"What has happened, Cecil?" she asked, in a low, breathless voice.
"Poor Wilmot—God forgive me if I have wronged him!—has just been murdered and robbed by his native servant, a Patan scoundrel named Aloodeen."
"Murdered?"
"Yes—-just as the sunset gun was fired."
In a swoon Clare fell at his feet like one who was dead.
He had been stabbed to the heart! Who, or what was it in his likeness that Clare had seen at the place they were to meet? She was saved from her great temptation—saved to remain a sorrowing and innocent wife. She never again saw the face of Wilmot, even in a dream, though often in the years to come she decked his lonely grave with flowers.
THE GREAT SEA SERPENT.
From all we have read and heard of a singular sea-monster that has been seen from time to time in various parts of the ocean, it is difficult to doubt that some such creature, or creatures rather, may exist; though the reiterated allegations of "old salts," that they do exist, may be but a relic of that dark superstition known as serpent-worship, which once prevailed over a great part of the world, and which still lingers in India, particularly among the Nagas, and of which snake-charming is a remnant.
How long this singular worship lingered in Western Europe we may gather from the "Atlas Geographus," published in 1711, which says, "there are still remains of this idolatory" in Lithuania, where the Boors keep adders in their houses, and pay them profound respect while professing Christianity; and also, that few families in Samogitia, are without serpents as household gods.