the murdered men had been Captain Fairfax, whose description tallied with that of the poor victim I had beheld.

and drawings, which I was loth to leave, were still within the lighthouse. I ran back, put the portfolio under my arm, and was on the threshold of my late dwelling, when the figure of a tall man appeared in the doorway-Japhet Brown!

His face was swollen and coarse with drink, and his fiery eyes drooped as they met mine. "Whither away, chap? Yew seem in a plaguy hurry;" he growled, and extended his hand.

"I am going out. I have no time for conversation;"

The young villain burst out into oaths and curses.

"Conceited British hound, who be yew, to refuse to shake an honest man's hand ?"

"A murderer's hand, you mean!" I cried, indignantly, though I repented the words before they were well out.

Japhet turned livid with passion. "You know too much, my gentleman. I'll stop your jaw pretty smart.

So saying, he threw himself upon me, but I was luckily armed, and I drove him out of the lighthouse, pursuing him, cutlas in hand, for a short distance. Then I went back to the boat. Juba and I were not first-rate rowers, the boat was heavy, and our progress was slow. Before we were half-way across the sound, I descried a swift whale-boat cleaving the waters, on our track. No doubt the wretch Japhet had given the alarm to his comrades, and had we been overtaken, the secret would have been preserved by the sacrifice of all our lives. But a sloop passing within hail picked us up, and carried us to the mainland. Before nightfall we were able to place Mrs. Fairfax and her little daughter under the safe care of her husband's relations.

I have little more to tell. The gratitude of the Fairfax family pressed upon me a large pecuniary reward. This I declined, but I gladly accepted patronage which enabled me to leave for Europe two years later, with-for an artist -a purse reasonably heavy. A States Marshal, backed by an armed force, was despatched to Cape Hatteras, with a warrant for the apprehension of the guilty. But some delay had occurred, and the Browns fled to Texas, in which remote region, years afterwards, I read of the execution, by lynch law, of Japhet and his father, for robbery and murder.

Leaving the widow weeping over her recent loss, while she clasped her rescued child as if she feared to lose her too, I went to make preparations for leaving the island. Most fortunately, I had employed my leisure in repairing the dismantled boat. The latter had no mast, but it was now watertight, and a pair of the old oars were fit for use. Before I slept, I brought the boat from the creek, and moored it to the quay, ready for a start. My great fear was that, before we could escape, some of the wreckers might discover that I had been an eye-witness of their crimes, and had saved some of the passengers on board the foundered ship, which I now learned was the Astarte, of Boston. On this account, shortly after daybreak I caused mattresses and pillows to be placed in the boat; and Aunt Polly, Juba, and I, carried down Mrs. Fairfax, who was too much exhausted to walk. The child followed, and Aunt Polly arranged the blankets and cloaks around the invalid, while Juba was to take one oar, and I the other. The black lad was not wholly unused to a boat. baving rowed on the SIR EDWARD BULWER LYTTON'S NEW WORK, river near Wilmington. In case of pursuit, which, however, seemed improbable, I had placed the loaded gun in the boat, had hidden one of the cutlases under my pea-coat, and concealed the other in the sand. We were just ready to push off, when I remembered that my sketches A NEW NOVEL, BY MR. WILKIE COLLINS.

At the completion, in March, of

A STRANGE STORY,

Will be commenced

Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors.

Published at the Office, No. 26, Wellington street, Strand. Printed by C. WHITING, Beaufort House, Strand.

ALL THE YEAR ROUND.

A WEEKLY JOURNAL.

CONDUCTED BY CHARLES DICKENS.

WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

fore my feet the rays fell full upon a bright and creepers of blue and vermilion. I walked yellow streak in the midst of a block of quartz, steadily up to them; they halted a moment or half embedded in the soft moist soil. In the so in suspense, but perhaps they were scared by midst of all the solemn thoughts and the intense my stature or awed by my aspect; and the Unsorrows which weighed upon heart and mind, that familiar, though Human, had terror for them, as yellow gleam startled the mind into a direction the Unfamiliar, although but a Shadow, had had remote from philosophy, quickened the heart to terror for me. They vanished, and as quickly as a beat that chimed with no household affections. if they had erept into the earth. Involuntarily I stooped; impulsively I struck the At length the air brought me the soft perblock with the hatchet, or tomahawk, I carried fume of my well-known acacias, and my house habitually about me, for the purpose of marking rose before me, amidst English flowers and Engthe trees that I wished to clear from the waste lish fruit-trees, under the effulgent Australian of my broad domain. The quartz was shattered moon. Just as I was opening the little gate by the stroke, and left disburied its glittering which gave access from the pasture-land into the treasure. My first glance had not deceived me. garden, a figure in white rose up from under I, vain seeker after knowledge, had, at least, dis- light feathery boughs, and a hand was laid on covered gold. I took up the bright metal;-gold! my arm. I started; but my surprise was changed I paused; I looked round; the land that just be-into fear when I saw the pale face and sweet fore had seemed to me so worthless, took the value eyes of Lilian. of Ophir. Its features had before been as unknown to me as the Mountains of the Moon, and now my memory became wonderfully quickened. I recalled the rough map of my possessions, the first careless ride round their boundaries. Yes, the land on which I stood-for miles, to the spur of those farther mountains-the land was mine, and, beneath its surface, there was gold! I closed my eyes; for some moments, visions of boundless wealth, and of the royal power which such wealth could command, swept athwart my brain. But my heart rapidly settled back to its real treasure. "What matters," I sighed, "all this dross? Could Ophir itself buy back to my Lilian's smile one ray of the light which gave 'glory to the grass and splendour to the flower ?" "

"Heavens! you here! you! at this hour! Lilian, what is this ?"

"Hush!" she whispered, clinging to me; "hush! do not tell; no one knows. I missed you when the storm came on; I have missed you ever since. Others went in search of you and came back. I could not sleep, but the rest are sleeping, so I stole down to watch for you. Brother, brother, if any harm chanced to you, even the angels could not comfort me; all would be dark, dark. But you are safe, safe, safe!” And she clung to me yet closer.

"Ah, Lilian, Lilian, your vision in the hour I first beheld you was, indeed, prophetic-' Each has need of the other. Do you remember?"

k

'Softly, softly," she said, "let me think!” She stood quietly by my side, looking up into the sky, with all its numberless stars, and its solitary moon now sinking slow behind the verge of the forest. "It comes back to me,"

So muttering, I flung the gold into the torrent that raged below, and went on through the moonlight, sorrowing silently; only thankful for the discovery that had quickened my remi-she niscence of the landmarks by which to steer my way through the wilderness.

murmured, softly-"the Long ago-the sweet Long ago!"

I held my breath to listen.

"There-there!" she resumed, pointing to the heavens; "do you see? You are there, and my father, and-and- -Oh, that terrible facethose serpent eyes-the dead man's skull! Save me-save me!"

The night was half gone, for even when I had gained the familiar track through the pastures, the swell of the many winding creeks, that now intersected the way, obliged me often to retrace my steps; to find, sometimes, the bridge of a felled tree which had been providently left unremoved She bowed her head upon my bosom, and I over the now foaming torrent, and, more than led her gently back towards the house. As we once, to swim across the current, in which gained the door, which she had left open, the swimmers less strong or less practised would starlight shining across the shadowy gloom have been dashed down the falls, where loose within, she lifted her face from my breast, and logs and torn trees went clattering and whirled: cast a hurried fearful look round the shining for I was in danger of life. A band of the savage garden, then into the dim recess beyond the natives were stealthily creeping on my track-threshold.

the natives in those parts were not then so much "It is there-there!-the Shadow that lured awed by the white man as now. A boome- me on, whispering that if I followed it I should rang had whirred by me, burying itself join my beloved. False, dreadful Shadow! it amongst the herbage close before my feet. I will fade soon, fade into the grinning horrible had turned, sought to find and to face these skull. Brother, brother, where is my Allen? dastardly foes; they contrived to elude me. But Is he dead-dead-or is it I who am dead to when I moved on, my ear, sharpened by danger, him ?" heard them moving, too, in my rear. Önce only I could but clasp her again to my breast, and three hideous forms suddenly faced me, springing up from a thicket, all tangled with honeysuckles * A missile weapon peculiar to the Australian

savages.

seek to mantle her shivering form with my dripping garments, all the while my eyes, following the direction which hers had taken-dwelt on the walls of the nook within the threshold,

half lost in darkness, half white in starlight. alienated, though latent, drew her thoughts And there I, too, beheld the haunting Luminous into definite human tracks. And thus, the words, Shadow, the spectral effigies of the mysterious that you tell me she uttered when you appeared being, whose very existence in the flesh was a before her, were words of love, stricken, though riddle unsolved by my reason. Distinctly I saw as yet irregularly, as the winds strike the harpthe Shadow, but its light was far paler, its out-strings, from chords of awakened memory. line far more vague, than when I had beheld it The same unwonted excitement, together with before. I took courage, as I felt Lilian's heart lengthened exposure to the cold night air, will beating against my own. I advanced-I crossed account for the shock to her physical system, the threshold-the Shadow was gone. and the languor and waste of strength by which it has been succeeded."

"There is no Shadow here-no phantom to daunt thee, my life's life," said I, bending over Lilian.

It has touched me in passing; I feel itcold, cold, cold!" she answered, faintly.

I bore her to her room, placed her on her bed, struck a light, watched over her. At dawn there was a change in her face, and from that time health gradually left her; strength slowly, slowly, yet to me perceptibly, ebbed from her life away.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

Ay, and the Shadow that we both saw within the threshold. What of that?"

"Are there no records on evidence, which most physicians of very extended practice will perhaps allow that their experience more or less tends to confirm-no records of the singular coincidences between individual impressions which are produced by sympathy? Now, whether you or your Lilian were first haunted by this Shadow I know not. Perhaps before it appeared to you in the wizard's chamber, it had appeared to her by the Monks' Well. Perhaps, as it came to you MONTHS upon months have rolled on since in the prison, so it lured her through the solitudes, the night in which Lilian had watched for my associating its illusory guidance with dreams of coming amidst the chilling airs under the haunt you. And again, when she saw it within your ing moon. I have said that from the date of threshold, your phantasy, so abruptly invoked, that night her health began gradually to fail, but made you see with the eyes of your Lilian! in her mind there was evidently at work some Does this doctrine of sympathy, though by that slow revolution. Her visionary abstractions very mystery you two loved each other at first were less frequent; when they occurred, less-though, without it, love at first sight were in prolonged. There was no longer in her soft face that celestial serenity which spoke her content in her dreams; but often a look of anxiety and trouble. She was even more silent than before; but when she did speak, there were now evident some struggling gleams of memory. She startled us, at times, by a distinct allusion to the events and scenes of her early childhood. More than once she spoke of common-place incidents and mere acquaintances at L. At last she seemed to recognise Mrs. Ashleigh as her mother; but me, as Allen Fenwick, her betrothed, her bridegroom, no! Once or twice she spoke to me of her beloved as of a stranger to myself, and asked me not to deceive her should she ever see him again? There was one change in this new phase of her state that wounded me to the quick. She had always previously seemed to welcome my presence; now there were hours, sometimes days together, in which my presence was evidently painful to her. She would become agitated when I stole into her room-make signs to me to leave her-grow yet more disturbed if I did not immediately obey, and become calm again when I was gone.

itself an incredible miracle,-does, I say, this doctrine of sympathy seem to you inadmissible? Then nothing is left for us but to revolve the conjecture I before threw out? Have certain organisations like that of Margrave the power to impress, through space, the imaginations of those over whom they have forced a control? I know not. But if they have, it is not supernatural; it is but one of those operations in Nature so rare and exceptional, and of which testimony and evidence are so imperfect and so liable to superstitious illusions, that they have not yet been traced; as, if truthful, no doubt they can be, by the patient genius of science, to one of those secondary causes by which the Creator ordains that Nature shall act on Man."

By degrees I became dissatisfied with my conversations with Faber. I yearned for explanations; all guesses but bewildered me more. In his family, with one exception, I found no congenial association. His nephew seemed to me an ordinary specimen of a very trite human nature-a young man of limited ideas, fair moral tendencies, going mechanically right where not tempted to wrong. The same desire of gain which had urged him to gamble and speculate when thrown in societies rife with such example, led him, now in the Bush, to healthful, industrious, persevering labour. Spes fovet agricolas, says the poet; the same Hope which entices the He said, "Observe! her mind was first roused fish to the hook, impels the plough of the husbandfrom its slumber by the affectionate, uncon- man. The young farmer's young wife was somequered impulse of her heart. You were absent what superior to him; she had more refinemen the storm alarmed her-she missed you- of taste, more culture of mind, but, living in his feared for you. The love within her, not life, she was inevitably levelled to his ends and

Faber sought constantly to sustain my courage and administer to my hopes by reminding me of the prediction he had hazarded-viz. that through some malady to the frame the reason would be ultimately restored.

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which she has not, in that respect, with yourself nor even with her mother. You seek only through your mind to conjecture hers. Her mother has sense clear enough where habitual experience can guide it, but that sense is confused, and forsakes her, when forced from the regular pathway in which it has been accustomed to tread. Amy and I, through soul guess at soul, and though mostly contented with earth, we can both rise at times into heaven. We e pray." Alas!" said I, half mournfully, half angrily;

66

pursuits. And, next to the babe in the cradle, no object seemed to her so important as that of guarding the sheep from the scab and the dingoes. I was amazed to see how quietly a man whose mind was so stored by life and by books as that of Julius Faber-a man who had loved the clash of conflicting intellects, and acquired the rewards of fame--could accommodate himself to the cabined range of his kinsfolks' half-civilised existence, take interest in their trivial talk, find varying excitement in the mo notonous household of a peasant-like farmer. I" when you thus speak of Mind as distinct could not help saying as much to him once. from Soul, it was only in that Vision which My friend," replied the old man, "believe me, you bid me regard as the illusion of a fancy that the happiest art of intellect, however lofty, stimulated by chemical vapours, producing on is that which enables it to be cheerfully at home the brain an effect similar to that of opium, or with the Real!" the inhalation of the oxide gas, that I have The only one of the family in which Faber ever seen the silver spark of the Soul diswas domesticated in whom I found an interest, tinct from the light of the Mind. And holding, to whose talk I could listen without fatigue, was as I do, that all intellectual ideas are derived the child Amy. Simple though she was in lan- from the experiences of the body, whether guage, patient of labour as the most laborious, I accept the theory of Locke, or that of ConI recognised in her a quiet nobleness of senti- dillac, or that into which their propositions ment, which exalted above the common-place the reach their final development in the wonacts of her common-place life. She had no pre-derful subtlety of Hume, I cannot detect the cocious intellect, no enthusiastic fancies, but she had an exquisite activity of heart. It was her heart that animated her sense of duty, and made duty a sweetness and a joy. She felt to the core the kindness of those around her; exaggerated, with the warmth of her gratitude, the claims which that kindness imposed. Even for the blessing of life, which she shared with all creation, she felt as if singled out by the undeserved favour of the Creator, and thus was filled with religion because she was filled with love.

My interest in this child was increased and deepened by my saddened and not wholly unremorseful remembrance of the night on which her sobs had pierced my ear-the night from which I secretly dated the mysterious agencies that had wrenched from their proper field and career both my mind and my life. But a gentler interest endeared her to my thoughts in the pleasure that Lilian felt in her visits, in the affectionate intercourse that sprang up between the afflicted sufferer and the harmless infant. Often when we failed to comprehend some meaning which Lilian evidently wished to convey to us-we, her mother and her husband, -she was understood with as much ease by Amy, the unlettered child, as by Faber the greyhaired thinker.

immaterial spirit in the material substance; much less follow its escape from the organic matter in which the principle of thought ceases with the principle of life. When the metaphysician, contending for the immortality of the thinking faculty, analyses Mind, his analysis comprehends the mind of the brute, nay, of the insect, as well as that of man. Take Reid's definition of Mind, as the most comprehensive which I can at the moment remember. 'By the mind of a man we understand that in him which thinks, remembers, reasons, and wills.' But this definition only distinguishes the Mind of man from that of the brute by superiority in the same attributes, and not by attributes denied to the brute. An animal, even an insect, thinks, remembers, reasons, and wills.* Few naturalists will now support the doctrine that all the mental operations of brute or insect are to be exclusively referred to instincts; and

* "Are intelligence and instinct, thus differing in their relative proportion in man as compared with all other animals, yet the same in kind and manner of operation in both? To this question we must give Cuvier, regarding the faculty of reasoning in lower The expression of animals, Leur intelligence exécute des opérations du même genre,' is true in its full sense.

at once an affirmative answer.

We can

in no manner define reason so as to exclude acts

which are at every moment present to our observation, and which we find in many instances to contravene the natural instincts of the species. The demeanour and acts of the dog in reference to his master, or the various uses to which he is put by man, are as strictly logical as those we witness in the ordinary transactions of life."-(Sir Henry The whole of the chapter on instincts and habits in Holland, Chapters on Mental Physiology, p. 220.) this work should be read in connexion with the passage just quoted. The work itself, at once cautious and

suggestive, is not one of the least obligations which philosophy and religion alike owe to the lucubrations of English medical men.