The miserable and monstrous creature who had occasioned the catastrophe which had so nearly proved fatal to Miss Chamberlain, was soon discovered, by the sagacity of a favorite beagle belonging to the duke, hid in the hollow of an old oak, which grew in the bottom of a secluded dell in a distant part of the park. When found, he was lying asleep, coiled up more in the manner of an adder than of a human being. His appearance when he emerged from the tree was indeed frightful, as, in addition to a stature far above the common standard, he was emaciated to the last degree of attenuation—a perfect living skeleton. His head was, as Miss Chamberlain had stated, entirely bald, and his long grizzly white beard hung down nearly to his waist. But beyond all these revolting circumstances, there was a terrific wildness in his manner and look which might well occasion doubts whether he was not some “goblin damned.” It turned out, however, that he was a harmless lunatic, who had escaped from an asylum in the vicinity. How he had discovered the secret passage leading into the castle, he could not or would not divulge. When the keeper of the asylum arrived to reclaim him, by the power which such people invariably acquire over maniacs he soon ascertained that for nearly a month previously he had frequented the room which had so unfortunately been assigned to the heroine of our history, and during the nights reposed on the bed; and that he had sustained life in the mean time by the exertion of that inexplicable cunning with which maniacs are so frequently endowed, enabling him, without detection, to plunder the butler’s pantry during the silence and darkness of the nights.
He was a native of Darly Dale, in the immediate neighborhood, and as Haddon, like most houses of the English nobility, was then, as it still is, freely shown to strangers, he had probably before he was deprived of reason become acquainted with the intricacies of the ancient Hall. The reason why he selected it as his place of retreat on escaping from the asylum arose, it was believed, from his having been a rejected suitor of pretty Maude, the house-keeper’s daughter. The painful circumstance of his rejection had bereft the unfortunate being of reason. Sooth to say, the charms of Maude, if the traditions may be credited, had captivated one much less likely to be rejected than her gigantic admirer—no less a person than the then humble retainer of the Duke of Rutland but in after years commander-in-chief of the English cavalry, who at the bloody battle of Minden, by one irresistible charge performed at the exact moment when victory or defeat hung vibrating in the scales, gained for himself and his country immortal honor, by the total overthrow and rout of the French army.
T. Webster E. G. Dunnel
THE POWER OF RELIGION.
SUGGESTED BY A PICTURE ENTITLED “THE BLESSING.”
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BY MISS A. C. PRATT.