prayed; but hope gave him no encouragement. He felt that his fight was a battle with Fate, and he knew that he would be worsted in the end. In order to counteract Winford's attacks upon his purse he had speculated in various ways, but he had always been unsuccessful, and even such a contingency as poverty dawned upon him, to make his torments the greater. "Let me buy your silence in one final sum," he said to Winford one day, when Barnes had solicited a further loan with more than ordinary insolence. "Name your price." "How business-like we are to-day," Winford mockingly replied, "we were not wont to be so matter-of-fact." "There need be no longer any disguise about our positions," said Paul. “The manner of your asking for money has been too peremptory, too arogant, to make any other than one impression." "And that impression?" said Winford coolly, lighting a cigar. "Is that I am paying for my safety; that were I to refuse, you would carry out the threat which you have more than once made, howsoever vaguely." "You were not always such a good interpreter of other men's intentions, Paul; you have read mine rightly." "Coward! miserable coward!" exclaimed Paul, passionately. "Have you no compassion, no feeling, no gratitude, no humanity?" "Ah, ah, ah," laughed his tormentor, "that's devilish good. You are abundantly blessed with all those virtues, I suppose." "I! I am more despicable than yourself, and ready to bend to the most terrible punishment: but there are others, Winford. You cannot be all stone: think of them. For myself, I ask nothing, but for them, I say, name the sum at which your silence is to be purchased, and I couple with it but one condition." "Well, I don't wish to be hard," said the heartless spendthrift ; "but I helped you into your new estates; I advised you to make up to the girl, you know." Paul's love for Anna Lee had been no sordid one, and he bore this assumed partnership in her fortune with a heart ready to burst, and with fingers hitching to seize his tormentor and hurl him to the earth. "It was a pleasant sitting down for you, as they say northwards, and it's only fair that you should deal handsomely with me," and Winford knocked a long ash from his cigar, and commenced a calculation. "Let me see, I owe £500 in a little matter of roulet, another instalment of £5000 towards the composition with those attentive creditors on the Tyne, certain fair ladies of Maryport must have £500 this week, and— but what condition is this you speak of?" “The condition is this, that you write and sign a document which I shall dictate, describing Harry Thornhill's accidental death, and confess ing therein that you were once wicked enough to try and make capital out of me, by basely and maliciously charging me with murder; all of which you now regret, pronouncing the truth of this declaration, which you make on condition that I do not prosecute you for slander; and that you leave England for ever, or permit me to do so. This will save the name I bear from a terrible blot; it will save my wife and child from a greater misery than poverty. I ask a great thing-I will pay a great price for it." "Is that all?" inquired Winford, with a grim mocking smile. "That is all." "And how much will you pay for that?" And I will also, "Perhaps all you may have the conscience to ask. in writing, agree to take no advantage whatever of the document, and never to use it in any way, unless to produce it in a Court of Justice to which I may be summoned on any charge relative to Harry Thornhill.” "But you want me to commit perjury. No, no, I can't consent to that. I, Winford Barnes, perjure myself, stain my fair reputation with crime! No, no, Paul Massey, that I cannot do," said Winford in a bantering, jeering way. "But if we can agree as to the amount, and you will accept my word of honour; why, then I am open to negociate." Paul made other propositions in which he endeavoured to secure himself against his tormentor; but Winford Barnes was too keenly alive to his power over his old friend to accept any which did not leave him a free agent. "No," he said at length, "I may come to that pass, Mr. Massey; the time may arrive when a pile of gold will tempt me even to a worse crime than perjury, but it is not yet, my friend. So, for the present, if you will just let me have, say ten thousand pounds-at five per cent, you know- —a simple loan, I'll trouble you no more this two years, at any rate, and if I'm in luck, I'll trouble you no more for ten years, perhaps. There! Now can you say I'm selfish and sordid?" Paul felt that it was useless to struggle further with his fate just then, so he consented to this twentieth loan. "If you leave here to-night I will order the money to be placed to your credit at Maryport by the next post." "It's unkind in a host to give his guest notice to quit," said Winford, emptying the brandy-bottle into his tumbler and tossing it off, "but I'll not oppose you in that: so we'll part at once." If Paul had taken particular note of the unhealthy, besotted, and generally dissipated appearance of his unwelcome guest, he might have seen a cause for hope in Winford's trembling hand and glaring eyes. He looked like a man who would some morning be found dead in a gutter, or who would go off raving in a fit of delirium tremens. had utterly sunk into the depths of debauchery, and his extravagance had gathered around him, in Maryport, depraved men and women who gladly encouraged his wicked ogies. But Paul received no hope from He Winford's debauchery: once, for two days, when the news reached Denby that he was nearly killed, Paul had hoped that his wife and child would be rescued from the pitfall to which he was leading them. It was little that Bessie Martin could tell Richard Grey about Denby Rise. Mrs. Massey often came to Beachstone's to buy books, and was a beautiful kind lady, and wore lovely dresses, and real diamonds. Mr. Massey often came with her, and he was a very kind gentleman. They had a little girl with bright curly hair, and a very impudent groom named Wittle, who had assurance enough to joke her, though she had not disliked him half so much since he had said that Richard Grey was a fine fellow. It was impudence, however, Bessie went on to say, for the man to tell her that Richard was rather fast; but she hoped soon to be away from Helswick. She had met Mr. Massey on the beach once or twice, and although people said he was so happy, she thought he looked miserable: he would stand staring at the sea, as if he would like to be far away on it. So she thought, however, when she saw him; but when he was with Mrs. Massey he was so kind, so good, so attentive. Oh, how delightful it must be, when people loved each other, to be always together! "Not to be separated as we are, dear Richard," Bessie continued. "But you will soon come, wont you? and fetch your poor Bessie. I am sure one of your letters has been lost; for I have only had this short one. Do write often to me, and be sure to come soon." Bessie's was a true description of Paul's occasional solitary rambles; but how incomplete! Paul had thought all sorts of wild things in those reveries. Once it seemed as if a voice whispered to him that rest could only come through the death of Winford Barnes, and then the prompter advised the forcible removal of his tormentor. Paul checked the murderous thought, and shuddered at the horrible suggestion. But the whisper came again, and seemed to ask what was the death of a worthless wretch such as Barnes, compared with the happiness and safety of Anna and her child. "Crush him out of your path-trample upon him," the tempter seemed to say, until Paul went home in a frenzy of fear and dread, and lay seriously ill for many long weary days. (To be continued.) AN OLD WORLD RAMBLE IN THE DAYS OF SHAKESPEARE. LET us forget for a time, dear reader, the bustle and activity of our own day, and travel gravely and soberly back for nearly three hundred years, and then plant ourselves unobtrusively among the men and women of "good Queen Bess's" days. We shall have a goodly pioneer to guide us in our ramble; yonder grave-eyed man in black with the high white forehead, and peaked beard, will go along with us. You all know him well, you all love him: it is Will Shakespeare, once the country boy in merry Stratford, who was to be seen morning after morning 66 Creeping like snail, unwillingly to school;" once the merry knave who stole the deer in Charlecote Chase, and who danced with the lightest heel beneath the "Boundary Tree" at Shottery: it is our own dear friend and gossip Will, not very well off at present, and a few years ago, if report speaks truly, reduced to holding horses at the doors of the London theatres. Our ramble shall be only in the world which Shakespeare has peopled; we will not look beyond, for all that the invincible Armada has been sighted, and the beacon-lights are flashing, and Right sharp and quick the bells all night rang out from Bristol town, Our business is not with Philip's galleons, nor with her gracious Majesty, who is haranguing the troops at Tilbury with a voice like that of her bluff sire himself. We will stay in London with Shakespeare; we will loiter in Ludgate and Paul's; we will look in upon the bear-baiting at Southwark. We can stroll, too, into the country without fatiguing ourselves, for is there not Charing with its cross; and the green lanes of Saint Giles, and Saint Martin's, really in the fields, are close by. We can take some slight refreshment if we need it, in the way of " pudding pies" at Pimlico, or cheesecakes at Holloway, or stroll for a longer walk to pretty Marylebone, Saint Mary-on-the-bourne; but let us not venture on the Oxford Road, for there frowns the triple gallows at Tyburn where so many poor wretches, guilty and innocent, have left this world with a short shrift and a long cord. The Thames of which Shakespeare's contemporary, Spenser, wrote, "Sweet Themmes ! runne softly till I end my song," was really sweet then, and the banks by Southwark were green and fringed with the water-lily and forget-me-not. On the other side was the Strand, with its large mansions belonging to the nobility, and its VOL. VI. L gardens sloping down to the river-side. Among these great mansions was York House where Bacon first saw the light which was hereafter to look upon his greatness and his meanness; hard by the luckless Raleigh lived, in sight of the Maypole round which the lads and lassies danced at merry Shrovetide. There were sweet-smelling gardens then in the very heart of what is now the city, and Shakespeare as he passed through Aldersgate Street and Bishopsgate might smell the roses and jasmine there. Let us go for a while to the middle aisle of Paul's, for there all the world is assembled just now. We can laugh at the gay gallant, flaunting in his taffety doublet, his plumed hat, and his long sword, fancying himself "the observed of all observers;" we can shrink back into a corner as the blear-eyed alchymist limps past, thinking, doubtless, of the grand arcanum which he is always so nearly attaining, or perhaps concocting some villainous poisoning scheme against some unconscious Overbury. Here we may see the actor who, to judge by his hurried, impassioned action, and scowling brow, may be rehearsing the part of Richard Crook-back; and near him comes Mar-text, the Curate, looking askance at the sleek, sly Jesuit from St. Omer. But soft, see yonder by the column, our bard leans his head against the grey stone, his gentle eyes are gazing out far beyond the crowd about him, far away from the narrow, common-place, grovelling world, into a higher world of his own creating. Can we not picture some of the forms which people it, and which are rising before the poet's rapt gaze? See where, with slow and stately step, with eyes cast down and arms folded across his broad breast, there comes one clad in mourning weeds; you know him, reader, ere I tell his name; it is he who loved Ophelia, it is Hamlet the Dane. How sad he looks! Truly he has borne "the stings and arrows of outrageous fortune," the death of his murdered father, the treachery of his false mother, the cold looks of friends; well may fair-haired Hamlet look sad. Close behind him comes fair Ophelia, old Polonius' danghter; but, alas! "there is no speculation in those orbs," the lovely face is expressionless, full only of passive beauty; the wild flowers hang among her golden locks, the winds toy with those shining tresses, she turns away singing, "For bonny sweet Robin is all my joy." Poor heart listen how she mourns for the old man : Go thy way, poor Ophelia; we know the rest, we know where "There is a willow grows aslant the brook, That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream." |