weapons, cut the

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rength and fury. The threat was soon fulfilled; the evening came on, prematurely darkened by clouds that seemed surcharged with a deluge. Loud and sudden squalls of wind shook the house from time to time, and then as suddenly ceased. Towards night the storm came on in all its strength; Melmoth's bed was shaken so as to render it impossible to sleep. He 'liked the rocking of the battlements,' but by no means liked the expected fall of the chimneys, the crashing in of the roof, and the splinters of the br

ing off the body of his victim (whose soul had long been his purchase) in a tempest, whose wild howl and triumphant ravage might have been variously, and with equal justice, interpreted by each party as giving testimony to their mutual denunciations. Just such a party (mutatis mutandis) were collected round the bickering fire and rocking chimney in Melmoth's kitchen. 'He is going in that blast,' said one of the hags, taking the pipe from her mouth, and trying vainly to rekindle it among the embers that the storm scattered about like dust; 'he is going in that blast.' - 'He'll come again,' cried another Sybil, 'he'll come again, - he's not at rest! He roams and wails about till something is told that he never could tell in his life-time. - G-d save us!' she added, howling up the chimney, as if addressing the troubled spirit; 'tell us what you want, and stop the blast, will ye?' - The wind came like thunder down the chimney; the hag shuddered and retreated. 'If it's this you want - and this - and this,' cried a young female whom Melmoth had not noticed before, 'take them;' and she eagerly tore the papers out of her hair, and flung them into the fire. Then Melmoth recollected a ridiculous story told him the day before of this girl, who had had the 'bad luck,' as she called i

.' The storm ceased for a moment, and there was a deep and dreary silence of fearful expectation. The sound was heard again, - it could not b

ething to struggle with, within we have only to suffer; and the severest storm, by exciting the energy of its victim, gives at once a stimulus to action

been suspended for a duster, - and a third was battling with a cat and her brood of kittens for a pair of old boots which she had been pleased to make the seat of her accouchement, - Melmoth had gone up to the highest room in the house. The window was driven in; - had there been light, this window commanded a view of the se

that crag - they will hear my voice from that.' He dashed desperately through the water, while the foam of the breakers from a distant rock almost choaked him, gained the point, and, elated by his success, shouted aloud with his utmost strength. But his voice, baffled and drowned by the tempest, was lost even to his own hearing. Its sound was faint and querulous, more like the wail of grief, than the encouraging cry of hope. At this moment, the racking clouds flying rapidly across the sky, like the scattered fugitives of a routed army, the moon burst forth with the sudden and appalling effulgence of lightning. Melmoth caught a full view of the vessel, and of her danger. She lay beating against a rock, over which the breakers dashed their foam to the height of thirty feet. She was half in the water, a mere hulk, her rigging torn to shreds, her main mast cut away, and every sea she shipped, Melmoth could hear distinctly the dying cries of those who were swept away, or perhaps of those whos

nce by sea and land, between hope and despair. No effectual assistance could be rendered, - not a boat could live in that gale, - yet still, and to the last, cheers were heard from rock to rock, - terrible cheers, that announced safety was near and - impossible; - lanthorns held aloft in all directions, that displayed to the sufferers the shore all peopled with life, and the roaring and impassable waves between; - ropes flung out, with loud cries of help and encouragement, and caught at by some chilled, nerveless, and despairing hand, that only grasped the wave, - relaxed its hold, - was tossed once over the sinking head, - and then seen no more. It was at this moment that Melmoth, starting from his trance of terror, and looking round him, saw all, to the number of hundreds, anxious, restless, and occupied; and, though obviously in vain, the sight cheered his heart. 'How much good there is in man,' he cried, 'when it is called forth by the sufferings of his fellows!' He had no leisure or inclination, then, to analyse the compound he called good, and resolve it into its component parts of curiosity, strong excitement, the pride of physical strength, or the comparative consciousness of safety. He had, indeed, no leisure, for just then he descried, standing a few yards above him on the rock, a figure that shewed neither sympathy or terror, - uttered no sound, - off

climb the rock, - the figure was but a few feet above him, - the object of his daily and nightly dreams was at last within the reach of his mind and his arm, - was almost tangible. Fang and Snare1 themselves, in all the enthusiasm of professional zeal, never uttered, 'if I but once get him within my vice,' with more eagerness than did Melmoth, as he scrambled up his steep and perilous path, to the ledge of the rock where the figure stood so calm and dark. Panting from the fury of the storm, the vehemence of his own exertions, and the difficulty of the task, he was now almost foot to foot, and face to face, with the object of his pursuit, when, grasping at the loosened fragment of a stone whose fall could not have hurt a child, though on its tottering insecurity hung the life-grasp of a man, his hold failed -