ing joy and consolation to the old man's heart.

"I am weary, my son," he said, "yet will I give thee brief word of advice, the fruit of long experience. To-morrow, when you mount the scaffold, look not at the mob; the ocean of eyes will confuse you, and make you falter. Fancy you are alone with the condemned man, and deal your blow steadily and carefully. If the head falls not at the first stroke, a thousand voices will cry haro on the bungling headsman: a thousand arms will be uplifted against him, and I shall never again behold thee alive. I will pray to God that He mercifully strengthen thee for the terrible task. Go, my son, and His blessing be upon thee."

Whilst the old man thus spoke, with a coolness resulting from long

habit, all Gerard's apprehensions returned with redoubled violence, and he longed to throw himself on his knees before his father, to declare his inability to carry out his instructions, and to recall his promise of supporting the burthen of existence. But affection for his sole surviving parent, and fear of accelerating the fatal termination of his malady, stimulated him to self-restraint; and, after alast embrace, and a murmured "goodnight," he retired to his chamber. There, however, he neither sought his bed nor found repose. The rays of the morning sun shone upon the unhappy youth sitting in the same place, almost in the very same posture, he had taken on entering his room-as mute, as motionless, and nearly as pale, as statue of whitest marble.

The execution of Hendrik the Mariner was fixed for six in the evening. Long before the appointed hour, crowds of people, eager to see the horrible spectacle, thronged through the St George's Gate, in the direction of the place of punishment. Nothing was more seductive to the populace of that day than the sight of a grisly head rolling upon the scaffold, and reddening the boards with its blood. The Antwerp burghers were not exempt from this horrible curiosity; and Headsman's Acre, as the field was called in which capital punishments then took place, was crowded with spectators of all ages and classes, including women,many of them with their children in their arms, urchins of tender age, and old men who, already on the brink of the grave, tottered from their easy chair and chimney corner to behold a fellow-creature expiate, by a premature death, his sin against society. Noisy and merry was the mob collected round the tall black gallows and the grim rusty wheel.

In the crowd, close to the scaffold, stood Lina, her heart beating quickly and anxiously, her tears restrained from flowing only by the reflection that she was there to give Gerard courage, and that weeping was the worst way to do it. Her brother Franz stood beside her, in holiday

suit, his broad-leafed Spanish hat upon his head, and his brown cloak over his shoulder, according to the fashion of the time. Lina had represented to him, in lively colours, the frightful danger incurred by Gerard; and he, with his usual rough good-heartedness, swore to break the neck of the first man who threw a stone at the new headsman.

It was late, and the shades of evening fell upon the earth, before the executioner's varlets completed the necessary arrangements on the scaffold. At the moment these terminated, a cart pierced the throng amidst general stir and hum of curiosity. The criminal, attired in a black linen gown, sat with a priest in the hinder part of the vehicle. Gerard was on the foremost bench, his broad bright sword in his hand, and one of his assistants beside him. None could divine, from his countenance, what passed in his mind; his features were fixed and rigid; his eyes, bent upon the ground, avoided the people's gaze; and but for the weapon he bore, none could have told which of the two, he or Hendrik, was the condemned man. Unconscious of his own movements, he ascended the scaffold, so confused in spirit that he saw nothing, not even Lina, although Franz several times made signs to catch his attention.

And now the varlets would have removed the prisoner from the cart to the scaffold; but he pretended he had not finished his confession, which he wished now, for the first time, to make full and complete, seeing all chance of pardon gone. Perhaps he nourished a vague hope of escape in the darkness; for heavy clouds drifted across the sky, and night approached so rapidly that already those upon the outskirts of the crowd could scarcely distinguish what passed upon the scaffold. So that the people, fearing the increasing darkness would deprive them altogether of the show they coveted, began to clamour loudly for the execution of the sentence. The culprit, still resisting, and claiming delay, was brought upon the scaffold by force, and made to kneel down. The headsman's assistant bared the condemned wretch's neck, and pointed to it with a significant look, as if to say, "Master, strike."

At sight of the naked flesh into which he was to cut, Gerard started as from a heavy sleep, and his limbs trembled till the scaffold shook under him, and the broad-bladed sword fell from his hand. The varlet picked up the weapon and gave it back to his master, who clutched it convulsively, whilst the red rod of the superintending official gave the signal to strike. But Gerard neither saw the rod nor heard the voice of its bearer. Already a murmur arose amongst the crowd. "Quick, master! quick!" said the varlet, whose ear caught the ill-omened sound.

Summoning all the strength and courage his recent sufferings had left him, Gerard raised the sword, with the fixed determination to strike a bold and steady blow, when at that moment the victim turned his head, and at sight of the impending steel, uttered a lamentable yell. No more was wanting to upset Gerard's resolution and presence of mind. They left him on the instant: his arms lost their strength, and he let the sword fall on Hendrik's shoulder, but so feebly that it did not even wound him.

At the chill touch of the blade, the criminal's whole frame quivered with agony; but the next instant, feeling himself unhurt, and perceiving the advantage to be derived from his exe

cutioner's irresolution, he sprang to his feet, and stretching out his fettered arms to the people, implored help and pity, for that he was wilfully tortured.

At this appeal the fury of the mob burst forth with uncontrollable vehemence.

"Strike him dead!" was the universal cry; "strike the torturer dead!"

And stones flew about Gerard's head, but in no great number, since, fortunately for him, they were not plentiful on the field. The unhappy youth stood for a moment stunned by the uproar; then, folding his arms, he stepped forward to the edge of the scaffold with the air of one for whom death has no terrors.

Wolves!" he exclaimed;"wolves in the garb of men! ye came for blood-take mine, and slake your fiendish thirst!"

This rash defiance excited to madness the fury of the rabble. Women, children, and men of the better classes, fled in all haste from the field, leaving it occupied by the very dregs and refuse of Antwerp, who pressed fiercely forward to the scaffold, making violent efforts to seize the headsman, in spite of the resistance of the police and officials. The uproar and confusion were tremendous. Around Gerard a number of officers of justice assembled-less, however, for his protection, than to prevent the escape of the culprit, who made furious efforts to get rid of his manacles, and continued to appeal to the people and shout "for assistance. At this moment of confusion, when scarcely any one knew what his neighbour did, a man ascended the scaffold, and approached the executioner. It was Franz.

"Gerard," he said, "Lina conjures you, in God's name, and by your love for her, to speak to her for one moment. She is below; follow me!" And he leaped from the scaffold, on the side where the mob was thinnest. Gerard obeyed the charm of Lina's name. How gladly, he thought, would he bid his beloved one more farewell before encountering the death he deemed inevitable. In another second he stood by her side. At the same instant Franz, stripping off his cloak, muffled Gerard in its folds,

pressed his broad hat over his eyes, and placing Lina's arm in that of the bewildered headsman, drew them gently from the spot.

"Go quietly and fearlessly through the crowd," he said, "and wait for me in the copse beyond the farthest gibbet."

And seeing that Lina obeyed his directions and led away Gerard, who followed passively as a child, Franz ran round to the other side of the scaffold, and set up such a shouting, that the mob, thinking he had seized the delinquent headsman, rushed furiously in that direction, leaving a free passage to the lovers. Franz continued to shout with all his might, and to affect the most violent indignation.

"Strike him dead!" he cried; "strike him dead! Down with the base torturer! Throw his carcass to the ravens !"

And he hurled stones at the scaffold, headed a charge on the police, and behaved altogether like a madman let loose. Favoured by this attracting of the attention from them, and under cover of the darkness, Lina succeeded in getting her lover away unrecognised, for Franz's cloak and hat completely concealed the headsman's well-known costume. But before they reached the thicket, the mob got possession of the scaffold, released the prisoner, and began ill-treating the officials, to compel them to confess what had become of the executioner. On finding that this latter personage, the cause of the whole tumult, had disappeared, a man, one of the lowest of the people, who had seen Franz throw his cloak over Gerard's shoulders, and who had watched the direction taken by Lina and her disguised companion, guessed that the fugitive was no other than the headsman himself, and immediately started in pursuit. Before he could overtake them, Lina and Gerard disappeared amongst the trees. His suspicions confirmed by this mysterious conduct, the ruffian, blaspheming with exultation and fury, rushed upon the lovers; and, tearing off Gerard's cloak, beheld the headsman's livery. Thereupon, without word or question, he lifted a heavy cudgel, and struck the poor fellow violently upon the head. Gerard fell senseless to the

ground. The murderer would have repeated his blow, but Lina, with the courage of a lioness defending her young, grappled him vigorously, and clasping her arms around his, impeded his further movements. The sight of her lover, stunned and bleeding at her feet, seemed to give her superhuman strength; and bethinking her that it was better to have one enemy to contend with than a hundred, she abstained from calling out, lest her cries should bring foes instead of friends.. Fortunately the uproar of the mob drowned the imprecations of Gerard's assailant, who vociferated horrible curses as he strove, with brutal violence, to shake off the heroic girl. At the very moment when, her last strength exhausted, she was about to succumb, Franz entered the copse, and, seeing Gerard motionless on the ground and his sister struggling with a stranger, immediately guessed what had occurred. A cry of rage burst from his lips, and before Lina remarked his presence, his powerful hands were upon the shoulders of her antagonist, who lay, the next instant, upon the grass at his feet.

"Lina!" cried Franz, seizing the fallen man and dragging him in the direction of the scaffold, "hide Gerard in the bushes; if he still lives, he is rescued from all he most dreads. Quick !· I will return.”

With these words he hurried from the copse, dragging his prisoner after him so rapidly, that the prostrate man, his legs in Franz's iron grasp, his head trailing in the dust, and striking violently against each stock and stone, could make no effectual resistance. As soon as Franz was within earshot of the mob, he shouted, more loudly than ever

"The headsman! here I have him -the headsman !"

"Death to the villain!" was reechoed on all sides; and from all four corners of the field the mob, who had dispersed to seek the object of their hate, rushed towards Franz. When Lina's brother saw himself the centre of a dense crowd, howling and frantic for blood, he hurled amongst them the man whom he dragged by the feet, with the words

"There is the headsman !"

"Death to him!" hoarsely repeated

a hundred voices, and as many blows descended upon the shrieking wretch, whose expostulations and prayers for mercy were unheard in the mighty tumult, and whom the mob, blinded by fury, easily mistook in the darkness for the delinquent executioner. His cries were soon silenced by the cruel treatment he received; in a few minutes he was dead, his clothes were torn from his body, and his face was disfigured and mutilated so as to be wholly unrecognisable.

Leaving the mob to their bloody work, Franz returned to his sister, and found her weeping and praying beside the body of her lover, whom she believed dead.. On examination, however, he found Gerard's pulse still beating. The violent blow he had received had stunned but not slain him. Fresh water thrown upon his face and chest restored him to consciousness, and to the caresses of his dear Lina, speechless and almost beside herself with joy at his recovery. When his strength returned, the trio crept stealthily from the copse, and safely reached the town, where Gerard concealed himself during the evening in the house of his mistress. When midnight came, and the streets of Antwerp were deserted, he betook himself, accompanied by Franz, to his own dwelling, and made his unexpected appearance in his father's chamber.

The old headsman, who lay broad awake upon his bed of sickness, weeping bitterly, and deploring the death of his unhappy son, deemed himself the sport of a deceitful vision when he saw the dead man approach his couch. But when convinced, by Gerard's voice and affectionate embrace, that he indeed beheld his child in solid flesh

and bone, his joy knew no bounds, and for a moment inspired the young man with fears of his immediate dissolution.

"My son, my son !" he cried, "you know not half your good fortune. Not only have you miraculously escaped a cruel death, but you are also delivered from the horrible employment which has been mine, and was to be yours. The accursed obligation that weighed upon our race ceases with life, and you, my son, are dead!"

"And pure from the stain of blood!" joyfully exclaimed Gerard.

"Begone," continued the old man, "and dwell far from thine unjust brethren. Quit Antwerp, marry thy good Lina, be faithful and kind to her, and heaven bless thee in thy posterity! Thy sons will not be born to wield the axe, nor wilt thou weep over them, as I have wept over thee. The savings of thine ancestors and mine insure thee for ever from poverty; make good use of them and be happy!"

His voice grew weak with emotion, and died away in inarticulate benedictions. Gerard hung upon his father's neck, and stammered forth his thanks. The events of the day appeared to him like a dream. He could not realise the sudden transition from the depths of despair to the utmost height of happiness.

For many years after these incidents there lived at Brussels, under an assumed name, the son of the Antwerp headsman, and his beautiful wife Lina. The old man's blessing was heard, and when Gerard's turn came to quit a world of cares for a brighter and better abode, brave sons and fair daughters wept around the dying bed of the DOOMSTER'S FIRSTBORN.

DEAR EUSEBIUS,-Whether it be a fable or not that the Lydians invented chess, to relieve themselves from pain and trouble, and were content to eat one day and play another, unquestionably amusement is a most salutary medicine to heal the "mind diseased," and even to mitigate hunger itself.

You

The utilitarian ant would not have had the best of the argument with the grasshopper," dance now,"-if the latter had not insisted on dancing too long a whole summer. Even hunger would do its dire work in doublequick time, if left to fret incessantly on the mind as well as the fast failing substance. Avert the thought of it, and half a loaf will keep alive longer than a whole one, eaten together with cankering care. "Post equitem sedet atra Cura," said the most amiable of satirists; but Care, the real “ gentleman in black," won't always be contented to sit behind, but is apt to assume an opposite seat at the table, and, grinning horribly, to take away your appetite" quite and entirely." may try, Eusebius, to run away from him, and bribe the stoker to seventy or eighty miles an hour, but Care will telegraph you, and thus electrify you on your arrival, when you thought him a hundred miles or so off. I have ascertained a fact, Eusebius, that Care is not out of one, but in one, and has a lodging somewhere in the stomach, where he sets up a diabolical laboratory, and sends his vile fumes up, upand so all over the brain; and from that conjuration what blue devils do not arise, as he smokes at leisure his infernal cigar below! Charge me not, Eusebius, with being poetical-this is sober prose to the indescribable reality. Your friend has been hypochondriacal. It is a shameful truth; but confession is the demon's triumph, and so the sufferer is punished-mocked, scoffed at, unpitied, and uncured. The Lady Dorothea Dosewell had proposed a seventy-fifth remedy. My lady, I am in despair: I have not as yet completed the fifty-sixth prescription; the fifty-fifth has left me worse. The Curate, who happened to be present,

laughed at me, as all do, and said, "No wonder-you are like the man who complained of inveterate deafness, had applied every recipe, and was cured by the most simple one-a cork-screw. Do set aside all your nostrums, and spend a week or two at the curacy, and I'll take care to pack in half-a-dozen novels, and you will soon forget your own in other folks' woes."

"I will go," I replied; " but I protest against any woes whatsoever. When young as you, Mr Curate, I could bear them, and sit out a tragedy stoically; but shaken nerves and increasing years won't bear the tragic phantasmagoria now. Sentimental comedy is too much, and I positively, with shame, cry over a child's book."

"I fear," quoth the Curate," it is a sure sign your heart is hardening. The sympathy that should soften it is too easily and too quickly drawn off by the fancy to waste, and leaves the interior dry. Come to us, and alternate your feelings between fancy and active realities; between reading imaginary histories and entering practically and interestingly into the true histories of the many homes I must visit, and you will soon be fresh in spirit and sound again."

Let me, Eusebius, use the dialogue form, as in some former letters: suffice it only to tell you previously, that I took the Curate's advice and invitation, and for a time did my best to throw off every ailment, and refresh myself by country-air exercise, in the society of the happy Curate and his wife, at the vicarage of, which you know well by description. And here we read novels. Even at the Curate's house did we read novelsthose "Satan's books," as a large body of Puritans call them, whilst they read them privately; or, if seen, ostensibly that they may point out the wickedness in them, and thus forbid the use of them; as an elder of the demure sect excused himself when detected at a theatre, that he "came to see if any of their young folk were there." How often people do what is right, and defend it as if it was a