a wild beast, at the clergyman, while he struck his breast with his clenched hand, "it's here now, here at my heart, where it's been gnawing, gnawing-"

"My son, oh! my son," cried the white-haired clergyman, deeply impressed, and with tears in his eyes, making a last effort to benefit the dying man, "there's a worm that never dies, that gnaws forever."

"Away with your idle tales," fiercely interrupted Aylesford, flinging himself away from the chaplain. But immediately he turned again. "I can't waste time, sir," he resumed, "and maybe by speaking, I may avert foul wrong. But no! no! that is impossible," he almost shrieked, as he spoke these words, gazing hopelessly from the assistant to the minister, like one drowning out at sea may be supposed to turn his frantic eyes towards the unattainable shore. "She is past rescue."

"She?" said the clergyman. "My son," he added solemnly, "if, as your words imply, there is a wrong to be remedied, speak out without delay. Next to repentance comes reparation, and it may be," he added, as if speaking to himself, "that God, in His infinite mercy, will consider one to include both."

Aylesford looked eagerly into the chaplain's face, and, without further parley, proceeded to narrate, though in broken sentences and with rapidly failing words, his scheme to carry off his cousin, its failure, and the great probability there was that she was now in the power of a licentious, brutal, and reckless outlaw.

The narrative, indeed, was not consecutive. Whether the mind of the dying man began to wander, or whether remorse made his thoughts incoherent, he was not able to give an entirely connected story; but from his bitter denunciations of Arrison, his curses on his own folly for being duped, and his apostrophes to Kate, his hearers had no

difficulty in arrving at a tolerably correct idea of our heroine's peril.

"Alas!" said the clergyman, when Aylesford had concluded, "this is a wrong done which is beyond remedy, I fear."

But Aylesford, at this, sprang up in bed.

"I tell you it is not beyond remedy," he cried, shaking his damp hair like an angry lion rousing in his lair; and while his eyes gleamed with the fires of partial delirium, he continued, almost with a howl, "I'll go myself to her Don't you hear her reproaching me? Unhand me, I say." And he struggled to get out of bed.

rescue.

"We will send word to the enemy's camp through a flag, that they may do all that can be done," said the clergyman soothingly, as he and the assistant held down the frenzied man. 'There, my son, lie back on your pillow again. There is no one calling you, that you need glare into that dark corner. God help you!"

Gradually the delusion passed from the mind of the invalid. His eye assumed its natural expression. He looked inquiringly around, like one awaking from a dream, and with an attempt at a wan smile, suffered himself to be placed in bed again.

"Thank you," he said feebly, as the clergyman stooped and gently wiped the big drops from his hair. "I've been talking wildly, I fear. The fever's in my head. But did not some one," and he glanced around, "say that they'd send pursuers out after her?"

"I said I would send word to the enemy's camp,' answered the chaplain; and looking around the room, he singled out an individual who had been a spectator hitherto. "You have heard what has been said," he continued. "Will you undertake to see that this is done?"

The person addressed nodded his head, and departed immediately, Aylesford watching his retreating figure eagerly

till it disappeared through the doorway, when he closed his eyes with a deep sigh, and remained motionless and silent so long afterwards that the clergyman began to think life had departed with that profound expiration.

He, therefore, whispered to the assistant.

"Does he still breathe?"

"Yes!" was the reply, after the speaker had leaned over the invalid for a moment. "He dozes again. That burst of emotion exhausted him terribly, however, and it may be that he'll never come to again."

The clergyman made no answer, but clasping his hands, appeared engaged in silent prayer.

In about ten minutes the dying man stirred again. His eyes were still closed, but he murmured incoherently. At first his words were low and disconnected, but gradually he spoke louder; and finally the listeners distinguished parts of sentences. But whether he was referring to the tragedy he had just detailed, or to some other, or whether what he said was purely the effect of delirium, the hearers could not ascertains

"The pitiless villain," were his words. "No mercy, no mercy. Oh! that I had run him through when he proposed it. I broke her heart. Mary! Mary! blessed saint," he exclaimed piteously, "don't look at me so reproachfully."

"He thinks she is already dead," whispered the clergyman to the assistant.

"Or perhaps there is still another," was the low reply. Tossing from side to side on the bed, working his fingers on the counterpane, every lineament of his face betraying the terrible mental agonies he was undergoing, Aylesford lay, a picture of remorse which had come too late. As his broken ejaculations went on it became evident that another person, as the surgeon had hinted, now mingled in his thoughts with Miss Aylesford.

"Forgive me, Mary, forgive me," he cried, clasping his hands, "I have indeed deserted our child; but if I had known-if I had—”

Here his words sunk into indistinct babblings, all that could be distinguished being the single phrase, "they call her his niece, you know."

He lay still for nearly a minute. Suddenly he sprang up again, glaring wildly at the opposite part of the bed.

"Take him away," he shrieked, in a voice that made the hair of his hearers stand on end with horror, and was heard far away out across the silence of the night; "his fingers almost touch me."

He clung to the clergyman, as a child, when woke from a dream in which it has seen horrible shapes, clings to its mother; his eyeballs starting from their sockets, his features convulsed with agony, and the perspiration exuding, like huge rain drops, over his clammy forehead.

It was a scene, which those who were present, could never shake off. The terrified countenance of the dying man, the despairing clutch with which he held on to the chaplain, and the fixed, stony gaze of horror which he fastened, as if on some object right across the bed, and almost within reach; the whole rendered, for an instant, visible with more than ordinary distinctness, as a burning deck of one of the ships that was consuming, fell in, shooting a quick, intense glare into the room.

"Oh! my God," he cried, "they come; there is a hell." The piercing tone, almost amounting to a shriek; the awful look; the gesture of horrible fear with which he shrank closer yet to the clergyman; these no pen can adequately paint.

But in a moment, a convulsion passed over him; a deep breath was heard, which was nearly stertorous; and he fell back into the chaplain's arms, stone dead.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

THE ESCAPE.

This night methinks is but the daylight sick,

It looks a little paler; 'tis a day,

Such as the day is when the sun is hid.-Shakspeare.

The whole air whitens with a boundless tide,

Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.-Thomson.

WE must now return to Kate, whom we left a prisoner with the outlaws, and momentarily in dread that she would be compelled to sacrifice life in order to avert dishonor.

The debauch of the refugees at last came to an end. Not being a witness of the scene, Kate could judge as to the manner of its termination, only from the laugh of derision with which it was said successively that another " was under the table." Gradually the voices of the speakers became so thick as to be undistinguishable; the revelers apparently grew fewer and fewer, and finally a heavy fall was heard, as of the last boon companion, followed by silence.

For a long while Kate listened, dreading lest she should hear some one stir, for she dared not hope that sleep had overpowered the whole gang. But five minutes passed without any one moving, then ten, and then finally a half an hour. When this latter period had elapsed she began to breathe freely again. The thought of escape flashed upon her. She reasoned that if she could pass the sleepers undetected, and gain the forest, she might find some place of refuge, perhaps, before the outlaws would awake. Ignorant as she was of the exact locality of the hut, she yet had a general idea of the direction in which the Forks