Douglas say, "Kenneth, I wish to speak with you ;" and to hear the latter reply, you;"

"Not now, I can't; I am going down to Torrieburn: meet me there; I must be there by noon." She was in time, though Kenneth turned quickly after he had seen Sir Douglas re-enter the house, to scramble together the torn papers he had ground down with his heel, and one fluttering bit that was rustling along the hedge of holly, and beat a rapid retreat with that treasure-trove in her hand. She saw Kenneth return to the spot, search, look up as though he thought the wind might have carried the fragments away, pick off the holly hedge just such another morsel as that she held, and tear it into smaller pieces, which he scattered on the air, and then, pale and moody, turn to the house. She locked herself into her turret-chamber and read with greedy eyes that seemed to eat the very words. She looked from that high window, and saw both Kenneth and Sir Douglas, at different intervals, take the direction of Torricburn, and little sturdy Neil go forth with his own dog and gun, and the careful old keeper.

Glenrossie was empty of its inhabitants! She too could go out: could go and see the blind and dying man. Yes, but first she would see-would ascertain -would pay a little visit of inspection nearer home.

She was going to Gertrude's bright morning-room.

It was very bright and still. There was no chance of interruption. Gertrude's maid had accompanied her lady; so had Lady Charlotte; but even had there been such a chance, Alice would have easily found some plausible excuse. Was she not working the corresponding portière to that which suggested such visions of Pluto's bad conduct to Gertrude's mother?

With gleaming, half-shut eyes, she scanned all the objects round, and rested them at last on a little French escritoire, set with plaques of old Sèvres china. It was locked-but what was that to Alice? She had a great variety of keys; and French escritoires are not protected by either Chubbs or Bramahs. Nor was

she trying this lock for the first timethough beyond reading Lorimer's account of Mr. Frere, she had never hitherto found anything to reward her trouble in opening it. Now she felt sure she would be more fortunate. And the event proved the correctness of her expectations. The papers had been somewhat hastily thrust back the night before, and peeping out from the halfdoubled blotting-book, as though absolutely offering itself for inspection, was the insolent, wild, loving letter of Kenneth's, and the rough copy (if rough copy that can be called which had so few verbal corrections, and SO completely conveyed the sentiments of the writer) of the torn and gravel-stained answer, with which his blind rage had dealt so hardly in the garden.

Alice nearly danced for joy! She laid the paper flat, compared it with the other, and gave little strange, triumphant pats to its outspread surface. Then she sat long, in mute, half-frowning, half-scanning consideration; and then she jumped up with a suddenness that Eusebia herself could scarcely have rivalled, and crushed all the paper together in her hands, with a wild laugh. Then once more she smoothed them out, rolled them neatly together, shut the escritoire, made a mocking curtsey to the empty chair in which Gertrude habitually sat; said aloud, in a mocking voice, "Adieu, milady!" and left the morning-room once more to its bright silence, unbroken to-day, even by the boom of the bee, or the outside twitter of the birds; the windows being all closed, and everything marking the absence of that sweet mistress whose happiest hours were passed there.

Then Alice went forth on her mission of charity, and visited the dying beggar. Her visit was prolonged till the day began to wane, for death at times seemed very near. When the clergyman arrived, Alice was still there, and the man had rallied. He spoke feebly of trying to reach his native village, and of dying Alice rose and prepared to leave him. "I will come again, if I can, to-morrow," she said, in her quiet tone;

there.

and looking up in the clergyman's face, as she rolled some papers together, “I have been reading him something I copied," she said; "I thank you for sending to me about him."

With those words, and a little gentle bow, and tranquil shake of the hand to the minister, she departed, leaving that good old successor of Mr. Heaton gazing after her slender figure with unmixed approbation of her conduct.

'But, indeed, it's not to be marvelled at, in a sister of gude Sir Douglas," was his half-uttered sentence, as he turned back into the dim cabin, and sat down by the box-bed, in the groping depths of which lay the sick man.

The little light that entered from the open door gleamed rather on the framework of the bed, than on the bed itself; except on the outer edge, where, white and blanched, on the ragged, green tartan quilt, lay the helpless and attenuated hand of the sufferer.

The good minister lifted that hand with some kindly, encouraging word; as he did So, he remarked a deepindented scar beyond the knuckles. "Ye'll have been hurt there, some time, puir bodie," he observed, compassionately.

The sick man moaned, and answered faintly, "We'll no murmur at trouble the Lord sends. I was chased in Edinburgh by some laddies, and whan I was nigh fallin', I caught by a railing, and the spike just wan' into me! It was a sair hurt; but I've had mony blessins, tho' I'm cauld now to my very marrow.' And so saying, the blind man slowly and tremblingly drew in his hand, under the dark tartan coverlid, and lay still and apparently exhausted.

CHAPTER XLIX.

A SCENE WITH KENNETH.

SIR DOUGLAS had made up his mind, after long reveries, that Kenneth should leave Glenrossie. Gertrude had not spoken to him on the subject. He dared scarcely argue the matter openly

to his own soul, far less to her, but he was not the less resolved.

They met then at Torrieburn. Kenneth had shot some birds on his way, and was carrying his gun with a listless, gloomy brow, as if there were no pleasure left in that or anything else for him. He had also obviously taken repeated draughts from the flask of whisky he carried at his belt; and the dull glare which Sir Douglas loathed to see in his eyes, was already perceptible there, though it was a little past noon.

They sat down on some felled timber, and Sir Douglas went straight to his point.

"Kenneth," he said, "I have resolved to speak to you about leaving Glenrossie. A great deal has come to my knowledge since first you and Eusebia made your home with us, which, had I known it at first, would perhaps have prevented my ever proposing to you to come."

Kenneth drew a long draught from the whisky-flask, and, in a thick angry voice, he muttered, "Has Gertrudehas your wife-been complaining of me to you ?"

"No, she has always taken your part always endeavoured to explain away or conceal differences between you and Eusebia, as well as those events which -which, perhaps" and here Sir Douglas hesitated, "which, most assuredly, I had better have known at the time they took place."

Again Kenneth had recourse to the flask, and said, with a bitter laugh, "It was not I, at least, who kept you in ignorance of them."

Sir Douglas felt the blood flush to his temples; he strove to be calm.

"No, Kenneth; it was not you. I cannot doubt, however, that they were kept from me for a good motive. We cannot undo the past; what I have to think of is the future. It is repugnant to me to live with you on other terms than those of the most loving cordiality and freedom from restraint. That cordiality that free affection"-Sir Douglas's voice broke a little-" cannot exist as it did. It may return, KennethGod grant it may !-but feeling as I do,

and knowing what I do, there is change enough to make me wish a further change, and that is"

"Pray go on, my dear uncle, go on, old fellow! Don't mind me!"

Kenneth was rapidly becoming more and more intoxicated.

"That change is that we shall part, Kenneth, at all events for the present. I have loved you, in spite of all your faults; I will endeavour to assist you to the last, in spite of all your imprudences; but I will not live with you in the same home, because

"D-n it, speak out, and say you want to part me and Gertrude, and have done with it. Afraid of me, eh? a little late in the day, uncle, a little late"

A drunken, hollow laugh followed this speech.

Sir Douglas rose, trembling with suppressed passion.

"Kenneth," he said, "do not break all the links that bind us together. However confused habitual excess may make your intellect, however little place love, and I will not call it gratitudelove and memory of what we have been to each other may hold in your heart, respect the purity of others! Respect the spotless name of my wife. Better men than you have loved in vain, and borne it, and stood faithfully by a second choice. Parted!" continued he, almost as vehemently as Kenneth himself; "you were parted before ever we were united! Parted, boy! Gertrude and I are one soul, and you part now with us both, till-if ever the day come in your perverse heart-you can reason and repent."

So sternly-in all their many discussions-had loving Sir Douglas never spoken to his nephew before. Never, to that spoiled and indulged idol!

It maddened Kenneth. What little reasoning power increasing irritation and increasing intoxication had left him, seemed to forsake his brain in a flash of hot lightning. He looked up, cowering and yet frenzied, from the felled tree where he sat, to the stately form with folded arms and indignant commanding countenance above him. He leaned

one arm on the lopped branch to steady himself, and answered, swaying from side to side, speaking thickly, hurriedly, with an idiot's laugh and an idiot's fierceness. "Pure," he said, 66 pure! Oh yes, pure and spotless; they are all pure and spotless till they're found out! I loved in vain, did I? Talk of my vanity: what is my vanity to yours, you old coxcomb? Parted! You can't part us. I told you at Naples, and I tell you now, that she loved meand nothing but fear holds her to you. I'll stay here, if it's only to breathe the same air. Parted! Part from her yourself-tyrant and traitor! Part from her for ever, and be sure if I don't marry your widow, no other man shall!"

-me-ME!

He staggered suddenly to his feet, levelled his gun full at Sir Douglas as he stood, and fired.

In the very act he stumbled, and fell on one knee; the charge went low and slanted part of it struck Sir Douglas on the left hand, and drew blood.

The shock seemed to sober Kenneth for a moment. A gloomy sort of horror spread over his face. Then the idiot laugh returned.

"I haven't, haven't killed you. You're winged though, winged! Stand back! Don't tempt me," added he, with returning ferocity.

Sir Douglas lifted the gun and flung it out of reach: then he spoke, binding his handkerchief round his hand.

"You have not killed me. Go home, and thank God for that. You have not made my son suddenly an orphan-as you were when first I took you to my heart. Oh! my boy, my Kenneth! what demon spell is on your life! Pray to God! PRAY!" and with the last broken words, a bitter cry, ending almost in an agonised sob, went up to heaven, and resounded in the dull ear of the drunken man. Many a day afterwards, and many a night in dreams, Kenneth saw that pale, sorrowful, commanding face, and the stately form erect over his grovelling drunkenness, held by the branch of the felled pine, vainly trying to steady himself and rise from the half-kneeling, half-leaning

Stay where you are.

Eusebia shall join you. Kenneth!"

nature.

God gives us moments in our lives when all might change. If he could have repented then! If he could have repented!

Many a day he thought of it when Sir Douglas was no longer there, and he could see his face no more.

There was a dreary pause after that burst of anguish, and then Sir Douglas spoke again.

Stay

"Come no more to Glenrossie. where you are. Eusebia shall join you. When I can think further of this day, and more calmly, you shall hear from me. Farewell, Kenneth!"

The stately vision seemed to hold its hand out in token of amicable parting, as Kenneth raised his bloodshot, stupefied eyes. He did not take the hand; it seemed too far off, reaching from some better world. He crouched down again, laying his head prone with hidden face on the rough resinous bark of the lopped tree. Something for a moment pressed gently on the tangled curls of his burning head, and passed away and left only the breath of heaven waving through them; and as it passed, a sound, as of a heavy human sigh, melted also on his

ear.

A fancy haunted Kenneth that the hand of Sir Douglas had laid for that moment on his head, as it had laid many a day in his boyhood and youth, and that the sigh was his also. But these might be but dreams.

All that was real, was the utter loneliness, when, after a long drunken slumber, he woke and saw the sun declining, and heard the distant music of Torrieburn Falls, monotonously sweet -and the clear song of the wooing thrush, and looked languidly towards the house of Torrieburn, with its halfhidden gables, gleaming through the trees; and the words came back to him clearly and distinctly, "Come no more

Farewell,

Was it all a black dream? A black, drunken, delirious dream?

No.

Somehow, suddenly, Kenneth thought of his mother. For a man knows, if no one else on earth pities him, his MOTHER pities still!

The drunken head bowed once more over the fallen tree, and half-murmured the word, "Poor Maggie!" What easy showers of kisses and tears would have answered, if she had known it! But Maggie was away,-" ayont the hills," swelling with her own share of sorrowful indignation at Kenneth's conduct, and trying vainly to reconcile the old miller and his rheumatic wife to their new abode.

"Cauld and strange!" "Cauld and strange!" was all that rewarded her efforts.

CHAPTER L.

ALICE IMPARTS HER DISCOVERIES.

THE next day was the Sabbath. Peace shone from the clear autumn sky, and glorified the common things of earth. Birds sang, flowers opened wide, streamlets and falls seemed to dance as they rippled and rolled in the light. The freshness of the morning was over the cultured fields; the freshness of the morning was over the barren moor; the freshness of the morning sparkled in the dewy glen. Neil had promised his old nurse to " step into her sheiling," his mother being absent, and go with her to church; for which the old woman was already pinning on her snowy cap and best shawl, and smiling, not at herself, but at a vision of Neil, in her glass.

Alice asked sadly and demurely, and very anxiously, if she might walk with her half-brother, and if he would mind setting out half an hour "too soon," as she had something very particular to say to him. Sir Douglas consented. They walked in utter silence great part

of the way, as far as the "broomy knowe," where Alice had first talked with him of "kith-and-kin love." There she halted, and there they sat down, there she reminded him of that day! There-in a sort of frightened, subdued whispering voice-Alice said, "I know well that since that day I myself have forfeited much of my claim to brother's love, though it seems to me even now that I love you better than all-ay, even better than my dream of wedded love! But whether I have forfeited or not, I feel I cannot bear others should deceive you; and I've brought to this place what must be shown, though it wring my heart in the showing, and yours in the reading. It's all I can do, in return for your mercy and indulgence to me. All I can do in return is to prevent your being deceived by others! God knows what we are all made of! I've not had an hour's peace since I picked this up. Kenneth trampled it under foot just as you went to speak with him yesterday morning; and I was out gathering flowers, and then I thought it looked so unseemly in the garden-ground; and then as I gathered it up I saw-I could not help seeingsome strange words; and at last-at last-oh! Douglas, do not have any anger with me!-nor much with her, for it's my belief there is witchcraft round her, and none can help loving her that see her."

Sir Douglas looked strangely into Alice's eyes as she handed him the gravel-soiled, earth-stained papers. It was Gertrude's writing; of that there could be no doubt. And what was not Gertrude's was Kenneth's.

Oh, God of mercy, what was to come to-day, after that yesterday of pain?

Sir Douglas lifted his bonnet from his brow and looked up to the serene heaven before he read. "Thy will be done. THY will be done," said the trembling human lips. And hard was the struggle to echo the words in the shuddering human heart.

Much has been said and written of

the tortures of the Inquisition, and the cruelty of those who could look on and

yet not show mercy. But what are physical tortures to torture of the mind? What "grand Inquisitor" ever looked on with more stony indifference to unendurable suffering than Alice Ross as she watched the flush of colour rise to cheek and temple-fade to ghastly paleness-and big drops stand on the marble brow; while the breath of life seemed to pant and quicken as if suffocation would follow.

Even she started at the long moan which burst from that over-charged bosom, as her half-brother closed his eyes and leaned back on the bank. He had read it all. ALL.

Not in vain had Alice Ross paid her long visit to the blind beggar with the indented scar on his thin right hand. Not for the first time-no, nor for the hundredth was that hand exercising its unequalled skill at imitation and forgery; nor that apt and tortuous brain devising schemes of ruin or vengeance on those who had offended him.

The passionately torn letter, gravelstained and soiled, had apparently its corresponding half, also gravel-stained and soiled (and carefully had Alice's light heel and clever hands sought the very spot where Kenneth's mad passion had ground it into the earth in the morning). But the half that corresponded in form, altered the whole sense of the letter. The sentences referring to her love for Sir Douglas were apparently addressed to Kenneth. Her notice that she would be in Edinburgh read like an appointment to him to meet her there. Her allusions to the necessity-"if all this torment continued "-of confession to her husband, barely escaped the sense that she had to make confession of a return of his unlawful passion. The letter only stopped short at a clear implication of sin. Perhaps even the two bold accomplices employed in its concoction felt that on that hinge the door of possible credence would cease to open. All was left in doubt and mystery, except that to that bold avowal of guilty love an answer had been secretly delivered, conveying all the encouragement it was possible to give: referring to the