MORLEY ASHTON:

It was the evening of one of the last days of spring, when that delightful season is blending with the approaching summer, and when the sun was setting on one of those green and fertile landscapes which we find nowhere but in England, that a young man paused upon the crest of the eminence which overlooks, from the southward, the beautiful little vale and sequestered village of Acton-Rennel, and, with a kindling eye and flushing cheek, surveyed the scene and all its features, on which he had not gazed for what now seemed a long and weary lapse of time.

Morley Ashton—for it was he whom we introduce at once to the reader—was a handsome and active young fellow, with a lithe and well-knit figure, somewhat above the middle height; but he was thin and rather sallow in face, as if wasted by recent sickness or suffering.

His short-shorn hair and well-pointed moustache, together with the general contour of his head, suggested the idea of a soldier, and yet no soldier was he.

Forethought and penetration were perceptible in the form and lines of his brow; his keen, bright, but contemplative eyes, and the shape of his lower jaw, betokened firmness, decision, and courage; and well did Morley Ashton require them all, for these pages, and the course of our story, which opens at no remote date, but only a very short time ago, will show that he had a very desperate game to play.

Tanned by warmer suns than those which shine in his native England, his complexion was dark, and, at times, there was a keen, bold restlessness in his eyes, which seemed to indicate that he had seen many a far and foreign shore, and many a danger too, since last he stood by the old Norman cross on Cherrywood Hill, and looked on the vale and village of Acton-Rennel.

In Morley's dress—a stout grey tweed suit—there was nothing remarkable; but a large and well-worn courier-bag, slung by a broad strap across his right shoulder, seemed to indicate that he was travelling, and dust covered his boots; yet he had only walked some four miles or so from the nearest station on the London and North-Western line.

As he looked upon the landscape, where the cowslips were spotting the meadows; where the wild rose was blooming, and the yellow gorse was flowering by the hedgerows; where the cherry and apple trees were in full blossom by the wayside; the landscape, so rich in its foliage and greenery; so calm in aspect, with the square tower of its Norman church, stunted in form and massed with ivy, darkly defined against the flush of the western sky; the little parsonage, secluded among plum and apple trees, over which its clustered chimneys and quaint old gables peeped; the thatched village, buried amid coppice, wild hops, wild flowers, and ivy; the fertile uplands, where the wavy corn would soon be yellowing under the genial summer sun; and, stretching in the distance far away, the wooded chase, the remains of a great Saxon forest, whence comes the name of our village, Æctune, or Oaktown-Rennel, whose leafy dingles have echoed many a time to the horn of William Rufus, ere he fell by Tyrrel's arrow; the landscape, where the voice of the cuckoo rose at times from the woodlands, with the occasional lowing of the full-fed herd, winding homeward "slowly o'er the lea." As he gazed on all this, we say, a sigh of pleasure escaped from Morley Ashton, for it was long since he had beheld such a scene, or one that had so much of England and of home in all its placid features.

Save a glimpse of the distant ocean, rippling and shining in the sunset, through a rocky opening or chasm, known as Acton Chine—terrible in the annals of wreckers and smugglers—the landscape might have seemed in the very heart of England; but on the ocean, "our water-girdle," Morley turned his back, for of late he had tasted quite enough of spray and spoondrift, having just landed in the Mersey, after a long and perilous voyage.

He passed the old church with its deep grey buttresses, and older yew trees; its picturesque Lykegate, footstile, and gravelled path, that wound between the grassy mounds and lettered stones; he passed the village, with its alehouse and well-remembered sign-board; and then he struck into the long green lane that lies beyond—the lane in which Dick Turpin robbed the rector.

All was very calm and still.

The merry voices of some little roisterers, who swung with frantic glee upon a paddock gate, soon died away in the distance; the wheel of the rustic mill had ceased to turn, and the water flowed unchafed along its narrow race; even the hum of the honey bee had died away, as it had gone laden to its home, and soft and almost holy thoughts would have stolen into Morley's heart, at such a time and place and sober sunset, but for the keen anxiety that made him hasten on—the anxiety that love and long absence had created, and verses that he had somewhere read occurred to him with painful truth:—

"Ah! not as once!—my spirit now
Is shadowed by a dull cold fear,
Nor Spring's soft breath that fans my brow
Nor Spring's sweet flowers my breast can cheer.

"Oh, Spring! sweet Spring! if Heaven decree
My term of life to be so brief,
That joy I would afar but see,
But taste the bitter cup of grief."

While proceeding, he looked frequently and eagerly around him; for now every old gnarled beech that overhung the path, and every meadow gate brought back some stirring thought or tender memory.

The flush in the western sky was bright, so he shaded his eyes with his hand (though whilom accustomed to more cloudless skies and brighter suns than ours), as if looking for some expected person.

At last an irrepressible exclamation of joy escaped him, as a hat and feather, and a female figure there was no mistaking, met his eye.

He flourished his wide-awake hat, and then quickened his pace, as a little parasol was waved in reply.

In a minute more his arms were around a young girl, who rushed forward, panting and breathless, to meet him, and his lips were pressed to hers in a long and silent kiss.

"Ethel, my own, own Ethel, at last—at last!" he exclaimed, in a voice rendered tremulous by excess of emotion; but the young girl for some time was unable to reply. She could but sob upon his breast in the fulness of her joy.

There was a long and tender pause, during which their lips, though silent, were busy enough, perhaps, for "Love," says some one, "is a sting of joy, but a heartache for ever!"

"I knew, dear Ethel, that you would come to meet me," said Morley, "if my letter arrived in time to inform you of the train by which I would leave Liverpool."

"Where you landed last night—only last night—and this evening you are here," she exclaimed.

"Yes, Ethel; but poorer than when I left England," said the young man sadly; "poorer than when I left you," he replied, drawing her arm through his, but still retaining her hand, with both of his folded over it;—"and now tell me how are all at Laurel Lodge. Your papa——"

"Is quite well."

"And your sister Rose—merry little Rose?"

"Well, blooming, and lively as ever."

"Why did she not come to meet me too? My letters have told you, Ethel, that after enduring the misery of three years' exile on the Bonny River, wearily waiting and toiling, transacting the sale of camwood, ivory, and palm oil, for my owners in Liverpool, and often enduring the frightful fever of that pestilent place——"

"Ah, my poor dear Morley, how it has thinned and wasted you!" said Ethel, looking at him tenderly through her tears.

"I have been compelled to return, almost broken in health, and what is worse, perhaps, in a worldly sense, well-nigh penniless, Ethel, to look for other work at home. But tell me something of yourself, dearest!"

"What can I say?—what can I tell you, Morley, for here, at Laurel Lodge, each day that passes is so like its predecessor?"

"How will Mr. Basset—how will your father, welcome me?" asked Morley, anxiously.

"Most kindly, Morley."

"You think so, still," continued the young man.

"Yes. All the more kindly that you have not been favoured by fortune; papa is most generous," replied Ethel.

Morley did not feel quite persuaded of this, but replied:

"Bless him and you for this assurance, darling. Oh, Ethel, how charming your sweet English face seems to me! Do you know, dearest, that for three whole years I have never seen a white woman or a red cheek? But you have not told me about Rose—no husband yet?"

"She has lovers in plenty, and Jack Page is her adorer," said Ethel smiling; "but there is enough time for Rose to think of marrying. Besides——" but Miss Basset paused and sighed.

"True; she is two years younger than you, Ethel. But our marriage, my love, seems far, far off indeed. Oh, farther than ever! Your father——"

"Will welcome you warmly, of that be assured, but——"

"But what, Ethel? Something weighs upon your mind."

"Many misfortunes have come upon him, misfortunes which we could never have foreseen."

"In your two last letters, you hinted something of losses in London speculations."

"Yes; and consequently, he has come to the resolution of leaving Acton-Rennel—leaving dear Laurel Lodge, where since childhood we have been so happy."

"Leaving Laurel Lodge!" exclaimed Ashton.

"Leaving England itself, Morley," said Ethel, as her fine eyes became suffused with tears again.

"England!" repeated Morley Ashton, breathlessly, and growing very pale indeed.

"Yes; did you not get my letter, in which I told you that papa had been appointed to a vacant judgeship in the Isle of France, and that in two months or less from this time we shall sail for that distant colony?"

"No—no! I hear all this now for the first time."

"Papa will tell you all about it," continued Ethel, weeping on her lover's shoulder. "He has been appointed one of the three judges in the supreme civil and criminal court of the island."

"Oh, what fatality is this!" exclaimed Morley Ashton, mournfully, as he struck his hands together; "have I returned to England, but to be more than ever an exile, and to learn that you are going where you must school yourself to forget me?"

"Oh, do not say so, Morley!" implored Miss Basset.

"All is ended now," replied her lover; "on earth there is nothing more for me."

"Or me!" said Ethel, upbraidingly.

"True; in the selfishness of my own love and grief, I forget yours."

The girl's tears fell fast, and he held her locked to his breast; for there was no eye on them in that sequestered lane, where the evening star, sparkling like a diamond set in amber, alone looked on them.

After a pause:

"See, Morley," said the girl, with a lovely smile, as she drew her ribbon from her bosom; "our split sixpence!"

"Here is the other half, dear Ethel. I used to carry it at my watch-guard, but seals and charms are dangerous gear among the black fellows of the Bonny River, who want every trinket they see, so I thought it safer where your lock of hair lay—next my heart. It was a happy hour in which you gave me that dear lock, my sweet Ethel."

"It was on an evening in summer, when we sat yonder by the old stile at the churchyard. How often have I wished to live that hour over again!" sighed his companion.

"And, sweet one, so we shall in reality, as I have often done in my day-dreams, when far, far away from this dear home and you; but this approaching separation crushes the heart within me, and destroys all hope for the future."

"Take courage, Morley, though I have none," said the young girl, while still her tears fell fast.

Ah me! a split sixpence is of small value, yet here it was riches, for it embodied the hopes, the future, and was all the world to two young and loving hearts!

"Amid the pestilent swamps and mangrove creeks of West Africa, where, from September to June, the steamy malaria rises like smoke in the sunshine, baleful," said Morley, "and laden with disease and death, O Ethel, my thoughts were with you! There, while engaged in the stupid and monotonous task of daily bartering old muskets, nails, and buttons, powder, rum, and tobacco, for palm-oil, camwood, ivory, lion-skins, and gorgeous feathers, bartering, cajoling, and often browbeating the hideous and barbarous savages of Eboe and Biafra, for our house in Liverpool, the hope of being reunited to you alone sustained and inspired me. In my wretched hut, built of stakes, roofed with palm-leaves, and plastered with mud, or on board the river craft, where we always sleep at some seasons, and during the horrors of the fever which left me the wreck of myself, it was your memory alone that shed light and hope around me. And there was one terrible night, when the breathless air was still and heavy, and when a green slime covered all the ripples of the rotten sea, while my pulse was as fleet as lightning, and my brain was burning, and when I thought that certainly I must soon die, my old friend Bartelot—you have often heard me speak of Tom Bartelot, of Liverpool—conveyed me to his brig, which rode at her moorings inside Foche Point, and he actually cured me, merely by talking for hours of you, Ethel, and of our meeting again—cured me, when, perhaps, the doctor's doses failed. And now, Ethel, poor though I am, broken in spirit, and crushed in hope—this hour, this moment, and these kisses, dearest, reward me for all, all—toil, danger, suffering, and hoping against hope itself!"

As he spoke he pressed Ethel Basset again to his breast in a long and passionate embrace, and a bright, happy, and lovely smile spread over the face of the young girl.

CHAPTER II.
LAUREL LODGE.

To a certain extent the conversation in the preceding chapter must have served to inform the reader of the relative positions and prospects of those whom, without much preamble, we have introduced—to wit, the hero and heroine of our story.

Morley Ashton was the only son of a once wealthy merchant, whose failure and death had left him well-nigh penniless, to push his fortune in the world as he best could. Thus, as agent of a Liverpool house, he had been, as he stated, broiling for the last three years on the western coast of Africa, with what success the reader has learned from his conversation with Ethel Basset, to whom he had now been engaged for four years.

Ethel was now somewhere about her twentieth year, and though her face was not, perhaps, of that kind which is termed strictly beautiful, it would be difficult to say wherein a defect could be traced.

Her features were regular, and, though somewhat pensive in expression, her occasionally sparkling and piquant smile relieved them from that insipidity which frequently is the characteristic of a perfectly regular face.

Though, in addition to singing, riding, and waltzing to perfection, she could play rather a good stroke at billiards, and make a good shot at the archery butts, her manner was gentle and graceful, her mind intelligent, and she improved on acquaintance, for few could converse with Ethel Basset for half-an-hour without being somehow convinced that she was lovely.

Her taste in dress was excellent, and one felt that from her little gloved hand, or, rather, from her smoothly-braided hair to the little heels of her kid boots, Ethel was a study.

Her mother's death had early inducted her into the cares and mystery of housekeeping, and made her thoughtful, perhaps, beyond her years.

Mr. Scriven Basset, her father, was a kind and warm-hearted, but somewhat easy-tempered man. In early life he had practised successfully as a barrister in London, where he had contracted a wealthy marriage. After this event he had retired to Acton-Rennel, and there, for the last eighteen years or so, his life had passed quietly and happily.

His tastes were elegant, but expensive; thus his villa of Laurel Lodge was fitted up in a style of no ordinary splendour, and to part with the elegancies by which he was surrounded would cost some pangs when the time came.

Since a pecuniary change had come upon his affairs, and as he had procured, by the friendship of the M.P. for Acton-Rennel, a legal colonial appointment, all his household goods must be scattered. He knew this, and that there was no help for it: save his dead wife's portrait, and a few equally dear "lares," all must "come to the hammer," as he phrased it, when he and his two girls sailed for their new home in the tropics.

He knew that poor Morley Ashton and his daughter, Ethel, had loved each other in early youth, when the prospects of the former were fair, and his "expectations" unexceptionable; and, though reverses came which blasted these, and rendered a marriage unadvisable, strange to say he did not separate them.

This was but a part of his easy disposition, and he permitted them to correspond, in the hope that, by absence, their mutual regard would gradually die away, as the mere fancy of a boy and girl.

But fortune ordained it otherwise.

Had Morley come home with wealth (three years on the Bonny River will scarcely serve to acquire that), he could have had no objections to their marriage; but there would be many now that Morley had come home poor.

Mr. Basset knew, moreover, that Morley, as his last letter had informed Ethel, was to visit them at Laurel Lodge immediately on his return.

"Well, well," thought the easy Mr. Basset, "a few weeks will separate them hopelessly now, so the poor young folks may as well be left to bill and coo together in peace until we sail for the Mauritius, which will be three times as far off as the Bonny River."

This policy was dangerous, and somewhat questionable; but we shall see how it ended.

Proceeding slowly hand in hand, and while such thoughts as these passed through the mind of papa, who, reclining in his easy-chair, was still lingering over his wine and walnuts, watching dreamily the last flush of the sun, that shone down the dingles of Acton Chase, Morley and Miss Basset reached the end of the green lane, where a handsome white gate closed the avenue that led to Laurel Lodge.

It was long and shady; a double row of giant laurels, from which the villa had its name, bordered the approach, and over these rose some venerable sycamores, in which the lazy rooks were croaking and cawing.

Laurel Lodge was a house of irregular proportions, the oldest part having been built in the middle of the seventeenth century, had small latticed windows, with carved mullions of red sandstone. The modern additions had been built by Mr. Basset, and were lofty and elegant, with large windows, some of which opened to the gravelled walks of the garden.

There was a handsome Elizabethan porch, surmounted, as some thought, rather ostentatiously by the Basset arms, a shield having three bars wavy, supported by two unicorns, armed and collared; and the pillars and arch of this porch, like the roof and clustered chimneys of the older part of the edifice, were covered with masses of dark ivy, fragrant honeysuckle, clematis, and brilliant scarlet-runners.

Through the vestibule beyond, with its tesselated floor and walls, covered with fishing, riding, and shooting appurtenances—rods, nets, boots, whips, guns, and shot-belts—Ethel led Morley to the door of the well-remembered dining-room, where, as we have said, Mr. Basset was still lingering in the twilight, over his full-bodied old port.

Though every feature of this comfortable English villa was known of old to Morley, after his three years' residence in a wigwam on the banks of the Bonny River, its aspect impressed him deeply now, and his eyes wandered rapidly over the furniture of carved walnut and marqueterie, inlaid with representations of game and fruit, the crimson velvet chairs, and old Rembrandt tables of quaint and beautiful designs, the buhl clock on the rich marble mantel-piece, the gorgeous vases of Sèvres and Dresden china, the ivory puzzles and Burmese idols, of which he had glimpses between the parted silk and damask curtains of the drawing-room windows.

Then there were the Brussels carpets, the grates that glittered like polished silver, the black wolf and dun deer skins, and the eight-light chandeliers of crystal and Venetian bronze, with armour, pictures, statuary, and rare books in gorgeous bindings—in short, the tout-ensemble of Laurel Lodge, wherein taste, wealth, luxury, and comfort, were all so rarely and singularly combined, formed to the mind of poor Morley a powerful contrast to the cabin of Tom Bartelot's 200-ton brig, and to the before-mentioned wigwam, with its roof of palm-leaves and trellised walls of reeds and bamboo cane, through which the mosquitoes and the malaria came together by night.

"It is Morley, papa," said Ethel, as they entered; "he has come by the very train we expected, and has walked all the way from Acton station."

"The express from Liverpool; but, ah, my dear sir, it was not even quick enough for me. I would have come by telegraph if I could," said the young man, as Mr. Basset shook him warmly by the hand.

"Welcome back to England! welcome home, Morley!" said he. "Sit beside me, lad, and let me see how you look! Ring for wine and more glasses, Ethel. And so, after all your toil and danger, worldly matters have not prospered with you, eh?"

"No, sir," sighed the young man, with his eyes fixed tenderly on Ethel, who had flung her hat and parasol on the sofa, and seated herself beside him; "I have come back to England a poorer fellow than when I left it."

"I am deeply sorry for that, Morley—port or cherry? Under the sideboard are some Marcobrunner, Johannisberg, and Sauterne, too, I think—port you prefer?—then the bottle stands with you. Sorry for your sake, and the sake of others, to hear what you say."

As he spoke he did not glance at Ethel, who was filling Morley's glass; so she sighed and trembled, for it seemed, by his tone and manner, as if he still acknowledged the fact of her engagement with Morley Ashton, but considered it all at an end now.

"Matters have not prospered with me, either," said Mr. Basset, who was a healthy and florid-looking man, nearer fifty than forty, however, but with the dark hair already well seamed with grey; "quite the reverse," he continued, emphatically; "so that I cannot upbraid you with being on worse terms with fortune than myself. You have, of course, heard of all that has occurred?"

"Ethel has told me all," said Morley, sadly.

"Aye, fortune is fickle, and was well portrayed as blind, and as Shakspere has it:—

"'Will fortune never come with both hands full,
But write her fair words still in foulest letters?
She either gives a stomach and no food,—
Such are the poor in health; or else a feast,
And takes away the stomach; such are the rich,
That have abundance and enjoy it not."

"He can console himself with scraps from Shakspere, while my heart is bursting," thought Morley.

"And so Ethel has told you all?" resumed Mr. Basset, cracking another walnut of the fruit which had followed a luxurious dinner.

"Yes, sir, and in doing so has wrung the soul within me."

"Oh, Morley," said Ethel, placing her ungloved hand kindly upon his, "do not talk so mournfully."

"Aye, aye, lad," said Mr. Basset, thinking most of himself, as, with his head on one side, one eye closed, and the other admiring the ruby colour of his wine as it shone between him and the flushed sky, "at my age, though I am not very old, but have many settled habits, it is hard to leave one's native country, and to set out with these tender girls on a long, rough voyage; but needs must—you know the rest."

"And so Ethel and I meet again, only to be separated for ever," exclaimed Morley, while he pressed her hand within his own, and in a tone so mournful that Mr. Basset, who, like every matter-of-fact Englishman, hated scenes, as they worried him, fidgeted in his chair, and said to Ethel:

"Where is Rose? Has she not seen Mr. Ashton yet?"

"She is with the captain in the conservatory, I think."

Morley, who disliked the formality of being termed "Mr. Ashton," glanced at Ethel, and perceived that a blush was burning on her cheek.

"You did not tell me that you had a visitor," said he.

"We had matters of greater moment to think of, Morley, had we not?" asked Ethel, anxiously.

"Besides, the captain is rather more than a visitor," observed Mr. Basset, laughing.

"More?" said Ashton, with a sickly smile.

"He has spent some few weeks with us," said Ethel.

"Weeks, Ethel?" exclaimed Mr. Basset. "Why, girl, they have run to months now. He is the son of one of my oldest and dearest friends—old Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn—and has seen a great deal of the world. He is a fine, free, rattling fellow, whom I am sure you will like; at least, I hope so, as he proposes to follow, perhaps to go with, us to the Mauritius."

Morley felt his heart sink, he knew not why, at these words—or at what they imported.

"Has there been a game playing here of which I have been kept in ignorance?" thought he.

There was an instinctive fear or jealousy in his mind, and he dared scarcely to look at Ethel. When he did so, there was a painful blush upon her cheek.

"Do not speak of the Mauritius, my dear sir," said he, in an agitated tone. "I cannot conceive or realise the idea of your all being anywhere but here—here at dear old Laurel Lodge."

"Never mind—time soothes all things. Fill your glass, Morley. The Mauritius possesses a splendid climate, though it is rather hot from November to April; and there the best of wine can be had almost duty free. Once we are there, who can say, but I may find you a snug appointment, my boy, and Ethel shall write to acquaint you of it."

Now Mr. Basset had in reality no more idea at that moment of procuring any such post for Morley, than of securing one for the personage who resides in the moon, but it suited him to say so at the time; and thus Morley, with a heart full of gratitude, exclaimed:

"Ah, how, sir! how shall I thank you?"

"By working hard and industriously at home in the meantime; by never shrinking from trouble, nor fearing aught that is onerous."

"Such, sir, has ever been my maxim and habit—yet what have they availed me?"

"With your business habits, your father's well-known name and connections in Liverpool, your intimate acquaintance with the west coast trade of Africa, you cannot be at a loss to push your way until you might join us. My friend the captain, as I have said, perhaps goes with us. Has Ethel told you that I am pledged to do something for him? But Heaven alone knows what will suit him; he is such an unsettled dog, and has been so long accustomed to wandering ways in California, and among scalp-hunters in Texas, the Rocky Mountains, and everywhere else."

All this sounded ill and unwelcome to Morley, and served to disturb him greatly.

His sallow cheek, long blanched by past illness, burned redly; his eyes were hot and sad in expression. As he drank another glass of port, he felt the crystal rattling on his teeth, and as Ethel watched him anxiously, her little hand stole lovingly into his, which closed tightly upon it.

He perceived that she had still his engagement ring on the proper finger, but another ring—a huge nugget-like affair, with a green stone—was there too!

CHAPTER III.
CRAMPLY HAWKSHAW.

Before Morley had time to think or inquire—if, indeed, inquiry was necessary—concerning this trinket, a lovely, laughing girl of eighteen burst into the room, and kissed him playfully on each cheek.

"Rose," he exclaimed, "Rose, how you have grown. The little girl I left behind has become quite a woman!"

"Why have you delayed so long, Rose?" said Ethel, almost with annoyance. "Did you not know who was here—that Morley had arrived?"

"No. If so, do you think I would have delayed?"

"Yet you have done so."

"Oh, don't be jealous," replied Rose, laughing, though her answer unwittingly galled Morley, and annoyed Ethel more; "we were not flirting, for the captain was only telling me about the flowers of South America; and I merely amuse myself with him and Jack Page, when I can get no one else."

Morley thought of the strange ring on Ethel's finger, and as he caressed Rose's hand, there arose some unpleasant forebodings in his mind; but at that moment, as lights were brought, and tea announced in the drawing-room, the gentleman whom they styled "captain" entered from the conservatory, throwing back therein the fag-end of his cigar.

Ethel hastened to introduce him to Morley as "Captain Cramply Hawkshaw, the son of papa's old and valued friend."

The captain bowed coldly to Morley, whom he scrutinised from head to foot in a cool and rather supercilious manner.

Hawkshaw was rather under than over the middle height, and possessed a tough and well-knit figure. He had rather a good air and bearing; but at times his manner was absurd and swaggering, and his features, though good and well cut, were decidedly sinister—so much so, that his eyes had in them, occasionally, an expression, which, to a keen observer, was most forbidding.

Under his light grey sack coat, he wore no waistcoat, but had his trousers girt by a Spanish sash; a tasselled smoking-cap, like an Egyptian tarboosh, was placed jauntily on his thick mass of curly dark hair. He rejoiced in a luxuriant beard and pair of long whiskers, with which his moustaches mingled.

He interlarded his conversation somewhat profusely with digger terms, Spanish oaths, and Yankee military phrases, American interjections, and frequent allusions to bowie-knives and six-shooters, and a pair of these weapons always figured on his dressing-table.

In fact, the captain seemed a character, though scarcely worth studying; but one that must frequently appear, more for evil than for good, in these pages.

At a glance, Morley perceived that he was somewhat of a swaggering fool—perhaps worse. He conceived an instinctive aversion for him—an aversion, however, that seemed to be quite mutual—and he marvelled by what idiosyncracy of his nature Mr. Basset could tolerate, or propose to patronise, a guest whose bearing was so questionable, and whose presence was rendered so obnoxious to himself, by his too-evident partiality for Ethel. Nor was this emotion lessened when our hero perceived, that whenever he spoke, a covert sneer stole into the cunning eyes of the captain.

He had been an officer, it appeared, among the Texans, in the Partizan Rangers, or some such distinguished corps; and like Gibbet, in the "Beau's Stratagem," he considered "captain" a good travelling name, and one that kept waiters, grooms, and even railway porters in order; so he still adhered to his regimental rank in the Partizan Rangers, or true-blooded Six-shooters of Texas.

He talked of scalping Red Indians, and shooting Spanish picaroons, as if such were his daily amusement; and when smoking out of doors, would squat on the grass in the mode peculiar to the Texan troopers, among whom he had undoubtedly become a deadly shot, and a good horseman—the only qualities he possessed.

"Papa," said Rose, while Ethel was officiating at the tea-urn, "I wish you to scold Captain Hawkshaw——"

"Why, what has he done now?—been burning your dog's nose with his cigar—smoking it in the drawing-room, or what?"

"He has been laughing at our loveliest azaleas, and saying they were only weeds."

"In Tennessee, my dear Miss Rose, in Tennessee," said the captain, with a deprecating grimace, while caressing his long whiskers; "but your namesake, the rose itself, is perhaps deemed little better than a weed in some countries."

"Where you have been?" inquired Morley.

"But," continued Hawkshaw, without deigning to hear his question, "to me—one who has seen the luscious fruit and gorgeous flower-covered districts of Xalappa, and of Chilpansingo, in the tierras tiempladas of Mexico—there is nothing you can show in this tame England of yours that interests you."

"Ours," retorted Rose; "is it not yours too?"

"Nay, nay," said the captain, shaking his head and the tassel of his tarboosh together, "I am a cosmopolitan."

"And care nothing for your country?" said Morley.

"Caramba! as we say in Texas, I did so once; but the sun shines brighter in other lands than it does in England."

"You will never make me think so, captain," said Mr. Basset, pushing aside his tea-cup; "for even now my heart sinks with deep depression at the thought of leaving home."

"'Tis nothing when you are used to it, sir—positively nothing. However, you have comfortable diggings here, and some very pretty fixings, too," observed the captain, casting his eyes on the mirrors, the hangings, and vases of Sèvres and Dresden china which decorated the drawing-room; "and thus, perhaps, don't care much about sailing in search of 'fresh fields and pastures new,' eh, squire?—or judge, I suppose we should call you?"

"No, I shall leave my heart behind me in England—in dear old Acton-Rennel. But the sooner we are gone the better; for every day now seems to bind me more to the place where my happiest years have been spent," said Mr. Basset, whose eyes grew moist as his heart filled with the memory of the wife whom he had lain in the grave but three years before, and with whom Morley Ashton had been an especial favourite, for he was gentle and lovable, yet manly withal.

In her resting-place—under the old yew at Acton church—he felt that she was still near, and still his; but once away from England, the separation would seem complete indeed.

Half shaded and half lit by the drawing-room lights, Ethel's beauty seemed very striking. Tall and dark-eyed, there was something of great delicacy in her cast of features, over which, as we have said, a pensive shadow often rested; especially when her white eyelids and long, dark lashes were drooping.

She was a girl whose whole air and manner, expression of eye, and turn of thought, were the embodiment of refinement; thus the conversation and brusquerie of the digger captain were by no means suited to her taste.

On the other hand, Rose was somewhat of a brown-haired hoyden; very lovely in her bursts of wild joy and laughter; all smiles and rosy dimples, and full of waggish expressions, in which the quieter Ethel never indulged; so she rather enjoyed the fanfaronades of Hawkshaw, and mimicked some of his idioms and Spanish exclamations with great success.

Tea over, and the piano opened, Morley hung fondly over Ethel, who ran her white fingers over the notes of an old and favourite air, which they had often sung together; while the captain, with his feet planted apart on the rich hearthrug, was romancing, or to use his own phraseology, "bouncing away" about the Tierra Caliente the mighty sierras of New Mexico, and so forth, to Mr. Basset, whose eyes were fixed on the embers that glowed in the bright steel grate, and whose thoughts were elsewhere.

"Your visitor seems quite at home here—a privileged man, in fact," said Morley. "You did not tell me this at first, Ethel," he added, in a lower tone.

Ethel blushed, and replied:

"We have been so used to him that I quite forgot."

"So used—then he has been long here."

"Nearly three months."

"Three months ago, Ethel, I was lying in Tom Bartelot's cabin, off the Bonny River, in hourly expectation of death, and with little hope of being where I am to-night, by your side, dearest, and listening to that old air again. And he has been here three months?"

"Yes, ever since his return from California."

"Is he rich—this captain—what horse-marine corps is he captain of?" continued Morley in an angry whisper.

"Oh, Morley, hush! he is not rich, poor fellow!"

"Poor devil!" muttered Morley.

"But he has realised something; I know not what; though he asserts that he has come back to us poorer than when he went away."

"To us," replied Morley, with growing displeasure, which he strove in vain to conceal. "Who is he?"

"A second cousin, or something of that kind, to papa, and the son of his old friend, Mr. Thomas Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's-inn. But why all these questions?" asked Ethel, looking her lover fully and fondly in the face.

Morley Ashton did not reply, for he felt an instinctive doubt and hatred of Hawkshaw: emotions that rose within his breast he scarcely knew why or wherefore; but, as a Scottish poet has it:

"Men feel by instinct swift as light,
The presence of the foe,
Whom God has marked in after years
To strike the mortal blow!"

Hawkshaw, while talking apparently to Mr. Basset, had his keen and sinister eyes fixed on the couple at the piano. They seemed plainly enough to indicate similar emotions in his breast, and to say:

"You are one too many in my diggings, Mr. Ashton. Poco e poco, I must get rid of you, my fine fellow, at whatever risk or cost!"

CHAPTER IV.

RIVALRY.

For a few days after Morley's arrival, he felt almost happy—happy in the society of Ethel, though the time when she would have to quit Laurel Lodge and sail from England—a time of painful, and it bade fair to be most hopeless separation—hung like a black cloud on the horizon of their future, and, alas! that time was not far distant now.

In three days the air of his native England had begun to redden Morley's cheek, but his eyes were sad in expression, and his heart was at times oppressed by thoughts which even Ethel's smile failed to dispel.

We have said the season was spring, and the last days of April, the time of which Clare sang so sweetly in his "Shepherd's Calendar."

"With thee the swallow dares to come
And cool his sultry wing;
And urged to seek his yearly home,
Thy suns the martin bring.

"Oh, lovely month, be leisure mine,
Thy yearly mate to be.
Though May-day scenes may lighter shine,
Their birth belongs to thee."

All the old familiar places where Ethel and Morley had wandered hand in hand before, they revisited now together.

The old green lanes of the picturesque village of Acton-Rennel, which, with its quaint old tumble-down houses of white-washed brick, and the black oak beams that run through their walls at every angle, its ivied porches and latticed windows, half hidden by wild roses and honeysuckles, is one of the prettiest in England, were wandered in again and again.

Then there was the ancient church, with its moss-covered Lyke-gate and sequestered graveyard; the stile near her mother's tomb, where they had plighted their troth, and split the sixpence which has already figured in our story; Acton Chine, a dreadful chasm in the cliffs which overhung the sea, where the brain grew giddy if the eye attempted to fathom its depth, where the sea-birds wheeled and screamed in mid-air, and where the boom of the breakers on the rocks below came faintly to the ear—all were visited again and again, and never were Morley and Ethel weary of rambling by the margin of glittering Acton Mere, where the snow-white swans "swim double, swan and shadow," or in Acton Chase, scheming and dreaming of a future all their own, when he would strive to rejoin her in the Mauritius, and fortune yet might smile upon them all. They were too young, too loving, and too ardent to be without such hopes and day-dreams, though more than once Morley Ashton said:

"Oh, Ethel, I thought the time had gone for ever when I could lose myself in a world of my own creating."

They spent hours together by Cherrywood Hill and the Norman cross, where, according to old tradition, a Crusader, lord of Acton-Rennel, when returning from Jerusalem, had died of joy at the sight of his English home; but no place loved they more than stately Acton Chase.

This is the remains of one of those grand old English forests, where the Norman kings were wont to hunt of old, and where the marks of King John have been found on more than one of the old trees when cutting them down lately. The storms of a thousand years have scattered the heavy foliage of these old English oaks; but every summer their leaves are thick and heavy again, as in the days when the wild boars whetted their tusks upon their lower stems.

In long rows, trunk after trunk, gnarled and knotty, solemn, brown, and distorted, they stand within the chase, in distance stretching far away, all green with moss or grey with lichens, and with the long feathery fern, which shelters the timid deer, the fleet hare, and the brown rabbit; and where the golden pheasant lays her eggs, waving high around their venerable roots, some of which stretch far into the brooks and tarns, where the heron wades, and the wild duck swims.

In the centre of this chase stands one vast tree "the monarch of the wood," sturdy, old, and almost leafless now, for its trunk has been thunder-riven.

This is called the Shamble-oak, for thereon, when the lover of fair Rosamond came hither to hunt with the Norman lords of Acton-Rennel, they were wont to hang the slaughtered deer, ere it was roasted and washed down with Rhenish wine, in the old oak hall of Acton Manor, a ruin now, as Cromwell's cannon left it.

Every tree on which, Orlando-like, Morley had carved the name and initials of his mistress, was sought for again; every familiar spot was revisited, and Captain Hawkshaw found, to his rage and mortification, two emotions which he could not at all times skilfully conceal, that Morley was always with Ethel, while he was left to amuse Rose, who always teased or quizzed him, or with her companions, who seemed to dislike him, to play chess with Mr. Basset, to the enjoyment of a cheroot, or to his own society, which no one envied less than himself.

Moreover, the farewell visits of friends, and entertainments provided for them, afforded Morley and Ethel many opportunities of being undisturbed together; and had it not been that the captain's self-esteem was wounded, and his inordinate pride hurt, by the preference which Miss Basset showed for her old and affianced lover, Morley, he might have found plenty of consolation, for among the visitors at Laurel Lodge were some very attractive girls; but Hawkshaw's mode of making himself agreeable, even when most disposed to do so, seldom pleased.

There was something sinister in his keen eye, and a quaint brusquerie in his manner, that made ladies instinctively shrink from him.

"Pshaw—caramba," said he, on one occasion; "it is very odd that I am always nervous when among crinolines and crape bonnets."

"Pray," asked Morley, with a disdainful smile, "how comes that to pass?"

"You forget the many years I have spent among Red Indian squaws and brown Mexican donzellas."

"Your nervousness should make you more choice in your expressions," said Lucy Page, a tall, grave friend of Ethel's, a handsome girl, with whom Hawkshaw was walking, as they were all promenading one evening, after tea, among the trees of Acton Chase.

"Though not much in the habit of receiving advice, I shall hope to profit by yours, Miss Page," said Hawkshaw, bowing with a malevolent smile.

"Pardon me," continued Miss Page, colouring under the short veil of her round hat; "I do not presume to offer advice to so travelled a man; but, for all that, I know a very ugly word may be veiled in your favourite Spanish."

The captain laughed so loudly, that the young lady bit her lips with vexation, and Rose saucily inquired if he were vain of his teeth.

"I might be, if I had not seen yours, which the father of dentists and mother of pearl might envy," said he, with a mock reverential bow. "But we are sparring, it seems," he said, with a slight flush on his cheek, as Miss Page turned haughtily away and entered into conversation with Mr. Basset. But our officer of the Partizan Rangers was not to be easily put down, and to prove this, he began to whoop noisily at the cattle, which were browsing under the trees.

"Hah, demonio!" he exclaimed; "if I had a lasso here, ladies, I would show you how we loop the cattle in Texas. Many a wild bull, I have overtaken with my horse at full gallop, and fairly tailed him."

"What may that be?" asked Rose Basset, who loved, as she said, "to draw the Texan warrior out."

"Cutting the poor animal's tail off, I suppose," suggested Miss Page.

"Not at all," said Hawkshaw, curtly.

"Then what is it, pray?" asked Ethel.

"Technically, it is catching him by the tail when at full speed, and slewing him round like a ship in stays; that is what we call 'tailing' in Texas."

"But to lasso?" began one of the ladies, to whom the captain's explanation was not very lucid.

"That is to catch Master Bull by casting a looped rope round his horns."

"Have you ever achieved this?" asked Morley.

"I should think so—rather, and a great deal more," replied the captain, almost contemptuously. "I once caught one in midstream, when swimming the Arroya del Colorado, a salt arm of the sea, more than eighty yards broad, while a wild pampero (that is, a gale of wind, ladies) was rolling the waves in mountains up the bight; and with the same lasso, not long after, I caught a rascally picaroon, just about your size, Mr. Ashton, by the neck, and well-nigh garotted him, when I was riding past at full gallop."

"And the result?" said Morley, disdaining to notice something offensive in Hawkshaw's tone, when addressing him.

"Well, the result was mighty unpleasant for the poor devil of a picaroon," replied Hawkshaw, as the whole party rested themselves on the soft velvet grass of the lawn, when he began to amuse himself by tossing a clasp-knife of very ugly aspect among the buttercups, and skilfully decapitating one at every toss.

"Oh, pray tell us all about it!" exclaimed Rose, smiling brightly under her parasol, and drawing two very pretty feet, cased in bronze boots, close under her crinoline.

Hawkshaw seemed here to recall some real memory of his wild and wandering life, for a dark, savage, and malignant gleam came into his eyes, while a hectic flush crossed his weather-beaten cheek, and he began thus:

"I was travelling through the Barranca Secca, which lies between Xalappa and the Puebla de Perote, on the long, hot, dusty road which leads from Vera Cruz to Mexico.

"Though I had not a farthing in my pocket, and knew not how I was to procure a supper for myself or my horse on reaching Orizaba (for I had spent all my ready money), I was well mounted, and well armed, with a first-rate six-shooter, a bowie-knife, and carried, moreover, a lasso, for whatever might come to hand—to catch a stray cavallo, a wild bull, whip nuts from a tree, to loop in a chocolate-coloured raterillo, which means a thief, or, perhaps, a run-away nigger.

"The sun was setting behind the Cordilleras de los Ondes, when I entered a quibrada, as the Spaniards name it, a deep gully—all great adventures take place in ravines and defiles; but I am more practical than most men, and so call things by their right names—so it was a gully in the mountains, worn, bored, and torn by the waterspouts and thunderstorms of ages; but lofty trees that towered above the underwood of aloes and azaleas—azaleas to which yours are weeds, indeed, Rose—overshadowed it, and cast a gloom upon the road, which seemed to enter a species of sylvan tunnel. I took a hearty pull of aquadiente from the leathern bota at my saddle-bow, and lit a Manilla cheroot, to make the most of the 'shining hour.'

"This portion of the Barranca Secca had a particularly bad name as the haunt of robbers, and there was more than one wooden cross, covered with green creepers, and many a pile of stones by the wayside marking the lonely and unconsecrated grave of a bandit, who had been shot by the National Guard of Orizaba, the soldiers of Santa Anna, long ago, or where the victim of the bandido's knife or rifle lay.

"Well, anxious to get through the gully, I was going at a fine rasping pace, when I met a man, armed with a long rifle, and carrying a knife and brace of pistols in the red and yellow sash which girt up his blue cotton breeches. His tawny breast, feet, and legs, from the knees at least, were bare, and a sheepskin jacket, tied by a cocoa-nut cord, dangled over his right shoulder.

"I recognised him at once, as Zuares Barradas, a young man, whom, with his brother Pedro, I had met at the gold-diggings on the Feather River, and with whom I had travelled from the seaport of San Diego, when they had both deserted their ship to try their fortunes at the mines.

"'What—capitano, is it you?' he exclaimed, 'welcome to the Barranca Secca.'

"'Muchos gratias, senor,' said I, having some anxiety to be on good terms with the fellow.

"'How far do you go to-night?'

"'To Orizaba.'

"'A light, if you please, senor—I have lost all my lucifers.'

"He was a sallow, dark-skinned, half-blood; that is, half Mexican, half Spaniard, and wholly devil—partly seaman, partly landsman, and wholly pirate in spirit."

"Good heavens!" exclaimed Rose, "were you not terrified to be alone with such a person in such a place? I am sure I should have screamed and died of fright."

Hawkshaw smiled and continued:

"His eyes, black and sparkling, told of a cunning equal to that of the serpent in the scripture, and of a ferocity that death alone could tame. He had neither beard nor moustache, for he was too young; but his raven hair hung in masses beside his olive cheeks, and he had silver rings in his ears.

"Such was Zuares Barradas, who, like his brother, Pedro, feared nothing on earth, and respected nothing in heaven."

"Was, you say—is he now dead?" asked Ethel.

"You shall hear; but such fellows don't die easily, Miss Basset, be assured.

"'Are you looking for game?' I asked.

"'Por vida del demonio, that I am!' said he, with a savage grin, 'but it is neither the elk, the jaguar, or the vinado I seek.'

"'What then, amigo mio?'

"'You must know,' began the young rascal, 'that Pedro and I have spent all our money—every duro, yes, every quartil—he at the wineshop, and I on Katarina, the barmaid at the Pasada de Todos Santos, and that other jade with the wheel—what's her name?—Fortune has since been as unkind to me as Katarina, with whom I parted on bad terms.'

"'You quarrelled?' said I.

"Zuares looked keenly into the gully, listened a moment, and then resumed his bantering style.

"'When last I visited the posada, Katarina had on a very handsome crucifix and pair of silver bracelets, so I took them off, saying, "Senora, a beautiful bosom, and such pretty hands as yours, require no adornment. Permit me to relieve you of these baubles—they are absurd!" She was about to permit herself the luxury of screaming, but I touched my knife and quieted her. Since then I have been left to shift for myself, as my father and mother too have turned their venerable backs upon me.'

"'I have not a coin, Zuares,' said I, with growing alarm, lest the underwood of aloes might be full of such evil weeds as the younger Barradas. 'Surely you mean not to rob me?'

"'Of course not; you are a bueno camarada. But as Pedro and I came through the Barranca Secca we heard that an old woman of the Puebla de Perote, who sold some cattle at Orizaba, will pass this way about nightfall. She is veiled, and has the blessed duros concealed among her hair, for fear of thieves—ha! ha! for fear of thieves," he continued, pirouetting about, and slapping the butt of his musket. 'Pedro watches one part of the road and I the other, so the money we shall have—(what use has an old woman for it?)—even should we take her scalp with it.'

"'Perhaps her hair may be false,' said I.

"'Then I shall be saved some trouble.'

"'She may resist, and make an outcry,' said I.

"'Then so much the worse for her,' said the young fellow, with a fierce scowl, as he placed his hand under his sheepskin jacket into the Spanish sash, where his long knife was stuck.

"'In this place none would hear her,' said I.

"'There you mistake,' he replied. 'There are more than forty free bandidos lurking in the Barranca, and Pedro and I have no wish to lose the prize we have tracked so far. Maldito, see, 'tis she!' he exclaimed, as a dark female figure became visible about a hundred yards off, traversing an eminence, over which the road went, and thence descended into a hollow. 'Till I return, stay where you are, and beware how you follow me!'

"With what thoughts, you may imagine, I sat on my horse, afraid to interfere in the matter. Many a rifle might be covering me from among the wood of aloes and mangrove trees; so what was the old woman to me, that I should risk a bullet-hole in my skin to save her duros?

"Zuares Barradas descended into the hollow, which was dark almost as night, so thick were the trees overhead, though the setting sun gilded brightly their topmost branches.

"Suddenly I heard a shriek ring through the rocky gully, and Zuares rushed out, with what appeared to be a bundle in his hand; but it was a bundle from which the blood was trickling among the summer dust of the roadway.

"'She resisted, and fought and bit like a tiger-cat, la muger muy vieja (the old beldame),' he exclaimed, with an oath, 'so I have cut off her head to save time.'

"Kneeling down, with the bloody knife in his teeth, he proceeded hastily to unroll the veil, and the long grizzled hair of his victim, to secure the money, which was concealed among the thick plaitings of the latter.

"While doing this, I observed that he carefully kept the dead face downwards, as if he lacked the courage to look upon it.

"Thirty silver duros, with the eagle and thunderbolt, soon glittered in his hands; but he dropped them, as if they had been red-hot, and threw up his arms in dismay, on finding among the folds of the torn veil a little piece of cow's horn, tipped with silver—an amulet worn by women as a protection against the mal de ojo, or evil eye.

"On beholding this, a shudder passed over his brown and muscular frame, and turning up the dead face, now livid, white and horrible, with fallen jaw, and glazed eyes, he exclaimed, in a piercing and terrible voice:

"'Mia madre! mia madre!'

"He had decapitated his own mother!"

CHAPTER V.
SUSPICION.

While the ladies listened breathlessly, and uttered proper exclamations of horror, the narrator, with their permission, lighted a cigar, and, squatting on the ground in the Texan mode, continued his story.

"Zuares grovelled in the dust, so dismounting, I picked up the blood-spotted dollars, and was in the act of pocketing them, when a musket flashed in the dark, leafy hollow, a bullet whizzed past my left ear, and——"

"What! did you actually take the poor woman's dollars?" exclaimed Morley.

"Of course," replied Hawkshaw, coolly; "would you have had me leave them on the mountain road?"

"Yes; perhaps no; but——"

"Caramba!" said Hawkshaw, angrily, but using his favourite Spanish interjection, "in such a country as that, I was not such a thundering muff."

"Go on, please. What followed, pray?" asked Ethel.

"I took up the money that lay on the road. You, Mr. Ashton, may call it robbery, perhaps—granted. But what do the best men in England, yearly, at the Oaks, the Derby, and elsewhere? Oh, there is no such thing as robbery on the turf, of course. Well, where was I?"

"A musket was fired at you," said Rose.

"Exactly, and then I saw Pedro Barradas, a vast and bulky Spanish seaman, whom, unfortunately, I knew too well, advancing towards me, with his Albacete knife tied by a handkerchief bayonet-wise to the muzzle of his piece. He was a ferocious fellow, and I knew that, when he and Zuares were so far inland, rapine and robbery were their sole objects and means of subsistence.

"These brothers once carried off a poor boy, the son of a widow, who resided near the Laguna d'Alvarado, and kept him among their companions in the mountains, till his mother was well-nigh distracted. A ransom of fifty duros was required by a padre, whom they sent as their messenger. She sent twenty—all she could borrow or scrape together; but, instead of her boy, she received back one of his ears, with a message that other parts of him, perhaps his cabeza (head) would follow, if the fifty duros were not forthcoming.

"The money was collected and intrusted to the padre, who, unknown to himself, was followed by twenty soldiers, sent by the commandant of Orizaba, with special orders to shoot the Barradas and their companions.

"Pedro saw these men approaching, and, believing that the padre had betrayed them, he pocketed the dollars, and with his stiletto stabbed the bearer and the boy to the heart, and fled to the woods of the Rio Blanco.

"Such was the character of the fellow who now advanced against me.

"I sprang upon my horse, unwound my lasso, took the slack of it in my right hand, and, swinging the loop round my head, rode full at him, as I could not encounter him on foot, or escape his aim on horseback, if I permitted him again to reload.

"Shrinking back with an oath and a cry, he twice eluded me; but on the third cast I looped him round the neck, drew the lasso over my right shoulder, stooped hard over my horse's mane, and spurring onward, dragged him headlong over the dusty road, for more than two hundred yards.

"His shrieks were soon stifled, and when I reined up, the blood was gushing from his mouth; his limbs were quivering, and his face was blackened by strangulation; but he was not dead, however.

"Dismounting, I released the loop of the lasso from his bare and muscular throat, and then rode off at full speed, leaving the two brothers, and the mother, whom, in their cruelty and ignorance, they had tracked and destroyed, all lying on the mountain path together. I never looked behind me, nor did I draw bridle till reaching Orizaba, which lies sixty miles westward of Vera Cruz, where I put up at the Posada de Todos Santas (or All Saints) about midnight, when the volcano of Citlaltepetel, which rises from amid forests of vast extent, and covered with perpetual snows, was flaming in the sky eighteen thousand feet above me.

"And there, in Orizaba, the duros sent me by fortune in the Barranca Secco, procured me a good supper, a bottle of vino-bianco, well iced, from the hands of the fair Katarina—a most enchanting fluid it proved, after such a devil of a hot ride. Then I went to bed, and blessed myself that I could sleep with an easier conscience than either Zuares or Pedro Barradas."

This pleasant little episode in the captain's wandering Mexican life, made the listeners regard each other, and him especially, with some surprise.

The girls looked at him blankly under their parasols, and through the short black veils of their little round hats, for the actual horror of the story impressed them less than a certain cool gusto in Hawkshaw's manner, combined with his grim, matter-of-fact mode of relating it; but this story of the Barradas was only one of many such as he related incidentally from time to time.

"It is no easy matter," says Goethe, "for one man to understand another, even if he bring the best disposition with him. What, then, is to be expected if he bring the smallest prejudice?"

Aware that he was a rival—a cunning, a daring, and so far as could be gleaned from his conversation, an unscrupulous one, Morley, as may well be supposed, was strongly prejudiced against Hawkshaw, and felt certain that, under a considerable amount of bombast and external bonhomie, he concealed a character that was alike mean, fierce, and avaricious; but "every man," says the writer just quoted, "has something in his nature which, were he to reveal it, would make us hate him."

"And such creatures as these were your companions in South America?" exclaimed Ethel Basset, almost with a shudder.

"Do not say so," replied Hawkshaw, who, perhaps, feared that he had been too communicative "but travelling, in such countries especially, acquaints one with strange bed-fellows and strange boon companions, too. But enough of the Barradas, who have likely been shot or garotted long ago. How delightful is this soft grass under the shady trees. By Jove, we are better here than in some places where I have been; the plains of Vera Cruz, for instance, among hot sand, mosquito flies, that sting like wasps, prickly pears, and herds of wild bisons; but, with all its charms, this is a cold-blooded country, this England of yours, Mr. Morley, and ill-suited to such a spirit as mine."

"Is it not your country as well as ours?" asked Morley, coldly.

"I scolded him for speaking thus the other night, when he laughed at my azaleas," said Rose, shaking her parasol at the offender.

"Well, I was certainly raised here, which is my misfortune, and not my fault; but I have been so long where the bowie-knife or revolver, the hatchet or rifle settle all quarrels, disputes, jealousies, or impertinent interferences," he continued with an unfathomable smile, "that I can ill tolerate the system——"

"Of a well-regulated police," interrupted Morley, closing the captain's sentence with a meaning smile, that was not unlike his own.

"Caramba!—yes; and, then, on the wild prairies, while one has a good musket and ammunition, we are so careless of money."

"The money of others especially," said Ethel.

Hawkshaw bit his nether lip; but observed with a smile:

"Be assured, my dear Miss Basset, that when in South America I did not squander my cash among tradesmen, or ruin myself by paying tailors and bootmakers."

What Hawkshaw meant by this was not very apparent; but when the little party resumed their promenade among the grand old trees of Acton Chase, Morley gradually drew Ethel somewhat apart from the rest. After being silent some time:

"I entertain a horror of that fellow!" said he; "and I am astonished that your father tolerates or patronises him. Excuse me, dear Ethel; but I cannot help saying so."

"You mean Mr. Hawkshaw?"

"Pray don't omit his rank of captain—yes, Hawkshaw—a most decided aversion for him."

"Though I don't like him, Morley, I am sorry to hear this," said Ethel, gently, while colouring a very little.

"Why?"

"He is such a favourite with papa—for his father's sake, I grant you, rather than his own—for old Mr. Hawkshaw was, indeed, a great and valued friend to papa, when early in life he much required one."

"Listen, Ethel, and, dearest, do be candid with me—has Hawkshaw ever spoken of love to you?"

"Frequently, before you came," said Ethel, smiling.

"D—— his impudence!"

"Oh, fie, Morley!" said she, folding her hands upon his arm, and looking up smilingly in his face.

"And I must quietly endure his presence here, after this most annoying admission from you!"

"There is something worse still you may have to endure," said Ethel, sadly; "the voyage on which he may too probably accompany us."

Morley felt a keen pang in his breast at these words; he glanced, too, at the strange ring on Ethel's finger, which an emotion of pride or pique had hitherto prevented him from referring to.

"It seems preposterous, Ethel," he exclaimed, "that this man should propose to accompany you, while I, your affianced lover, am left behind; and, by Heaven, it shall not be so!"

"Dearest Morley!"

"Poor as I am, Ethel, I am not so poor that I cannot pay my way to the Mauritius—in the same ship, too, and I shall write this very night to London about it!"

"Oh, Morley—oh, what happiness!"

"I shall take a berth in the forecastle bunks, rather than be left behind. You have now at your breast a flower that Hawkshaw gave you."

"A flower!"

"Yes,-a wild rose."

"I had quite forgotten it; but let this show you how it is valued;" said Ethel, laughing, as she threw it on the ground, and placed thereon a pretty little foot, cased in a kid boot, with a heel of very military aspect.

"My own dear Ethel!" exclaimed Morley, pressing to his heart her hand and arm, which leant so lovingly and confidingly on his, "I have one thing more to ask you about—this queer-looking ring with the green stone!"

"Well?"

"Is it a gift of his?"

"Yes; when he first came to Laurel Lodge he begged me to accept of it, saying that it was found in Mexico, at some battle fought by Juarez, at a place with an unpronounceable name."

"It was more likely found as he found those dollars about which he told us some time ago."

"Mercy! do you think so?"

"I am inclined to think the worst of him!" said Morley angrily and emphatically.

"Oh! Morley, do not let prejudice blind you, and do not condescend to be jealous of him," said Ethel, imploringly; "I would return the ring, but that the act might affront him, giving, moreover, to its first acceptation, a significance, an air of importance, I have no wish should be attached to it. Do you understand me, Morley, dear? Then he is papa's friend and guest."

Morley was pale with concealed annoyance.

Ethel perceived this, and that he was distressed by the double prospect of a rival living in the same house with her, and embittering the few days that intervened before their long—alas! it might be final—separation.

With her eyes full of tears, she drew Hawkshaw's gift from her finger, and gave it to Morley, begging him to return it to the donor at a fitting time.

This was, to say the least of it, a most unwise request, with which he readily enough undertook to comply, and secured the ring in his portemonnaie, as they rejoined their friends, who were now gathered round the shamble oak in the centre of the chase.

When Morley reflected on the story told by Hawkshaw, it seemed that there must have existed between him and those lawless brothers, Pedro and Zaures Barradas, a greater intimacy than he had admitted in the narrative; and he became convinced that, under a nonchalant and swaggering air, his rival concealed a real spirit of latent ferocity, with a dark character that had been inured to cruelty and promptitude to vengeance, when such could be taken with safety and secrecy; so Morley Ashton resolved, but somewhat vainly, as we shall show, to be on his guard against him.

CHAPTER VI.
FOR THE LAST TIME.

Mr. Scriven Basset had made all his arrangements for departing to his legal charge in the distant Isle of France.

He had secured passages for himself, his two daughters, and an old and valued servant, Nance, or, as she was more frequently termed, Nurse Folgate, in the Hermione, a fine ship of 500 tons burden, which was advertised to sail from the London Docks in fourteen days from the time we now write of.

Meanwhile, poor Morley resolved to make the most of the present, and endeavoured to shut his eyes to the future; but while striving to be blindfolded, he knew that this future, with all its separation and sorrow, its fears, and, alas! its doubts, must ensue.

There were times when Morley thought of asking Ethel to bind herself to him in writing; but he soon thrust the idea aside as mistrusting and melodramatic. There were other occasions when he actually thought of imploring her to contract a stronger tie, by consenting to a secret marriage; but it seemed an abuse of her kind and easy father's hospitality, and a violation of the trust reposed in him, and this, too, he abandoned, resolving to trust to Ethel's faith, to patience, and to time.

Poor Morley! He knew how dark and lonely seemed the three years of their past separation, and he felt keenly how much more lonely and dark would be the vague years of that which was to follow.

Then the pictures he drew of this long severance from Ethel—the voyage by sea for so many weeks, so many months; a residence in another land, with strangers, rich and attractive, perhaps, about her—a severance during which she would be hourly exposed to the attentions and addresses of a rival so cunning, so artful, so enterprising, and, in some respects, not so unpleasing, as Cramply Hawkshaw, filled him with intense apprehension, anxiety, and disgust.

"Why should I not go with her?" thought he, suddenly. "The money which will enable me to do so I shall only squander here in England, it may be, without avail, while there, in the Mauritius, a new sphere will be open to me."

Like all impulsive people, on this new idea he acted at once. He wrote to the agents for the Hermione to secure a cabin passage for himself, a measure which Captain Hawkshaw, for some reason as yet unknown, had omitted to take, though Mr. Basset had always more than half indicated that he was to accompany him abroad.

Now, when it was announced and definitely settled at Laurel Lodge that Morley was to go, the spite and disappointment of the ex-digger and soi-disant captain of Texan Rangers was ill-concealed indeed; for, doubtless, he considered it no joke to lose all chance of a lovely bride, with a fair prospect of getting—excuse us for using his own phraseology—"into comfortable diggings," under the wing of a colonial official.

After Morley wrote to London, two days elapsed without an answer coming from the agents, and the anxious dread of Ethel and himself, lest there was no more accommodation in the Hermione, was so great that he vowed he would go before the mast rather than be left behind.

Already Laurel Lodge had a somewhat dismantled aspect. Bookshelves were emptied in the library; the walls were denuded of pictures in dining-room and drawing-rooms; choice plants in the conservatory and rare flowers in the garden had been given away to the Pages and other old friends.

Chests, bales, and boxes, corded, labelled, and all very "outward bound" in aspect, encumbered all the hall and vestibule, indicating but too surely that the Bassets were on the eve of departure; and now came their last Sunday in the old village church.

Morley Ashton and Captain Hawkshaw were in the same pew with Mr. Basset's family.

The curate who officiated was an old friend of theirs, and his voice faltered as he besought the prayers of the congregation for those who were about to leave them, and set forth on a long and perilous journey.

Then Ethel felt her timid heart tremble, and Rose sobbed under her veil, while many a moistened eye turned kindly to the Bassets' pew; but a smile curled the moustached lip of the Texan Ranger, as much as to say:

"Speak to me of danger—pah!"

The solemnity of the place, and the soft familiar music of the choir, and the old organ pealing from its shadowy loft, soothed the grief and agitation of Ethel's heart, though a keen pang shot through it, when she reflected, that when again the sacred melody rang through that ancient church, only seven days' hence, she might perhaps be separated from Morley, and most assuredly would be ploughing the sea, while he—ah! he might come here, where they had last sat side by side, and feel himself alone—so terribly alone!

Some such thoughts were swelling in the breast of Morley Ashton, for his eyes were turned on her with a deep and unfathomable expression of tenderness, while hers was bent upon her prayer-book—it might be on vacancy.

There was a wonderful charm in those snowy lids and downcast lashes, so dark, so silky, and in the pure, pale loveliness of the whole face of Ethel, especially when contrasted with the rounder and rosier beauty of her younger sister.

Over the high oak pews, quaint with old carvings, dates, and monograms; the marble tablets, where lay the men of yesterday; the time-worn tombs of those whose rusted helmets, spurs, and gloves of mail, erst worn in many a field against the Scot and Gaul, now hung over them amidst dust and cobwebs; over the painted windows, through which the sunshine poured its rays of many colours; over the bowed heads of the hushed congregation; over the altar, before the rail of which, during many a day-dream in Africa, he had knelt in fancy, the bride-groom of Ethel Basset;—over all these the eye of Morley wandered, but to fall, again and again, on her soft and downcast face, her sweet mouth and long lashes, and on her little tremulous hand, cased in its pale kid glove, that touched his from, time to time, as they read from the same prayer-book.

"No answer yet from London!" was ever in his mind, and keenly in anticipation he felt the nervous dread of being severed from her after all.

But now the morning service was ended; the organ was pealing its farewell notes from the dark recesses of the vaulted loft, and the Bassets rose up to depart.

In that old pew the people of the parish had seen their heads bowed in prayer when Ethel and Rose had nestled beside their mother, now at rest in the adjacent graveyard—nestled with their shining heads bent over the same volume, and now they were on the verge of womanhood. Ere evil fortune came upon them, so good had those girls been to the sick, the poor and ailing, that a crowd of village matrons, the mothers of the blooming Dollys and hobnailed Chawbacons, blessed them with hands outstretched; and so deeply moved were all present, that when they passed down the aisle and issued—from amid those flakes of many-coloured light that fell on oaken pew and carved pillar—through the deep old gothic porch, into the grassy churchyard, where the tombstones that stand so thickly were shining in the sun that streamed in his glory down the far extent of Acton Chase, poor Ethel burst into a passion of tears, and sobbed aloud.

"Oh, Morley!—oh, papa!" she exclaimed; "how sad it is to do anything, and know that we are doing it for the last time!"

Morley pressed the hand that laid upon his arm.

"I have had the same emotion in my heart all day, Ethel, dear," said he, "with a sadness for which I cannot account. I have no one now to cling to but you. I never had a brother or sister. My father died, as you know, before I went far away to Africa, and now he sleeps by my mother's side, in yonder old churchyard, among the Denbigh hills; and their graves, of all our English ground the dearest spot to me, I shall never look on more."

"My poor Morley!" said Ethel, her eyes sparkling through tears of affection.

"Oh, how plainly still I can draw their faces and forms, as my mind goes back quickly and feverishly at times over the past days of infancy, when their kind eyes smiled on me under our old roof. How different seems that early home and parental care, which to a child are as a fortress and tower of strength, when compared to——"

"Our diggings in manhood, eh?" interrupted Hawkshaw, who had joined them unperceived, and thus cut short Morley's intended peroration.

The latter repressed his rising wrath with difficulty. Jealousy of Hawkshaw, perhaps, he had not; but that Ethel should be annoyed by the society of such a man was repugnant to him. But how was he to act?

He could not quarrel with Hawkshaw while they both shared, for a brief period now, the hospitality of Mr. Basset; and to retire from Laurel Lodge would but serve to leave him in full possession of the field, and to embitter the last few days they would all spend together in good old England, and in the home of their early loves and best associations.

With Morley, Ethel and Rose had paid a visit for the last time to all their old haunts and rambles. At Acton Chase, now almost in the full foliage of an early summer; at Acton Chine, that frightful cliff which overhangs the sea; at the moss-grown Norman cross; on Cherrywood Hill, where in childhood they had often sought in vain, among the long grass and the pink bells of the foxglove, for the elves and fairies of whom they had read so much in nursery lore.

They paid a last visit to the ivy-clad cottages of all their old pensioners and favourites in the village, to each and all of whom they gave some little memento; to the churchyard stile; to every place connected with the memory of their past happiness; and, lastly, to their mother's grave the sisters paid a visit that was sad and solemn.

Some daisies which grew there Ethel gathered and placed in her breast, and with something of the same spirit which often inspires the poor expatriated Highland emigrant, she made up a little packet of English earth to take with her to her new home beyond the sea.

She sadly viewed their garden, where a blush of summer roses, of crimson daisies, gorgeous lilacs, and sweetbriar had now replaced the earlier flowers of spring, the yellow pansies, the purple auriculas, the golden crocuses, the pale white snowdrop, and she wondered if such things grew in the distant Isle of France.

It was on her return alone from a farewell visit in the village, that she was overtaken by Hawkshaw, when something like an unpleasant crisis took place in the relations which had subsequently existed between them. At that time Morley was absent, having walked to the Acton railway station, for the purpose of telegraphing along the London and North-Western line, to the agents of the Hermione, for intelligence regarding his berth and passage.

CHAPTER VII.
THE REJECTION.

Hawkshaw had been rambling in Acton Chase alone, when he met Ethel, or overtook her, near the great old shamble oak, which we have before mentioned.

He had been pondering on the state of his affairs and finances, which were far from flourishing. His pocket-money was almost gone, and for a time he had been reduced to clay pipes and cheap cubas. He was without the means, in fact, of travelling so far as the Mauritius; and as Mr. Basset—good-natured, easy-tempered Mr. Basset—whose character had no particular point save perfect amiability, though half intending or adopting the idea that Cramply, the son of his "old friend Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn," should accompany him abroad, had never made an offer of means to enable him to do so; thus our Texan Ranger was somewhat at his wit's end on the evening in question—an evening of which, at that moment, he little foresaw the end; and he rambled under the stately oaks of the ancient chase with a cloudy expression of eye, though still wearing the melodramatic scarlet cap and Spanish sash, which had excited considerable speculation among the rustic hobnails of Acton-Rennel.

Hawkshaw had imbibed rather too much of Mr. Basset's Amontillado after dinner; this, with some champagne, of which he had partaken freely during that meal, and a glass of brandy, imbibed as a corrective after it, rendered him somewhat blind alike to consequences, and to foregone conclusions. Thus, on suddenly meeting Ethel in such a secluded place, he resolved on speaking more openly of his love to her.

Had Mrs. Basset survived at this period of our story, there can be little doubt that she would speedily have relieved Ethel from the presence and advances of such a lover, despite her husband's reverence for the memory of "old Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn." As the matter stood now, the village gossips, at the tap of the "Royal Oak," the blacksmith's forge, and other rustic resorts, had long since settled the whole affair. Ethel was the affianced of Morley Ashton, and poor little Rose was assigned to "the captain with the red thingumbob cap."

"'Fortune favours the brave;' 'nothing venture, nothing have.' They are two old saws; but I must keep them in view, nevertheless," thought Hawkshaw, as he threw away his cigar and joined Ethel Basset, on whose cheek there was a charming flush, for the May evening was warm. She had been walking fast, to learn what tidings the electric wire had for her and Morley; and the last farewell of an old cottager, who dwelt by the skirts of the chase, had agitated her.

The captain opened the trenches by some of the remarks usually made about the weather, and the beauty of the evening; then he adverted to his good fortune in meeting her, especially in such a place; how much he had longed for an opportunity of speaking with her alone, as his future happiness or misery would be the result—an opportunity that had not occurred for some time (since Morley Ashton's arrival he might have said), and so, after sundry awkward pauses, he proceeded to declare his regard, his esteem, his passion for Ethel.

She listened to him with considerable annoyance and concern, but barely slackened her pace as he spoke.

The extreme self-possession, the quiet manner, the cool and gentle aspect of Ethel, baffled Hawkshaw, and irritated him so much, that there were times, when in his self-communings he actually felt a doubt whether he loved or—hated her!

And now, while he spoke of love, volubly, but yet with agitation, she continued to fit on a lemon-coloured kid glove, with provoking care and accuracy, on her small, pretty hand, and seemed to be fully more occupied with it than with him.

The very movements of her hands, the white parting of her smooth, dark hair—all betokened a placidity which, as he said, mentally, "served to worry him." Yet Ethel was greatly agitated, though Hawkshaw's eye had not the acuteness, nor had he the refinement, to be aware of it.

"I am deeply grieved to hear all this, Captain Hawkshaw," said she; "for already you must be assured," she added, in a tremulous voice—"assured that I cannot love you in return."

"Now, Ethel, call me Hawkshaw, Cramply, which you will, or anything you please that is not formal, but do not, for Heaven's sake, speak so coldly. And so—and so it is quite impossible?"

"Quite," she said in a low voice.

"Wherefore? Am I so hideous?"

"Far from it."

Hawkshaw was aware of her undisguised preference for Morley Ashton; and though he knew, or feared what her reply would be, the wine he had imbibed, or some strange emotion that stirred within his breast, made him urge the hopeless matter still.

"Ethel," said he, softly, but through his clenched teeth, and while his cheek grew pale with suppressed passion; "you will, perhaps, have the kindness to explain?"

Trembling with excitement and annoyance, and while tears started to her eyes, she replied:

"Explain, sir! Why should I be called upon to explain? You know well that since I was seventeen I have been engaged—have loved another."

"At seventeen, interesting age, a girl is in the first flush of womanhood," began Hawkshaw, in his sneering tone; "fresh in feeling and tender in sensibility; the consequence is that, of a necessity, she falls in love with the first fellow, be he good, bad, or indifferent, who presents himself."

"But I did not fall in love, as you phrase it, with the first who presented himself, any more than I am likely to do with the last," replied Ethel, with an air that now was one of unconcealed annoyance. "My sister Rose is a girl whom all allow to be charming, and is as much admired as any in the county, and she has passed seventeen, your rubicon, your girlish equator, your ideal line, without 'falling in love' with anyone——"

"That you know of, Miss Basset," said Hawkshaw, sharply.

"Rose has no secrets from me, sir!"

"Do not let us quarrel, for Heaven's sake. I apologise."

"How tiresome—how impertinent! and yet I dare not tell Morley," sighed Ethel, in her heart, as she continued to walk very fast; but Laurel Lodge was a long way off, and the sunlit waste of the chase stretched for, at least, a mile before them yet.

Bitterly did she now repent having entrusted Morley with the ring, as it might lead to some unseemly quarrel between him and Hawkshaw; on this occasion she had an admirable opportunity for returning it personally. After a pause:

"With all this fancied attachment to your first love, I do not think you very romantic, Ethel," said Hawkshaw.

"You are right, sir; indeed, I am quite matter-of-fact."

"Caramba! it is too bad for a charming girl of two-and-twenty to be so."

"What right have you to deem me charming, or to assume my age?" asked Ethel, angrily, and with her eyes now full of tears, which the short veil of her little hat concealed.

"I can no more help deeming you so than help admiring the sunshine. But, ah, Ethel, if I had you where I have been—where the volcanic mountains of the Sierra Nevada look down on the valley of the Colorado, I could teach you, or perhaps infuse into your impulsive nature something of the fire, the romance—the glorious romance—of Spanish South America."

"Thank you," replied Ethel, relieved and laughing, when she found Hawkshaw was indulging in one of his platitudes; "but I would rather learn it here, amid a sweet English landscape, like this old wooded chase, than among flaming volcanoes, tawny savages, stinging mosquitoes, and your old friends, the Barradas."

"The Barradas!" repeated Hawkshaw, starting, as his eyes flashed with a gleam of malevolence and alarm; his brows knit, his hands twitched spasmodically, and he gave Ethel a keen glance of inquiry; for she had unwittingly touched some hidden spring, some secret sore—or it might be sorrow. For a moment he looked as if he could have sprang upon her; but he laughed, and said, with an evident effort at being jocular: "To return to the subject—to this love of thrilling, blushing, and susceptible seventeen, which deprives me of you, occurred five years ago?"

"And since then I have found no reason to change my mind. Here is the gate of Miss Page's house, where I wish to call. Good evening, captain. Her brother Jack will see me home."

Ethel bowed, left him, and closed the iron gate.

She was, in reality, full of intense anxiety to learn what tidings Morley had received by the telegraph from London; but being bored and worried by Hawkshaw's cool and impudent love-making, she took this opportunity of quitting him, which, in her nervous haste, she did, perhaps, rather too abruptly.

A shower of tears relieved her; but Hawkshaw, as he watched her figure flitting up the Pages' avenue of lilacs, balsam, poplars, and giant hollyhocks, bit his nether lip till the blood nearly came, and his sinister eyes emitted one of their most malevolent gleams.

"Curse her!" he muttered, hoarsely and deeply, "curse her! She spoke of the Barradas, too! But I shall crush her proud heart yet—crush it like a rotten castano!"

Then he turned away towards the seashore, with vengeance burning in his heart, and had not proceeded a quarter of a mile before he encountered Morley Ashton, perhaps the last person in the world he could have wished to meet at such a time, and when in such a bitter mood.

CHAPTER VIII.
MORLEY AND HAWKSHAW.

A fierce and panther-like spirit swelled up in the breast of Hawkshaw on seeing his fortunate rival approach. He felt a strong desire to strangle him, and thus, by one determined stroke, remove him from his path, and gain revenge on Ethel too!

He had more than once conceived the idea, in his wilder and more bitter moods, of giving Morley a quietus of strychnine, or putting a loaded revolver in his hand, so that it might go off conveniently, and, to all appearance, unawares; but coroners' inquests often brought unpleasant things to light, and Morley was completely master of that ticklish fire-arm, the "six-shooter," as well as himself, and our Texan captain was far too politic to risk his valuable neck, in committing an open outrage on the queen's highway in England, whatever he may have done in his well-beloved Mexico, among the wild inhabitants of which he had learned the art—no small one certainly—of veiling alike every purpose, love, hate, or fear, under a bland and smiling exterior, when it suited his purpose to do so.

The man he hated most on earth was Morley Ashton, yet he walked up to him frankly, with a smile in his deep eyes, and on his cruel lip (though his moustache concealed that), his right hand extended, and a cigar-case in his left——

"A lovely evening, Ashton," said he. "Had a pleasant walk? Have a weed—eh? Try a cigar?"

"Thank you—I don't smoke cubas."

"Do you prefer a regalia?"

"Thank you, I have some here."

"Caramba! I have smoked them two feet long ere this."

"In Texas?"

"Yes."

"I thought so," replied Morley, laughing. He was in excellent spirits. A telegram to Acton-Rennel had announced that his cabin passage to the Isle of France had been secured on board the Hermione, immediately on receipt of his mandate, and added, that a letter, duly announcing the circumstance, had been posted for Laurel Lodge.

"I never received it, Hawkshaw—odd, isn't it?" said Morley; "but it matters nothing now."

Hawkshaw gave a bitter smile unnoticed. No wonder that Morley had never received it, as his quondam friend had found the letter referred to, in Mr. Basset's post-bag, which hung in the hall, and, after making himself master of the contents, had quietly put it in the fire, thinking by delay to create confusion, and, perhaps, stultify Morley's intentions altogether.

In his joy, honest, good-hearted Morley felt blandly disposed even to Hawkshaw, of whom he had such a constitutional mistrust. He had now an excellent opportunity for returning the ring, with which Ethel (whom Hawkshaw, incidentally, assured him was from home) had so unwisely entrusted to him; but in the height of his own satisfaction, he felt loth to mortify his luckless rival, and so delayed the matter for a time, while, smoking their cigars, they walked together slowly, side by side, up the hill, towards the rocks that overhung the sea, and border on the Yale of Acton.

"And so, old boy," said Morley to the silent and brooding Hawkshaw, "I am to go with our dear friends, the Bassets, after all."

"And what follows?"

"Of course, I shall have to look about me for some employment the moment we land, because I would rather die than be dependent on any man; but when I have the new judge's influence to second my exertions, something suitable and jolly will be sure to turn up."

"Ah—yes," accorded the other, smoking vigorously.

"Then, I shall have all the joy of the voyage with—(Ethel, he had almost said)—with my old friends the voyage through those very waters I so recently traversed on my half-hopeless homeward journey—a most miserable dog in my own estimation.

Morley, who, in the exuberance of his joy, began to whistle "A Life on the Ocean Wave," seemed to commune with himself rather than Hawkshaw, whose sinister visage at this moment presented somewhat of a picture as he listened.

"Like you, friend Ashton," said he, "I have failed to climb

"'The steep ascent where Fortune frowns afar.'

But I have learnt to fling a bowie-knife, point foremost, with deadly effect, and to handle a six-shooter ditto, damme—yes, and that is something."

Had Morley looked at Hawkshaw as he spoke, he would have seen a fierce glitter in his usually cunning eyes, betokening mischief.

"Well," he resumed, "any place is better than this conventional England. One of the greatest annoyances to me is the state of society in it; so you are wise to squat elsewhere."

"Indeed! How?" asked Morley, watching his cigar smoke as it curled away in the breeze that came from the sea, whose breakers they could now hear bursting on the rocks.

"Because that state compels us, as if we wore a vizard—a mask—to conceal our suspicions, our loves, and our hatreds—yes, Mr. Ashton, still more especially our hatreds—under a suave and cold-blooded exterior."

"The result of good breeding, I presume?"

"The result of cursed conventionality, I call it. The stronger the hate, too often, the brighter and softer is the smile that conceals it. Maladette! 'Tis not so in some of the sunny lands where I have been, and where a little homicide, now and then, is considered but a casual occurrence."

The captain was in what Morley and Mr. Basset were wont to term one of his "bitter and bouncing moods"—moods which rather amused them; so as this was scarcely a moment in which to proffer the ring, Morley lit another cigar, and to put off the time until he could meet Ethel, strolled on till they reached the summit of the cliffs, from whence could be seen the far extent of the dark blue sea, that stretched away to the south-west, with the sails that dotted it, shining red, rather than white, in the ruddy light of the setting sun. There, too, was visible the smoke of more than one steamer, rolling far astern, like a long and fading pennant on the sky.

So the rivals continued to ramble on in no very companionable mood, for Morley was happy and abstracted, while Hawkshaw was bitter and quarrelsome, till the deep hoarse booming of the breakers announced that they were close to Acton Chine, towards which, as if by silent and tacit consent, they proceeded.

The evening was lovely, and its calm beauty increased as the sun set and twilight stole on.

With the shrill practical whistle of an occasional locomotive on the London and North-Western line, there came on the breath of the soft west wind the more poetical tinkling of the waggon-bells from the dusty highway, in the green vale far down below; and now, though the placid air rang joyously, the evening chime from the broad, low Norman spire of Acton church, the solid outline of which stood defined and dark against the flush of the saffron sky beyond.

And with the breeze that wafted the sound came the fragrant perfume of the ripening fields, their warmth and fertility, as if it had stolen "o'er a bed of violets." Sunk in deepening shadow now, green Acton Chase, with all its great oaks blending in a mass, stretched far away in the distance to the foot of the uplands.

Acton Chine—the reader may perhaps have seen it—is a seam or chasm in the rocks, rising to the height of four hundred feet or more, sheer from the sea, whose waves for ever roar, toil, and boil in snow-white foam against its base.

Standing where Morley and Hawkshaw did, on the evening in question, one might say with Edgar, but perhaps more truly than he did of Dover:

"How fearful
And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,
Show scarce so large as beetles * * *
The murmuring surge,
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong."

There, too, as at Dover, on the dark face of those rocks, the fine green tufts of the samphire grow. The waves outside the chine are white as snow with foam and fury, while within the water is calm, deep, and dark as those of a far-sunk well.

Above, around, and below, the sea-birds wheel and scream, for the clefts and crannies of the rocks are full of their nests. And here, in explanation, we may add that chine is an old Anglo-Norman word, derived from echine—a gash or rent; and these chasms are so named in some parts of England, particularly about the Isle of Wight, where we find Compton Chine, Brook Chine, and the Black Gang Chine.

Morley peeped over into the awful profundity below, and then shrank back instinctively, with an emotion of inexpressible alarm and awe—it seemed so vast, so terrible!

Retiring, he seated himself on the verge of the giddy cliff and removed his hat, that the sea-breeze might play on his hot and flushed forehead. Cool and grateful, it refreshed, soothed, and calmed him.

Impressed by the beauty of the scene and of the evening, a calm joy pervaded Morley's heart, and he prayed a voiceless prayer to God to strengthen him for his destiny.

What put prayer into his head at such a time?

The scene was grandly terrible on one side, and softly serene on the other; but Morley was familiar with both.

Was it present happiness, or a solemn foreboding of future woe, that filled his soul with pious thoughts?

Morley himself could not tell. He thought of the future; and none can foresee what is in the womb of Time.

To be separated from Ethel—ah! there was no chance of that now; but Hawkshaw—the cunning and hateful Cramply Hawkshaw—for some brief space would hover about her still!

What of that? The broad waters of the mighty sea on which he looked, and whose breakers boiled against the rocks four hundred feet below him—the sea from which a red moon, round and vast as a chariot-wheel, was rising—would be around him and Ethel, and this man Hawkshaw would be left behind.

While these thoughts occurred to Morley, he opened his portemonnaie, and drew forth the ring he had promised to return.

At that moment Hawkshaw, who was seated behind him, crept near, with a visage pale, damp, and distorted by malevolence, and with a fiendish glare in his eye.

* * * * *

About an hour after this, the captain was seen leisurely proceeding along the road to Laurel Lodge.

He was alone!

CHAPTER IX.
ALARM.

Darkness had set in, and candles had been lighted for an hour nearly, when Hawkshaw entered the now half dismantled drawing-room of Laurel Lodge.

Rose was idling over the piano; Ethel was seated near the unremoved tea equipage, and Mr. Basset was busy among some papers in his escritoire. Hawkshaw, for reasons of his own, dared not encounter the pale, inquiring face of Ethel.

"Have you seen anything of Mr. Ashton?" asked her father, looking up, with one glance at Hawkshaw, and another at the clock on the mantel-piece. "It is past nine. He was only going to the railway station, and has not yet returned. His absence is most singular."

Hawkshaw hesitated, and looked at his watch with a confused air, as he muttered:

"Past nine—yes, ten minutes."

"He was seen to pass the gate with you," said Ethel.

"With me?" said Hawkshaw, starting.

"Yes."

"By whom?" he asked, with some asperity.

"Nance Folgate," said Rose.

"Ah—true, yes—we took a turn together; and when I saw him last he was going towards the chine."

"The chine!" exclaimed the girls together, in a tone of surprise that was not unmingled with alarm.

"The chine, at this hour!" repeated Mr. Basset.

"It was eight then; and he said he intended to enjoy a quiet weed along the cliffs."

"Most strange!" said Ethel, "when he had news of importance to communicate to me."

"He cannot be long now. I returned without him, as I felt odd—giddy; the regalias I sometimes smoke here don't agree with me. I used to get such prime ones in Mexico."

"You look pale—absolutely ill," said Mr. Basset; "have some wine. What is the matter?"

"Thanks," replied Hawkshaw, almost tottering into a chair, and tossing his red cap aside.

"The last bottle of our Cliquot is on the sideboard."

The cork was soon cut, and Hawkshaw nearly filled a crystal rummer with the foaming champagne, of which he drank thirstily. As he did so, his hand trembled, and the vessel was heard to rattle against his teeth.

Whence this unusual emotion, which did not escape the anxious eyes of Ethel.

"Oh, Heaven!" thought she in her heart, "if he should have quarrelled with Morley! His manner is so excited, so strange, something unpleasant—terrible—must have happened."

Time passed slowly.

Half-past nine struck, then ten, but there was no appearance of Morley. Ethel watched at the windows which opened to the lawn; she listened and lingered at the front door. Then Rose and she ventured to the foot of the avenue, now lighted by a clear, cold moon, and gazed down the long green lane, in which she had first met him on his return; but all was still, not a footfall was heard, nor aught but the dew dropping from the leaves.

Far into the darkness and silence stretched the vista of that long and shady lane, so famed for its wild roses in summer, its filberts and black brambleberries in autumn, its scarlet hips and haws in frosty winter—a real old English lane.

A sound breaks the impressive silence—it is the distant clock of the village church striking the hour of eleven.

Anon twelve struck, and no Morley came.

Ethel wept aloud. Mr. Basset now became seriously alarmed, and knowing how dangerous was the chine, and indeed, how much so were all the cliffs along the adjacent coast, he closely questioned Hawkshaw (who had now become more composed) as to when, where, and how he had last seen Morley, and his story never varied—that they had separated at the pathway which ascended upwards from the old London road to Acton Chine; that Ashton was in high spirits, having had a most satisfactory telegram from town, and that the speaker, when looking back, had last seen the outline of his figure between the earth and the sky on the summit of the rocks above the chine.

"He must have fallen and hurt himself—broken a bone, perhaps," suggested Mr. Basset, rising, and proposing to start.

"Oh, for mercy's sake—papa! papa!" began Ethel.

"Let us go forth to search—I am at your service!" said Hawkshaw.

"Nance Folgate, summon the gardener; let us get lanterns—a rope, a pole or two, so as to be ready for any emergency."

Pale, trembling, faint, and in tears with apprehension and vague fears of some impending disaster, Ethel would have accompanied them, but for the opposition made by her father and Hawkshaw; and with sickening anxiety, she saw them depart, knowing that some hours must necessarily elapse before they could bring intelligence that might relieve her agony or crush her heart for ever.

Muffled in cloaks and shawls, she and Rose, with old Nance Folgate, lingered at the end of the avenue, so long as the lantern lights were visible; and hour after hour, till dawn was drawing near, did they wait, trembling with every respiration, and listening in an agony of expectation to every sound, till the shades of night began to pass away.

When Mr. Basset, Hawkshaw, and the gardener set out, a little after twelve, the night had become dark—unusually so for the season—cloudy and windy.

They traversed the road leading to that portion of the cliffs on which Hawkshaw averred he had last seen Morley Ashton lingering in the twilight.

Hallooing from time to time, as they continued to ascend the pathway to the shore, they pushed on rapidly, yet pausing ever and anon to listen; but there came no response on the gusts of wind that occasionally swept past them.

The clock of Acton church in the valley below struck the hour of two, when they reached the summit of the cliffs, when weird and wild was the scene around them. Masses of cloud, like dark floating palls, were hurrying across the heavens; the stars between them shone out clear and brightly; the ocean, that stretched in distance far away, and blended with the sky, was flecked with foam, for there was a gale coming on from the seaward, and the boom of the hurrying waves as they rolled in white surf against the rock-bound coast, and mingled their roar with the bellowing wind in that deep and awful chasm, the chine, was terrifically grand and impressive, especially at such an hour.

Disturbed by the lantern-lights, and the voices of the three searchers, the wild sea-birds screamed and wheeled about in flocks.

The soft close turf grew to the very verge of the shore and wall-like cliff, and as the searchers proceeded along the giddy summit, seeking for traces of feet and hallooing from time to time, the utmost caution was necessary for their own safety.

Gradually they drew near the chine.

"Hallo—what is this?" exclaimed Mr. Basset, as he trod on something; "a hat—and near it, a kid glove."

They picked them up, and recognised Morley's light grey "wide-awake," and a glove supposed to be his, all uncertainty about the first-mentioned article being ended, by their perceiving his name written on the lining thereof.

Proceeding with greater care, a little farther on they found his cigar-case, and a few feet below, near the edge of the cliff, the ends of two half-used cigars.

"I told you he was enjoying a quiet weed," said Hawkshaw.

Mr. Basset and the gardener made no reply; but with eyes and lanterns close to the ground, were breathlessly examining several footmarks impressed in the soft gravelly soil and sea grass about the mouth of the chine.

"For Heaven's sake, take care, sir," exclaimed the gardener, whom the scene, the place, the hour, and the awful booming of the black sea in the profundity four hundred feet below, appalled. "But look here, sir," he added almost immediately; "oh, sir, look here!"

Two deep ruts in the gravel, as if formed by a man's foot slipping downwards, and two places from which the grass had been recently torn away by hands that had clutched them evidently in despair, showed but too plainly and too terribly that some one had fallen over there.

"Look here, captain—look here!" continued the excited gardener.

Hawkshaw was pale as death, and he drew back with an irrepressible shudder.

"Oh, heavens!" exclaimed Mr. Basset, "poor Ethel!—he has fallen over here, and must have perished—most miserably perished!"

"Nothing could save him, sir," said the gardener, in a low voice, "he would be drowned, if he was not dead before he reached the water."

After lingering hopelessly for a time, as if loth to accept the fact of such a sudden calamity, they began to descend from the chine, and slowly and sorrowfully retraced their steps to Laurel Lodge, to increase by their story the alarm, dismay, and grief, which already reigned there.

* * * * *

In vain were descriptions of Morley Ashton's person and dress circulated in the local papers, in vain were they distributed among the rural police, fishermen, and coastguard, by Mr. Basset, during the few days that remained before he left England.

In vain were telegrams dispatched along the coast, north and south (at Mr. Basset's expense), by Hawkshaw, who made himself most singularly and kindly active; no trace could be found of the missing one; and after three days had elapsed, there remained not a shadow of a doubt that he had been drowned by falling or being thrown over the cliff of the chine. The London detectives who examined the spot were suspicious enough to aver the latter, from the traces they found, and, in their opinion, Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw, the latter most unwillingly, ultimately found themselves compelled to concur.

CHAPTER X.
POOR ETHEL.

The day that followed the return of Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw from the perilous exploration of Acton Chine was one of dreadful suffering for poor Ethel.

Kind old Nance Folgate had forced the girls to retire to bed as dawn was breaking; but no sleep closed the eyes of Ethel Basset.

Morning came—a bright May morning—and still no word of Morley; for she could not realise as yet the idea, the dread conviction, of his death—that he had indeed perished so miserably.

Oh! was this the world of yesterday?

Her sister, Rose, weary with watching overnight, was now asleep. Happy Rose, who could gain oblivion in slumber. Ethel quitted her restless bed, opened the window, and looked forth into the sunny morning.

There was still the garden, with its trees and flowers, the first rays of the sun shining through the conservatory, a distant glimpse of the village church through a long vista of oaks, and the blue sea beyond. There, in the distance, she could trace the road that wound over the uplands towards that fatal Chine—the road he must have pursued but yesterday. There also—but tears, hot and blinding, welled up in her eyes, and she nestled again beside her sleeping and unconscious sister.

"Gone! Morley gone—Morley dead—Morley drowned!"

These words seemed ever on her lips, written in the air before her, to be whispered in her ears and in her heart, while fancy drew an agonising picture of his fall from that dreadful cliff into the yawning profundity below, where he would be tossed and dashed upon the rocks, till his poor, uncoffined remains were chafed to pieces by the waves.

As the lagging day drew on, she did not quit her bed; but, after a time, total prostration of mind and body enabled her to sleep soundly and deeply, with her aching head pillowed on the bosom of Rose; while her father, with Hawkshaw and others, pursued a hopeless and fruitless search for the missing man.

This slumber lasted little more than an hour, and waking brought her back to misery—a misery that flashed upon her vividly, keenly, and suddenly, calling all her half dormant faculties into instant life and action.

It was indeed coming back to agony.

Vainly did Rose speak to her of hope, that it might not have been he whom Hawkshaw had watched proceeding towards the Chine, and that the half-smoked cigars might not have been his.

"But the hat, with his name written in it, and the glove—his glove, Rose; see where I sewed it for him yesterday—only yesterday!" she would exclaim, while pressing it to her lips as she sat up in bed, with her dark hair all dishevelled about her white and polished shoulders, pale, worn, and crushed by an anguish there was no alleviating—for the loss of the poor dear heart, who had loved her so truly and so tenderly.

When re-examined by day, the verge of the Chine, by the abrasion of the soil, bore conclusive evidence that a short struggle had taken place, and that some one had fallen or been pushed over there. A few drops of blood were detected on the stones; but of this circumstance Ethel was not informed.

"Eat something, Miss Ethel—a bit of cake; take a little tea, a glass of wine, or anything; you must, darling, you must!" said old Nance Folgate, pillowing her favourite's head on her breast, towards the close of this most dreadful day.

Ethel silently declined, for the smallest crumb would have choked her; but grief is thirsty, so she drank the wine and water with gratitude, or rather permitted Rose to pour it between her pale and passive lips.

Then a shower of tears followed, and she moaned and sobbed aloud, and heavily. Another night followed, another day dawned; but no hope dawned with it, and no tidings came.

The first shock over, there settled on the mind and soul of Ethel a deep and settled grief. She ceased to weep, save when alone. For a time she was reckless of the future, or viewed it with sullen indifference or composure, none knew which. She cared not how soon they quitted Laurel Lodge now, nor how soon she saw the shores of England fade from view, though she thought, with a shudder, of the ocean which she knew must have entombed the corpse of him she loved so long and well.

And Cramply Hawkshaw—how did he comport himself during this painful crisis? Quietly, earnestly, full of apparent solicitude, ready in suggestion and active in inquiry. He remained mostly with Rose; but when Ethel appeared on the evening of the second day in the dining-room, he was ready, with hand and arm, to attend her politely, and silently.

She entered Morley's bed-room, now empty of its tenant. She flung herself upon the couch in an agony of grief, for the place seemed full of his presence, and his beloved form appeared to rise up embodied before her.

There were his travelling bag; his telescope and flask, his hair-brushes, a stray glove or so, and a miniature of herself, which had been the poor fellow's only solace when far away from her in Africa. There were other mementoes of the beloved one she would never see more; he whose poor remains, if they were not lying at the foot of that dreadful Chine, were being, perhaps, swept away to sea—that sea which, at times, she hoped she might not live to traverse.

Here prostrate on the couch she was found by Rose and Nance Folgate, who conveyed her out, and locked the door.

This event, by the confusion and anxiety it created, delayed the departure of the Bassets from Laurel Lodge for a week longer.

There were times when Ethel wished that she might die, though she shrank from the idea of being separated from her father and sister, and from not sharing their perilous journey; but her mother's grave under the close-clipped grass looked so calm and peaceful in the sunshine of the old English churchyard, that she almost longed to be laid by her side. However, as some one says, "Grief rivets the chain of our life instead of breaking it." So Ethel did not die; but she fell into a state of languid apathy, which caused her father and sister the most serious apprehension.

There were other times, when dreadful thoughts occurred to Ethel—thoughts that came to her mind unbidden, and that she dared express to none; but she could not help associating the mysterious and terrible calamity which had befallen Morley with the idea of Hawkshaw, his rival.

She remembered the unusual and unnatural pallor of his cheek, and his strange excitement on the eventful night; how he complained of illness; how thirstily he drank of the champagne; and how his hand shook so that the crystal which contained the wine rattled nervously against his teeth.

The thought of his story of the Barranco Secco; of his having too surely associated in California, and elsewhere, with such men as Pedro and Zuares Barraddas; and she remembered many episodes of his Mexican life, which he had incidentally related, and at which, though she and Rose had been wont to laugh at them, she shuddered now, and knew not why!

She perceived, too, that Hawkshaw wore his own ring once more, so Morley Ashton must have formally returned it to him on that fatal evening.

Prior to Morley's final arrangement to accompany them, Ethel had schooled her little heart to bear the separation, consequent on their anticipated sea voyage, and change of home, contemplating it as a sorrow that might have a happy end when brighter fortune smiled upon them all; but now she had lost him by a separation that would endure while life lasted.

The slight tinge of colour which her delicate cheek usually wore faded completely away. Her eyes lost their brilliant and calm expression, her lips their wonted smile, her spirits all their buoyancy.

Mr. Basset, we have said, saw this with alarm, and by every means in his power hastened to break up his household, and leave Acton-Rennel.

His daughter's thoughts were with the dead; but still the living, and the duties of life, claimed her care. One cannot live in the world and not be of it; thus, one of her last days spent at pleasant Laurel Lodge was occupied in paying farewell visits—supported between Rose and Hawkshaw—to her old pensioners and dependents in the thatched cottages among those lovely green lanes, that ere long were to know her footsteps no more, and these old people mingled their blessings with tearful hopes of her happiness and long life, in the new home to which she was about to depart.

On the tenth day after Morley's disappearance she found herself, with her father, Rose, Hawkshaw, and old Nurse Folgate, seated in a first-class carriage, speeding along the London and North-Western line towards the metropolis.

Laurel Lodge had long since vanished, with its whole locality.

Steeped in summer haze, the landscape flew past like the wind; but Ethel was listless. To her it seemed that the purpose of life, the joy of existence, the romance of love, and the charm of youth, had all gone for ever.

Hawkshaw was seated opposite to her. She lowered her veil to conceal her face; he held the last number of Punch well up to conceal his.

As Morley had disappeared thus, and beyond all trace, and as his berth was secured in their ship, the Hermione, which was to sail for the Isle of France, as soon as her cargo was all hoisted in, Hawkshaw availed himself of the circumstance to go in his place; by which means this most enterprising Texan officer secured his passage free.

CHAPTER XL
DARKNESS MADE LIGHT.

We last left Morley Ashton and Hawkshaw seated near the verge of Acton Chine.

The former was extracting from his portemonnaie the ring which Ethel Basset had so unwisely commissioned him to return, and he remained with it in his hand for a minute or two, forming in his own mind the least offensive mode of tendering it. At that time the chimes of the church of Acton-Rennel rung out joyously their closing peal, and the sound, together with the beauty of the evening, the softness of the wooded landscape on one hand, and the wild grandeur of the surf-beaten rocks on the other, were not without a most soothing influence on the somewhat poetic and imaginative temperament of Morley, who reflected on the shortness of the time he would be permitted to look on that familiar scene, and the changes that must take place ere—if ever—he saw it again.

He said something of this kind to Hawkshaw, who was alternately silent or nervously garrulous, adding, with a sad smile—

"I never hear the chimes of old Acton, ringing over the woodlands, without thinking of the lines—

"'Those evening bells, those evening bells,
How many a tale their music tells,
Of youth, of home, and native clime,
When last I heard their soothing chime.'

And then the scenery here about is so glorious, and so thoroughly English in its character and fertility!"

"Bah! you don't call this scenery, do you?" asked Hawkshaw, brusquely.

"Is it not charming?"

"May be so to you; but to me, who have hunted, scouted, and trapped over the mighty Sierras, which divide Texas from New Mexico—Sierras covered to their cloud-clapped summits with forests of oak, pine, and cedar, and all alive with wild horses and cattle; or to me, who have seen the yet denser woods out of which the Arkansas and Trinidad rivers come roaring to the sea, your mild, Dutch-looking, English landscape, is no more than a rat-ranche would be if compared to St. Paul's Cathedral?"

"It must be somewhat dangerous, a land teeming with wild horses and cattle?" said Morley, to change the subject, and smiling, as he lit a fresh cigar.

"Dangerous? Caramba! I rather calculate it is!"

"How?" asked Morley, carelessly.

"In those mountain ranges are wild trappers, and lawless bandidos, like those Barradas I told you of one evening—do you remember?"

"Perfectly."

"Fellows of all colours—white, black, and brown, yellow, and copper-coloured—who may be off with your purse and scalp before you know where you are. Then there are bears, conguars, buffaloes, panthers, wolves, foxes, and alligators. I was nearly gobbled up by one when bathing in the Red River. Immortal smash! I had a close run for it, and only kept him off by splashing and kicking like a sunfish in a breeze."

After a pause—

"I wish we had the ladies here," said Morley; "the evening is so lovely—the sunset is so rich."

"Aye—our Ethel is romantic, very!" observed Hawkshaw; "she rather likes 'Thaddeus of Warsaw,' and copies verses in a hot-pressed album; sighs often when alone, no doubt, and always ties the ribbons of her bonnet in a true-lover's knot."

Morley looked fixedly at the speaker, for the whole speech, and the phrase, "our Ethel," displeased him.

"Mr. Hawkshaw," said he, gravely, "there is something of a sneer in your tone, which I do not understand."

"Sneer—not at all. Do you imagine that I would sneer at one so charming as our friend, Miss Basset—one whom we mutually admire so much?" replied Hawkshaw; but as he spoke the fire of secret hate mingled in his eye with that of the admiration, we cannot term it love, he bore for Ethel.

"Apropos of Miss Basset," said Morley, now careless whether he offended or not, "I have here a ring of yours, Captain Hawkshaw, which she commissioned me to return to you, as, on reflection, she cannot think of depriving you of so interesting a relic of your Mexican campaigns."

"Thank you," replied Hawkshaw, with a quiet stare, as he took the ring from Morley, and placed it on one of his fingers, even his bushy moustache failing to conceal the fierce quiver of his upper lip; "I received it at a ball, from the eldest daughter of General Santa Anna, and so can well afford to receive it back from a daughter of old Scriven Basset."

This was the third or fourth history of the ring Morley had heard; but he only smiled in silence.

"You think you have done your duty," resumed the captain, as the resolution to quarrel became strong in his breast, so strong that he cared not to repress it; "but I reckon, friend Ashton, that you are slightly up a tree, as the Yankees say."

"Sir, I do not understand you," said Morley.

"I am not so vernal as to fail in perceiving that you are awfully spooney upon Miss Basset."

"If I am to construe your slang into meaning that I love her, you are quite right," replied Morley, coldly, as he rose up.

"But you cannot think of marrying her, even if old Basset be donkey enough to let you!"

"Captain Hawkshaw!"

"For one who can scarcely float himself, it is thankless work to take a sinking craft in tow," continued the captain, whose phrases were quite as often nautical as Mexican.

"Sir, you are impertinent."

"Caramba! not at all—but truthful—only truthful," replied Hawkshaw, with a studied insolence of manner, as he continued to knock the ashes off his cigar, so that they flew all over Morley's face. "If I had you in Mexico, I would give you advice more seriously; as it is, in this tame, stupid land of good order, coroners' inquests, rural police, and city bluebottles, I must content myself with what I have said."

"Stand back, sir, and permit me to pass you!" said Morley, haughtily, as he found that, on rising, he was unpleasantly near the verge of the rocks, and that Hawkshaw, with a dark and dangerous gleam in his eyes, stood menacingly between him and the safer portion of the edge.

It was at that moment, that unexpectedly as a star falls, or light flashes, a diabolical idea occurred to Hawkshaw, just as if a fiend, unseen, was at his ear to whisper and to urge him on.

A sudden silence seemed to fill the air—to pervade the land and sea. He ceased to hear the roar of the waves in the Chine below, or the screaming of the wild sea-birds in mid air. A clamorous ferocity—a terrible anxiety, seemed to possess his whole soul.

He cast a hasty glance around him; not a person was near, and no eye was upon them, save One in heaven, and that dread eye he forgot. He gave the unsuspecting Morley a dreadful blow with his clenched hand, and then a violent push. The victim staggered backward, reeled forward, and as he fell, clutched wildly at the turf which fringed the edge of the rocks.

"Oh, Heaven!" burst from his lips; "Hawkshaw—you cannot—you dare not mean this! Save me—Ethel!"

The pieces of turf he clutched so desperately gave way, and without a sound he vanished into the awful profundity below!

Hawkshaw lingered a moment by the fatal spot, for in that moment all his senses were paralysed. His breath, his sight, and hearing were gone, and he felt as one who had ceased to live.

Then he glanced carefully, fearfully, and stealthily around, to assure himself again that the dreadful deed he had committed was unseen by mortal eyes, and anon, turning, he proceeded rapidly to descend the winding pathway from the Chine, and then sought the road to Laurel Lodge.

The minutes spent in descending seemed to be so many hours. His feet felt as if glued to the dusty path, and his knees trembled under him. Before he reached the highway the fierce fever of his blood had cooled, though his heart still beat wildly, and his temples throbbed painfully.

There was a revulsion of feeling now, and he began to wish the cruel deed undone. It was an act so tremendous, so fearful to be perpetrated among civilised people, that it appalled him more than he could have expected, though he had witnessed, yes, and acted in many a deed of cruelty and bloodshed, in climes where the law, unless it were Lynch law, was unknown even in name.

The sun had set, and the sombre shadows of evening were deepening on the land and sea.

Hawkshaw walked hurriedly, taking a great circuit, that the perturbation of his spirits might subside a little before he presented himself at Laurel Lodge; but the throbbing of his temples, and the leaping of his heart, continued the same as he hastened on; and now, as the twilight deepened, the trees and shadows began to take strange and threatening forms, and ever before him he seemed to see the last despairing glance of Morley's eyes, and in his ears to hear the rending of the turf as it gave way, with the awful sound of the poor victim's voice, as with the terror of a dreadful death in his soul, he so vainly sought the pitiless destroyer to save him.

In the cool flow of a wayside runnel, he bathed his trembling hands and flushed forehead. Then he began to consider that, as no one had seen him commit the act, he need scarcely wish it undone; that he should dismiss the palsying fear that was gnawing at his heart, for in time he would strive to forget, as he had forgotten and lived down many a thing before.

He had removed a troublesome rival from his path, and fearfully had he punished Ethel for her rejection of his addresses but two hours or so before, it now seemed years ago, and for her open preference of the hapless Morley Ashton; and yet—and yet the emotions of that man's soul were what no pen can depict.

The summer moon that rose so broad and redly from the distant sea now showed her clear, bright, silver disc above the rocks of Acton Chine, but Hawkshaw dared not look upon her lest he might see murder on her face, as slowly, with parched lips, pallid cheeks, and trembling hands, he left the long, green lane, and proceeded up the avenue that led to Laurel Lodge.

CHAPTER XII.
ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP "HERMIONE," OF LONDON.

Amid the glare, the roar, and bustle of the mighty world of London, ten days passed away like a painful dream, an unrealisable phantasmagoria, to Ethel, and like a dream, too, appeared the embarkation at the crowded docks (which seemed crammed with all the vessels in the world) one board the Hermione, a fine clipper ship of 500 tons register, which, with all her canvas loose, and blue peter flying at the fore, was towed down the crowded river by a puffing, panting, noisy little paddle-tug, which rejoiced in the name of Garibaldi.

Blackwall, with its docks; noble Greenwich, with its terraces and domes; Woolwich, where, now and then, a drum beat sharply, or a cannon boomed through the air, were speedily passed; vast fleets of merchantmen, crowded river steamers, and lumbering barges, sidling down with the tide were glided between; each bend of Father Thames was traversed, and soon the Hermione was off Gravesend so busy as a watering-place, and ever alive with whistling trains and smoking steamers, in its noise, bustle, and gaiety contrasting with sombre Tilbury, on the flat Essex shore, with its brick-faced bastions, double-ditch, and moat—an old cannon or two lying among the sea slime, and a solitary sentinel pacing to and fro before King Charles's Gate.

At Gravesend, where the Hermione lay for a time, with blue peter still flying, and her foretopsail loose, as a double signal "for sea," she was joined by her captain, who came by the down train from town; the tug was paid off and a pilot taken on board, with the last of the sea-going stores.

Then sail was made on the ship, and the sunset of a fine May evening saw her past Sheerness, with its vast basin, docks, and storehouses, and the guard-ship at the Nore, which pealed her evening gun across the silent sea.

The wind was freshening as the eventful day went down.

Ethel and Rose, with old Nance Folgate, were all below now, sick and ill. Mr. Basset and Hawkshaw trod the lee side of the quarter-deck together. Both were silent. Mr. Basset was gazing sadly at the shore along which they were running, and anon at the red hulk of the floating light, which is anchored four miles north-eastward of Sheerness, and the lamps of which were now twinkling amid the haze and obscurity far astern.

Hawkshaw was full of thought, too. He felt a secret joy at being scatheless and free from England; though, when reflecting, he thought, in the words of Jane Eyre: "It is not violence that best overcomes hate, nor vengeance that most certainly heals an injury."

The Hermione, we have said, was a 500-ton ship. She was one of the finest of her class that ever left the slips at Blackwall, and this was only her third voyage; thus, in addition to being new, she was well found and well fitted up in every respect.

John Phillips, her captain, was a bluff, ruddy-visaged, jolly little man, with cheeks turned red by exposure to sun and sea-breeze. He had three mates; the senior, Mr. Samuel Quail, was a plain, honest, rough seaman, who expected next voyage to have a ship of his own; the second, Mr. Foster; but the third was Adrian Manfredi, an Italian, a quiet and rather gentlemanly young man, of whom we shall hear more an on.

The Hermione had a surgeon, Leslie Heriot, a Scotsman, of course, and F.R.C.S.E.; a boatswain, carpenter, blacksmith, and a crew of a somewhat mingled kind, as we shall have unfortunate cause to show ere long. She was bound for Singapore, but was to touch at the Isle of France on her way out.

Her cabin was handsome and spacious, and little cabins, called state-rooms, opened off it with sliding doors.

Ethel, Rose, and Nance Folgate had one of them. Mr. Scriven Basset and Hawkshaw had the berth opposite. The others were occupied by the officers of the ship, and all bade fair to form a pleasant little community during the long voyage before them.

For two days the Hermione lay at anchor off Deal; on the third day she put to sea. By this time Ethel and Rose had nearly got what Captain Phillips bluntly termed "their sea-legs under them," and sat on the quarter-deck seats after breakfast, well muffled in cloaks; for though a lovely May sun was shining on the rippling sea, and all over the fertile coast of Kent, the atmosphere was chill, as the breeze swept over the watery Downs.

The day was charming, the wind was fair, and, with everything set upon her that would draw, even to her topgallant studding-sails rigged aloft, the Hermione flew before it.

The chalky cliffs of Kent; Dungeness lighthouse, with its miles of shingly headland; gay Brighton, with its far extent of sandy bay, that stretches from Beechy Head to Selsea Hill; the chalky ranges that look down on the wooded weald of Sussex—were soon passed, and ere long the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, gilded by the evening sun, rose on the starboard bow.

Rose Basset, about whom, attracted by her girlish beauty and espièglerie, the young Scotch surgeon and the Italian mate were both disposed to hover, asked questions from time to time—those silly, but, perhaps, natural questions which landfolks will ask on board ship, which, somehow, did not sound quite so silly when asked by the rosy lips of such a pretty girl as Rose—while poor Ethel remained seated in silence, with her eyes fixed on the distant coast, and wondering how far Laurel Lodge and Acton-Rennel were beyond those shadowy cliffs of chalk.

Her reflections or thoughts were all chaos—a mere mass of confusion. Thus, at times she could scarcely realise where she was, or how she came to be on board the Hermione, whether the journey by rail to London, her ten days' sojourn there, and her being at present on the sea, were not all a dream—a protracted nightmare, from which she would waken and find herself in her familiar bed-room in dear old Laurel Lodge, which her eyes were never more to see.

She thought, "How bright the evening sun may be shining on it now; how gaily down the long leafy vistas of Acton Chase, and on poor mamma's grave. How little could she have conceived that we should be so far from it? But the Lodge—ah, others inhabit it now; others look through the windows and pass through its rooms; others promenade the gravelled walks and play croquet on its grassy lawn, or cull flowers in its conservatory. The place that knew us once, knows us no more; we shall never see it again; never tread its soil, or breathe its air; never more, never more!"

Her tears fell, tears that fell hot and fast.

"Oh, to be with Morley and at rest," she sighed in her heart. "But then there is papa, poor papa, who loves me so well, and Rose."

Her father's kind and benevolent face, sweet, ruddy Rose's happy smile, and the familiar visage of Hawkshaw (who had become exceeding gentle and attentive), were ever before her. But Laurel Lodge, with its home life, its elegance, and quiet details, with the face, voice, image, existence, and loss of Morley Ashton, seemed all to have passed away to a vast distance from her.

In a very few days she seemed to have lived a great many years in thought and suffering.

"Cheer up, Ethel—permit me to call you so," said Hawkshaw, who had been silently regarding her sweet, pensive face. "Cheer up," he repeated, in a low voice; "think of what is before us in the Mauritius—the lovely Isle of France—the land of Paul and Virginia, that amiable little Virginia, about whom every lady at least once in life sheds so many tears, especially when in her early teens. We must go over all the places depicted by Bernardin St. Pierre in his novel; the Shaddock Grove, the Mount of Discovery, Cape Misfortune, and the Bay of the Tomb—eh?"

"In pity leave me to myself," said Ethel, on whose sensitive ear his half-jocular voice sounded gratingly.

"As you please," he muttered, under his breath, with impatience, as he went to leeward and lit a cigar.

Next evening Ethel wept again, as she saw the last of England—the lovely coast of Devon, with all its apple-bowers mellowing in the sun—fade into a blue streak, that blended with the evening sea.

Then, for the first time, sea and sky, cloud and water were around them, and she strove to rouse herself from the apathy that had been oppressing her faculties, and endeavoured, if she could not speak, at least to listen to the conversation of others.

"Our crew are indeed a mixed lot, Mr. Basset," she heard Captain Phillips say to her father; "mixed in character and in colour; more like a gang shipped in the Mersey than in London."

"How so, sir?" asked Mr. Basset.

"We have Yankees, West Indians, and Mexican Spaniards—some of these last are the worst of the lot."

"Been a good many years in Mexico, Captain Phillips," said Hawkshaw, assuming a jaunty air.

"Have you?"

"Yes, and should like to see some of your fellows."

"They are quarrelsome, I presume," observed Mr. Basset.

"Very, and very apt to use their knives. Keep her away a point or two to the southward, Ellerton," said he to the man at the wheel. "Mr. Quail, desire the watch to bring those lee braces more aft."

"They should be restricted in the use of such weapons as sheath-knives, by law," said Mr. Basset, emphatically, and thinking, perhaps, of his judge's wig, which he had been recently trying on.

"So they should, sir, but the law seldom reaches far into blue water, unless so be as a Queen's pennant is floating over it. Do you see that fellow out upon the arm of the mainyard just now?"

"Ah!—what is he perched up there for?—amusement?" asked Mr. Basset.

"He is busy securing the eye of the stun'sail boom."

"Well, captain?"

"To my mind, he is the very model of a pirate."

They all looked up, and saw a large-boned, powerful, athletic, dark-skinned, and black-whiskered fellow, clad in a red shirt, and a pair of remarkably dirty canvas trousers, secured about his waist by a black belt, in which a long sheath-knife was stuck.

He was astride the yard-arm; the bronze-like soles of his muscular bare feet were turned towards the group, and, as the captain said, he was doing something to the studding-sail boom.

"A foreigner, I presume, by the rings in his ears," said Mr. Basset, with his hands thrust into the pockets of his ample white waistcoat.

"A Mexican Spaniard," said Captain Phillips; "we have two of them on board, brothers, and a pretty pair of rascals they are. But there goes the steward's bell for tea, ladies; Miss Basset, may I have the pleasure of taking you below? She's running on a wind now, and will be pretty steady. Doctor Heriot, oblige me by doing the attentive to Miss Rose."

The young surgeon (whom the captain's request was meant to quiz) hastened, smilingly, to proffer his arm as directed, and the whole party, including Quail, the first mate, Manfredi, the third (as the second had charge of the deck), descended to the cabin, where Rose did the honours of the captain's tea-table, for Ethel was still too weak or too listless to do so.

The last to leave the deck was Cramply Hawkshaw. As he turned to descend, he looked up at the Spanish seaman, whose outline and dark profile were clearly defined against the sky.

"'Tis Pedro Barradas," he muttered; "confusion and a curse! the Barradas here."

His face was white as that of the dead—white as on the fatal evening when he entered Laurel Lodge; and he seemed scarcely to know what he was doing, as with one of his stealthy glances cast around, he descended to the cabin, from which he did not issue for the remainder of that night.

CHAPTER XIII.
ACTON CHINE.

More than three weeks have now elapsed since that eventful evening which saw Hawkshaw and Morley Ashton ascending the steep pathway that leads to Acton Chine, and which, moreover, saw the first-named personage traversing the same path homeward—but alone.

Though Morley was flung over the cliff, and though the turf which he grasped gave way, so that he actually fell into the yawning gulf below, he was not fated to perish.

But before the turf parted in his despairing grasp, poor Morley lived a lifetime, as it were, of keen agony.

He knew the profundity of the awful abyss that yawned in blackness far down beneath him, and he heard the roaring of the fierce waves, that leaped and boiled as if impatient of their prey.

The chine we have stated as being about 400 feet in height; its depth, to the bottom of the sea, we have no means of knowing, the foundation of its rocks being far below where mortal eye can fathom.

After the name of Ethel escaped him, he had no power to utter another cry, for the terrible expression which he read in the malignant face of Hawkshaw, while standing safely on the brink above, paralysed him, and he remained silent—but silently desperate, in his wild and despairing attempts to raise himself up, and to regain a footing on the cliff; but he had no purchase (to use a mechanical term); thus, while clinging by his hands, his feet and knees scraped fruitlessly on the hard face of the basaltic rocks.

Mechanically, too, he moved his body, as one who, in sleep, dreams, and is afraid of falling.

He felt the turf rending, the last clutch of life parting, by the very efforts he made to save it. Then a blindness seemed to come upon him—a mist, through which the form of Hawkshaw seemed dilated to colossal proportions, towering between him and the sky like a destroying angel, while the roaring of the sea beneath seemed to fill all space, as with the roll of thunder.

Bead-drops of agony oozed upon his icy brow, while despair and the terror of death were in his heart, and though the whole episode lasted little more, perhaps, than a single minute, Morley Ashton lived, as we have stated, a lifetime of agony!

The turf gave way! a sigh—it seemed his parting soul—escaped him; he fell, and vanished from the eyes of Hawkshaw.

But Heaven had ordained that the poor lad was not to perish. About thirty-five, perhaps forty feet below the verge of the chine, there extends a ledge or abutting piece of rock, about five feet broad, and eight or ten feet long, so far as the eye may judge of it from the seaward, as mortal hand has never measured it; and on this natural shelf he fell heavily, and almost senseless by emotion and the shock.

A thick coarse moss, of a kind that has grown there for ages, mingled with a species of guano deposited by the sea-birds, received him softly, and broke the force of his fall, which, had the face of the basalt been bare, must have produced the most fatal injuries.

For some time Morley thought all was over, and he lay still—half stunned alike by the shock and by the suddenness of the whole event. Then his heart filled with a gush of gratitude to Heaven that he was saved, till reflection brought a thrill of horror that he was now utterly lost.

He heard still the ceaseless roaring and bellowing of the breakers, gurgling, sucking, and surging in the chine; he heard also the wild screaming of the sea-birds above and below him, as the astonished gulls and cormorants wheeled in circles, or alighted on the shelf of rock beside him, and flapped their wings with a sharp and at times booming sound.

The evening passed away, and night came on before Morley dared to stir, to move, or look about him. In all its starry splendour, he could see the Plough and the glorious stream of the Milky Way.

Then the moon, that whilom rose as we have said, red and round as a crimson shield, at the far verge of the watery horizon, had gradually reached almost to the zenith, when her disc, small and sharply defined, shone like a ball of glowing silver amid the sparkling ether.

A broad flake of her glorious sheen poured aslant into the gaping chine, increasing, perhaps, its weird and ghastly aspect; but this broad stream of light enabled poor Morley to examine the place of his fall, and he soon saw in all their details the horrors of his hopeless situation.

Above, the rock ascended sheer as a wall to the height we have stated—a wall up which it was hopeless to think of climbing.

Below, the cliff receded from the ledge on which he lay, so that in reality the sea was foaming completely beneath him.

From the land-side his position could neither be seen nor even discovered in any way whatever; and even if it were so, in what way were the finders to succour him?

How many ships might pass before even a sailor's ready eye might detect a human figure perched so far up, among the hungry cormorants and shrieking sea-mews?

Without shelter, food, or water, how long could he survive on the giddy shelf of that storm-beaten sea-cliff, where he dared not close an eye lest he might roll into eternity below?

To ascend was impracticable; to descend was to die!

How awful it was to see the white sea-birds skimming the ocean with wings outspread, or floating in the air, and know that they were more than 300 feet below him!

If descried by the crew of a fisher-boat, the idea occurred to him of risking a plunge into the water: but from this desperate thought his heart recoiled at once. To fall whizzing through the air from such a height would insure his falling breathless into the sea, so that its waves would close over him when his lungs were empty, and he would never rise again.

Days might pass, and nights would certainly pass, during which no eye could see him, save those of the sea-birds that wheeled in circles round him, as if impatient of their repast, from which his apparent life and power of action—as he "who-whooped" from time to time to scare them—as yet denied their craving beaks and bills, but only as yet, for he anticipated with horror a time when, faint and expiring, they might pounce down in one voracious flock and rend him piecemeal.

And thus Ethel, life, hope, and the world, were all cut off from him at one fell swoop, by a single blow of Hawkshaw's felon hand.

Conquered, powerless, and crushed by the united horrors of his situation; unseen, unknown, left to die within a pistol-shot of help, within forty feet of safety, he cowered his face between his knees, and murmuring, "Oh, villain! villain!" he wept like a child.

So the breakers continued to boom, so sickening in their monotony, far down below, and the night passed on. Morley strove to pray, but his mind was a chaos; he could neither thank Heaven for his first escape, nor implore aid for the future. For a time he was stupefied.

So the wild sea-birds—the black-billed auk, the mouse-coloured guillemot, the huge white gull, the rank, coarse cormorant, whose shape Milton describes Satan as assuming, when devising death, he perched upon the Tree of Life—continued to wheel and scream around the miserable Morley, who remained on his lofty perch in an agony of spirit.

The sea ebbed and flowed again; the moon paled and waned; the clouds gathered in heaven and divided again. Day stole over the brightening ocean, and gradually a bright May morning—the same morning when, creeping from Rose's side, the weeping Ethel drew the curtains of her window, and looked forth upon the upland path that led to this fatal spot.

The morning star twinkled brightly and propitiously above the edge of the chine, and then its light faded into radiance of the growing dawn.

And with day came hope, that if he was doomed to die it might not be unseen. Morley wiped his damp brow and eyes with his handkerchief, for though the season was summer, the atmosphere was damp and chill upon the cliff above the sea.

He heard once the voice of a lark, but it was high above him.

From the place where he sat, Morley's eye could command a range of about eight miles of sea, and as the day dawned he anxiously swept the offing, but in vain; nothing was visible, but what the Ancient Mariner saw, "the sea and sky, the sea and sky," till about sunrise, when a white sail and the smoke of a steamer, both hull down, could be seen at the horizon, some thirty miles off; thus, so far as succour was concerned, they might as well have been beyond the equator.

Fourteen hours had he now been missing.

What would be the emotions, the bewilderment, the grief of Ethel?—what the specious, the artful, it might be the villainous story framed by Hawkshaw to account for his disappearance? It might be one that would blast his character, blacken his memory, and sever even her love from him.

Was not a murderer capable of anything?

Now a fisher-boat, brown and tarry, with a patched lugsail, of no particular hue, bellying out in the fresh morning breeze, with the snow-white foam bubbling under her sharp prow, shot into sight about two miles off.

Morley shouted, though he might have saved himself the trouble, for the two men who formed her crew could no more have heard him than if he had been in the moon; but he could not repress the impulse that made him halloo to them again and again.

He waved his white handkerchief frantically. If observed, it would seem but a sea-bird's wing at such a distance; but the two black specks in the fishing-boat were seated with their backs to the shore, one intent upon handling his tiller, the other grasped the sheet, and both were enjoying their pipes and gazing seaward; so the boat, with her bellying sail, and foam-dripping prow, passed on, and Morley remained still unseen and alone.

Other three boats passed, under a press of sail, towards the fishing ground; but they were far off—so far that he scarcely made any attempt to signal them.

He felt no hunger; but now a thirst, which he had no means of allaying, and which the saline property of the atmosphere tended to increase, came upon him to add to his troubles and misery of mind and body.

Now a steamer passed, bound for Ireland, or the Isle of Man.

She was nearly ten miles off; but in the hope some idling tourist or passenger might be scanning the coast with a telescope or lorgnette, he continued, with anxious vigour, to wave his handkerchief, but waved it in vain, for she sped on her course and rapidly disappeared, though the long, smoky pennant, emitted by her funnel, lingered for hours across the sky before it melted into thin air and passed away.

And still the angry waves boomed below, and the greedy sea-birds wheeled and screamed around him. How he longed for wings like the latter!

"Oh, Heaven!" he exclaimed, "aid, inspire, and sustain me for a little time, or let me perish at once, and end this day of horror!"

More than once, he actually conceived the idea of endeavouring to lure a couple of gulls within his grasp, and then to plunge into the sea, in the hope that their flapping and outspread pinions might break the force of his descent; and once safely in the ocean, he knew that he could swim round the chine, and reach the level beach that lies about a quarter of a mile to the westward of it.

But he might as well have hoped to catch the distant clouds or the hues of the rainbow, as those wild gulls and gannets.

So the weary day passed on, and, with horror, he contemplated the prospects of another night of hopeless watching, of sleeplessness and thirst, for he dared not close his eyes, even for a moment, lest drowsiness should come upon him, when he might topple from his perch into the eternity that yawned below.

The rising wind moaned in the chine, and waved the tufts of samphire below, and those of the grass forty feet above his head.

The sun was verging to the westward. The breeze, which had been soft and mild all day, changed, and blew keenly against the cliff, rolling the sea in billows before it; and now, about six o'clock in the evening, so far as Morley could judge—as his watch had been broken in his fall—a smart, square-rigged vessel—a ship, as he soon perceived—lying as near the wind as she could, on a long starboard tack, came gradually near the shore.

When she first hove in sight she might have been six miles off, but was running steadily towards the chine.

Morley knew that she would come within half a mile, or less, of the coast, without going about or shortening sail, as the water was so deep; so he resolved not to miss this chance of life and rescue!

To have a larger signal than his handkerchief, he drew off his white shirt, and, holding it by the sleeves, permitted the whole garment to wave out like a banner on the wind.

CHAPTER XIV.
THE RESCUE.

On came the beautiful ship, with all her white canvas shining in the setting sun. Her deck, on which, from his fearful perch, Morley could look completely down, was spotless, and her crew seemed pigmies, herself a toy, but one, nevertheless, instinct with life, as she flew before the breeze, careening gracefully over, with the white foam curling under the bows, and sweeping past her counter, to form a long grey wake in the green sea astern.

Frantically Morley waved his impromptu banner, his signal of distress; and long he continued to do so, bathed in perspiration, and enduring an agony of hope and anxiety, before he could perceive the crew hastening to the bows, the forecastle bitts, and some ascending into the fore-rigging, as if to have a better look at him.

"Hurrah! and blessed be God, they have seen me!" he exclaimed.

At that moment up went the scarlet ensign to the gaff-peak, from whence it was dipped once, and hoisted again, as a signal that he had been observed.

On she comes; and now she is about half a mile distant from the rocks of Acton Chine. A man is heaving the lead in the fore-chains, but no soundings are there for more than forty fathoms; and borne over the water, and upward through the ambient air, the words of command came clearly to Morley's excited ear.

Now the headsails shiver, heavily flap the jib, forestaysail, and foretopmast-staysail, round swings the main and maintopsail yards sharp to windward, and now she lies to, with her broadside to the shore.

A quarter-boat is lowered; six men—Morley can count them—drop into her; something is thrown in, Morley knows not what, but a telescope would have revealed that it is a coil of stout rope.

Now the oars are shipped. Bravo! she is shoved off, and the dripping blades flash in the last rays of the setting sun, as she darts from the ship's side, and sweeps round the promontory, and out of sight, towards the little cove, where Morley knew there was a landing-place and little strip of white sand.

Morley waited nearly an hour—it seemed an age—after this. The ship still lay off the rocky shore, rolling heavily on the ground swell—so heavily, that the cracking flap of her loose canvas reached his ear sometimes. Once the mainyard was slued round, and sail was made on her for a little way, as if she had been drifted by wind and current rather too close in shore; but again the yard was backed, and, as before, she lay to, motionless and still.

The sun had gone down, dusk was stealing over the land, and the warm saffron flush that bathed the western sea and sky became obscured by masses of copper-coloured clouds.

Morley's heart beat wildly; he listened, but heard only the boom of the eternal breakers in the horrid grave that yawned below, and the screaming of the sea-birds around him.

Suddenly he heard a cheer—the mingled shout of several voices—ring in mid-air above him. Oh, how his poor heart bounded at the sound!

He looked upward, as he had done a hundred times before, but saw nothing, save the impending rock, for a time, till suddenly something appeared to swing over it, between him and the sky.

Down it came, and soon he grasped it, and the rope to which it was attached.

Wrapped round with a seaman's neckerchief, it proved to be a pint bottle, with a memorandum, written in pencil, twisted round the neck.

"Take a pull at the bottle, to give you strength, and lash the line round you; tie the knot well, for your life depends on it. Then pass up the word to hoist away, and never fear but we shall pull you up."

Such were the directions pencilled on the scrap of paper.

With a sigh of joy and gratitude, Morley, faint, weary, and trembling in every limb and every nerve, uncorked the bottle, which contained brandy-grog—stiff half-and-half. As directed, he took a hearty "pull" thereat, for strength and coolness were alike necessary now.

He then cast the bottle into the profundity below. No sound followed its descent: and the fall of a sixty-four-pound shot would have caused none there.

He tied the rope round his body, under the arm-pits, but with considerable difficulty, as his hands trembled like aspen leaves.

"All ready? heave away!" he shouted.

After a time the rope was tightened from above; a few sharp tugs followed, as if those who sought to save him wished to assure themselves that all was secure below.

Then followed the familiar "Yeo-heo!" of merchant seamen when pulling together, and Morley felt his scalp bristling as he was lifted off his feet and swung into mid-air.

The hated ledge of rock—hated, though, but for its lucky intervention, he must long ago have "slept the sleep that knows no waking"—receded below him, and he was dragged up the face of the bluff so speedily that all his care was requisite, by the use of hands and feet, to save his face and knees from being bruised and torn.

At last he reached the verge—that awful verge, close to where the tufts of grass had parted in his seeming death-grasp. Here a stoppage, a trivial delay, occurred; Morley was too blind and giddy to know why or wherefore, but he was not without fear that the knot his feeble hands had tied might break loose, or that the chafed cord might part, here, as it were, upon the threshold of the world and a new lease of existence; nor did he feel secure until he felt himself grasped bodily by the strong hands of several sturdy seamen, dragged in, as it were, and landed like a huge fish on the grass. Pale, panting, weak, weary, and becoming breathless, he fainted outright.

"Here's a coil, mate," said one of the seamen. "The poor fellow has gone right off into a swound, and is as useless as a wet swab."

"What's to be done now, Mr. Morrison?" asked another.

"We can't leave him, dying, it may be, of starvation," replied the seaman addressed—one in authority, apparently, and who spoke English correctly, but with a Scottish accent. "No house is nearer than yonder hamlet. He is well rigged, and don't look like a poor samphire gatherer, after all. How the dickens did he get up or get down there, unless on a grey gull's back?"

"Take a leg and an arm, Bill. Heave ahead. We must get him down from this 'tarnal steep bluff, somehow."

And, carrying Morley as carefully as they could, the seamen, who were six in number, proceeded downwards by the narrow path which led to the beach.

So intent had these worthy fellows been on their humane operations, that they had completely failed to observe how the dense clouds had been banking up to seaward; how the waves were curling up, white and frothy, and how the wind was freshening, till it swept the spoon-drift off each foaming crest, into the trough between; or how the ship had doused her royals, and handed her topgallant-sails, to make all snug for the coming blast.

"We have not a moment to lose," said Morrison, the mate. "It is almost dark already, lads—very dark for a May night. A breeze in shore is coming on fast. Let's be off to the ship without delay."

"But this poor fellow, sir."

"Can't be left to die upon the beach. It would be clear murder, mates."

"Let us take him aboard with us, and send him ashore with the first in-shore craft we overhaul after he gets his sea-legs."

"In, in! Here comes the gale! Out oars! Shove off!"

And thus Morley Ashton, still insensible, or completely stupefied and passive, in three minutes more was speeding over the rising waves, as fast as six oars could bear him, towards the unknown ship.

CHAPTER XV.
AN OLD SHIPMATE.

For twenty-four hours after he was on board, Morley Ashton was alternately faint and delirious. His nervous system had been overstrained, and thus, for a time, he knew not where he was, by whom rescued, or by whom surrounded, and, at times, he still fancied himself on his awful perch above Acton Chine, and still in his ears he seemed to hear the roar of the waves and the screaming of the sea-birds.

Meanwhile a heavy gale had sprung up, and the ship which sheltered him had been compelled to stand off to sea, pursuing her course south-south-west, and thus the land had vanished astern some seven hours before Morley recovered complete consciousness, and began to look curiously and inquiringly around him.

Was he in a dream?

Whence the strange and not unfamiliar odour of new paint and tar, and the close atmosphere, so undeniably that of a ship's cabin? Then there were the creaking of timbers, the jarring of all sorts of things, the swaying to and fro of a chained lamp, of a brass tell-tale compass, that swung in the skylight—the swaying, also, of berth-curtains on brass rods and rings, the rattle of racks and plates and dishes in an open locker, the clatter of blocks on deck, and the gurgling wash of water against the outer sheathing, with the jolting of the rudder, and the rasping of its chains.

Aided by the gleams of uncertain radiance that came down the square skylight, and sometimes with prismatic hues through the yokes that were inserted in the planking of the deck, Morley looked around him, and became assured, beyond a doubt, that he was a-bed in the cabin of a ship under sail, and in no dream at all.

At that moment footsteps were heard descending the companion ladder, and a seaman, muffled in a storm jacket and sou'-wester, both of which were shining with salt spray, approached the berth in which Morley lay.

"Bartelot—Tom Bartelot! old friend and school-fellow," he exclaimed, with bewilderment, "where on earth did you come from?"

"Not from among the clouds and gulls, as you did, Morley," replied the other, laughing.

"And so—so you are beside me!"

"Of course I am, and right glad to see you again, Ashton; but this is a queer business of yours, old fellow."

"How?—why?—where am I?"

"Aboard my ship, to be sure."

"Then I have had fever again, and have never been at home; have never seen Ethel! Have never been thrown into Acton Chine! I have had dreams, Tom—oh, such dreams!"

"I rather think you have, Morley."

"How mad I must have been, and such queer things I must have said. Did I speak about the Bassets and the Isle of France? I would have sworn that I had seen Ethel, had spoken to her, and—and kissed her many times. Dear Ethel! And so we are still on board your brig in the Bonny River?"

"Now, what are you talking about? You are most awfully at sea, in more ways than one!" exclaimed Bartelot, thrusting his hands deep into his trousers pockets, and regarding Morley with great surprise. "My poor chum, Ashton, you are not aboard my old brig, the Rattler, of Liverpool, at Foche Point, with the yellow flag—the sign of fever—flying at the foremasthead, but aboard of my new ship, the Princess, of London, of 300 tons register (we won't say what burden) and Al at Lloyd's, bound for Rio de Janeiro, with a mixed cargo, and now about eighty miles off the Land's End and Cape Cornwall."

"Tom, Tom, how you bewilder me," groaned Morley.

"We are just clearing St. George's Channel with a glorious breeze—quite aft—though it will soon be upon the starboard quarter, I fear. So now, my boy, tell me how the deuce you came to be perched up aloft among the gulls and gannets on yonder rocks? A most fearful place it is, and a world of trouble it cost my first mate, Bill Morrison, to get you towed up in safety."

The silence almost of stupefaction succeeded this information, and some time elapsed before Morley could understand or realise the truth of it.

Meanwhile, let us describe Captain Thomas Bartelot, of the ship Princess, of London.

He had a free, open, jovial, and merry expression, a fresh and ruddy complexion, a pleasant voice, and a very winning manner. He was a stout, rather gentlemanly man, about ten years older than Morley, but more muscular, better developed, and thicker, especially about the arms, the biceps whereof indicated that he had been used to a good deal of pulling and hauling in his time. He had on a glazed sou'-wester, the strings and ear-laps of which he untied, and a storm-jacket of tarred canvas, secured by horn-buttons, of which attire he now proceeded to disencumber himself, for on deck the weather had been rough, and the spray was flying in showers of foam over the catheads, occasionally over the quarter, and he "had just left the ship in charge of Morrison," he said, "and come below for the double purpose of seeing how Morley was getting on, and procuring a caulker from the steward's locker." After a pause, during which time the said "caulker" was imbibed from a square case-bottle: "When you were brought on board, Morley, by Morrison and the boat's crew, I was so surprised at recognising you," said Bartelot, "that I scarcely knew whether my head or heels were on the deck. You were in a death-like faint, or I would have sent you ashore again. The night was fast becoming dark, and the weather foul. We couldn't keep dodging about the coast, as Admiral Fitzroy had telegraphed, 'Gales of wind expected from all quarters;' so I resolved to give the land a wide berth (lucky it was for you that we hugged it so close!) and stood off to sea. I am sorry for that, Morley, but I couldn't help it, old boy; insurance brokers, ship agents, and owners won't stand trifling nowadays, so console yourself that it was no worse. You couldn't have fallen into better hands than Tom Bartelot, eh? Look there," he continued, pointing to a small yellow map of Britain, framed and glazed on the bulkhead, and having all the coast surrounded by little black spots. "Each of these spots, Morley, marks a wreck of last year. It is the 'Wreck Chart,' published by the Life-boat Institution, and it shows quite enough of black spots in the Bristol Channel to warrant me in getting out to sea; and somehow, to my mind, we have had three gales now for one we used to have before Admiral Fitzroy took to telegraphing about his south and north cones, storm-drums, and what not. Old Gawthrop, one of our men, swears he whistles up the very gales he telegraphs. But speak, Morley, why don't you say something? Am I to have all the talking to myself?"

"Oh, Tom, I owe my life to you."

"To Bill Morrison, rather."

"Who is he?"

"My Scotch mate."

"But this adventure, and my being taken off to sea, I know not whither——"

"Rio de Janeiro, I told you."

"It ruins my prospects for ever!"

"Sorry to hear you say so; but we'll put you aboard the first homeward-bound craft we overhaul. Till then, you are heartily welcome to swing your hammock in my cabin, and to share our junk and grog."

"Thanks, thanks, old fellow; but a homeward-bound ship will avail me little."

"The deuce!—would you wish to swim or fly?"

"Unless I could be landed near Acton-Rennel, and within a week, it matters not where I am; for Ethel Basset, if she lives—survives my supposed loss—don't laugh in that way, Tom, please—must be, like myself——"

"How—where?"

"Upon the sea."

"Drink this," said Bartelot, handing him a tumbler of wine-and-water; "and now tell me all about this matter, for I own to being rather curious about it."

Morley related his story briefly and rapidly.

"My berth was secured and paid for on board the Hermione, of London."

"I know the craft well, and jolly Jack Phillips, her captain, too," said Bartelot; "a fine old fellow he is, and your friends are in capital hands."

"I was to have sailed with them for the Isle of France," said Morley, in a voice like a groan; "sailed once more in search of fortune—the blind jade! Ah, Tom, the Romans were right when they depicted her as a woman, for she has much to do in the happiness or misery of man."

"Is that the wine or water talking now?" asked Tom, supplying himself with another measure, nautically named "a caulker," from the before-mentioned square case-bottle.

"Don't chaff me, Tom, for mine is an evil destiny."

"Oh, bother! don't talk of destiny, like a fellow in tights, with a broad-brimmed tile, addressing the lustre, or the footlights, at the Surrey. Every man who has a steady heart—a heart, mind you, that don't yaw even when the wind is foul—and keeps a strong hand on the tiller of perseverance, is the maker of his own destiny. I learned that long ago, before I knew the mizzen-top from a marlin-spike. This spirit will make a man go right before the wind, through even Hamlet's 'sea of troubles,' and never heed the waves or breakers thereof."

"Why, Tom," said Morley, with a sad smile, "you are a regular salt-water preacher."

"A philosopher if you will; but no preacher—oh, d——n it, I haven't come to that. I suppose that piratical beggar—what's his name?"

"Hawkshaw—Cramply Hawkshaw," replied Morley, through his clenched teeth.

"I suppose he will consider you quite a gone 'coon, as the Yankees say; but you must haul up for the Mauritius (if we can find a ship for thence at Rio, which is not very likely) and have the fellow exposed, tried, and punished as he deserves."

"Punished! how know I that ere I can reach the Mauritius, penniless as I am——"

"Penniless! You young swab, don't you know that you can command my purse—no great matter certainly—to the last farthing?"

"Thanks, my dear Bartelot."

"Well, as you were about to say, before you may reach the Mauritius——"

"He may be—he may be——"

"What?"

"The husband of Ethel Basset."

"Whe-e-e-uh!" whistled Tom Bartelot.

"How can I foresee what one so subtle, so daring, so reckless as Hawkshaw may achieve!"

"Well, drink your wine-and-water; remain quiet in the meantime. You may keep all your night watches below if you like, and, till you regain your strength, content yourself with exercise by day—a Dutchman's promenade, three steps and overboard, eh?"

There was a pause, during which Morley sighed deeply.

"Cheer up, Morley," said jolly Tom Bartelot; "look firmly ahead, and boldly face the little spray and black scud of misfortune. Pursue your present way contented for some time at least, with confidence and hope, and never look astern. It is no use, as nothing ever comes that way, either for good or for evil. It would be a poor love that won't outlast a sea voyage, however long it might be, and if Miss Basset forgets you——"

"Forgets me—agony! Tom, she may be made to believe that I have deserted her."

"Impossible!"

"That I have been murdered, then!"

"Hawkshaw would not tell upon himself, surely?"

"That I fell over the cliff and was drowned!"

"Ah—that would be a likely tale enough."

"I know not what specious tale the villain may form to deceive Ethel and her father," continued Morley, impetuously.

"When at Rio, write to her all about it."

"Write! By the ship that bore my letter, I would fly to her."

"I should prefer sailing; but every man to his taste. In another day or so, according to your own showing, she will be upon the sea!"

"True—true, and with that wretch, most probably," said Morley, relapsing into wretchedness, and striking his forehead with his hand.

"Come, come," urged Bartelot, patting him on the shoulder, "turn out and take a sniff of the breeze on deck. Another glass of wine first; drink and be jolly, man. What says the old song? for it is an old song of Captain Topham's, and none of mine, be assured!

"'You bid me my jovial companions forsake,
The joys of a rural recess to partake;
With you, my good friend, I'll retreat to the vine,
Its shelter be yours, but its nectar be mine;
For each 'twill a separate pleasure produce,
You cool in its shade, while I glow with its juice;
For own no delight with his rapture can vie,
Who always is drinking, yet always is dry.'"

"Many a night have we sung that together when in the Bonny River, on board the dear old Rattler," said Morley, listening with pleasure to the song which Bartelot trolled forth with a fine mellow voice.

"Ah!—the Rattler," said Bartelot, sighing; "they broke her up for firewood—think of that. I sent my old mother at Liverpool a table made out of her timber."

"Go ahead, Tom—finish your song."

"Ah, there is life in the old dog yet, I see," replied Bartelot as he resumed:

"'The lover (that's you, Morley) may talk of his flames
and his darts,
His judgment of eyes and his conquest of hearts;
May smile with the wanton, and sport with the gay,
Enjoy when he can and desert when he may;
Yet the warmest adherents of love must deplore
That its favours when tasted are favours no more;
Then how can such joys with his ecstasy vie,
Who always is drinking, yet always is dry?'"

As Tom concluded (he was not a bit of a toper, as we shall show ere long, though he sang so bacchanalian a ditty), the sunlight died away, the cabin became gloomy, the rolling of the ship and the noise on deck increased.

"The gale freshens," said he, "and the glass is falling fast. We shall have the wind blowing great guns to-night, so we must close our shutters, as I once heard a lubber call them. Don't you remember, Mr. de Vavasour Spout, the Cockney supercargo? Steward, pass the word to Mr. Morrison to have the dead lights shipped. I must be off to the deck, Morley, and have some more cloth taken off her—send down the topgallant yards, get the lumber out of the tops, and bend the trysail aft."

Morley was too feeble to leave his berth for that night, especially as the Princess encountered a heavy gale of wind.

He could slumber, but his dreams were wild, and disturbed by starts, visions, and memories of all he had undergone; and every thought of Acton Chine and its horrors caused a shudder to pass through his frame.

CHAPTER XVI.
UNDER THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN.

Next morning, when Morley ventured up, everything was dripping wet; on deck and aloft all bore cheerless evidence of a rough night that had passed.

The Princess had but little canvas spread, for the sea was rising still; the fore, main, and mizzen topsails were taken off her, and ere long she was speeding before the wind and sea under a close-reefed foresail and storm staysail.

Morrison, one of the most powerful men on board, with another grim old seaman, named Noah Gawthrop, whose weather-beaten visage resembled nothing on land or sea but a knot on a gnarled oak tree, were at the wheel, and it was with the utmost difficulty they could keep the helm, so heavily did breaker after breaker poop the ship.

Though heavy, the wind was fair for the Princess, but it bore her away from the shores of Britain, was Morley's first and regretful idea.

No other craft was in sight, and the gray sky imparted an opaque tint to the dark and tumbling sea, which seemed to follow her brine-dripping sides, as swiftly she darted on, at times cleaving asunder, or riding across, the long rolling mountains of water that burst in hissing showers over the varnished bowsprit and gilded catheads, over the iron windlass and forecastle bitts, and after drenching the cowering watch, poured away through the scuppers to leeward as the buoyant ship rose on each successive wave, like a gallant sea-bird trussing her pinions.

Amid that waste of waters, no living thing was visible from the deck, save a brown flock of Mother Carey's chickens, the stormy petrels, tripping with outspread wings up the slope of one wave and down the slope of another.

Though accustomed to the sea, by his past voyaging, Morley gazed around him with a bewildered air. He addressed something—he knew not what—to the men at the wheel, but the Scotch mate was too full of anxiety about his steering to reply, and, as for Mr. Noah Gawthrop, he heard the remark with stolid indifference, and expectorated vociferously to leeward.

The bronzed face and keen gray eyes of the Scotchman were turned alternately to the leech of the close-reefed foresail, the bellying of the storm staysail, and the compass-box, while his feet were planted firmly on the deck-grating, and his weather-beaten hands grasped the wheel like his shipmate on the other side.

Neither of these men ever spoke to each other. Instinct and skill taught them simultaneously and mutually when to keep her full and by, when to let her yaw, or when to let her ship a sea.

Wearied with toil, and the double watching of the past night, Captain Bartelot was asleep in his damp clothes on the cabin-locker. So noon passed away, and still the Princess flew on through mist and spray, under her close-reefed foresail and storm staysail.

Another vessel, similarly stripped of canvas, flew past them on the opposite tack, and, like a spectre, disappeared in the wrack and gloom; but, anon, the wind and sea went gradually down together, the clouds burst asunder, and the sun came joyously forth.

The gale gradually abated to a fine spanking breeze, the mainsail was set, and the reefs shaken out of the foresail; topsail after topsail were hoisted and sheeted home. Then followed the studding-sails and royals, and the Princess, with everything on her that "would draw," swept out into the waters of the mighty Atlantic.

A lovely evening followed, and a rosy sunset, but not a ship was in sight, and Morley now calculated that they must be more than 200 miles from land.

"By Jove, this is excellent!" exclaimed Tom Bartelot, lounging back in his chair, after a late dinner (for on this day the cook's fire had been washed out of the caboose); "how happy I am to have you here, Morley. Confess, old fellow, that you couldn't have fallen into better hands."

"I do confess it most willingly; but, my dear old friend, I must be set on shore, if possible, at the first opportunity. I have Hawkshaw to punish, and Ethel to save from the insult of his presence."

"On shore, with the breeze blowing thus—the Scilly Isles more than 150 miles astern, and not a sail in sight."

"But, Ethel—the Bassets—what will they think of my sudden disappearance? What story may that rascal tell them?"

"Nothing that you can't unsay by-and-bye."

"Unsay when it may be too late."

"Too late!"

"And to have Ethel left in the power, or rather, subjected to the wiles and addresses of one so cruel, so artful."

"Tut, tut, if she would slip from her moorings by the old man's side, to sail in company with a rascally pirate, she's not worth much, friend Morley, and certainly not worth regretting."

"Ethel shall judge what I have suffered, by what she is suffering herself."

"Try some of that brandy-and-water, and don't get into the doldrums. Light a cheroot—there's a box of capital ones on the locker behind you. Have patience; in a few months at farthest——"

"Months! You talk to me of patience, Tom, as if you had never seen me practise it."

"In what way?"

"Have you forgotten when I was broiling, for a pittance, on the Bonny river? how I toiled, worked, aye, slaved, and cheered myself with the thoughts of Ethel Basset, and an English home? For three years I had patience, amid adversity and illness. Heaven knows how I got through those three years, Tom."

"Just as you shall get over the three months that must pass before you reach the Mauritius after visiting Rio."

"Well, I returned, as I have told you, to find that her future home was to be elsewhere than in England; that we were to be separated, perhaps, hopelessly; that I had a rival, too, a kinsman, a protégé of her father's, a son of a certain Tom Hawkshaw, of Lincoln's Inn—a fellow without honour, honesty, money, or scruple."

"I'd like to give him a dip at the end of a deep-sea line."

"Sail, homeward-bound, on the weather-bow!" reported Morrison, one morning, a few days after this.

Morley's heart leaped, and he rushed on deck to look at the stranger—a smart bark, close-hauled, with all her starboard-tacks aboard. She was evidently a foreigner, being painted a pale pea-green.

"A Baltic craft, I take her to be," said Morrison. "Here she comes, running sharp on a wind, with a bone in her teeth."

"A bone?" repeated Morley.

"Yes; the spray flying under her cutwater, and over her catheads. Don't you remember the fun we used to have with De Vavasour Spout, the cockney supercargo, when talking all manner of nautical rubbish to him. Morrison, run up our ensign; lay the mainyard to the mast; steward, hand up the trumpet, we'll overhaul her."

The orders were promptly obeyed; the stranger also backed his mainyard, and showed his ensign—black and white.

"Prussian," said Morrison.

"Bound for the Elbe," added Bartelot, whose hail was answered in a hoarse dissonance, that made even Noah Gawthrop's grim visage relax with a smile, as he sent the debris of his quid to leeward, and anathematised foreigners in general, and their Hugos in particular, while each vessel stood off on her course again.

"No chance for you, Morley," said Bartelot, "so we'll give it up and think no more about it."

Ten days elapsed after this, and, in all that space never once did the Princess come within hail of a homeward-bound ship, so Morley strove to resign himself to his fate.

"Rio de Janeiro be it," said he.

He took his watch with the rest of the crew, and endeavoured to make the time pass; but weary, weary was his lot for days and weeks—days and weeks of mental suffering, during which he fretted, chafed, and loathed, at times, the floating prison which bore him away, almost hopelessly, from the watery path which he now concluded Ethel must be traversing—she, due southward, towards the sun; and he, south-westward, towards the land of fire.

It is an age of swift postal arrangements, of telegrams, magnetic and electric, but nothing could avail Morley there on the wide, wide sea; the appliances of modern science were there as nugatory and of as little avail as in the days when Columbus ploughed the same waters in search of the western world—he had nothing to console him save patience and hope.

She might be dying of grief for his loss, for people sometimes do die of grief, though, pardon me for the heresy, fair reader, people seldom die for love; and, unless assisted by some good genii or spirits of the air, Morley was powerless, and without the means of acquainting her that he was safe, alive, well, and had miraculously escaped a most foul and deliberate attempt to assassinate him.

So, weary were the days and more weary the nights, while the swift ship flew on, making a most prosperous voyage towards a clime of sunnier skies and brighter seas than those of England; but, weary though it seemed, and insufferably slow, the time passed, nevertheless.

Each day the sun grew hotter and rose higher overhead.

The Line was passed; Father Neptune came on board in all the splendour of oakum wig, tar, and yellow ochre; and Morley, having crossed the Line before, escaped being shaved with a hoop and bathed in salt water, though old Noah Gawthrop, who personated the god of the ocean, and Morrison, who personated Amphitrite, the mother of Triton, had some very waggish views respecting him. And now the atmosphere was hot, indeed.

"When I was last at Rio," said old Noah, whose voice, like worthy Tom Pipes's, had "a cadence like that of an east wind singing through a cranny"—"the crabs and winkles were roasted in their shells upon the shore."

The winds continued favourable; the Princess steadily held her course, and the day on which they would probably see Rio Janeiro was already confidently spoken of by Tom Bartelot and his first mate, Bill Morrison, for both were practical seamen, and holders of first-class certificates.

Though a grave and stern man, and one deeply imbued with many of the northern superstitions of his country, with a few—but luckily a very few—of its theological whim-whams, Morrison became a great friend of Morley, and, though a believer in mysterious lights, warnings, and presentiments, in second sight, second hearing, and so forth, he was remarkably well informed, well educated, and spoke Latin, and more than one European language fluently.

His face was browned by long exposure to every climate in the world; he had faced all the dangers of the deep, and their name is legion; he was hardy, tough, and athletic, and, being at times conversational, he learned from Morley, long ere the voyage was over, the whole history of his love, rivalry, and adventures.

"Take heart, young gentleman," said he, as they kept their watch together on a lovely moonlight night, when drawing near the tropic of Capricorn; "when I was a bairn at home, my mother (God bless her puir auld body!) aye taught me that 'the ways o' Providence were dark and intricate, perplexed wi' mazes and distressed wi' errors,' and I have seen but little reason to alter my opinion in manhood, or as I grow aulder in the horn, as we say in Scotland. But something tells me that you will bring this rascally piccaroon up wi' a round turn yet."

"But Miss Basset?"

"If she countenanced him," interrupted the Scotchman, turning his keen gray eyes and knitted brows to Morley, "why, then, I say, e'en let her go with a flowing sheet."

"Which means——"

"That you'll be well free of so unseaworthy a craft."

So, at this period of their story, the loved and the loving, Morley Ashton and Ethel Basset, are both traversing the same mighty ocean. Morley knew that, if Ethel lived, she would now inevitably be sailing for the Isle of France; but she, alas! believed that her lover was no more, and lost to her indeed for ever!

Will they ever meet more?

They may meet peacefully and happily again, never to separate; or, it may be, that they shall be united never more on this side of the grave, for both are now upon the sea, and the perils encountered by those who go down into the great deep and see the wonders thereof—wreck, storm, fire, mutiny, piracy, and famine—may be the lot of one or of both.

The wheel of fortune turns, and anon we shall see!

CHAPTER XVII.
SECOND HEARING.

The Scotch mate, Morrison, spun many a strange yarn to Morley, when together they kept their watches at night under the glorious radiance of a tropical moon, when the vast sea shone like a silver flood, over which the Princess glided before the trade wind, with all her canvas, topsails, and topgallant sails set.

"When falling over those rocks, on which we found you, Ashton," said he, on one of those occasions, "did you utter any person's name?"

"Not that I remember of—why?" asked Morley, with surprise.

"Because—I have known of such things—that person might have heard your cry, however far distant."

"I do not understand."

"I mean on the principle, or rather the theory, of polarity. In the terror and despair of such a moment, your thoughts would flash, or rush to some one whom you loved—say Miss Basset—who became the recipient of the force, the hearer of your cry, by that faculty which is called in some countries second hearing."

Morley, though he coloured at Ethel's name, smiled, for he knew that this was another of Morrison's strange theories.

"I never heard of an instance of this," said he; "have you?"

"I shall tell you," replied Morrison; "but, perhaps, you won't believe me?"

"Why?"

"Because you English are so sceptical about the mystic, generally."

"I shall try, however."

"When I was third mate of the Queen of Scots, a clipper ship of Aberdeen, on a voyage home from Memel, we encountered in the North Sea a dreadful gale from the westward. We stripped the ship of everything, until at length we hove her to under a close-reefed main-topsail.

"The night was dark—black as pitch, as the saying is; the sea white as snow with foam, and the wind blew as if the clerk of the weather was determined to blow his last.

"The captain was on deck, holding on by the weather mizzen rattlings by one hand, while the other held his speaking trumpet.

"'Away! forward! Morrison,' he shouted to me, 'and see the flying-jib stowed,' for somehow it had got loose.

"It was a perilous duty to perform at such a time, and in such a wild night. So, being loth to order a man for it, I undertook the task myself.

"I felt my way, like a man in the dark, along the wet and slippery bowsprit, which one moment seemed tilted up in the air, and the next went surging, cap under, in the seething trough of the sea, when the bows of the Queen plunged down. Then I felt as if my heart was in my mouth, for I was but a young sailor, and thought of what would come of poor old mother and dad at home, if I should perish, and there would be no share of my wages to get monthly from our owners.

"At that moment I planted my feet on the leeward foot-rope, and nearly fell into the world of waters that yawned and whirled below.

"In my fall I caught a rope, and swung at the end of it, like a salmon grilse at the end of a line.

"None spoke to me, lest even to suggest anything might cost me my life, and none could aid me, for I was beyond the ship altogether. My shipmates seemed paralysed by the same peril that filled my own heart with despair and dread of death. I was but a youth; so the exclamation, 'God help me, mother!' escaped me, and was swept away by the howling wind.

"At length, favoured by a lurch of the ship, I somehow regained my footing on the bowsprit, stowed the jib in its netting, crept along the dripping spar, and regained the deck, where the men crowded round me with congratulations on my escape; for, had I remained even one moment longer among the foot-ropes, I should never have been seen again, as thrice in succession, with awful rapidity, the ship went forward, plunging bows and bowsprit under the sea with such force, that the starboard cathead and all our headrails were swept away.

"Well, sir, at that very hour—aye, at that very moment—my poor old mother, who was a-bed and asleep in her cottage by the Don, was awakened by a voice, which, with true maternal instinct and terror, she knew to be mine, crying as if in agony, and from a vast distance—'God help me, mother!'

"In the still and silent night, it rang dreadfully in her startled ears, and in her anxious heart. She roused her neighbours, and declared—poor auld body—with loud lamentations, that her dear Willie, her sailor laddie, her only bairn, was drowned; but it was only my thoughts that had rushed homeward, and she had received them in her sleep.

"It was, indeed, my voice she had heard, swept—He who holds the great deep in the hollow of his hand alone knows how—over the wide, roaring waste of the North Sea, and she never ceased to mourn for me, till our ship was signalled off the Girdleness, and all reported safe on board."

As Morley was neither so superstitious nor so deeply read as his Scotch friend, and consequently was ignorant of Dr. Ennemoser's queer theory of polarity, he could only listen in silence, as this was only one of many anecdotes such as Morrison was wont to beguile the watches of the night with.

At the time he fell over the cliff, and clutched the turf at Hawkshaw's feet, the name of "Ethel" escaped him, as we have related; but Morley had no recollection of the circumstance, and though at that dread moment his very soul seemed to fly to her, no warning voice came to poor Ethel's ear, so, in this instance, the first mate's theory was at fault.

"How steadily the trade wind holds," said he. "Watch, ahoy there, forward! set the royals and top-gallant studding-sails, and up with the flying jib—quick, lads, rouse it out of the netting, and hoist away."

These orders were promptly obeyed, and faster flew the Princess through the phosphorescent water, which seemed to smoke under her counter, and gleamed in millions of sparks in the long wake, that could be traced astern for miles upon the moonlit sea.

"I have sometimes wondered, Mr. Ashton, what would be the emotions of a murderer, at such a moment as that I endured, when clinging among the hamper of the wet bowsprit, on that night in the North Sea, or when in any similar peril," observed the mate, recurring to his anecdote, as they trod to and fro.

"His emotions would be anything but enviable. That man, Hawkshaw, must feel himself a deliberate and cold-blooded assassin, and I frequently wonder how he comforts himself."

"I should not like to go to sea with that fellow," said the mate; "no ship that has a murderer on board can reach its destination in safety, or at least without accident."

"Another of your theories, I hope; but pray don't say so," said Morley, thinking of the Bassets; "yet he was only an assassin in intent—not fact. Moreover, he may not be on board the Hermione at all."

"Will you be surprised if I tell you that I was once accused of murder?" asked Morrison, turning his grave, grim Scotch face with a smile to Morley; "aye, and marooned, too, as one, though innocent as the babe that is unborn. It is a queer yarn, so I don't mind telling it to you.

"Before I shipped aboard the Queen of Scots, I was a foremast man of a Peterhead whaler that was bound for a fishing trip to the north.

"Off the Noss-head, a rocky bluff on the south of Sinclair's Bay, and which has a dry cavern in it always full of seals, we encountered a tremendous storm, which carried away our flying jib-boom snapping it like a clay pipe right off at the cap; at the same time we lost our long-boat with all our live stock; so, amid whirlwinds of foam, we ran round Stromo, hauled up for Thurso Bay, and came to anchor under the lee of the land in Scrabster Roads to refit.

"Our skipper ordered another long-boat from old Magnus Sigurdson, a boat-builder at Scrabster, who had a fine one nearly complete, and ready on the stocks in his yard, and which, for certain reasons of his own, he was remarkably anxious to get rid of at almost any price. Thus, ere she was brought aboard and lashed to the boat-chocks amidships, strange stories concerning her preached the ears of our crew, when drinking in the public-houses of Thurso.

"It would seem that when old Magnus, his wife and family were a-bed at night, they were roused by the sound of a hammer knocking at the sides of the boat in the building-yard; then came the clinking, as of nails being driven into her planks, with other noises, so exactly like those made by Magnus when at his daily work, that his gudewife, Alie Sigurdson, had some difficulty in believing that he was in bed beside her.

"'Perhaps it is some idle callants amusing themselves among the chips,' said Magnus, on the third night, and tried to sleep; but louder grew the hammering; so at last he leaped from his bed, dressed himself, and went forth to the yard. But no one was there; the strange sounds had ceased; the night was starry and still, and he only heard the hollow booming of those great billows that roll for ever, in snow-white mountains, over the Kirkebb, against the rocks of the Bishop's Castle, the cliffs of Pennyland, and the piers of Thurso: for there three vast currents meet from the German, the Atlantic, and the Northern oceans.

"All the family of old Sigurdson heard the hammering, night after night, while the boat remained on the stocks, and the sound thereof made his poor bairns cower and nestle in the recesses of their box beds with affright; yet not a mark could be seen upon its ribs, thwarts, or sheathing, even after she was painted.

"At last the boat was upon rollers, and ready to be run to the beach.

"On that night the din of hammers in the yard of Magnus Sigurdson exceeded any that had ever rung there before. Quicker, thicker, faster than ten smiths' hammers ringing upon as many anvils, rang the strokes, and the old man listened with fear and trembling.

"Bible in hand, he crept forth at last.

"Still there was nothing to be seen, save the unlucky boat standing on its props in the broad moonlight; but in the lulls or intervals of the breakers that rolled upon the distant beach, he heard moans of distress, sighs of fatigue, and faint mutterings, which seemed to proceed from the boat itself.

"Such was the history of our new longboat, a story still current in the north of Scotland; and such was the craft in which I found myself at midnight, alone amid the North Sea, marooned and abandoned by my shipmates on a charge of murder.

"You may imagine what I felt in such a situation.

"Despising the stories that were current concerning the boat, our skipper had it shipped, paid Magnus Sigurdson his money, and we sailed from Scrabster Roads for the whale fishery. Four days after we were becalmed in the North Sea, some fifty miles or so beyond the Skaw of Unst.

"Day succeeded day, night succeeded night, and there came no wind. Around us—strange it was in such a latitude—the sea seemed like oil, so still, so glassy and waveless. Loose in its brails, the canvas flapped against the masts and yards; and now, when too late, the men whispered anew, and murmured about the bewitched boat of Magnus Sigurdson.

"At the far horizon we more than once saw craft passing under easy sail, but the breeze that bore them on never reached us.

"From murmuring, the crew became clamorous; so, yielding to their entreaties, and being perhaps a little impressed or scared himself, our skipper ordered the mysterious boat to be shoved overboard and cast adrift; and heavily, with a thundering plunge, she fell bow-foremost into the glassy sea; but by that power of attraction which larger bodies possess over smaller in the water, she lay close to the ship, and jarred there with every roll she gave on the long oily ridges that swelled up from time to time.

"Three days followed, and still no wind.

MORLEY ASHTON:

CHAPTER I.THE BLIND GODDESS.

CHAPTER II.LAUREL LODGE.

CHAPTER III.CRAMPLY HAWKSHAW.

CHAPTER IV.

RIVALRY.

CHAPTER V.SUSPICION.

CHAPTER VI.FOR THE LAST TIME.

CHAPTER VII.THE REJECTION.

CHAPTER VIII.MORLEY AND HAWKSHAW.

CHAPTER IX.ALARM.

CHAPTER X.POOR ETHEL.

CHAPTER XLDARKNESS MADE LIGHT.

CHAPTER XII.ON BOARD THE GOOD SHIP "HERMIONE," OF LONDON.

CHAPTER XIII.ACTON CHINE.

CHAPTER XIV.THE RESCUE.

CHAPTER XV.AN OLD SHIPMATE.

CHAPTER XVI.UNDER THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN.

CHAPTER XVII.SECOND HEARING.

CHAPTER I.
THE BLIND GODDESS.