told him that she had been visited by the High Priest and questioned and cross-questioned on the subject, and that he had shown the liveliest gratification on her assuring him of her entire faith in the truth of the story in all its details.

The incident increased to alarm the uneasiness that the persistence of his questioners had already caused Mr. Westlake, an uneasiness by no means abated by the fact that from that hour that particular subject was dropped. Nevertheless, men listened to him with apparent interest; he was allowed absolute freedom within the precincts of the settlement; he was even treated with respect; whilst Miss Westlake was accorded the homage due to a princess men saluted when she passed, women prostrated themselves. The only restriction placed on them was that on certain mornings, twice and sometimes three times a week, they were confined to their quarters till midday. On the evening of June 24 the revelation came to them.

They were conducted to the temple, where they found the entire body of priests assembled, and there they were once again examined as to their belief in the story of Daniel, and particularly in the shutting of the lions' mouths by an angel. Then the High Priest rose and addressed them.

'White man and white woman,' he thundered, 'ye who would suborn our men and subvert the ancient belief of the Cougar, to-morrow ye shall be put to the test, and we shall prove which faith is the stronger, yours or ours. Remove the blasphemers,' he ended, with a fierce gesture, and do you '-to the captain of guard that escorted them-instruct them, that they may be prepared against the dawn. It is not fit that the priesthood should contaminate themselves further.'

The substance of what they learned that terrible night is, briefly and baldly, something as follows:

From time immemorial the Tribe had been governed by an unbroken dynasty of absolute monarchs, the succession descending to the eldest child of the reigning sovereign, irrespective of sex. Some thirty years back the throne had been occupied by a queen. This woman appears to have been a veritable human spider. She selected her consort at will and slew him at her pleasure; yet there was no successor, and there ran an ancient prophecy that when the direct line failed, disaster should befall the tribe. For a time the queen was in serious danger. Men were clamouring that she should be deposed a fearful term, signifying inexpressible torture-and the elder of her two brothers crowned in her stead.

At that crisis, when her doom seemed inevitable, it chanced that the prince was killed whilst hunting-and by a cougar. Now, the worship of the cougar was the fundamental faith of the Tribe.

Instantly the queen turned the accident to her advantage. The god, she proclaimed, had unmistakably declared its wrath against the rebellious and the impious.

Then she formed a scheme truly satanic, aided, it would appear, by a young priest, who was her special favourite. It had been revealed to him in a vision, he announced, that the wrath of the god would not be appeased until his living representative was honoured in the flesh.

Accordingly a cougar was captured and installed in a gorgeous pen built specially for its reception. For three days it was kept hidden from profane eyes-and without food. On the fourth the god was exhibited to the worshipping gaze of its people. Half famished and exhausted with its vain attempts to escape, the creature lay, crouching and whining pitifully. The priest pretended to be able to interpret the sounds, and prophesied that the offended god demanded the sacrifice of the young prince, the queen's surviving brother. Before the unhappy young man could attempt to escape or defend himself, before a rescue could be even initiated, he was seized by guards stationed for the purpose, and hurled into the pen, to be instantly struck down and devoured. By this means, in a short time the leaders of discontent were un erringly weeded out.

T

1

'You know,' interrupted Mr. Westlake at this point of his narrative, the detestably cruel disposition of the felines to play with their victims, as, proverbially, a cat with a mouse. Well, the cougar soon learned to expect its human banquet, and-and the spectacle of I can't go on-you understand-the spectacle used to afford the queen delight inestimable. As the rapacity of one cougar could not satisfy her appetite for horrors, it was discovered that he required a mate.'

Just about this time a strange, a very strange, thing happened, and it became certain that the line of succession was assured. It was also about this time that a missionary, as far as Mr. Westlake could judge, a priest of the Church of Rome, arrived in the settlement.

He was not unkindly received by the queen, who, in spite of her demoniacal cruelty, appears to have been a woman of capacity and intelligence. She had heard of distant tribes of white people, The High Priest of whose terrible end we were eye-witnesses.

and questioned him about their manners and political life. (I may say, incidentally, that Mr. Westlake tells me that the language of the Tribe differs only slightly, chiefly in respect of accent, from the tongue common to the natives of those regions.) The priest, however, had not come to tell of politics but to evangelise the heathen, and boldly opened the subject at once. The queen appeared interested, and bade him attend a festival in worship of their god, a feast of the cougar.

Indignant, horrified at the hideous sight, the priest sprang up and denounced the queen's cruelty to her face before the entire assembly. He must have anticipated torture and death as his immediate guerdon, but he hesitated not a moment.

Yet the queen gave no order. Fearless herself, she admired fearlessness in others. No man, not even the High Priest, ever dared raise a voice in opposition to her. She called the priests together and commanded them to examine the missionary as to the faith that could produce men so brave. For,' she said, ' if he can convince me of its truth, that faith shall be the faith of my warriors.'

It was not to be. In an evil hour for himself, as illustration of the futility of the worship of the cougar, the priest told the story of Daniel. The quick mind of the queen's favourite saw and clinched the opportunity. He demanded that the missionary should exemplify the truth of his doctrine in his own person.

'What the upshot would have been,' said Mr. Westlakeand I remember the sadness of his voice, I cannot tell. Men say the days of miracles are over. Was it less than a miracle that you should have been brought to our rescue yesterday? Was it only a coincidence? I think not-I think not. The unhappy man, as he was being lowered into the pen, for a moment lost his hold on his faith. He turned to the queen and cursed her with a curse-that she should have a cougar for her son. The result of that curse you know.'

More might be told of the origin and nature of the Beast-God worship, but I, personally, refuse to tell it. As to what I have been compelled to write, I ask, is it not forgotten'?

something to be

CLAUDE E. BENSON.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.—I have submitted the proofs of this story to Mr. Duncan, Mr. Westlake, and Mr. and Mrs. Heywood, and they agree that, admitting certain discrepancies of memory in respect of certain unimportant details, the narrative is substantially correct.-C. E. B.

A DANISH POET.

In the last number of the CORNHILL I gave some recollections of a visit which I paid to Denmark in the year 1872, a visit entirely devoted to a study of the cultured interests which then animated the life of that romantic and sympathetic little nation. During those weeks I had remarkable opportunities for observing what was finest and brightest in the Danish intellectual life of that time, and I enjoyed to the full a series of fortunate peeps down the kaleidoscope. But it was the final day of my visit which culminated in the most exquisite of these little adventures. In those days, to a Danish pilgrim, the vision of Frederik Paludan-Müller at Fredensborg was like that of Victor Hugo in Guernsey or that of Tennyson at Farringford to a French or an English worshipper. It was more mysterious, perhaps, on account of the extreme and even morbid reluctance of the great Danish poet to be looked upon.

At this time, Paludan-Müller (born, like so many eminent men, in 1809) was only sixty-three, but he had been suffering for several years from a complete breakdown of the nervous system, accompanied by a shrinking from all society. There are a few apartments attached to Fredensborg Palace, the autumn. residence of the Danish monarchy, and these form a sort of minute Hampton Court for persons whom the King delights to succour in solitude. One of these small lodgings had been given to the poet and his wife, mainly because of the utter stillness which surrounds this palace during ten months of the year. It lies forty miles from the capital, and is in the days I speak of, at least, it was the haunt of immemorial peace. The general public had gradually given up the idea of gratifying its curiosity by gazing at Paludan-Müller, who was as much lost to the world as if he had long been dead.

My host, Dr. Fog, the Dean of Holmen's Church in Copenhagen, in his infinite kindness had mentioned to no less a person than the King himself the great desire which a young English friend had to set eyes on the celebrated bard, on Apollo in Zealand,' as Walter Pater might have put it. At

the same time Dr. Fog lamented that it was impossible. Upon this his Majesty replied, mysteriously, Don't be so sure that it is impossible! My latest advices from Fredensborg are that our poet is singularly improved in health, and his physician thinks that a little excitement would now be good for him. I advise you to take your young Englishman down to the palace, and try. There could be no hesitation after this, and I leave the reader to judge whether I was not all agog. I sat up late that night reading the poems of the great man; and my dreams were disturbed by laurelled phantoms of ghostly old wanderers, who seemed to brandish broken lyres and then to vanish into the beech-woods.

་་

Fredensborg is the least imposing, the least intimidating, the least showy of royal residences. Even in Denmark, where nothing is pompous, it is remarkable for its delicate modesty. It was made, early in the eighteenth century, by some Italian architect who thought he was building in the French style of Louis XV, and who lifted his green cupola of copper over a straight white façade pierced by two long rows of square windows, while he flanked the whole with a plain chapel of pink brick. The palace sits there, in the middle of its enchanting park, like a little elderly lady in muslin, smiling under a green mushroom hat; nothing could be more old-fashioned nor, in its own prim way, more attractive. Somewhere in the precincts-so far as I remember, on the farther side, towards the lakestood the little dwelling, scarcely more than a cottage, where the poet spent the greater part of the year. My heart leaped in my throat when we knocked at the door, but the old servant who opened to us a significant and familiar character,' so Dr. Fog told me, in the Paludan-Müller family-assured us that her master, and mistress had only gone out for a walk in the park, and would soon be home. So we went away for a space, wandering westward through the magical woodlands, where a turn would show the dense foliage broken around some marble nymph or faun, and where paths famous in the records of Denmark the Alley of Sighs, the Skippers' Alley, the Vale of the Norsemen, I know not what-testified to the fancy and merriment of generations of landscape-gardeners. And everywhere the dominant, beech-leaf flickered in the breeze, or was silhouetted against the distant silver reaches of the Esröm Lake.

The sunshine in the open was intolerable, so we plunged