blow he was kicked out of the water into the mine again. At this feat the mirth of the goblin rout redoubled, and the game too was being resumed on dry land with even more vigour than it had been carried on before in the water, when most unexpectedly Dr Kirton appeared in his formidable cocked-hat, and flourishing his goldheaded cane, which had long been predominant over the children of St Just, when indulging in unlawful sports, and which now as easily put an end to the vagaries of poor Philip's tormentors. The doctor, equally famous for surgery and scepticism, has been already mentioned as a sort of doubtful friend to Tregagle, exculpating him, indeed, from the charges brought against him by popular tradition, but at the same time almost denying his existence. At the sight of this ambiguous ally, either from fear or friendship the elfin party slunk away, leaving behind them the golden cup, which, as it seemed, the diablotin had fetched from the bottom of the pool expressly for the purpose, and the victim of their malicious sport fell into a swoon, the last thing he had a glimpse of being the near corner of the doctor's trilateral hat.

The swoon lasted long. At length the tide of life, which had ebbed to its lowest mark, began again to flow, when the very same object, that had been the farewell land-mark to his departing senses, was now the first to greet them on their return. As he gradually came to himself, first one corner of the hat became visible, then a second, then a third, then the whole hat in all its trilateral dignity, till, as his powers of perception cleared up, his eyes took in the complete doctor, including the gold-headed cane, which had been so potent over the goblins. But this was all that remained of the former scene, for, instead of being in the giant's shaft, he was lying on his own bed in his own hovel. Still he was wholly at a loss to reconcile the witchery of the past with the present reality, and he gazed on the hat and its wearer with looks that seemed to ask for an explanation of his doubts.

"Humph!" said the doctor, as if in answer to the wild gaze of his patient-"Not quite recovered your senses yet?-all in good time-not well to hurry nature."

The patient was still more bewil

dered by these muttered ejaculations, of which he readily caught the import, though without being at all forwarded in his knowledge of the real state of things. With some difficulty he found words to address his visitor.

"This is very kind and neighbourly, Master Doctor, and I am heartily glad to see you-but I don't exactly know-that is, I can't guess-"

"I dare say you can't; you'll soon come to, though-yes, yes: the pulse beats pretty freely now."

"How came I here, doctor? I thought, to be sure, I was in the bal.”

"And so you might have been still, if you had not thrust your dunderhead into a shaft where you had no business, and tumbled into the water for your pains. Lucky I happened to visit the mine, as I did, to see old Borlase; the chicken-hearted rogues would never have gone near you else

but the moment they told me of your pranks I guessed there was mischief brewing, and egad I came just in time; you had swallowed more water in one quarter of an hour than in your whole life before. The dose had wellnigh proved too much for you. If you must drink the pure element, which, however, I don't advise,

take it in smaller quantities; you may not always find me at hand to set you on your legs again."

"Take my word for it, doctor, I'll never trust a finger of my body in the giant's shaft again. But it was partly your fault, you know."

"Deuce take me then, if I know any such thing. But explain; explain; I shall be happy to learn of your wisdom."

"Nay, doctor, not so wise either." "Well, never mind that-explain; I am curious to know what I had to do with your drowning yourself."

"Why you always laughed when folks talked of Tregagle

"To be sure I did; but what of that? You did not surely plump your stupid head into the water to look for the giant?-though I could almost suspect you of as wise a trick."

"Why, no, sir, I can't say that I did; only as you laughed at the stories about him, and being so wise a gentleman, I partly thought you might be right after all; and so, when brother Ralph and the others did not come back, I took heart

"You should have taken brains at

the same time, and then you would not have tumbled into the water like an ass, to be pulled out again like a rat, half-drowned."

"That was all along of the gold cup; there it lay within a few feet of me, as if I had only to put out my hand to be a made man."

"Gold cup! what gold cup? I saw nothing but an old iron kettle, that you clutched as firmly as if your life had depended upon it. There it is, and large enough to boil potatoes for the whole parish."

"I know nothing about kettles, old or new; but there, as I said, was the gold cup quite close to me, to be had, as it were, for asking for. I did have it too-but, mercy on me! it dragged me down as though it had been a whole ton of lead, and I kept sinking, sink ing, sinking, while Tregagle and a score or two of his imps laughed, and shouted, and kicked me from one to the other, as though I had been a foot-ball, till you came and put them all to the rout with your gold-headed cane."

"The devil I did!"

"You know you did, Master Doctor."

"It's the first time I ever heard of it notwithstanding."

"And if it had not been for you, it's my belief that I should never have got out of their clutches-the imps of the Old-One!"

"So I routed them all with my gold-headed cane, did I?-Poor fellow! poor fellow !-the water has clean washed away his brains; he'll never be his own man again."

This unlucky prognostic, which seemed as if the doctor meant to deny his part in the late scenes, utterly confounded his patient; he was at a loss to comprehend how so learned a man could be so wilful, or what motive he could have in forswearing an act of kindness, which redounded so much to his credit,-for even the vicar, armed with all the powers of the church, could not have shewn himself more ready to encounter, or more potent to discomfit, the giant and his auxiliaries. "Why, surely, surely, Master Doctor," said the perplexed patient, "you won't go to deny what you did only half an hour ago?"

"And what was it I did half an hour ago?"

There was a peculiar glance in the

doctor's eye, as he put this question, that added still more to poor Philip's embarrassment; it reminded him in a most unaccountable manner of the mischievous diablotin, who had cut so principal a figure amongst his tormentors, and he began to suspect the doctor of a more intimate connexion with the fiends than he was willing the world should believe, if indeed he was not actually the little imp himself in the disguise of a human form. It was, therefore, with heavy misgivings, and a most deprecating tone, that he related the story of his adventures, just as I have repeated it from his narration, or rather from the traditionary tale of his narration, as it even now exists amongst the miners.

The doctor listened to the story with divers shrugs and contortions, that might have been the effect of impatience, but which, in Philip's mind, were identified with the malicious grimaces of the little imp when kicking him to and fro in the water. Scarcely would he wait for the conclusion, but exclaimed angrily, "Pooh, pooh, man; you fancied all this stuff while you were drowning, as men in such cases will often seem to go through, in a single minute, more than they can afterwards tell in an hour; or you have dreamt it since, and now you have once got it into your silly noddle, nothing but the whip and the dark cellar will be able to drive it out again."

"Then I have not seen brother Ralph ?" said Philip, inquiringly; " and I did not follow him into the giant's shaft ?"

"Both one and the other," replied the doctor," or you had not been in this pretty pickle."

"And what has become of him?and of John ?—and of Richard ?”

"Gone to feed the fish at the bottom of the pool, if there happen to be any in it, at least I can suppose no other. It seems, as I hear from the men of the Huel-Rose, you all went, one by one, into the giant's shaft,— by the by, you were as drunk as so many owls, and, as there is no outlet, they must either have been drowned, or have returned by the way they entered, and this they did not do.Bless me,nine o'clock !-Here, Martha, Martha-Where the plague is the woman?-Always out of the way when you are wanted, and in the way when

nobody asks for you. Look well to your husband, woman, if you don't want to be a widow in a hurry. The pill at ten-again at twelve-and the draught in the morning;-and mind, when I say morning, I don't mean any of your sluts' mornings-none of your days that begin when other people are thinking of their dinner ;-I mean five o'clock-do you hear?-five o'clock at the latest."

"Yes, sir," replied the admiring Martha, with a curtsey in proportion to her awe of the doctor.

"Good-but that's not all; fasten the windows-bolt the doors,-you understand?"

But Martha did by no means understand, and, what she did not dare to say, her looks said for her. The poor woman looked the very picture of wondering ignorance.

"Confound the fool!" exclaimed the impatient doctor. "His head's not quite right yet-Do you understand now ?"

"Mercy on me!" cried Martha, lifting up her hands with mingled horror and astonishment, " you don't say so?"

"Yes, I do; so look to the doors and windows-there's no knowing what may happen."

The last directions were uttered in a low tone, with certain mysterious winks and nods to give them the greater emphasis, and the dispenser of death and physic hurried off. The poor woman would have followed, as well from her profound respect towards him, as for the clearing up of certain doubts touching her probable widowhood; but the doctor, who, though a skilful and humane man, was a perfect oddity, and had a peculiar aversion either to receiving or shewing civility, repulsed her with, "No, no; stay where you are, woman-want none of your gossip-had enough of your husband's.'

"But, sir! sir!-Doctor Kirton!" exclaimed Martha, raising her voice as the doctor retreated, "I beg your pardon, but shall we see you to-morrow ?"

"What for?-he'll not die, I dare say; and, if he should, I'm not the undertaker."

When the doctor said this, he felt certain that his patient 'would not stand in need of a coffin for any thing that had happened, or was like to

happen to him from his recent immersion in the pool of the giant's shaft; and herein he was perfectly right ;— but he thought that, with the morning, Philip would forget his night-wonders, or at least accept a rational solution of them, and herein he was wrong. The miner, though fully himself again, yet persisted in his tale, which was soon circulated throughout Saint Just and the neighbourhood, and universally received without the smallest doubt of all having happened precisely as he had stated it. Some even joined in his suspicion of the doctor, and, as they were constantly on the look-out for corroborative evidence, enough was easily found to identify him with the imp, though it was difficult to say why such a malicious being, with his violent propensity to buffeting and drowning people, should on the other hand practise the healing art for the benefit of humanity. It could only be accounted for on the supposition, that the cutting off of limbs, and the administering of nauseous doses, occasioned him so sovereign a delight, that he was willing to buy it at the price of a few cures, without the occasional display of which he would have found no employment for his malice. It was observed, too, by the most sagacious, that the cures were very few in number, while the modes of torture were exceedingly diversified, as might be learnt from the testimony of those who had ever had occasion to become acquainted with a certain oblong mahogany case, containing a multitude of sharp, shining instruments, for which the sufferers could find no name.

The story altogether attracted so much attention, that, when the pool had been in vain dragged for the bodies, the owner of the mine, as much to satisfy his own curiosity as to meet the general wish of the neighbourhood, determined to have the water drawn off entirely. This was a matter of little difficulty, the pond being scarcely eight feet deep; but, when it was accomplished, nothing else was learnt from their labour, than that the cavity was an old underlying shaft filled by the waters which, in the course of wet seasons, are copiously supplied in all deeply sunk mines. The only singularity was its extending into a second chamber, on a level with the giant's shaft, and divided from the latter by a wall, which, as it went nearly half a

foot below the water, had rendered its very existence unsuspected. Nothing was more probable than that Ralph and his brothers, in their drunkenness, stumbling into the pool, had, without seeking it, found their way to the second chamber; but this conjecture, if true, did not render the question less perplexing;-what had afterwards become of them? Even the doctor, with all his wish to find a rational solution for the marvellous, was completely at fault here; not that he was the less obstinate in maintaining, as usual, that every thing had happened simply and naturally, though he allowed that the manner of it was, for the present, unintelligible. His declarations to this effect, however, were in general recei ved ill, and by none more so than Philip and his partizans, who now contrived to unite two opinions that to most people would have seemed somewhat incompatible with each other. On the one hand they condemned the incredulous doctor for a goblin, while on the other they damned him as a mere mortal for his disbelief in goblins, hinting at the same time, pretty plain ly, that it would be as well to try his real nature by the help of a tar-barrel. It was on the second day after the disappearance of the brothers that this fruitless search for their bodies took place; and it was late on the evening of the same day, upon his return home from the mine, that Philip was destined to receive a farther proof of the interference of supernatural powers with the affairs of men. On seating himself by his own hearth, weary enough with the toils of the last eight hours, his attention was caught by the appearance of a small leathern bag,care lessly thrown aside into a corner, and which certainly did not enter into the very brief catalogue of his household goods. But what was his surprise, when, on lifting the bag and opening it, he found it full of gold coins of an ancient date, the most recent being of Cromwell's time, and many of a much earlier period; the whole, to guess by the weight, might amount in value to a hundred pounds, or perhaps even more; for the bag, though small, was heavy. The first feeling that occurred to him was, unquestionably, pure de light at finding such a prize, with a determination of appropriating it to his own use; the next, and following hard upon it, was of a more doubtful

nature,-might not the money be a fiendish gift, of course with no good purpose, and one which could not be kept with safety to himself either here or hereafter? To part with it was to lose that which he very much coveted to keep; and yet to retain it was to undergo a peril, for which he had a marvellous disinclination.

After a long struggle, prudence, or, to speak it more truly, fear got the mastery over avarice-he resolved to fling the gold into the sea, the best depository, he thought, for unhallowed treasure; and, besides, there was a chance of the tide casting it up again, a chance he devoutly prayed for, as in that case he determined to consider it a gift from Heaven, and take it to himself accordingly. This idea had some thing in it extremely consoling, if, indeed, it was not the only thing that at all reconciled him to the desperate measure of flinging away more wealth in a minute than he could gain in a life of labour, though that life should be extended to the age of Methusaleh.

The night was pitch-dark, when, with a heavy heart, he set out upon this purpose, equally reluctant to peril his soul or to part with the gold. Something, indeed, seemed to whisper him, that if he did not soon fling it from him, he would not be able to get rid of it at all; for the longer he kept it, the more powerful was its attraction. The precious metal seemed as if it actually stuck to his hands; and the more he weighed and balanced it, the greater, to his thinking, grew the weight, just as the cup had done in a former instance, to the no little danger of his soul from the fiend, and of his body from the water.

"It must be magic gold," he thought to himself, "and the sooner I pitch it to the goblin, from whom it came, the better for me now and after."

"Are you mad, fool? are you mad?" exclaimed a voice close beside him, and at the same time his arm was arrested in the very act of hurling the treasure as far as he could hurl it.

Philip turned round hastily, when who should meet him face to face and eye to eye, but the ill-omened doctor, wrapt up in a large red cloak, with a lantern in his left hand, and grinning more diabolically than ever. The luckless miner immediately dropt the bag, and sprung back in dismay from the grasp of his suspicious visitant.