"I would not touch life. No, killing is poor revenge. Wait, wait a while. What noise is that?-music? oh, truly this is a fit scene for music." The strains were those of a flute: they were soft and sweet, like the accents of pity mourning over this scene of frightful misery, and essaying to soften the soul of the hardened man, and touch his dæmon ferocity with one recollection of human feeling; or they might have been likened to the voice of an angel exorcising the spirit of evil from its unholy tenancy of the image of God in man. For a brief time the man of blood paused and listened eagerly to the notes, which were those of a wild plaintive French air, now long forgotten, but of exquisite melody: they pierced the heart of Ferdinand, and rived it with a bitter yet a human anguish. The heated instrument fell from his grasp upon the hearth; he tossed his naked arms furiously above his head, and uttered a loud cry. "Aye, aye; torture me!-I hear you in my soul. I know all: you would tell me SHE used to sing that air to me. So she did; and oh! how sweetly did she warble it when my weary head rested upon her bosom, till ĭ sunk into the sleep of confidence and love. Then she was my wife, my hope, my all, she was myself. Oh, if men could read the breasts of their fellow men, I would tear open mine before the collected world, and ask, did I not love her?-did I not fold up my seared and lonely heart in hers, and with it every hope for happiness? when she was blithesome did I not bask in the ray of her smile even as in heaven's own sunshine, and when she pined in sorrow or sickness, did I not weep for her tears of blood?—I did, I did; and now she has turned my heart to stone, and given my brain to madness. She is a harlot."

For some fleeting moments recollection admitted a ray of reason, a consciousness of human nature, athwart the darkened brain of the maniac. Could he have wept, the progress of crime might yet have been stayed. But no; the sluices of tears were parched up by the sirocco of frenzy, and the reign of feeling was but during a pause in the deadly gust. A fiend "sate heavy on the soul" of the miserable man, and rejoiced in commingling the elements of humanity into a stormy chaos, of which a fixed purpose of revenge was the predominant constituent.

"Justice!" said Ferdinand in his former low hoarse tone. "I am about to do a deed of justice, and it is meet that the execution of justice should have witnesses. Ha! a good principle that! come forth then," and he strode to a distant part of the room.

It has been said that the circuit of the chamber was in deep shadow, but in one corner might be distinguished a bed with dark-coloured hangings, which were rent and dragged from their proper position as if by a furious struggle, in which one party had tenaciously clung to the frail things for help against a powerful and determined foe. At least the imagination readily supplied such a cause for their tattered state, as in perfect consistency with the scene. It was towards this bed that from my place of confinement I saw Ferdinand advance. In a moment he returned, bearing in his arms a human body, nearly naked. It was that of a golden-haired youth, apparently not twenty years old. The limbs were slight and delicate, but exquisitely

moulded, and the skin of surpassing whiteness; together forming a remarkable contrast with the dark harshly-lined visage and the stalworth and mighty frame of the man on whose shoulder the body rested with a weight seemingly unfelt.

Ferdinand brought forward the corpse. To my appalled gaze the joints appeared still quivering with life, but it was the partial litheness of recent death. The murderer placed his dead victim in a chair opposite his living prey, and forced the body to assume a sitting posture. He then ignited a lamp and disposed it so that the light should fall directly upon the countenance. I saw that the creature had died a death of agony. The features were distorted, the eyes protruded far out of their sockets, the tongue was torn from its cavity, and rested upon the cheek. Across the throat was a long jagged trench, from which the blood had welled in torrents, and let forth life.

I sickened at the spectacle of horror. I writhed; I madly bit the iron fetters which bound me down flat and helpless. I seemed one instant to have strength sufficient to burst my bonds, and uproot a tree for a weapon, yet on essaying I was damned with the impotence of a baby through utter horror. I ground my teeth, and would have yelled forth menaces and curses against the homicide, but my tongue clave to my palate, and a suffocating sensation impeded utterance; my throat swelled and gurgled, a cold sweat burst forth upon me, and I could not give vent to a sound. The fiend knew I was securely fastened, and he proceeded in his bloody work without heeding my paroxysms.

He placed his hand heavily on the shoulder of the female. The touch awoke her as from a trance, and she shrunk from its withering grasp. She could have crawled into a charnel-house, and crouched beneath the rotting remnants of mortality to have escaped the presence of that ruthless man only for so long a time as she could have prayed to her Creator for forgiveness of her crime, and fortitude to endure its punishment. Now her body and soul were alike doomed. She could not pray, for her faculties were palsied. She "cowered like a guilty thing" beneath the eye of fire which glared steadily upon her without show of mercy or compunction. Her frame was rigid with horror, and her dry lips moved as if she would have entreated remission.

"Woman, awake; awake, I say; and for the last time behold thy paramour. What! wilt not look upon thy lover, whose dainty girlish form thine eye hath so often gloated upon? Yes, one last look," he continued, with a horrible sneer, 66 one last look of love and farewell. See! behold his throat! Is he not beautiful now?" God! he thrust the fingers of one hand into the gaping wound, and with the other dragged forward the wretched woman to look closer upon the work of murder. Her fixed eye met the ghastly object, but no alteration of expression took place in the stony vapid stare with which she regarded it. Even that bleeding form conveyed no fresh idea to her mind to increase its full store of misery.

"Fear not for life," muttered Ferdinand; "I do not mean to kill thee. Oh, no, I promise that. But look well and look long upon

him, Augusta; let thy lover as he now is be the last object thine eye has dwelt upon, so that, as thou wanderest blind and helpless through the world, thou shalt see his mangled carcase ceaselessly in thy darkness. And mark, Augusta-fail not to remember, gentle lady, it was thou who caused his death-and now for justice." The monster griped his unresisting victim firmly by the nape of her neck; with one exertion of his powerful arm he raised her into an upright posture, and supported her weight upon his hip, whilst with the other hand he grasped the bar, and with it seared her eyeballs. I heard the heated iron hissing in those lustrous orbs which in their living speaking beauty might have captivated the sternest soul, and turned to pity a heart of nether millstone. I saw the steam of the quenching bar arising in volumes. I heard the protracted dire shriek of the tortured creature. I saw the frantic struggles by which she vainly strove to escape from the vice-like hold of her executioner, when the extremity of physical agony had restored her paralyzed faculties, and, in consequence, the power of muscular motion. I heard again the hoarse laugh of the madman reverberating in different cadences as from a hundred echoes when the deed was done ; and it rung in mine ears like the rejoicings of a hundred fiends. "Whoo! whoo!" howled Ferdinand; "I thought I should doctor the fainting fit."

Again I laboured to release myself from the terrible bondage in which, powerless to afford help, I was doomed to behold this scene of blood; but I could only lacerate my flesh against the links of the chains which pressed me down with their huge weight, and restrained me by their strength. I could not longer look on and retain my senses. Reason tottered-I was fast becoming mad. The scene dissolved like a group of shadows, and I saw nothing but waves of blood which floated and dashed before my eyes, and laved me with their hideous foam. Yet I felt the hand of the murderer upon me, and it was slippery with the gore of his victims.

"Halloo! old fellow; not up yet? Zounds, this is too bad. Come, stir your stumps. We are losing the best time for sport. It is past five o'clock."

"Eh!" I rubbed my eyes. By the bedside stood my old crony Ferdinand Schnapps, the identical hero of my dream, with his fishing tackle on his shoulder, and his physiognomy exhibiting considerable impatience at my breach of an agreement made the preceding day to be ready at five o'clock precisely for the purpose of accompanying him to a capital trout stream. But, entre nous, courteous reader, I had eaten a meat supper, imbibed certain glasses of brandy punch, and overslept myself.

"Eh!" I groaned out. "Is that you, Ferdy? I have had a horrible dream. How is Mrs. Schnapps?"

“Oh little Gusta is quite well; only a trifle sulky. She says married men have no business to get out of bed at such unseasonable hours, and run about the country like school-boys. The poor girl has not yet got reconciled to the habits of a sportsman; only two months married, you know. But come, make haste."

CAIUS.

THE VOICE.

A SKETCH.-BY CHARLES DIXON.

Author of Aber-Merlyn.

"Horror of horrors! what his only son!

How looked the hermit when the deed was done?

Not Hell, though Hell's black jaws in sunder part

And breathe blue fire, could more assault his heart."-PARNELL.

AND what is a sketch? Is it but an outline drawn with a few hasty pencillings of the brush ?-here a little shade and there a little light: but yet withal so perfect a resemblance that the artist can at any future period fill up the blank, and make it start forth a picture full of life and colour,-a mere memento as it were of some form he loved to dwell upon, a landscape that once pleased his mind; or is it a species of petite histoire, which the modesty of the author (perhaps the nature of the case itself) will not permit him to call a "Tale;" or, on the other hand, his vanity will not allow to be denominated a "Story." To which of these belongs a "Sketch," or does it belong to either? And although it is a title we see in almost every periodi cal of the present day, it is one of that numerous family that we meet with in our daily conversation, which we all comprehend, but yet so few of us can with any accuracy describe.

"Good heavens! what a figure. Confess now that you have never seen such a lovely creature before."

Such was the ejaculation of my friend, but I must not begin in the middle of my sketch, lest I be thought an inhabitant of England's sister Isle. Henry Walter and I had become acquainted with each other while studying at the same college; and after we quitted it, although our avocations were rather different, time had so cemented our friendship that we were always companions in our rambles, I might almost say inseparable. He was a man of some property, of an agreeable person, and possessed what is more valuable than either delightful and charming manners; his conversation was always pleasing, and on any subject that was proposed, he had a greater fund of information than the generality of men.

I say more valuable, because I have ever remarked that a man of agreeable manners and conversation, even though his figure be not elegant or graceful, has much more frequently won the heart of womankind, than one who is handsome alone in person, but unadorned in the graces of the mind; and the reason is but too obvious.

I remember once hearing a young lady express her surprise that a certain gentleman who was far from the Beau Ideal,-nay, more, to whom it would have been a compliment even to have called him plain, had gained the regard of a very pretty and accomplished girl, since, in her eyes, she said there was nothing at all attractive about him. Some months afterwards, when I happened to meet her again, I saw

her engaged in deep and earnest conversation with the plain gentleman, and when I reminded her of her former opinion, she blushed deeply, and begged me to forget her hasty and mistaken judgment. The following year beheld them a wedded pair.-But to return.

Walter was an universal favourite among the ladies, and had especially ingratiated himself in the good favour of Louisa Denville. She was an exceedingly pretty, but certainly not a beautiful girl; lively and full of spirits, she was the soul of the evening over which she presided like a guardian spirit; good nature beamed in her smile, and destruction was certain to all who came beneath the glance of her sparkling eye. Such a girl could not fail to be an object of admiration, and Walter yielded to the powerful magic that she threw around him. The attachment, which on both sides was mutual, was approved of by their friends, and the marriage day had been already fixed upon at some no distant period.

But there was one trait in my friend's character which I must not omit to mention, as it exerted no little influence over his fate. He was exceedingly variable and unsteady in his disposition; one moment he would be full of spirits, at the next as silent and gloomy as though a cloud had come over the spirit of his dream; and this variability was but too evident in all his actions. His attachment however to Miss Denville had as yet been altogether unmarked by this fickleness of conduct.

We had been taking a stroll in the Park, enjoying the summer freshness of the morning, and were on our return homewards when we suddenly encountered two ladies, the younger of whom, from her likeness and her youth, was evidently the daughter. Walter was so smitten with the slight glimpse, that he proposed we should make the same way our own, to which I was myself nothing loth, for certainly if I have a weakness, it is in admiring a pretty girl. We walked on accordingly until we saw them enter their house-yes, their house, for our curiosity was not satisfied until we had discovered who they were, and every particular relating to them.

Day after day we found ourselves in the Park, and the impression that had at first been made on my friend, was not at all diminished by the subsequent views he had of her person and figure. We had been taking our accustomed walk, and had entered into conversation about our fair acquaintance, when, at some observation that fell from my lips, Walter burst forth into that ejaculation of rhapsody which I have before stated.

"Good heavens! what a figure! confess now that seen such a lovely creature before."

you

have never

"As to her figure," I replied, "it is certainly very fine, but I cannot allow her the palm of beauty; nay, look at her face, since we have entered into an argument on the subject. Her features are certainly regular and the tout ensemble is captivating at first, but what expression is there-where can you find any soul-any breathing eloquence? without which in my humble opinion no beauty can exist indeed they are the essence of beauty."

You have no taste, begging your pardon," said Walter rather pettishly.