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Captain Kyd; or, The Wizard of the Sea. Vol. I

by J. H. Ingraham · English · Gutenberg #36030 · 408,608 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Captain Kyd; or, The Wizard of the Sea. Vol. I

Author: J. H. Ingraham


        
Release date: May 4, 2011 [eBook #36030]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAPTAIN KYD; OR, THE WIZARD OF THE SEA. VOL. I ***




Produced by Curtis Weyant, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)









                           CAPTAIN KYD;

                                OR,

                      THE WIZARD OF THE SEA.

                            A ROMANCE.

                        BY J. H. INGRAHAM

           AUTHOR OF "THE SOUTHWEST," "LAFITTE," "BURTON," &c.


    IN TWO VOLUMES.

    VOL. I.

    NEW-YORK:
    HARPER & BROTHERS, 82 CLIFF-STREET.
    1839.

    Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1838,
    By HARPER & BROTHERS,
    In the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.

                TO
        THE AUTHOR OF THE
       "WINTER IN THE WEST,"
    CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN, ESQ.,
        THESE VOLUMES ARE,
    WITH SENTIMENTS OF ESTEEM,
      Respectfully Inscribed.


   "There's many a one who oft has heard
      The name of Robert Kyd,
    Who cannot tell, perhaps, a word
      Of him, or what he did.

    "So, though I never saw the man,
      And lived not in his day,
    I'll tell you how his guilt began--
      To what it led the way."

    H. F. GOULD.




PREFACE.


The following dramatic romance consists of two acts, with an interval of
five years between them. The time and action of the first part, the
scene of which is placed in the south of Ireland, are comprised in
something less than three days; that of the second, the scenes of which
are laid in New-York Bay and on its adjacent shores, embraces a somewhat
longer space of time, the two comprising the most prominent crises of
the hero's life--one giving the colouring to the whole of his subsequent
career, which in the other is brought to its close.

Natchez, Miss., Jan., 1839.




BOOK I.

THE CAUSE.


                    "A lady should not scorn
    One soul that loves her, howe'er lowly it be."

    BARRY CORNWALL.

    "'Twere idle to remember now,
      Had I the heart, my thwarted schemes.
    I bear beneath this alter'd brow
      The ashes of a thousand dreams--
    Some wrought of wild Ambition's fingers,
      Some colour'd of Love's pencil well--

           *       *       *       *       *

    Ambition has but foil'd my grasp,
      And Love has perish'd in my clasp."

    _Melanie._




CHAPTER I.

          "Oh, bold Robin Hood
          Was a forester good
    As ever drew bow in the merry green wood,
          And what eye hath e'er seen
          Such a sweet maiden queen
    As Marian the pride of the forester's green."


On a rocky headland that stretches boldly out into the bosom of one of
the lakelike bays that indent the southern shore of Ireland, stands a
picturesque ruin, half hidden to the eye of the voyager amid a group of
old trees. With its solitary square tower, and warlike battlements
jagged and stern in their desolation, it still wears an air of imposing
grandeur, that conveys some idea of its ancient baronial state. It is
known by the name of "old Castle Cor;" and in its palmy days was the
summer abode of the last Earl of Bellamont.

On a bright morning in the merry month of May, in the year sixteen
hundred and ninety-four, its now silent halls rung with the joyous
voices and noisy sports of a score of gallant youths and noble maidens,
gathered there, from many a lordly roof both far and near, to celebrate
a rural fete in honour of the sixteenth birthday of the only child of
this ancient house, the beautiful Kate Bellamont, better known
throughout the barony as "wild Kate of Castle Cor." In the pastimes of
the day, archery, then much practised by ladies of gentle blood, was to
hold a conspicuous place, and a silver arrow was to be awarded to the
victor by the hands of Lady Bellamont herself. As the hour of noon
approached, the earl's chief forester, Cormac Dermot, his gray locks
covered with a red cloth bonnet, in which was fastened an eagle's plume,
and his goodly person arrayed in a holyday suit of green and gold, made
his appearance on the lawn by the west side of the castle, and wound his
horn, loud and long, as the signal that the "gentle sporte of archerie"
was now about to begin.

The place chosen for the trial of skill was an ample lawn of the softest
and greenest verdure, lying between the wall of the castle and the verge
of the cliff. A few ancient oaks grew here and there upon it; and
towards the south it was open to the land-locked bay and far-distant
sea, which, wide as the vision extended, seemed to belt the horizon like
a shining band of silver. At each extremity of the field, one hundred
yards apart, was pitched upon the sward a gorgeous pavilion, one of
blue, the other of orange-coloured silk: the hangings of the former were
fringed with silver; and from the festooned curtains of the latter
pended tassels of silk and gold. In these were laid tables spread with
cloths of crimson damask, and covered with every luxury that could tempt
the palate or gratify the eye. From the summit of one of the pavilions
fluttered a crimson banneret, displaying the arms of Bellamont, its
boar's-head crest pierced through with an arrow, emblematical of the
occasion; and from the top of the other waved a white banner, in the
centre of which, according to the rules of heraldry, a bow, quiver,
target and other signs of archery were tastefully emblazoned.

Twenty-five yards in front of each pavilion, two targets were placed,
fifty yards apart, so that, after sending all their arrows at one, the
archers might walk up to it and gather them, and, taking their stand by
it, shoot back to the other; thus alternately reversing the direction of
their shots, and adding healthful exercise to their graceful pastime.
The targets were both very beautiful, and gay with colours; being round
wooden shields half an inch in thickness and three feet in diameter,
with four circles painted on the faces: the outer white, with a green
border; the next black; the next within it orange; and the inner circle
red, encompassing a gold centre. They were elevated, at a slight angle,
twenty inches from the ground, on a light frame resembling a painter's
easel.

Midway between the targets, but safely placed several paces back from
the erratic path of the arrows, was erected beneath an ancient
linden-tree a sylvan throne, surmounted by a canopy of silk, elaborately
worked with the needle to represent Diana, with her nymphs and hounds,
pursuing a herd of deer with flights of arrows. This was the seat of the
umpire of the sports--Katrine, the lovely Countess of Bellamont.
Altogether, it was an imposing and gorgeous scene; and, with its stern
castle rising boldly from the verdant lawn topped with battlements and
towers; with its boundary on the north side, of green, dark old woods,
and the calm, deep bay beneath, with a yacht sleeping on its bosom; with
its extended prospect of the illimitable sea forever breathing with a
mysterious life, the field of archery at Castle Cor, for the natural
beauty of the spot and the taste displayed in its adornment, has
doubtless had no parallel in the annals of archery.

Scarcely had the echoes of old Cormac's horn died away in the forest,
startling many a stately stag to flight, when the castle poured forth
its gay throng of archers towards the lists. In their midst was the
Countess of Bellamont, escorted by a bodyguard of young archeresses. She
was then in the prime and beauty of ripe womanhood: at that delightful
age when the wife and mother, all the charms of mind and person fully
developed and refined by taste and elegant culture, fascinates by a
thousand nameless graces, and captivates and enslaves even the youthful
crowd that sigh at the feet of her lovely daughter of seventeen--the age
that leaves one in doubt whether beautiful women arrive at the zenith of
their beauty and power under five-and-thirty.

This was the age of Katrine of Bellamont; and though at eighteen (when
she became a bride) the loveliest of all Irish maidens either of gentle
or lowly birth, yet now, as the Countess of Bellamont, far-famed for her
rare and stately beauty. She was arrayed in a simple white robe; and a
laced jacket of royal-purple velvet closely fitted her magnificent bust.
When she entered the field she was conducted by her juvenile escort to
the throne, on which she seated herself, and with a playfully assumed
queenly dignity that became her highborn air. A coronet of pearls graced
her brow; and her symmetrical hand, that rivalled pearls in its soft
transparency, gracefully held, like a sceptre, the miniature arrow which
was to be the prize for excelling in archery. Her deep blue eyes, as she
looked around, reflected, in a thousand smiling beams, the joy that
danced on each youthful face, and the sunny light of her own countenance
communicated sunshine of the heart wherever it fell.

On each side of the throne stood a well-born youth habited as a page,
and behind her were stationed two beautiful young girls attired as
sylphides. On her right hand, a few feet in the rear, leaning on a yew
bow six feet in length, stood Cormac Dermot, his stag's horn, richly
inlaid and curiously carved with woodland devices, slung beneath his
left shoulder, with the mouthpiece brought round in front ready for use.
A little farther beyond, and nearer the castle-wall, was assembled a
group of lower degree, consisting of under-foresters, retainers of the
household, and neighbouring peasants; while on the opposite side of the
lawn might be seen, relieved against the sky, the forms of two or three
fishermen, whom curiosity had led to climb the dizzy precipice from the
beach--far along the white line of which were visible their scattered
huts, looking like black specks upon the sand.

All was now animation with the preparations for the lists. From bundles
of bows thrown by Dermot on the ground before each pavilion, the youths
began busily to select weapons for the fair archers, who were themselves
earnestly engaged in choosing arrows from quivers that were hung on the
front of the tent; fastening braces of thick fawn's leather on their
left or bow arm just above the wrist to preserve it from injury by the
rebound of the bow-string; and drawing on the right hand, from parcels
handed them by pages, shooting-gloves, with three finger-stalls, fitted
with a strap and button to fasten at the wrist, to protect their fingers
in drawing the arrow. Besides these appendages of archery, each
archeress wore a belt buckled about the waist, to which pended a tassel
of the softest floss of Brussels, to wipe away the soil that adhered to
the arrows when drawn from the ground; and also an ivory box with a
metal lid, containing a perfumed paste for anointing the finger-stalls
of the shooting-gloves and the brace on the arm, that the bow-string
might the more easily quit the fingers and pass over the guarded wrist.
A small pouch, either of tortoise-shell or of silver, in shape and
dimensions like a sportsman's cup or a dicebox, was suspended on the
right side to receive two or three arrows; the more cumbersome quiver,
while in target-shooting, being left on the ground near at hand, filled
with shafts to replace those broken or lost.

The party of archeresses consisted of seven fair girls, the eldest
scarce seventeen. They were fancifully attired, some in green, and
others in orange or blue hunting-jackets, after the tasteful fashion of
the period; a costume admirably calculated to display their sylphan
shapes. They all wore hats of the colour of their spencers, looped up in
front, and ornamented with waves of snowy plumes. Long white trains
descended from their waists to the ground, but, in shooting, were
gathered beneath the belt on the left side, and, thence falling down
again to the feet in numerous folds, added to the grace and
picturesqueness of their appearance. Each archeress was attended by a
favoured youth as an esquire, habited in a green or gray hunting-frock,
bordered with a wreath of embroidered oak-leaves, with an arrow worked
in silver thread on each lappel. They wore broad flapping hats, turned
boldly back from the forehead, and shaded in front with a drooping black
plume. Each carried a short hunting-spear, decked with ribands of the
colour of his mistress' jacket, gifts from her own hand and tied thereon
with her own fingers, in token that she acknowledged him as her "Esquire
of the Bow." The duty of these youthful cavaliers was to select a bow
suited to the strength of the archeress whose colours they wore; to fit
it with an arrow of a weight proportioned to its power, having a nock
exactly receiving the string; to assist, if the lady is unskilled, in
stringing the bow; to draw the arrows from the butt, or collect the
far-shot shafts and return them to the owner; and otherwise, as courtesy
and gallantry prompted, to do their duty as "esquires of archerie."

Once more the sonorous horn of old Cormac was heard winding, now high,
now low, in a long, wild strain, and then ending in three sharp blasts,
like the stirring notes of a bugle sounding to the charge. Every
archeress now had her brace buckled on her arm, and her shooting-glove
buttoned about her wrist; every one had two good arrows in the pouch at
her belt, and a third on the string; and each fair girl, attended by her
esquire, hastened to the stand by the southernmost target at the sound
of the forester's horn--save, in each instance, Kate Bellamont! Her
brace would not buckle all she could do; her shooting-glove would not go
on, and three, that she had pulled off, were lying rent at her feet; and
not an arrow was to be seen in her tortoise-shell pouch, though half a
dozen fair ones lay about her on the ground! It was very plain that
something was going wrong with the maiden. Such a dilemma could not have
happened without a cause. The braces of the rest buckled with ease;
their shooting-gloves fitted beautifully; and there had been time enough
to fill twenty pouches. Why, then, was Kate Bellamont not ready? Her
brace, both strap and buckle, was perfect; and the wrist it was destined
to compass was not to be matched for its smallness of size! The gloves,
plainly were just what they should be! Her companions had been fitted,
and her hand was the smallest as well as the fairest of the party;
besides, there were a dozen pairs on the ground that evidently were made
for no other hand. The cause could not lie in the arrows, for they were,
to the eye, without fault, and of every variety of shape and fashion
known to archery; nor in her handsome esquire, who, save when requested
by some eager girl to assist her, had been diligently serving her with
arrow after arrow, until he had emptied two quivers, the contents of
which now lay strewn around. The cause is not to be found in either of
these. The truth is, Kate Bellamont was playing with her little foot
against the ground when she should have been trying on her glove. No
sooner was one pulled half way on than she suffered it to remain so,
drumming the while in a fit of absence on the sward, while her eyes
followed the motions of her handsome esquire. The next moment,
recovering herself, she would tear it off impatiently, and, with a
laugh, fling it to the ground. She would then take up another, and go
through the same process, or play with her brace instead of buckling it;
and when the young gentleman gave her an arrow, without scarcely
touching it to the bow-string she threw it down, saying it was too heavy
or too light, too long or too short, had too much feather or had not
feather enough; so that, when the rest of the party were ready, Kate
Bellamont was just where she was at the outset. The result of all this,
whether brought about designedly or not by a little female
manoeuvring, being a question to be solved by such as are skilled in
the ways and means by which women work out their ends, was, that when
the last notes of Cormac's horn died away in the forest, Kate Bellamont
found herself and her esquire, the noble and youthful heir of the broad
lands of the earldom of Lester, left quite alone. The brace was on her
arm unbuckled, and she held a glove in her hand.

"Lord Robert, do clasp this troublesome brace for me. Strange you could
not see what difficulty I have had to get ready! But I suppose you were
so engaged fitting an arrow to pretty Gracy Fitzgerald's bow, that you
had no eyes for any one else!"

This was said half in pique, half laughingly; and holding, with a
pouting lip, her snowy arm towards her esquire as she spoke, he
gallantly received it, and with the merest effort in the world clasped
the rebellious brace. But he did not release her soft hand without
giving it a slight pressure, and looking into her face with an eloquent
gaze, which she consciously met with eyes half downcast, yet beaming
through their long dark lashes with a gentle fire that young love only
could have kindled.

"Now, Sir Esquire, fasten this glove."

The youth bent till the black plume of his bonnet rested on her arm,
and, with some difficulty apparently, for he was a very long time about
it, succeeded in buttoning the silken strap across the blue-veined
wrist; nor did he lift his head from the fair hand, which lay nestled
like a bird in his beneath the thick covert of his drooping feather, ere
he had touched it with his bold lip.

"Ha, Sir Forester, is this a part of your service as squire of archery?"
she demanded, with the blood mounting to her cheek in maidenly surprise;
though the pouting smile on her mouth, which she vainly tried to turn
into a frown, and the dancing light in her telltale eyes, betokened
anything besides resentment at the bold deed; "I see I must resign you
to my sly little cousin Gracy, and take her well-behaved esquire;
doubtless you better understand her humour than you seem to do mine."

By the time she had ended she had succeeded in calling up a small cloud
on her brow, which struggled very hard to cast a shadow over the sunny
light that played around her lovely mouth and was reflected back in a
thousand rays from the deep wells of her black, Castilian eyes.

"Forgive me, sweet Lady Kate," said the esquire, dropping on one
knee--disguising his attitude to the eyes of others by gathering
carelessly one or two arrows from the ground--to her eyes alone a
suppliant. The expression of his face amusingly wavered between playful
mockery and seriousness, as if greatly fearing, yet doubting much, that
his daring act had really given offence: a sort of neutral ground
between mirth and grief, with the advantage of enabling him to fall
readily into the one or the other, as he should find the needle of her
humour pointed.

"See, then, you offend not again, sir," she said, laughing at the
troubled expression of his serio-comic countenance. "Haste! choose me an
arrow that tapers from the pile to the feather."

"One that tapers each way from the middle will suit you better for
shooting in this light wind," said the young esquire, the puzzled play
of his handsome features changed to sunshine by her voice. As he spoke
he brought a quiver full of arrows and poured them out at her feet, and,
kneeling on the thick verdure, selected an arrow of the kind he had
named.

"No, no," she said, putting it aside; "they always curve from the line
of sight; and, besides, fly unsteady."

"Not in a wind, Kate. The fulness in the middle counteracts the weight
of the ends, and drives it more evenly."

"Do as you are bidden, Sir Esquire," she said. "Don't think now you are
going to have your own way." A second arrow was placed in her hand by
the youth.

"Why, Lord Robert, what _is_ the matter with your wits! This is an arrow
of the same kind; and, besides, it is without a cock-feather. I shall
have to call yonder handsome fisher's lad, who is watching me so
admiringly, to my assistance."

The esquire, without looking up, mechanically handed to her a third
arrow, with the head broken and the feathers ruffled. Without being able
to speak in her surprise, she looked quietly down and beheld the young
man so intently contemplating one of her exquisite little feet, that
twice she spoke to him ere he looked up to encounter her gaze of arch
astonishment. It was very plain what had become of her esquire's wits.
The youth blushed, and hastily rose to his feet; but the maiden could
not disguise a little female vanity, though she shook her finger at him,
and said mischievously,

"Do you propose becoming a cordwainer, and making me a pair of slippers,
Lord Robert, that you are so busy taking the dimensions of my foot?"

"I would willingly become apprentice to the meanest cobbler, to be
suffered to take the measure of that tiny foot, and fit it with a shoe,"
said the youth, with gallantry.

The maiden laughed, and, unwilling to betray the feeling his words had
created, said, "Do be quick, Lord Robert; my bow is not yet strung with
our foolish idling here, and I shall be too late for the lists."

As she spoke she grasped her bow firmly in the middle, and extending her
hand, containing the string terminating with a loop, to the upper limb,
she pulled smartly upward, pressing the limb downward at the same time
with her left wrist, and skilfully and accurately carried the eye of the
bow-string into the nock. Her bow, like those of her companions, was
five feet in length, neatly made of dark wood highly polished, and
rounded on the inner side to increase its power in shooting.

"Well and featly done! That's a tough yew, and a man's strength could
not have better done what your little fingers, with skill to guide them,
I have just seen do. You were an apt pupil, young mistress, and do
honour to old Dermot's lessons."

Kate Bellamont turned and saw the old forester close at her side. "If I
have any skill, good Cormac," she said, "I do owe it all to your kind
teaching; and if I win the arrow this day, you shall have it as a
birthday gift from me, to wear in your bonnet instead of your pipe."

The forester lifted his bonnet with a gratified air, mingled with
respect, at this expression of kindness from his lovely young mistress,
and said,

"I know you would give Cormac, sweet lady, even the fair white plume
that graces your brow if you thought it would gratify the old man. God
bless you, noble child; may you live to see many such bright birthdays
as this!" The rough huntsman brushed a tear from his eyes as he spoke;
for the experience of years had told him that clouds would obscure the
bright sky of her young hopes, and that each returning birthday might be
but a sad waymark to denote the slow passage of a life of sorrow and
trial. "The countess has bid me come and see if you need my aid in
fitting your shafts, that you delay."

"No, no, Cormac," said the maiden, blushing; but directly she cried,
"Yes, you can help me. I am undecided whether to shoot an arrow that
tapers from the head to the feathers, or from the feathers to the head,
or from the middle both ways."

"What says Master Robert?" asked Dermot, smiling archly through one of
his little gray eyes, the other, from the long habit of shutting it in
shooting, having at last got to be so firmly closed up in a radiating
network of fine wrinkles as to have been for the last ten years of his
life invisible.

"Pshaw, Cormac!" she cried, stooping till her snowy plumes shaded her
burning cheek; "I did not ask Lord Robert, but you."

"I have advised Lady Kate, forester, to shoot arrows that taper both to
feather and pile," said the youth, haughtily.

"And she chooses--"

"Those that taper from the pile to the feather," said the maiden,
quickly.

"If the distance were seventy yards instead of fifty," said the
forester, measuring the ground with his eye, "it would be a good shaft
for a steady hand; but, if you will let me decide, I would recommend you
to take the taper from the feather, especially as the air is in motion."

"Your skill is at fault for once, old man," said the young noble, with a
flushed brow; "the best bowmen in England--ay, Robin Hood himself, were
he here this day--would teach you your craft better."

"You are in error, Master Robert," said the forester, with some warmth,
in defence of his profession; "and he who taught you that a double taper
is better in a wind than--"

"Hist, old graybeard! you know nothing of woodscraft; yonder fisher's
lad will even tell you a shaft swelling in the middle will waver in its
passage through the wind like a weathercock."

"Nay, Master Robert--"

"Speak again, old man, and I strike you!" said the young noble,
imperiously, angry that his skill should be called in question; feeling
positive that he alone was right, or else too proud to acknowledge his
conviction.

"For shame, Lester," cried Kate Bellamont, with an indignant look; "I
did not think you were of so overbearing and ungracious a temper!
Besides," she added, proudly, "I sought Cormac's opinion! Strike an old
man, and in a lady's presence! Out upon thy manhood, Robert. Ask
Cormac's forgiveness, or never speak to me more."

"Pardon my hasty speech, Kate," he said, abashed by her look, and
reproached by the cutting irony of her words, approaching her as he
spoke with an air of deep mortification, "forgive--"

"To Cormac, sir, not me."

"For Cormac, in atonement, I will send from Castle More a fat buck, with
this very arrow sticking in its heart; but," he added, with haughty
fierceness, "I will ask no man's forgiveness. If I have offended, I am
ready to stand by my words."

"Marry come up! we are like to have a letting of blood here," said the
maiden, between jest and seriousness. "Will you be docile, Robert?"

"At your bidding, Kate, as a lamb."

"_Very_ like a lamb. Forget it, Dermot. You have made his pride a little
sore to tell him, before a lady, he knew not how to choose a shaft, and
so unfit to be an esquire of archery."

"Young blood will up," said the forester. "I meant not to gainsay your
skill, Master Robert, for it's known to every bowman that no young hand
in the county can send a shaft farther or surer than young Lord Robert
of Castle More."

"That will do, Cormac. Now, Robert, see that you henceforward take fire
less readily; and you, good Dermot, refrain from wounding the esteem of
these young lords. Verily, it behooves me to look to my own speech in
such fiery company. Nay, Robert," she added, laughing, "I have done.
Give me the shafts; and, as we are to have three shots apiece at the
target, I will shoot one of each kind, and be the prize his whose arrow
wins! Give me them, Robert!--nay, don't press my fingers so hard; I
don't want them in my hand, but in the pouch. Go, Cormac, I am ready. I
see my lady mother is shaking her silver arrow at me already for
loitering here when I should be at the post."

The next moment she had joined the archers, and the trial of skill
forthwith commenced. The first arrow that was shot was from the bow of a
fair-haired girl, in a blue hat and a silken bodice of the same colour;
it flew wide of the mark, and quivered in the trunk of a tree sixty
yards off.

"There was nerve in that, Lady Eustace," said old Cormac, who watched
each shot with professional interest; "but you grasped the handle of
your bow too tightly, and so made your aim unsteady. Hold your bow as
lightly as you would a hunting-whip. 'Tis not strength, but skill, that
sends the bolt into the eye of the butt."

The young archeress laughed at her failure, and resigned her place to
another, who was distinguished by an orange-coloured spencer. This
second shot was more successful; for, swiftly cleaving the air, the
arrow stuck in the orange circle.

"Bravo! orange to orange!" was the cry that on all sides hailed this
appropriate hit.

The third shaft was still better directed; and, hitting the red or inner
circle, stuck there for a moment trembling like an aspen-leaf, and then
fell to the ground.

"A brave bolt that! a brave bolt that," said the forester, "and drawn
well to the head. But you should have brought the nock of your arrow
down more towards your ear. The ear in shooting an arrow; the eye in
firing a pistol or harquebuss. That shaft was a taper from the feather,
Master Robert."

"Hush, Cormac," cried Kate Bellamont, quickly; "would you get your gray
beard into a broil. Robert, bring me my quiver," she said, as she saw
the young man's eye light up; "one of my arrows, the very one you gave
me, has the cock-feather awry! Stay! you need not bring the quiver, but
select a shaft for me yourself. I will keep it as my forlorn hope, and
mark me if it do not carry off the prize." She sought his eyes and
looked so bewitchingly after a manner maidens have of their own, that
his brow coloured and his eyes beamed with a different emotion, while,
with a fluttering heart, he went to do her bidding.

Oh, gentle and angelic woman! ever ready to calm the ruffled brow with
words of peace! to bring good out of evil! to step between fierce man
and his reinless passions! with an eye to sooth, a voice to disarm, a
smile to win! Blessings on thee, woman! whether in thy happy and
innocent girlhood, or fair and gentle maidenhood; whether maid or
matron, young or old, lovely or homely! Blessings on thee, sweet leaven
of humanity! yet partaking so much of the heavenly nature, that the sons
of the gods, we are told, were lured from their celestial thrones to
cast their crowns at thy feet!

A fourth arrow hit the black circle; and the fifth, sent from the bow of
a tall, graceful girl, struck on the outer edge of the target and
splintered it, while the bow itself snapped in two in her hand.

"What a mischievous shot, Fanny," cried Lady Bellamont, smiling; "if
by-and-by you launch Cupid's shafts at your lovers' hearts in that way,
you will make sad havoc."

"It was all, your ladyship, of placing the short limb of the bow
uppermost. Hugh Conor must be getting old that he teacheth not his pupil
better to handle the bow," said old Cormac, shaking his snowy locks as
the next archeress, a sylph-like little being, about fifteen, with
dangerous hazel eyes; rich chestnut-coloured hair, that flowed in curls
all over her shoulders; a voice like some merry bird's, and a wild,
joyous spirit lighting up like a sunbeam her whole countenance, took her
place at the stand.

"Now, cousin Gracy, do be steady!" cried Kate Bellamont; "take heed! you
will shoot my esquire through the heart if you handle your bow so
carelessly."

"And then you would shoot me through the head in return, I dare say."

The laughing girl bounded to the stand as she spoke, carelessly drew her
arrow to the head, and, ere she had well taken aim, away it flew, and
passed through the centre of the emblazoned target waving on the summit
of the pavilion, and continued its wild flight into the wood beyond.

"Bravo, cousin Gracy! you have won the silver arrow," cried Kate
Bellamont. "Lord Robert, I wonder if that was the arrow you chose for
Lady Grace. A taper both ways, or I'll forfeit my jennet!"

"Who makes the broil now, young mistress?" asked the old forester, with
a glance of humour.

"You and I, worthy Cormac, are two very different people where a young
gentleman is concerned," said the maiden, laughing.

The forester shook his head incredulously, and, turning to Grace
Fitzgerald, said, "Faith, but it was a brave shot that, my young lady!
You have done what old Dermot could not have done at a target, playing
in the wind like that. But, with the leave of my lady the queen, you
must have a second shot at the real target. Take this arrow, that tapers
from the feather to the pile; fit it to your bow-string exactly at the
spot where it is wound round with silk; and, if you will follow my
directions, I will teach you to strike the centre of the true butt, or
never draw arrow to head again." Leave being granted by acclamation, the
archeress merrily resumed her attitude and prepared to follow his
instructions.

"Hold the bow easily in your hand. Throw your head back a little. That
will do. Now keep your bow-arm straightened, and bend the wrist of your
gloved hand inward. Now raise your bow, steadily drawing the arrow at
the same time--not towards your eye, but towards your ear. Be steady!
When it is three parts drawn, take your aim at the centre. Keep the head
of the arrow a little to the right of the mark. Be cool, and, if you are
sure of your aim, draw the arrow quickly and steadily to the head, and
gently part your fingers and let it go!"

The shaft, loosened from the string, cut the air and buried itself in
the very centre of the golden eye of the target. A shout from every part
of the field acknowledged the success of the quick pupil, and bore
testimony to the skill of the experienced old archer.

"It is Cormac's shot, not mine," said the archeress; "I am satisfied
with piercing the glittering centre of yonder escutcheon."

"The queen shall decide," cried several of the party, turning towards
the throne where sat the lovely countess, amid her youthful attendants,
participating with girlish interest in the scene, and prepared to decide
all appeals to her royal umpirage.

"Gracy is right. Cormac's skill directed the shaft. She has no honest
claim to the honour of the hit, save the credit of having stood quiet
longer than she was ever known to before! The banner with its perforated
target she is justly entitled to; and," added the countess, with a
smile, "I here award it to her."

"And if I ever get a husband he shall carry it before him into battle,"
said the merry sylph. "Now, divine Kate, see that you don't wound my
arrow. I would not have it injured for a silver one."

"It tapers from the middle in each direction, I have no doubt," said
Kate, archly, glancing mischievously towards her esquire as she prepared
to take her place at the stand.

"Your speech tapers in both directions, wild Kate," retorted the other,
blushing. "I wonder what you and Lord Robert could have been doing, that
you loitered so long about the pavilion! There, I declare, if you are
not holding your bow with the short limb uppermost!"

Kate blushed in her turn, and reversed it.

"Why, cousin Kate Bellamont, you are going to shoot with the feather
towards the target!" cried the tantalizing little maiden. "Really, I
_do_ begin to wonder what you and Lester _could_ have been about, that
the mention of it scatters your wits and makes you look so _very_
foolish!"

Kate shook her head with a playful menace at her tormentor, placed her
arrow with the right end to the bow-string, and took her stand by the
target. The instant she fixed her eyes on it her self-possession
returned, and, elevating her bow, she threw herself with careless grace
into the attitude of an accomplished archeress.

A more beautiful object than this young creature, standing in the
strikingly spirited attitude she had assumed, can hardly be imagined.
Though but sixteen, her form was divinely perfect. Every limb--foot,
hand, and arm--was a rare model for the sculptor's chisel. The
undulating outline of her shoulders was faultless; and her figure,
perhaps, was the more beautiful that her bust and waist, and the wavy
symmetry of her whole person, was just receiving that harmony of touch
and roundness of finish which marks the era when the wild romping girl
is merging into the blushing, conscious, loving, and loveable maiden of
seventeen. Descended from an ancient Milesian family, she betrayed her
origin in her complexion, which was a rich brunette, reflecting in warm,
sunny tints the mantling blood, which came and went at every emotion.
Her eyes were dark and sparkling as night with its stars, and as, with a
slightly bent brow, she fixed them on the target, they had a cool and
steady expression remarkable in one of her years and sex. She wore a
dark ruby velvet jacket, laced over a stomacher rich with brilliants,
and a velvet hat of the same dark ruby, surmounted by a plume of white
ostrich feathers, in that day a rare and costly ornament, which
gracefully drooped about her head in striking contrast with her raven
locks that floated around her superb neck in the wildest freedom. Her
lips, like most of the lips of Erin's fair maidens, were of a rich coral
red, and, just parted as she took sight, rendered visible a pearly line
of beautifully-arranged teeth. Her mouth, when closed, was finely
shaped, and sometimes wore an air of decision, that did not, however, in
any way diminish its witchery. The glow of health, and the pride of
birth and beauty, were upon her countenance, and every feminine grace
and charm seemed to play around her.

As she stood with one foot a little advanced, her neck slightly curved
to bring her eyes down to a level with the mark, her left side, but no
part of the front of the body, accurately turned towards the target, the
eyes of old Cormac Dermot glistened with pride. Slowly she elevated the
bow, drawing the arrow simultaneously towards the ear with the first
three gloved fingers of her right hand, till she had drawn it out three
quarters of its length, when, pausing till she had filled her eye with
the golden eye of the target, she drew it smartly to its head and let it
loose from her fingers. For an instant she stood following its swift
flight: the pupils of her dark eyes dilated and eager; her lips closely
shut; her chest advanced; her right arm elevated and curved above her
shoulders, the wrist bent, and the fingers of the hand turned gently
downward; the left arm extended at full length, and grasping the relaxed
bow; her neck curved; her spirited head thrown back, and her whole
action animated and commanding; presenting altogether, perhaps, the most
graceful attitude the female form is susceptible of assuming.

The arrow was sent with unerring aim, struck the golden eye within half
an inch of Grace Fitzgerald's, and buried itself to its feather. The
lawn rung with the plaudits of both archeresses and esquires; and even
the retainers and fishermen, who were humble but curious spectators of
the sports, gave vent to their admiration in shouts of clamorous
applause. Old Cormac swung his long yew bow above his head with delight,
and looked as if, in the pride of the moment, he would have hugged his
accomplished pupil to his heart.

"Do not be so elated, good Dermot," she said, laughing; "it was the
arrow I chose--a taper from the pile."

"The more skill in the hand that drove it so truly," said the forester.

"I must do still better than this, else neither you nor Lord Robert,
who, methinks, looks somewhat blank to find I have not missed to gratify
him, will neither of you get the prize."

"It was not a fair trial, Kate," said the esquire, gayly; "the wind has
lulled; and, as you drew your bow, there was not a breath of air."

"If, nevertheless, that had been a taper from the feather," said the
forester, after surveying the target earnestly for a moment, as
obstinately bent on adhering to his original opinion as even the
spirited young noble himself, "it would have cleft the arrow of Lady
Gracy through its length to the pile."

"We will see to that anon, worthy Cormac. I have two shots more. Here is
the arrow you chose for me, which I will fit to my bow-string, and do my
best to drive it through my cousin's."

"I dare say you will if you can, and would like, also, to destroy
everything else Lord Robert gives me," said the roguish Grace, putting
up her lip and tossing her head, with its cloud of rich hair, in
admirably affected pique.

The young esquire of Kate Bellamont looked embarrassed; Kate laughed and
drummed on the ground with her foot, while the whole party began
forthwith to prepare for the next round. The customary mode of
ascertaining the value of the hits in archery, by estimating it in
proportion to their distance from the centre, was departed from in the
present instance. By the method alluded to, a hit in the gold counts
nine; in the red, three; in the orange, two; in the black, one; and
their sum is the value of the hits: a process which makes three hits in
the red circle of the same value, or nearly so, of one in the gold. In
the present case, the shots were limited to three, and the prize awarded
to the greatest number of hits in the gold.

In the second round, the first three arrows struck three different
circles; and one well-directed shaft, shot by the archeress who had
before broken her bow, hit the gold, though at its junction with the
red. Grace Fitzgerald bent her bow without aim, but the courteous arrow
went accurately to the mark, and struck within a finger's breadth of the
centre, much to the delight of Cormac, the forester, who took himself
all the credit of the fair shot. Kate, with the arrow given her by
Cormac fitted to her bow-string, took somewhat less careful aim than
with her first shot, and was about to loose the arrow, when a hawk,
bearing a live fish in his talons, soared above the cliff, and with
swift wing flew high across the lawn in the direction of the forest.
Quicker than thought, the point of the arrow was elevated from the
target into the air, drawn to its head with a stronger arm and more
resolute eye, and launched from the bow-string. With irresistible force
and unerring aim, it cleft the air and struck the proud bird of prey
beneath the wing. He uttered a wild cry, flew heavily a few feet
perpendicularly upward, and then, whirling round and round in concentric
circles, each gyration bringing him nearer the earth, fell, transfixed
with the arrow, among the fishermen: fluttering wildly on the ground in
agony, he succeeded, before they could secure him, in flapping himself
over the precipice. He was instantly followed by a daring young
fisherman, who had been endeavouring to capture him--the same youth
whose admiration of her had before attracted the notice of Kate
Bellamont.

For a moment the generous heart of the fair archer shrunk from the wreck
she had made, and she turned away her head from the dying struggles of
the dark bandit of the air. But maidens of that period were too familiar
with the more revolting scenes of the chase to show emotion at
witnessing the death of a hawk; and, therefore, sympathy for the fate of
the victim of her skill gave place to the pride of the successful
archer.

"There is a prize for you, Cormac, better than a golden arrow," she
said, with a flashing eye; "and, when next I go a hawking," she archly
added, "I will be sure to use arrows that taper from the feather."

The third and final round now followed. Each archeress had shot her last
arrow save Kate Bellamont, yet but three arrows besides her own and the
equivocal shot of Grace Fitzgerald were in the centre, and these from as
many different bows. Grace had made a wilder shot even than her first;
for her arrow, jeopardizing the lives of the poor fishermen, flew far
over the cliff out of sight. Four of the companions of Kate had, equally
with herself, each an arrow in the gold; but as she had yet to shoot her
third arrow, she had yet a chance of making a second hit and winning the
prize. Glancing with proud consciousness of her own skill towards her
young esquire, she drew her remaining arrow through her fingers,
carefully examining each one of its three feathers, and fitted it
accurately to the bow-string; then elevating her bow, she steadily drew
the arrow. All was breathless expectation. The old archer looked on as
if he would not grieve if for once his pupil should miss; while her
young esquire watched her with the anxiety of one who felt that his
judgment and skill in the noble science of archery were at stake. As she
was ready to loose the arrow, the wind, which had hitherto gently fanned
her cheek, increased suddenly to a strong breeze, lifting the hair from
her brow and tossing her tresses in wild confusion about her neck. The
eyes of Cormac lighted up with triumph, while Lord Robert himself curled
his lip scornfully and smiled with confidence. The archeress, who had
dropped the point of the arrow with a misgiving, remembering what Cormac
had said of it as ill adapted to a wind, on catching the confident eye
of her esquire again raised the bow, and coolly and steadily drew the
shaft to its head. Every eye followed it in its swift course, and saw it
strike the arrow of Grace Fitzgerald on the end, shiver it to its pile,
and drive itself through the target to the feather. A general
exclamation of surprise and admiration bore testimony to the skill of
the victor; the dark eyes of the young esquire sparkled with triumph,
while the discomfited Dermot said, with a broad laugh of good-humour,

"Well, Master Robert, it's your time to boast now. By the boar's head o'
Castle Cor! I shall never hear the end of your double taper. Faith,
masters, no hand but my young Lady Kate's could have sent a double taper
with such an aim and in this wind, which young Lord Robert there has got
old Elpsy to set a blowing to triumph over the old man's skill. Well
a-day! What the gray-headed forester said of it is true, nevertheless;
but when such a hand and eye as Lady Kate's sends the bolt to the butt,
there is no depending on old rules; especially," he added, laughing,
"with a witch's wind to carry the arrow to its centre."

The young noble frowned darkly on the speaker, and joined not in the
laugh of his companions. Lady Bellamont now commanded Cormac to sound
his horn three times, and bid, in the name of the queen of archery, the
band of archeresses, with their esquires, who were hastening towards the
target to collect their arrows, to approach the throne, and witness the
award of the prize to the victor.

Amid the congratulations and applauses of the whole field, for,
unenvious, each light-hearted girl seemed to share the triumph of the
accomplished archeress, the victoress advanced to the rustic footstool
of the throne, and gracefully knelt to receive, from the hand of the
beautiful queen of the sports, the glittering prize--a finely-wrought
arrow of silver, five inches in length, with a chased gold head, on
which was graven, in small Gothic characters, these words:

    "Field of Archery, Castle Cor, May, MDCXCIV."

"Victorious archeress," said the queen, rising, her face beaming with
maternal love and pride, and extending her arm containing the prize,
"receive this fair token of your matchless skill, so well displayed this
day. May you in every other female accomplishment, my sweet Kate, be as
successful as in archery."

"She'll be a match for poor little Cupid, with his tiny bow and arrow, I
dare say," said Grace Fitzgerald, with a roguish eye. "Poor youth!" she
continued, glancing significantly towards the handsome Lord Robert, who
stood at the right hand of the victress, "I pity him if he's like to
have such a hole made in his heart as Kate has made in yonder target."

This sally of the sprightly maiden was merrily received by all the
youthful circle save the conscious two who were its subjects. The lovely
countess now left the throne, embraced and kissed her noble Kate, whom
her companions, gathering around her, playfully forced into the vacant
seat. She was about to bound from it again, when she checked the
impulse, reseated herself, and bade her esquire advance and kneel before
her. The gallant youth obeyed; when, bending gracefully forward, she
fastened the silver arrow in the loop of his bonnet, and bade him wear
it on every return of that day in memory of the field of archery at
Castle Cor.

The noble youth accepted the gift, won by the arrow he had chosen, with
the same playful, half-serious spirit in which it was bestowed, and then
kissed the fair hand that presented it with at least full as much
passion as gallantry. Amid the merry sallies, especially from Grace
Fitzgerald, this scene created, the whole party of archers bounded away
like a troop of wild deer towards the target, to ascertain more
accurately the nature, of the several hits, while the countess, at a
more dignified pace, attended by the forester, returned to the castle to
prepare for the further entertainments of the day. But the fleetest of
foot among the youthful bevy of fair girls had not measured half the
green space between the linden-tree and bristling target, when a
thrilling outcry of terror from a fisherman on the cliff, who wildly
waved his arms to some one below, and the next moment clasped his hands
together in despair, checked them in mid career; and, with hearts
palpitating with vague apprehensions of danger, they flew to the
precipice to ascertain the cause of this sudden alarm.




CHAPTER II.

    "From crag to crag descending--swiftly sped
    Stern Conrad down, nor once he turned his head;
    He bounds, he flies, until his footsteps reach
    The verge where ends the cliff, begins the beach."

    _The Corsair._

    "Dark was the flow of Oscar's hair,
    But Allan's locks were bright and fair."

    _Oscar of Alva._

    "But who is he, whose darken'd brow
    Glooms in the midst of general mirth?"

    _Ibid._


When the hawk, which had been so skilfully struck by the arrow of Kate
Bellamont, flapped himself, in his violent death-throes, over the edge
of the cliff, a gallant young fisher's lad, seeing him lodge in the
topmost branches of a blasted tree twenty feet below, fearlessly flung
himself off the precipice, and lighted, by the aid of a limb, on a
projecting rock within twelve feet of him. The cliff at this place was
one hundred and forty feet in height, and, except where its surface was
opened by narrow crevices, in which a few shrubs and dwarf cedars found
precarious roothold, or where a fragment, hurled from its seat by the
lightning, or fallen through age into the sea, left a narrow shelf, it
presented to the passing boatman on the bay below a naked and gigantic
wall, of nearly perpendicular ascent and inaccessible to human foot:
indeed, from a midway brow seventy feet from the base, it receded,
leaving a sheer descent of that space from the water, which lay black,
still, and of profound depth beneath. Near the top of the cliff grew a
scathed cedar, clinging with its hardy roots into a cleft in its face,
and leaning threateningly over the flood. Its top reached within twenty
feet of the summit of the precipice; but, inclining at an angle away
from it, stood full seven feet out from its side. It was the ragged arms
of this tree which caught the hawk in his descent, and where, with
fierce cries of rage and pain, he struggled to free himself from the
fatal shaft, but which he drove deeper and deeper into his side with
every beat of his strong wing.

The young man paused after lighting upon the first landing-place, and
measured with a cool glance the dizzy descent; and then fixed his gaze
on the bird, whose blood-red eyes flashed forth vindictive fire as they
met his, with a resolute look that conveyed a determination to capture
him at whatever risk. The pliant limb of a tree growing on the summit,
by which he had let himself down to the place where he stood, had, on
being released, sprung back to its natural position far beyond his
reach: the surface of rock, eight feet in height above him, was as even
as a wall of masonry; and an upward glance satisfied him that, without
assistance from those above, to reascend again would be impossible.
Quietly smiling at the difficulty in which he had involved himself, the
fearless lad placed his eyes again on the hawk with the confident and
resolute, and almost stern, expression they had before borne, and began
to examine narrowly his position, and to look about for some safe way of
descending to a perilous spur, the breadth of a man's two hands, which,
on peering down, he discovered projecting from the side of the rock on a
level with the top of the tree. Whether governed solely by that pride of
spirit which is found in most youths of high-toned feelings, he
internally resolved to accomplish what he had thoughtlessly undertaken;
whether actuated by the spirit of adventure, or whether fascinated by
the beauty of Kate Bellamont, he wished to preserve the proud bird as a
trophy of her skill; whether one or all of these motives influenced the
daring fisher's lad, remains to be unfolded.

The spot on which he stood was the projecting edge of the second stratum
of rock, twenty inches wide, running irregularly along the face of the
precipice, and appeared to have been formed by the falling away of large
chips or flakes from the upper and softer stratum. From this rim there
ran a zigzag crevice, an inch wide, obliquely downward along the rock to
the shelf below, on which grew a handful of long grass and two or three
slender shrubs. On a level with it was the top of the tree; underneath,
thirty feet below, were visible its gnarled roots clinging to a mere lip
of the rock, yet vigorously inserting themselves in the neighbouring
crevices; farther down, on the edge of the brow where the cliff began to
incline inward, was visible yet one more foothold, scarcely a palm in
breadth; below that, the shrinking eye measured a dizzy vacancy till it
fell upon the still, pool-like bay beneath.

The youth surveyed these features of the dangerous precipice with a
steady eye; and having coolly calculated his chance of accomplishing
safely the descent of the twelve feet below him, sat down with his legs
hanging over, and deliberately drew off his stout fisher's boots and
hung them on a twig beside him. Then turning round, he carefully slid
off and suspended his body an instant by his right hand, till he had
firmly inserted the tip of one foot and the fingers of the other hand in
the zigzag crevice. Releasing his right hand from its grasp on the
shelf, he then carried it below the left, and having got a firm hold of
the edge of the fissure, let go with the left and passed it in its turn
under the right: he changed the position of his feet in the same manner
so long as he could obtain, which was not always the case, a
resting-place for his toes; and in this way, with cool self-possession
and undaunted nerve, which even the wild cries and beating wings of the
bird could not move, he succeeded in safely reaching the small
projecting leaf, and stood on a level with the top of the tree. The
falcon was now within seven feet of him horizontally; but he seemed as
far from the attainment of his object as before. It was impossible to
spring into the tree, even if its roots should not be torn from their
rocky bed by the force of the leap and his weight. But the young
fisherman possessed a temper that never yielded to obstacles, and seemed
to be governed by a spirit that scorned defeat. Stretching himself out
upon the shelf, which was just broad enough to contain his body lying
sideways to the face of the rock, he looked down, and saw within reach
of his arm a stout root, the strength of which he tested; and below
this, within reach of his feet if he should swing himself off, was a
sharp projection scarce the size of his foot; and a few inches below
that, a stout limb of the tree rested against the precipice. His eye
embraced at once these advantages, and he did not hesitate to avail
himself of them.

Lightly, but yet with care, he committed his weight to the root, and,
hanging at the full length of his arm, reached, after three unsuccessful
trials, the spur below with the tip end of one of his toes. This, to one
like him, was a sufficient hold to authorize him to release his grasp
above. Lying, like a fly upon a wall, close against the side of the
rock, he now fearlessly yet cautiously let go his hold, and stood with
one foot on the projection, with no other support but his muscular
adhesion to the wide wall of the precipice. This was a situation
attended with the most imminent peril; and by the firmly-closed lips and
the almost stern expression of his eyes, it was clear that he was fully
conscious of his dangerous position. But there was no shrinking, no
pallor, no sign of fear! He was equal to the danger he had braved; and,
as this increased, the powers of his mind and body seemed to expand to
compass it.

The branch of the tree was within a few inches of the point on which his
foot rested. Slowly and cautiously he dropped his unsupported leg, while
he pressed his cheek and shoulder close against the side of the cliff;
for he knew that the slightest deviation from the equilibrium would be
fatal. His foot at length touched the horizontal limb, which was the
thickness of a man's arm where it met the rock. He repeatedly pressed
upon it, each successive time harder and heavier, until he found that it
would bear his whole weight. Then directing his hand carefully downward
towards his feet, he placed it on the point of rock, removing his foot
at the same instant to make room for it, and stood upright and with
confidence on the limb.

Satisfied that the branch, which, turned back by the cliff, had forced
the tree to lean over the water, would safely sustain him, he now
glanced down to the foot of the tree, and began to inspect the hold of
the trunk upon the shelf from which it grew. The examination afforded
him no very great assurance; nevertheless, he determined to test its
strength by advancing out on the limb, though aware that, if it should
yield to his weight, he would be hurled with it into the sea. Even this
reflection did not present any weighty objection to his making the
trial; for with a fearless recklessness, for which there is no
sufficient term in language, he half anticipated the possibility of such
a catastrophe, and caught himself calculating the chances in favour of
his taking in safety a flight into the deep pool beneath. Letting go his
grasp on the point of rock, he now settled himself astride the branch,
and made gradual approaches towards the trunk. It remained firm as the
rock in which it was imbedded, and scarcely gave signs of feeling his
weight till he touched the body, when the top slightly vibrated. He
paused; but, finding it still remain fast, rose to his feet and clasped
the scathed trunk, at first lightly, and then more firmly; and at last,
gaining confidence, he shook it till the hawk fluttered anew in its
perch. Assured of its security, his lips unclosed, and his eyes lost
their severity, and with a smile of success he cast them triumphantly
upward, where, but a few feet above him, entangled by the long shaft of
the arrow and his broken wing, he saw the falcon secured in the crotch
formed by a fork of three stumps of limbs (all that decay had left) that
terminated its summit.

Without hesitation he began to climb the trunk, which, save the limb by
which he had reached it, and the branches crowning it, was bare from its
roots upward. This was the least difficult part of his hazardous
enterprise, and he soon got within reach of the bird, and stretched one
arm forth to seize him by the wing. But the fierce animal, who had for a
few moments ceased his struggles to watch, with a quick and guarded
glance, the movements of the young fisherman, no sooner saw this hostile
demonstration on the part of his human foe, than, with an intelligence
supernaturally called forth by existing suffering and anticipated
danger, he struck at him fiercely with his sharp, glittering talons;
while, stretching downward his head to the full extent of his neck, he
uttered long, wild cries of mingled fear and menace. Nothing daunted by
what, in itself, was sufficiently appalling, the young man coolly
watched his opportunity, and, at the expense of several severe wounds in
the wrist from his talons, caught the hawk by the throat. Clinging round
a limb with the disengaged arm, he raised himself higher in the tree,
and lifting his prize, which still struck at him with his armed feet, he
skilfully extricated the wing and arrow from the crotch: the next
instant, with the huge, fluttering bird in his hand, he had slidden down
the trunk, and was standing on the transverse limb with a flushed brow,
and a triumphant look illuminating his handsome and fearless
countenance.

With one arm bent around the tree, and the other holding the hawk at
full length, he now began to cast his eyes upward. They travelled over
the bare surface, scarcely without lighting upon a resting-place for a
squirrel; and he began, for the first time, to question the possibility
of reascending; it having been comparatively easy for him to let his
body down by the crevice, as he had descended, while it would be
impracticable for him to lift its whole weight up again by the mere
effort of the fingers. A glance demonstrated this to him at once. But
time was not given him to reflect on a plan for surmounting a difficulty
which, in reality, was insurmountable, his faculties being at once
called into action to save himself from being thrown from this dizzy
perch by the struggles of the hawk. This ferocious creature had been
wounded by the arrow in the side just beneath the wing, which was broken
by the fall to the earth, and, thence passing upward, the barb had come
out through his back, without touching any vital part. His strength was,
therefore, through pain, rather augmented than diminished; and
notwithstanding the manual pressure upon his windpipe, he now began to
battle fiercely with his captor, fighting both with his claws and
remaining wing. Though holding him out at arm's length, the young man
was unable wholly to defend himself from the strong blows of the wing,
which was three feet in length, with which he violently assailed him
about the head, while with his talons he succeeded in striking his
person and inflicting a deep wound in his breast. He for a time coolly
bore the heavy sweeps of the wing, hoping he would soon tire; but he
forgot that his terrible antagonist was "the bird of tireless wing;"
and, at length, finding his own strength beginning to fail, though his
spirit was unsubdued, he loosened his hold from the trunk of the tree
which his arm had hitherto encircled, and, leaning his back against it,
watched his opportunity, and suddenly, with a firm grasp, seized the
wing as it was beating against his temples, and, by a sudden and skilful
turn of his wrist, dislocated it. This bold act nearly destroyed his
equilibrium; and, after its successful accomplishment, he just had time
to recover his hold on the tree to save himself from falling into the
dark wave below. For a moment afterward his heart throbbed tumultuously;
and reflecting on the imminent peril he had incurred by this necessary
exposure, he trembled with emotion and several times breathed heavily,
as if to relieve his breast of a weight of suffocating sensations--the
tribute which nature demanded of humanity.

Goaded to increased rage by the additional pain, and maddened at his
vain efforts to lift his useless wing, the eyes of the hawk glittered in
his head like a snake's, and, opening his red jaws, he thrust forth his
long, narrow tongue, and hissed at his captor like an angry serpent. It
was a moment that called for all the moral energy and physical nerve man
is capable of exercising in the hour of danger. The extraordinary young
fisherman evinced the possession of these qualities in a degree adequate
to the crisis which called them into action. With his eyes fixed
unflinchingly on the burning eyeballs of the hawk, and calmly
indifferent the while to the terrible hisses which came hot from his
throat and fell warm upon his face, he continued to keep him at bay so
that his talons should not reach his person, and put forth all his
strength to strangle him. There was a moral grandeur in the spectacle
this young fisher's lad presented, fearlessly perched on his fearful
eminence, as regardless of the depth below as if standing in his own
cottage door, battling at such odds with the fiercest warrior of the
air!

It was at this crisis that one of the fishermen, a very old man, whose
attention, with that of his companions, had been hitherto too much
occupied by the trial at archery to give a thought to the youth, after
having remained to see the prize awarded to the victress, turned to
leave the ground, when missing the young man, he recollected that he had
seen him follow the hawk to the verge of the cliff. Calling him by name
and not receiving any reply, he approached the precipice; but finding
that he was on the most perpendicular part of it, he cast only a hasty
glance down, and was about to turn away, supposing he had, unseen,
descended to the beach by the usual route a little farther to the north,
when a movement far below arrested his eyes. Looking steadily, he beheld
the youth with one arm clasped round the tree, and the other stretched
out, holding the bird by the neck, while all his moral and physical
energies were called into action to enable him to defend himself against
the talons of the savage creature.

A glance conveyed to the fisherman the whole extent of the danger; and,
after looking down upon him for a moment in speechless horror, his limbs
trembled with fear, and, giving utterance to a wild cry, he would have
fallen from the precipice had he not caught by a tree that hung over its
verge. Kate Bellamont was the first to reach the cliff on hearing the
alarm given by the old man; and, glancing down, she intuitively
comprehended the peril in which the youth had placed himself. With
wonderful presence of mind, waving her hand back to those advancing, she
said with energy,

"Hold! all of ye! Breathe not a word! He is in mortal danger! A shriek,
or a sign of fear among us may unnerve his bold spirit and be fatal to
him!"

Several of the young archeresses stopped suddenly, and turned pale at
this intimation of danger; while one or two, with more sensibility of
nerves, unable to control their fears, turned and fled towards the
castle, as if in the retirement of their closets they would shut out all
sense of the threatened evil. Young Lord Robert was the first by Kate
Bellamont's side.

"By Heaven! a bold peasant!" he said, his eyes sparkling with
admiration; "but--"

"Lester, this is no time for words," spoke the maiden, quickly.
"Something must be done for him. How could he have got there in safety!
Poor, rash youth!"

"Alas! my child, my lost, lost child!" cried the old fisherman, who was
seated on the ground shaking his head mournfully, turning his eyes away
from the trying scene. "God protect thee, lad, for no human aid will
avail thee!"

"Do not despair, good Dennis, he may yet be saved," said Kate,
encouragingly.

"Let go the bird!" shouted Lester.

The fisher's lad, whose attention had been called to the top of the
cliff by the shout of the old man, and who had watched the movements of
those above, smiled proudly at this request, and firmly shook his head
in the negative.

"He deserves to perish if he will peril his life for that bird," said
the young noble.

"Hush, Lester, he must be aided. Mark, drop the bird, or he will throw
you off. How could you be so foolish as to adventure your life for that
fierce hawk!"

"There is humble gallantry at the bottom of it, I dare swear," said
Lester, with a tone in which there was a slight shade of scorn.

"Perhaps there may be!" was the quiet reply of the maiden. "Mark, let
the bird go, I command you. If your life is sacrificed, I shall feel
that I am the cause of it."

"By the bow of Dan Cupid! I would change places with the serf to have my
situation create such an interest in your breast, fair lady." This was
spoken, partly with sincere feeling, partly with derision, by the
haughty Lester.

The full, dark gaze of Kate Bellamont encountered his; and with a manner
that eloquently conveyed the feeling of contempt that sprang up in her
heart, she said,

"Robert Lester must have fallen low in his own self-esteem to be jealous
of a fisher's lad!"

The young noble, with all his native haughtiness and pride of spirit,
possessed a generous nature, and was ever ready to atone for the wounds
which his wayward temper might have caused him unawares to inflict.
Especially was this the case where Kate Bellamont was the party
interested. With an instantaneous change peculiar to hasty spirits, he
sought pardon of the offended maiden with his eyes, and at once appeared
so different, that she saw that she could fully rely on him; plainly
reading in his face, with unerring feminine tact, that he nobly had
resolved to banish every feeling but the humane one the occasion
demanded.

"Lester, he will not release the bird for which he has perilled so
much," she said, with frank confidence in her tones, "and we must devise
some means to save both him and his prize. Haste to the castle, and get
a rope to save your comrade!" she cried to the remaining fisherman.

"I will save him with my life!" said the young noble. "How many bows
have we here?"

"A dozen," said Kate, at once comprehending the object of his inquiry.
"But are they strong enough, Robert?"

"To bear the weight of three men. Aid me, Kate, in making a chain of
them."

In a few seconds they had prepared a rope or chain nearly threescore
feet in length, of bows strung together, each link being five feet long.
Firmly securing one end to the top of the precipice by carrying it over
an upright limb, they successfully tested the strength of the whole by
extending it along the lawn, half a dozen drawing on it at once without
breaking it.

"This will do," he said with confidence, approaching the cliff to let it
down; but, to his surprise, he saw that the youth no longer retained the
bird, which, notwithstanding the command of the maiden, he had hitherto
seemed resolved, as Lester had hinted, to preserve, at the peril of his
life.

While these preparations had been making on the cliff, the hawk, not
being any longer able to reach the young fisher's body with his talons,
began to strike and lacerate his wrists. Finding at length that his
strength was unequal to the effort of strangulation (his intention
having been, if he could have killed him, to have lashed him to his
back, and so ascended with him), and satisfied that, while holding him
in his hand alive, he could not reascend, he reluctantly had been
compelled by a severe wound in the hand to let him go. In his fall the
bird struck heavily against the root of the tree, and, bounding off,
descended twenty feet lower, when the point of the arrow, which passed
through him like a spit, caught in a cleft and firmly held him on the
little shelf before described, which projected from the brow that
beetled over the sea at the height of seventy feet from it. The youth
watched him a few moments steadily, and saw that he moved neither wing
nor talon. He was dead!

When the intrepid lad saw him arrested in this manner, and that life was
now extinct, the cloud of regret that began to darken his face was all
at once chased away by a sunbeam of pleasure; for he discovered, as he
followed the bird's course with his eye, that the cleft in which he was
caught commenced at the very foot of the tree, and offered him the same
perilous facilities of descent that the zigzag one above had afforded.
When Lester looked over the cliff preparatory to letting down the chain
of bows, he beheld him, therefore, to his astonishment, in the act of
swinging himself from the horizontal limb, and the next moment clinging
about the trunk below it. Before either Kate or he could speak to warn
him, so sudden was their surprise, the daring youth had effected a
cautious and rapid descent of the tree, and was standing safely at its
roots: on casting their eyes farther below, they discerned, hanging over
the very verge of the brow, midway the precipice, the lifeless
ger-falcon, which instantly accounted to them for this new and
unexpected movement.

"His blood be upon his own head!" cried the maiden, shrinking from the
sight. "Lester, look! Is he not attempting to reach the bird? Or perhaps
he finds that he cannot climb the precipice again, and is trying to
descend to the water!"

"It is a long step of seventy feet from where that bird hangs to the
bottom," said the old fisherman, for an instant rousing himself. "He
will die, lady, and I shall have to convey his mangled corpse in my
skiff to my lonely hut, and dig for the poor boy a grave in the sand. I
loved him as if he had been my own flesh and blood!"

Kate was about to ask him, with surprise, if he were not his own son,
when a cry of alarm caused her to turn round just in time to see Lord
Robert commit himself fearlessly to the chain of bows and swing himself
over the dizzy verge. As he descended from her sight, with a smile on
his lip and a devotion of the eyes as he met hers, that told her,
plainer than words could convey it, that he ventured his life for her
sake prompted by his sympathy with the interest she took in the daring
fisher's boy, he said resolutely,

"I will save him in spite of himself, or share his fate!"

She was about to speak, but her voice failed her; and covering her eyes
to hide him, as he hung suspended above the sea, from her swimming
sight, for a few seconds she appeared as if her presence of mind had
deserted her. This weakness, if an emotion so natural can be termed
such, was but momentary. Recovering herself by a strong mental effort,
she once more looked over the cliff, and calmly watched the descent of
the daring Lester, whom she knew to be a skilful cragsman, with a prayer
on her lip for his safety. The novel chain by which he descended reached
to within ten feet of the spot where the young fisherman stood, and the
intention of Lord Robert was to take the tree, and reach the roots of it
as the other had done before him. He had accomplished, however, but a
few feet of his passage down the rock, not without great peril, though
at each junction of the bows he found a resting-place for his feet and a
hold for his hands, when the young fisher's lad lowered himself from his
shelf, and, getting his fingers in the cleft, began to descend,
alternately supporting his weight by his arms, with a celerity and
apparent recklessness that, to the spectators above, was fearful to
witness: he, however, took a firm grasp of the rock each time, and with
a cool head and steady eye, gained the spur where the hawk was fixed. In
the mean while Lord Robert had reached the tree; and leaving the chain
swinging in the air, he clasped the trunk, and quickly descended it: but
the object for which he had so generously ventured his life was now
twenty feet below him. With all his nerve, the fearless young noble
shuddered when he looked down and beheld the means by which the fisher's
lad had made his last descent. Both had reached the points at which they
aimed at the same instant; and when Lord Robert bent over to look down,
holding firmly by the roots of the tree, the other was standing with
perfect self-possession on his dizzy foothold, holding the hawk in one
hand, and waving with the other to those above.

"Do you value your life so lightly, peasant, without saying anything of
the painful sympathy your folly produces in those who are spectators of
your foolhardiness, that you peril it after this fashion?" said the
young noble, passionately, yet unable to refuse the admiration due to
his fearless character.

"I am not your serf, Lord Robert of Castle More, that my life should be
of value in your eyes," said the youth, with a look and bearing as
haughty as the young noble's.

"Ha!" exclaimed Lord Robert, with astonishment and anger; "these are
brave words to come from beneath a homespun jerkin. By the cross of St.
Peter! fisherman, thou dost presume too much upon that equality to which
mutual danger has for the moment brought us. I have periled my life to
assist thee--not by mine own will, by Heaven! for thou deservest to be
rewarded for thy temerity by a bath in the sea; but at the bidding of a
lady, who, perforce, thinks, if thou shouldst, by any lucky chance,
break thy neck for the hawk her arrow has sent over the cliff, thy blood
will be on her head. So I have explained to thee the height and depth of
my charity, lest thou shouldst swell still bigger to think that, peasant
as thou art, thou hast made a noble thy servant."

"A very proper speech, I have no doubt, Lord Robert More," answered the
fisherman, with a quiet smile of superiority (as the noble construed
it). "I need none of your lordship's aid. Without it I came down, and
without it I can go up again."

"The devil have thee, then, for thy obstinacy," cried Lester, his eyes
flashing with anger; "by the rood, if I had thee there, I would be of a
mind to help thee down rather than up."

"The path by which I came is equally open to your lordship," was the
cool answer. "Robert More, thrice have I saved your life; and though you
have thanked me like a noble for the deed at the time, have after
cancelled it by treating me like a slave, because the accident of birth
has made you noble and me base. Leave me again. I will not owe my life
to your lordship!" This was said in a steady and determined, but very
quiet tone.

"My good Meredith, I will forgive thy rudeness of speech, for thou hast
had offence," said the young man, struck with his proud and independent
character, so nearly akin to his own. "The haughtiness with which I have
treated thee is one of the consequences of this accident of birth.
Believe me, I have never forgotten what I owe to thy courage: once saved
from drowning by thee! once snatched from a peril almost equal to that
thou art now in! once preserved from death beneath the antlers of an
enraged stag! I have not forgotten these debts, thou seest. If I have
seemed to thee ungrateful, set it down, brave Mark, to pride of birth
rather than want of feeling. Shall I aid thee, lad, in gaining the top?"

"Lord Robert, your words have atoned for the past," said the young
fisherman, not unmoved by this generous and manly defence of the proud
young noble; "nevertheless, I will not owe my life to you!"

The noble fastened his penetrating gaze on the upturned face of the
young fisherman, and thought he discovered a meaning there that was a
key to his refusal.

"Ha! I have it!" he said, internally, after a few moments' reflection.
"_He dares to place his thoughts on her!_"

Instantly, with that lightning-like rapidity with which his impulsive
feelings changed, he shouted in a loud, haughty tone of voice,

"Ho, Sir Peasant! prithee tell me what strange fondness for dead hawks
set thee to jeoparding thy life after this sort?"

"Lester," cried Kate Bellamont from the summit of the cliff, hearing
their voices without understanding the words, "why this delay? Can there
be no means of reaching the noble youth?"

"Noble youth!" repeated the young man, scornfully, to himself; "it will
be a _princely_ next. By the cross! If he does not smile and wave his
daring hand to her! And she answers it back! Fellow!" he added,
fiercely, "I will come down and hurl thee into the sea!"

"You are welcome, Lord Robert," replied the other, unmoved; "yet, as
there is barely room for me, it is certain that, if you do descend,
_one_ of us only can remain upon it."

The impetuous Lester was already preparing to descend by the crevice;
but the coolness of the other at once disarmed his anger.

"Thou art a brave fellow, Mark, and I would not injure thee. But," he
added, sternly, "see that thou cross not my path!"

"How mean you, Lord Robert?" he inquired, concealing his penetration of
the lover's motives under a look of simplicity that embarrassed the
haughty and sensitive noble.

Before he could reply, the voice of the Countess of Bellamont,
encouraging them both, was heard from the summit. She only had this
instant arrived, drawn hither by the rumour of the danger of the
fisher's lad, accompanied by Dermot, and one or two men-servants, with
ropes and other means of assisting those below.

Her first proceeding, on discovering the position of the parties, was to
attach the rope to the chain of bows, and have the end of it firmly tied
to the tree. She then bade the men to lower it steadily till it could be
reached by Lord Robert, and in a few seconds he held it in his grasp.

"Now, Sir Peasant," said Lester, relaxing into his former haughty mood,
"here is the means of reascending the cliff."

"You may profit by it, my lord, I will not," said the youth, firmly. "I
will receive no favour at your hands."

"Then, by Heaven, thou shalt ascend, whether thou wilt or no," said the
noble, with energy. "I have pledged my word to save thee, and I will
redeem my pledge. Ho! there above! Drop a piece of cord a few yards in
length, so that it will fall at my feet."

The coil was placed by Kate Bellamont on the rope, and the next moment,
sliding down like a ring along the chain of bows, it was caught in his
hand.

"Let out twenty feet more of the rope," he again shouted, "and see that
it is well fast above."

As it passed through his hands, he conducted it over the shelf on which
he stood till it touched the feet of the young fisherman. He had quietly
watched these preparations, and, as they were completed, he coolly
glanced into the depth beneath, and then upward to the young noble, with
an air so resolute that the other paused ere he descended by the chain,
on a link of which one foot already rested.

"Surely thou wilt not be so mad!" exclaimed Lester, reading a fatal
determination in his lofty and intrepid look.

"Robert More, I will owe you no favour. Rather than be beholden to you
for my life, I will fling it away, as freely as I have now hazarded it
to win a smile from the fair maiden of Castle Cor."

"THOU! By Heaven, I thought it!" he shouted, with scorn and indignation.
"If I had thee on a piece of ground two feet square that would hold us
both, I would waive my birth, and do battle with thee on that score,
hind as thou art! and see if I could not beat out of thy bones this
leaven of insolence! I will now assuredly aid thy return to the summit,
that I may have the pleasure afterward of doing for thee this good
service."

As Lester spoke, he committed himself with cool intrepidity to the
chain, holding in one hand the coil of line, by which it was evidently
his intention to lash the young fisherman to the rope, and began rapidly
to descend.

"Robert More, I do not fear to meet you on any ground. If I did, I
should hardly take _this leap_ to avoid the lesson you have in
contemplation for me! But I will owe you no favour, not even that of
life. Nor shall you lay a finger upon me to force me to do your pleasure
in this thing. Hold! place your foot on the nock of this second bow
above me, and I will take a free spring out into the air."

This was said in a tone and manner--a steady uplighting of his clear
dark eyes, and a firm, muscular compression of the lip--that made the
other hesitate; but it was only for an instant: the next moment he let
the bow to which he held slip through his hands, and he descended with
velocity till his foot struck upon the last link, which was on a level
with the young fisherman's head. At the same moment the latter elevated
his arms high above his head, holding the hawk between his hands, and,
placing his feet close together, made a spring into the air!

Lester, with a full knowledge of his cool and resolute character, had
not anticipated this result; and, in his surprise, had nearly let go his
hold. He at the same time uttered a cry of horror, which was answered
from the summit by a loud wail of anguish from many voices; for this act
had been witnessed by all, without the cause which influenced it being
apparent. Preserving the erect attitude with which he had left the rock,
the young fisherman descended like lightning, cut the still bosom of the
black wave beneath, and disappeared below the agitated surface; the
heavy, splashing sound of his fall striking on the ears of those on the
summit of the cliff like his death-knell. Wild and full of mortal
anguish was the shriek that echoed it!

A flush of hope lighted up the countenance of Lester when he saw the
accuracy with which he had struck the surface, and thought upon the
manner of his descent. At the same time Kate Bellamont, who had been an
interested but puzzled spectator (for their voices, at the height she
stood, had not distinctly reached her) of the previous conduct of the
parties, and had beheld with horror the seemingly fatal act of the
adventurous youth, also marked the natatory art with which he had taken
the spring; and, scarcely hoping, watched, equally with Lester, the
circling waves, as they widened from the centre, with an intensity
amounting to agony.

After an interval of full thirty seconds, which seemed an age to those
who watched, the water, which had once more become nearly smooth, was
seen to part many yards from the point of descent, and the head of the
daring youth appeared above the surface. A shout, loud and long, greeted
him from the cliff; and no voice was louder or more glad in the joyful
welcome than Lord Robert's. With the hawk elevated in one hand, and
buffeting the waves with the other, he swam bravely towards a belt of
sand a few yards farther northward; and in a few moments afterward he
safely landed, full in sight of those standing anxiously on the cliff.
Pointing to his prize, and waving his hand to Kate Bellamont with native
gallantry, he disappeared around an angle of the shore, to reascend, by
a beaten and easy path, to the summit of the promontory.

In the mean time Lord Robert became an object of renewed interest to the
party. He was sixty feet from the top of the cliff, with no other means
of reaching it than the precarious chain of bows and a few additional
feet of rope: even the permanent safety of this was doubtful. It
depended solely for its strength on the goodness of the yews and the
entire soundness of the slender bow-strings; and one of these he
discovered, on running his eyes upward, was chafed by some sharp point
of the rock with which it had come in contact. There remained, however,
no alternative. It was plain that he must either trust himself to it, or
follow the example of the young fisherman, and take the leap into the
sea. For a moment he gazed down into the water, and seemed to measure
with deliberate purpose the empty void between; but, shaking his head
with doubt, he once more turned his attention to the equally dangerous,
but more probable, means of escape. The catgut which had stranded
belonged to the third bow above him. Drawing hard upon it with his whole
weight, he saw that it was slowly untwisting, and that it would be
madness to trust himself to it. His self-possession, however, did not
desert him.

"Can you obtain no stout rope that will reach me here, 'wild Kate?'" he
said, in a careless tone; "I fear the ragged points of the rock will cut
your bow-strings, and spoil them for further shooting."

"No, Lester, there is none!" answered the maiden, in a deep voice, that
betrayed the depth and intensity of her feelings at this crisis; "men
have been sent to the cove for ropes, but it is far, and it will be long
before they return, even if they succeed in getting them. God protect
you! Preserve your coolness, for my sake, Robert!" she added, with that
force and truth that spurned, at such a moment, all disguise.

Her words seemed to have awakened anew the spirit within him. Placing
his hand on his heart, he carried it to his lips, and gallantly waved it
towards her. She answered it encouragingly in return; but instantly
turning away overcome by her feelings, cast herself on the bosom of her
mother, and burst into tears.

Necessarily ignorant of this touching testimony of her attachment to
him, which his imminent danger now forbade her to disguise longer under
a mask of badinage, Lester concentrated all his energies to the task
before him. He felt that before the lapse of one or two hours, which it
would require to get ropes from the cove which was more than a league
distant, the inconvenience of his position would have left him with
little strength to climb the cliff, even with the assistance that might
then be rendered. He was now in the full possession of his physical and
mental energies, and resolved, without longer delay, to avail himself of
them. Taking the cord, which he had demanded for a very different
intention, he fastened one end around his wrist; then leaning backward
from the rock, sustaining himself by the grasp of one hand on the chain,
he threw it upward with such accurate aim that it passed through the bow
next above the one with the stranded string, and fell down within his
reach. He then loosened it from his wrist, firmly secured the ends to
the lower bow on which he was sustained, and so made the cord supply the
place of the weak bow-string, and bear the whole strain. This done, he
prepared to ascend the smooth face of the rock twenty feet to the foot
of the tree. Grasping the cord with both hands, he braced himself in a
horizontal position, one of most imminent hazard which demanded all the
coolness, self-possession and physical strength he was possessed of, and
began literally to walk up the perpendicular side of the precipice. The
stranding of a string; a sudden strain upon the tensely bent bows; the
least deviation from the horizontal, would have been instantly fatal!
Coolly, slowly, steadily, lifting himself, step by step, hand after
hand, he at last got to a level with the tree, firmly grasped one of its
roots, and by its aid sprung lightly upon the shelf on which it grew.

His preparations had been watched, and it was told Kate Bellamont that
he was preparing to ascend. But the maiden had yielded her full heart to
her woman's nature; and while he was making the perilous ascent, with
her head lifted from her mother's bosom, and with tearful eyes and
clasped hands, she was looking heavenward, breathing a silent prayer for
his safety. A shout of joy announced to her his success! Once more she
dropped her face and wept with joy. Lady Bellamont, who felt that all
had been done that circumstances admitted of, refrained from watching
his perilous feat; and, while she solaced her daughter, calmly directed
Cormac the forester to steady the rope, and keep it from rubbing against
the rocks.

Quitting the chain, Lester now ascended the tree to the transverse
branch, which he had scarcely reached when a loud crack at the root
warned him that the scathed solitary of the cliff, unused to such
repeated trials, was giving way under his weight. Hardly had he time to
throw himself upon the chain, and hang by a bow-string with one hand,
when a series of loud reports rapidly followed each other as one after
another the roots snapped; the top of the tree waved wildly to and fro,
and then the huge trunk plunged, crashing and roaring, into the flood
beneath. For an instant afterward the appalled Lester continued to cling
to the fragile chain with nervous solicitude; but at length assured that
he was not to be carried along with it into the frightful gulf, he
prepared to continue, by the same process of horizontal walking he had
hitherto adopted, his upward progress to the next shelf, six feet above
him, and with which the top of the tree had been on a level.

The effect of the fall of the tree on those so deeply interested above
can scarcely be imagined. Lady Bellamont answered the heavy crash by a
wild shriek, echoed by all around save Kate. With her the dreadful
suspense and anxiety were now lost in the certainty of his fate. She
calmly raised her head, approached the cliff with a firm step, and
looked steadily down, not with hope, but with a settled gaze of despair,
as if she would take a last look at his grave, and for ever impress upon
her heart's tablet his sea-covered tomb. It was at this moment of her
soul's anguish she confessed within her own heart that, notwithstanding
the lightness with which she might have attempted to disguise it, she
loved him with all the fervour and devotedness of a first passion.
Approaching the verge with such feelings, her surprise was only equalled
by her joy when she saw him in the act of climbing on the shelf above
described. A joyful cry escaped her; and the bold youth, looking up,
acknowledged her presence with a proud smile and wave of his hand. From
this moment Kate Bellamont was herself again. He was safe! The change
from grief to joy in her countenance was electrical! and she prepared to
watch and aid his ascent with all the coolness and energy she was
possessed of.

He had accomplished thus far his arduous task in comparative safety; and
as he had now but twenty feet more to ascend, she looked with confidence
to its successful accomplishment. This space, however, save a shelf
within eight feet of the top on which the young fisherman had alighted,
and the zigzag crevice by which he had descended the remaining twelve
feet, was steep as a wall, and as difficult of ascent. The young man,
after having hitherto passed through such trying scenes, was not now to
be daunted by any obstacles, of whatever magnitude, that opposed his
farther progress. Nerving himself to the effort, he grasped the rope,
which here had taken the place of the chain of bows, and extended
himself, as before, into a horizontal position, meeting and returning
with a smile, as he did so, her look of solicitude. As he slowly and
laboriously ascended, she inspired the men to their task of keeping the
rope from the cliff, often assisting them with her own fingers, till at
length she was rewarded by seeing him safely reach the shelf, and stand
within eight feet of the summit. By her direction the men now bent the
projecting branch of the tree until it was within his reach; when, aided
by one hand placed on the rope, he lightly climbed the limb, and with a
spring stood in safety on the top of the cliff.

Kate, who had scarcely breathed as she watched this final effort, guided
by the impulse of the moment, flung herself at once, grateful, happy,
weeping, into his arms!--so certain it is that true love will out, give
it occasion to speak for itself! And what fitter one than this? At such
a time, love is both deaf and blind. It sees, hears, knows no voice but
its own; is indifferent to the opinions of a world of witnesses, and,
setting aside all canons of propriety and discretion, abandons itself to
the impulses of its ardent nature. Such was the love of Kate Bellamont.

But love, like all other emotions, is but short-lived in its excess. The
temporary excitement passes away; reflection follows; notions of
propriety return; and the conscious victim, blushing, mortified, angry
with shame, feels that there _is_ a world of witnesses to whose canons
she is amenable, and shrinks at the judgment that will be passed on her
outrage of its received notions of maidenly propriety. Such, the next
moment after abandoning herself to the first wild gush of joy at his
escape, were the thoughts that rushed thick on the mind of the proud and
sensitive maiden. She sprang away from him; hid her face in her hands;
and, for the moment, scarcely knew whether her wounded feelings would
have vent in tears or laughter. True to her character as "Wild Kate of
Castle Cor," the latter prevailed; and, exposing her face, she broke
into a fit of merry laughter, which was caught up and continued, with
many a lively witticism, by those around, who, the moment before, were
sad and gloomy under the pressure of fatal forebodings: for so
wonderfully, yet wisely, is the human heart constituted, that smiles
never come so readily, and are never so bright, as when heralded by
tears.

The gratified Lester was too happy to receive such an ingenuous,
impulsive token of her love, and of its deep, womanly sincerity, to feel
hurt at this change in her manner, which his good sense enabled him to
refer to its true cause. With deep and silent pleasure, he felt that
that moment had fully repaid him for all he had risked.

Grace Fitzgerald, who had been by no means an indifferent spectator of
his hazardous adventure, now advanced, grasped his hand with great
warmth, and congratulated him on his safety.

"You need not look so very fond, Sir Cragsman," she said, gayly; "I am
not about to follow the example cousin Kate has so generously set for
us. Oh no! What with your exploit and Kate's folly, you will be
completely spoiled for me! I dare say you would go down that horrid
place again for another such hug as my cousin Kate gave you. Really, I
am shocked!"

"I will go down and take the leap off into the sea for a similar
reception from Grace Fitzgerald," said Lester, with an air of gallantry.

"And do you think I would come near such a dripping monster as you would
make of yourself? No, no, I am no Nereid to fancy a man coming out of
the sea."

"By which I infer, fair lady," he said, archly, "that, if I will go down
and come up dry, you will give me such a welcome as--"

"Kate gave you? Really, you are quite spoiled. Kate, come and take care
of your beau cavalier, for he is no longer fit for any company but
yours. But here comes one I will welcome, dripping or dry!"

She bounded forward as she spoke, and met, at the head of the path, the
gallant fisher's lad, who just then appeared, on his way up from the
water, bearing in his hand the ger-falcon which had been the cause of
putting in peril two human lives. He was accompanied by the old
fisherman, who, having remained on the summit of the cliff, paralyzed
and inert through alarm and anxiety until assured of his safety, had
gone down to the beach to meet him on his return. She approached the
young adventurer with one hand extended to welcome him, the forefinger
of the other at the same time lifted with censure.

"I will shake hands with you, Mark; but you deserve, handsome as you
are, to have your ears boxed. See what a to-do you have been the cause
of; and all for that great black bird, which Kate, forsooth, must shoot
instead of sending her arrow at the target. Well, you are a noble and
gallant young man, and I like you. Do you hear that, Kate? I too have
made a declaration! Well, but I won't embrace you, I think, for you are
too wet."

While the lively girl was speaking, the rest of the party, including
Lord Robert and Kate, approached and joined in welcoming him.

"My brave Meredith," said Lester, frankly extending his hand, "you
deserve a better career than that before you. Henceforth let us be
friends."

The hand of the young noble was received without embarrassment and with
a native dignity of manner by the humble youth, that, to all present,
atoned for his want of high birth; while he said, with a firm yet
respectful tone,

"We may not be enemies, but we can never be friends, Lord Robert:
friendship between the high and low is but another name for dependance
to the latter."

"I fear you speak too truly, Mark," said Kate, who had congratulated him
on his escape with an honest warmth and sincerity of manner that sent
the blood like lightning to his brows.

"Not in my case, brave Mark," said the noble, earnestly; "I will become
your patron and--"

"And is there patronage without dependance, my lord?" he asked, in a
quiet tone.

"Well, well," said Lester, colouring, "have it your own way. You have
pride enough for Lucifer!"

"But not enough for a noble," said the other, with a very slight curl of
the lip.

"Mark Meredith," said Kate, reprovingly, "you forget your station. A
proper degree of pride is the secret of independence. Perhaps you have
too much. Lord Robert is sincere, and means well by you."

"Believe her, Mark," said Grace Fitzgerald, with playful raillery;
"nobody ought to know so well what Lord Robert means as my cousin Kate."

"Stop your saucy tongue, Grace," said the maiden, placing a finger on
her bright lips. "What will you now do, Mark, with this bird, that has
cost us, through your thoughtlessness, so much anxiety and suffering?"

"And betrayed a secret that was not quite a secret before," said the
mischievous Grace.

"Grace, prithee hist!" cried Kate, with a spice of asperity.

"Give me the bird, peasant!" said Lester, in a tone of authority. "I
will nail it on the door of the lodge at Castle More, in honour of the
fair archer who shot it."

"Here is the gentle owner," replied the youth, turning towards Kate
Bellamont; and gracefully kneeling as he spoke, he gallantly laid the
bird at her feet, saying,

"Gentle archeress, deign to accept--it is the only boon I crave for my
peril--this trophy of thy skill. I have obtained it for thee at the risk
of life and limb, valuing neither, so that I might do thee a service,
and save what I know thou wilt be proud to preserve in remembrance of
this day."

"By the cross! a forward youth! an Alfred in disguise, I would swear!"
said Lester, haughtily, his quick spirit kindling at the scene. "He will
be offering next, fair Kate," he added, scornfully, "to share with thee
his palace of bark and poles, and his wide realm of sand and seashells.
S'death! a proper peasant!" The young noble's eyes sparkled, and he
paced the sward with angry impatience, as he concluded.

Kate Bellamont was not indifferent to the tone, manner, and language
with which the hawk was presented by the humble youth. She was flattered
by his well-directed compliments, and pleased, without knowing why, with
the deep, silent admiration with which he regarded her. Was it the
language of love? His manner reminded her of Lester in his most
impassioned moments of devotion; but there was in the fine face of the
young fisherman a calmer, sweeter, more chastened expression; a
reverence without humility; devotion without awe. Was it love? She
trembled, as she thought so, and dared not a second time meet his
dark-beaming eyes. The peculiar character of the expression of his face
was read aright by none but herself and Lester: for only love and
jealousy can translate the language of love. The light blue eyes of the
young noble flashed fierce fire as he witnessed what he deemed palpable
proof of his suspicions. His glance turned rapidly from the face of one
to the face of the other. The expression of his maddened him; that of
hers troubled and puzzled him; and he turned away, grinding his teeth
with bitterness: for what is there on earth so bitter as jealousy?

The contrast between the appearance of these two haughty young men was
as great as that existing between their ranks in life. The young noble
was in his eighteenth year, tall, and firmly made, with uncommon breadth
and expansion of chest, which gave a striking appearance of compactness
and muscular finish to his frame, that promised, in manhood, nobleness
of carriage as well as great personal strength. His complexion was fair
as the Saxon's; his features regular as the Greek's; but, unlike his,
stamped with that union of manly grace and strength, and bold, fiery
energy, supposed to be characteristic of the ancient Briton. Over his
clear, high forehead fell locks of light flaxen hair of rare beauty, and
shining tresses of the same pale, golden hue floated about his
shoulders. His eyes were his most remarkable feature. They were large
and blue, clear as light, and of a beautiful shape, glowing with
intellect and sparkling with animation, and, when undisturbed, beaming
with a soft and gentle expression betokening gayety of temper and
lightness of spirit; but, when roused by anger, they flashed fierce
fire, and seemed literally to blaze, so bright was the light they
emitted. They further possessed a striking peculiarity, which so marked
his angered glance that he who once encountered it never forgot it till
his dying day. This was a habit, or, rather, nature had given it to him,
when under the influence of angry passions, of lowering his brows down
over his eyes in such a way as to destroy their fine, oval form, and
give them a strange, triangular shape; and the pupil of his eyes
darkening at the same time till they grew black as night, communicated
to them a singularly wild and terrible expression.

His lips were very beautiful both in form and colour; but the upper wore
a haughty curl that marred the beauty of a mouth which nature had
chiselled with the nicest hand. He carried himself at all times with a
gallant but proud air; and his demeanour was like that of the highborn
youths of his time, taught to regard all of low degree as created for
their use and pleasure. His faults were those of education rather than
of the heart; and, where these deeply-grafted prejudices were not
attacked, he was frank, noble, and generous, and not unworthy the love
of a noble maiden like Kate Bellamont. At the moment seized upon to
describe his appearance, he was standing within a few feet of the young
fisherman, his eyes sparkling with anger and assuming that remarkable
shape which has been described, with his head and one foot advanced, and
his whole attitude hostile and threatening.

The fisher's lad, who continued kneeling for an instant at the feet of
the fair archeress awaiting her acceptance of the trophy he had
presented, met his dark look unmoved, and, as he thought, with a smile
of proud defiance. The appearance of this bold youth, whose bearing
caused the haughty Lester to question if nature had not a nobility of
her own creation, was, save in his proud carriage, strikingly opposite
to that of the young noble. He was about the same age, and nearly as
tall, but had not such fulness in the chest, and was wanting something
of his breadth of shoulders; but his figure, if lighter, was more
elegant, and united great muscular activity with native dignity and ease
of motion. He wore fishermen's loose trousers, with a coarse jacket of
brown stuff, and was both barefooted and bareheaded. His face was
exceedingly fine. It was oval in shape, with an olive complexion, still
more darkened by exposure to wind and sun: now, with the glow of
exercise and the magic presence of her before whom he bent, it had
become of the richest brown colour. His dark hair was glossy with
sea-water, and, parted naturally on his brow, fell in long raven waves
adown his well-shaped neck. His eyes were dark as hers on whom he gazed,
exceedingly large-orbed, and eloquent with thought and feeling.

"What handsome eyes!" thought Grace Fitzgerald, as she gazed on them.

"What dangerous eyes!" thought Kate.

His eyebrows were as even and accurately arched as if pencilled; but
they were redeemed from anything like effeminacy, on account of the
delicacy of their outline, by the intellectual fulness of the brow. His
nose was straight, and of just proportions; his mouth beautiful as a
girl's, yet full of character, decision, and strength, and oftener it
was the seat of dejected thought than of smiles. Its expression was
generally quiet; yet the finely chiselled lips were full of spirit; and,
when silent, seemed most to speak, so eloquent were the thoughts that
coloured them with their ruby life. The merest movement of the upper
conveyed the intensest feelings with the vivid rapidity of the
lightning's flash, whether they were begotten of scorn or irony, love or
hatred. His bearing, as well as his appearance, was above his station;
and he manifested a haughty independence of spirit that scorned the
distinctions of rank, and a pride of character that, in one of his
humble grade, was not far from being closely allied to audacity. But
perhaps this only proceeded from a certain impatience at being
compelled, nevertheless, to admit in his own person a conventional
inferiority to those with whom he felt he was on that broad basis of
equality, the elements of which are equal physical and intellectual
qualifications.

Though a poor fisher's lad, he possessed all the feelings and sensations
common to humanity, and experienced emotions both of pleasure and pain;
could feel disgusted at what was revolting, and be pleased at what was
agreeable. He shared, therefore, with all men, of whatever rank, from
the prince to himself--for there could scarcely be a lower scale--that
mysterious principle of the heart by which it attracts, and is attracted
to, woman--he beheld Kate Bellamont, and this moral loadstone, acting as
nature intended it should do, irresistibly drew him towards her. Without
reflection, without cherishing either a hope or a fear, but simply happy
in the contiguity, he gave himself up to the new and delightful
sensations produced by the flow of love's magnetic fluid through his
heart. In plain words, the poor fisher's lad fell deeply in love with
the highborn heiress of Castle Cor.

No one of the wonderful phenomena of the human mind so fully
demonstrates that it is a mesh of anomalies, as the existence of the
fact that, when a man loves a woman, he has only to learn that another
regards her with the same flattering sentiments, to hate him most
cordially, seek him out, quarrel with him, and even take his life. It
would seem to be taken for granted that the knowledge of this fact would
have a directly contrary effect; for the presumption irresistibly
follows, that whoever feels an interest in the object to which we
ourselves are so closely bound by ties of love, must, without regarding
the delicacy of the compliment to our individual tastes, be
proportionably loved by us. But experience has too often demonstrated
this by no means to be the case; but, on the contrary, the knowledge of
the existence of a parallel attachment produces in the breast of the
legitimate admirer wrath, malice, and hatred, filling his soul towards
the subject of it with all manner of evil.

True to this feeling of the human heart, the young noble and fisher's
lad forthwith felt rising in their breasts towards each other emotions
of a hostile character; for love is a famous leveller, and the prince
can deign even to hate his slave if love raises him to a rival. In one
of the youths it manifested itself in the cool expression of defiance:
in the other, by haughty scorn and indignant surprise.

When the fisher's lad had finished his manly and gallant address, he
modestly continued to await, with his hand upon the bird, the
acknowledgments of the fair maiden. Gratified, yet embarrassed, Kate
remained silent, knowing not how to reply to the chivalrous lad, who,
under the magic tuition of love, had suddenly assumed a character that
alarmed her; who, all at once, had been converted, as if by a spell,
from the quiet, yet handsome fisher's boy, who was accustomed to attend
her in her excursions along the beach, into a bold and daring lover! She
could not be insensible to the compliment. She loved Lester with all her
heart; therefore she could not have requited the youth's boyish love,
had his blood been noble as her own. Yet there remained a place in her
heart for kindly gratitude, and with a smile that sent the quick colour
to the forehead of the boy, she said, in a voice that thrilled to his
soul,

"I thank you, Mark, for the gift. I will keep it in remembrance of your
courage, as well as a trophy of my skill in archery; notwithstanding, I
fear good Cormac will lay claim to it, as it was hit with his own arrow.
It would make a brave ornament, with its wings spread at length above
the door of his cot," she added, turning to the old forester, who stood
respectfully on the outskirts of the party that was gathered about Mark
and his ger-falcon.

As she spoke her thanks she extended to Mark her hand, which he took
with blushing embarrassment, and, after a moment's hesitation,
gracefully carried to his lips. The eyes of the young noble sparkled
with anger as he saw the offer of the hand, but they shot forth a
menacing glare as he witnessed the act on the part of the youth: turning
on his heel with an execration, he would have left the ground but for
the eye of Kate Bellamont, which he caught fixed upon him.

"Come, Mark," said Grace, "you must join us all in the pavilion; for you
need refreshment after your fatigue. I wish, Robert, you would present
him with one of your green hunting-suits. I declare, I should like to
see if he would not outbrave you all. Do! good Lord Robert."

"You are perfectly crazy, Grace," said Kate, aside.

"Am I? was the quiet reply, accompanied by a quizzical look, which
conveyed far more than the words to Kate's comprehension, and made her,
in spite of her efforts to maintain indifference, look exceedingly
foolish.

"You are all beside yourselves, I verily believe," said Lester, in a
tone that his accent alone made biting; "I have no doubt whatever that
it would oblige you excessively, Lady Grace, if I would exchange attire
with your fishy favourite."

"Really, Lord Robert, I wish you would. I have a curiosity to know what
sort of a fisherman you would make. I dare say a very nice one, save a
spice or so of pride, that would hardly suit your station."

"Pride in a peasant is impertinence. But 'tis an attribute most
congenial to the station, I discover," he added, with cool irony, "and
doth recommend its possessor, I see, most particularly to the favour of
noble ladies."

"I advise you, then, Lester, when you chance to fall in their good
graces," said Kate, assuming the same tone, yet qualifying its
bitterness with good-humour, "that you renew your suit under a fisher's
garb; believe me, it will assuredly restore you to favour."

"I have no hesitation in believing it," said Lester, in a grave tone,
and with a marked emphasis of manner that excited both maidens to
laughter; but he was far from participating in their merriment, and
turned from them with an angry brow.

"I have delayed the banquet too long with this folly," said Kate; "hie
to the pavilion, fair archers and gallant esquires all," she added,
gayly, "and I will soon follow you. As for you, Mark, I will send to you
some of the choicest viands on the board, and cousin Grace shall be the
bearer of them. Cormac, take up the hawk."

"This honour will please Lord Robert better," replied Grace, glancing at
him with an archly malicious look.

"Lord Robert will have nothing to do with this piece of folly," cried
he, in a tone that made her start. "By the cross of Christ! peasant, if
you betake not yourself speedily to thy hovel, I will hurl thee with
mine own hand from the cliff upon its roof."

As he spoke he advanced upon him. Mark looked apologetically at Kate,
and then sprang to his feet, and confronted him with that calm courage
which had hitherto characterized him. His coolness maddened the
impulsive Lester, and with a bound he leaped upon him, and caught him by
the throat; but, ere he could get his fingers firmly clinched upon his
windpipe, he reeled violently backward by the force of a blow upon his
chest, dealt with a skill and accuracy of aim that compensated for any
inequality of physical strength. With eyes darkening with rage, he
recovered himself, and seeing lying not far from him on the ground his
short hunting-spear, he snatched it up, and launched it at his breast
with a force and direction that would have transfixed him on the spot
but for his presence of mind; anticipating its flight, he quietly moved
from its path, when it passed within a few inches of his head with a
loud whirring noise, and, striking against a distant rock, shivered into
a thousand fragments.

"Robert Lester," exclaimed Kate Bellamont, with a flashing eye and a
voice of indignant horror, "by that act you have forfeited all that
belongs to you as a noble gentleman, and also," she added, with deep
feeling and a proud spirit, "all that connects you with any person (I
speak for all) that is here present."

"Pardon me, lady," he said, throwing himself at her feet, and attempting
to take her hand.

"Never, Robert Lester. Touch me not! Leave me--leave me! Leave us all!
The farther festivities of the day will be marred by your presence!"

"Lady--"

"Silence, assassin!" and the dark eyes of the roused heiress of
Bellamont flashed with such a light as might burn in an indignant
seraph's.

"Ha!" he cried, starting to his feet, "this to me!"

"This to you, Robert Lester, who now have made yourself lower than the
meanest peasant. I degrade you from your esquireship; and, faith! if the
more noble Mark Meredith shall not take your place. Mark, approach and
be my esquire of archery!"

The youth proudly smiled, but hesitated.

"I command you. As true as my father's blood runs in my veins, thou art
the more noble!"

"God of Heaven! this is too much to bear calmly," cried Lester, his eyes
assuming that remarkable shape that characterized them when his anger
had grown to its height.

"Mercy!" cried Grace Fitzgerald, with real alarm; "what a fearful look!
I wonder," she added, with a slight touch of her usual manner, "that I
ever could have had the courage to coquet with such a terrible
creature."

The fierce noble made no reply, but, glancing from her to Kate, looked
pleadingly, as if about to speak; but she shook her head with a motion
scarcely perceptible, but in a firm manner, that left no hope to his
repentant spirit. Striking his forehead violently, with mingled shame
and rage he rushed from the spot towards the castle, and walked rapidly
until he disappeared behind an angle of one of the towers. Kate
Bellamont followed him with her eyes, her brow unbent, her proud manner
and high-toned look unchanged; but, when he could no longer be seen,
there was perceptible a struggle on her eloquent countenance to restrain
the emotion with which her heart was full. With an even voice and forced
gayety, she said,

"We will now to the pavilion, maidens fair and cavaliers; and I trust
this rudeness of yonder haughty boy will not mar our festivities. Mark,
you will attend me. What! has he gone too? God grant two such fiery
youths meet not again this day."

"Didst observe, my lady," said Cormac, who had been a silent spectator
of the exciting scene, "didst take note of that look out of the eyes of
Lord Robert? Well, if it did not remind me of Hurtel o' the Red Hand, as
if he had stood before me."

And the old forester ominously shook his head, as if it contained
something very mysterious, yet untold, and followed the party to the
pavilion, whither they had already directed their steps, to partake,
with what spirits they might after the scenes that had transpired, of
the luxurious banquet therein spread for their entertainment.

Here Kate Bellamont, who preserved a calm dignity the while, and, save
to the eye of Grace, whose generous spirit sympathized warmly and
sincerely in her feelings, betrayed no outward signs of emotion, with a
tranquilly-spoken excuse for her absence left them and fled to the
castle: she ran through its long hall like a hunted hart; flew up the
broad staircase to her boudoir, and entering it, closed the door. Then
uttering a gasping cry of suffering, she threw herself, with a wild
abandonment of passion, upon a seat; the fountains of her bursting
heart, so long choked up, were opened; and she gave way to an
irresistible flood of tears.

It is ever thus with woman! Although, in the moment of just resentment,
pride and anger may for a while check the flow of affection, and harden
the wounded heart as if bound about with bands of steel, yet love will
return again, dissolve these bands, and convert resentment into
tenderness. It is its nature to obliterate all dark spots that wrong may
have cast upon the heart; to palliate offences, and to forgive even
where forgiveness is a weakness: it makes itself half sharer of the
fault; is ever ready to bear the whole weight of the blame, and with
open arms to receive back again, without either atonement or
acknowledgment, the guilty but still loved offender.

In a few moments the current of her feelings had changed. She thought of
the thousand noble qualities of Lester's head and heart, shaded only by
the faults of pride of birth and a hasty temper.

"For these," she asked of her heart, "shall I break his high spirit? For
these shall I inflict a pang on his noble nature? For these, which among
men are regarded praiseworthy attributes of highborn gentlemen--for
_these_ shall I make him unhappy, and myself--for it will kill
me--miserable? Oh, Lester, dear Lester, I was too, too cruel! You had
cause for anger; but oh, that fatal spear! Would that it had been far
from your hasty arm!"

At this moment she heard the sound of horses' feet moving rapidly across
the court towards the forest. With a foreboding of the cause she flew to
the lattice, and beheld Lester, mounted on his coal-black steed,
galloping at the top of the animal's speed away from the castle, each
moment burying his armed heels into his sides, and riding as if he would
outstrip the winds. For a moment she watched him with an earnest gaze,
then threw open the lattice, shouted his name, and waved her hand! But
his back was towards her, and he was too far off to hear even _her_
voice calling him to return; and in a few seconds afterward he entered
the wood. With tearful eyes she saw the last wave of his dark plume as
he disappeared in the winding of the road; and, leaning her hand upon
the window, she sobbed as if her young heart would break. Oh love, love,
what a mystery thou art!




CHAPTER III.

    "Alas! the love of women! it is known
      To be a lovely and a fearful thing;
    For all of theirs upon that die is thrown,
      And if 'tis lost, life hath no more to bring
    To them but mockeries of the past alone,
      And their revenge is as the tiger's spring,
    Deadly, and quick, and crushing; yet, as real
      Fortune is theirs--what they inflict they feel."

    _Don Juan._


Kate Bellamont gazed after the departing Lester until his receding form
became indistinct, and his dancing plume mingled with the waving foliage
of the forest into which he rode; she then bent her ear and listened
till his horse's feet ceased longer to give back a sound, when, overcome
by the depth and strength of her feelings, she leaned her head upon the
lattice and wept like a very child; at length she recollected the duties
that devolved upon her as entertainer of the party of archers; and,
forcing a calmness that she did not feel, she descended to the lawn, and
once more mingled in the festivities of her birthday.

Notwithstanding all her self-possession, her eyes often filled with
tears when they should have lighted up with smiles; and even her smiles
were tinged with sadness! And how could it be otherwise, when her heart
and her thoughts were at no moment with the scenes before her? She
longed for the day to close--for the night to approach--that she might
fly to her solitary chamber, and there, hidden from every eye, indulge
her feelings. At length the long, long day came to an end, and with it
departed the youthful company on horse-back to their several homes. A
gay and gallant appearance the cavalcade presented as it rode away from
the castle--a youthful cavalier prancing by the bridle of each maiden,
and a band of armed retainers of the several families bringing up the
rear. Kate bade them adieu, and stood in the hall-door following them
with her eyes till the last horseman was lost in the windings of the
forest; she then flew to her chamber, and, turning the bolt of her door,
cast herself upon her bed and once more gave free vent to the gushing
tears which she could no longer restrain.

Twilight was lost in night: the round moon rose apace, and, shining
through the Gothic lattice, fell in a myriad of diamond-shaped flakes on
the floor; yet had she not lifted her face from her pillow since first
she had buried it there, though the violence of her grief had long since
subsided; and so still was she that she seemed to sleep. But the soft
influence of this gentle blessing was a stranger to her aching eyelids.
Her soul was sad and dark! her sensitive spirit had been wounded! the
wing of her heart was broken. Her thoughts rushed wild and tumultuous
through her brain, and her young bosom, torn by strong emotions, heaved
like the billow when lashed by the storm. She mourned in the silence of
her heart's depths, without solace, and without hope; condemning her own
hasty act, and, like a very woman, excusing his conduct by every
invention that her true love could find in palliation.

All at once she was disturbed by a light tap at her door. She started
suddenly, aroused from that world of troubled thought in which she had
so long been lost to the exclusion of everything external, and lifted
her face. Her surprise was great on seeing the moon looking in upon her,
and filling her little room with an atmosphere like floating dust of
silver. A glow of pleasure warmed her heart, and an exclamation of
delight unconsciously escaped from her lips--it was so calmly bright, so
richly beautiful! Like a blessing sent from heaven, the sweet moonlight
fell upon her soul, and all the softer and holier sympathies of her
nature were touched by its celestial beauty. She approached the lattice
and threw it open, forgetting the cause that had aroused her from her
mood of grief, in admiration of the loveliness to which she had
awakened.

A second tap was heard at her door. She started with instant
consciousness; and throwing back from her face the cloud of raven
ringlets that had fallen about it, tried to assume a cheerful look, and
bade the applicant enter.

"I can't, cousin Kate," said the sweet voice of Grace Fitzgerald, in a
low tone; "you have locked yourself in."

Kate blushed, stammered something, she scarcely knew what, in excuse,
and turning the key, admitted her mischievous cousin.

"In the dark, Kate!" exclaimed Grace, as she entered.

"'T were sacrilege, cousin, to bring a lamp in presence of this lovely
moon! Come stand by the lattice with me," she said, throwing her arms
about her and drawing her towards her.

The fair cousins leaned together from the window and looked out upon the
silvery scene. There was something in the quiet loveliness of the lawn
beneath, spangled with myriads of dewdrops like minute fragments of
diamonds; in the deep repose of the dark woods; in the majesty of the
ocean, which sent its heavy, sighing sound to their ears with every
passing breeze; in the glory of the glittering firmament, with the moon
like a bride walking in its midst, and in their own lonely situation,
which the silence of the castle and the lateness of the hour contributed
to increase, to make both silent and thoughtful.

At length a deep sigh escaped the bosom of Kate, and Grace turned to
contemplate her unconscious face, as with thoughtful eyes, her head
resting in her hand, she gazed on vacancy, evidently thinking on
subjects wholly separated from the natural scenery before her.

"Dear Kate," said Grace, after watching for some time in silence the
sad, pale brow of her cousin, and speaking in a tone of tender and
affectionate sympathy; "dear Kate, I pity you!" She gently threw her
arms about her neck as she spoke, and, drawing her towards her, kissed
her cheek.

The touching sincerity of her manner, unusual to the merry maiden, came
directly home to her heart. She felt that she was understood; that her
sorrow was appreciated! She struggled with virgin coyness for a few
seconds, and then, yielding to her increasing emotions, threw herself
into her arms and wept there. How grateful to her full heart to find
another into which it could freely empty itself! How happy, very happy
was she, that that heart was, of all others, her beloved cousin's! How
unexpected her sympathy! How soothing, how welcome to her sad and
isolated bosom! At length she lifted her face, and, smiling through her
tears, said, after dwelling an instant on the lovely features of her
cousin,

"You are a sweet, noble creature, Grace! You don't know how happy your
kind sympathy has made me! and all so unlooked for! Yet I know you will
think me very silly; and I fear your natural spirit will break out
again, and that you will, ere long, ridicule what you now regard with
such sweet charity!"

"Believe me, Kate, I feel for you with all my heart. I could have cried
for you a dozen times to-day, when I saw how very unhappy you looked!"
she added, with tenderness beaming through her deep shaded eyes.

"And yet, dear Grace, I think I never saw you so gay, nor those little
lips so rich with merry speeches," pursued Kate, playfully tapping her
rosy lips with her finger.

"It was for your sake, dear cousin Kate. I saw that your feelings were
wrought up to just that point when you must either laugh or cry, and one
as easy for you to do as the other; so, trembling lest, in spite of
yourself, you should lean towards the tragic vein, I did my little best
to make you laugh."

"You were a kind, generous creature, Grace," said the maiden, with a
glow of grateful energy in her manner. "I have not half known your
worth, though you have been full six months at Castle Cor."

"And now, just as you are beginning to know what a nice, good cousin I
turn out to be, I am, hey for merry England again!"

"I cannot part with you, Grace; my father must sail to-morrow without
you. You will stay with me, won't you?" she added, with sportive
earnestness.

"I have twice delayed my departure, and poor father will need my nursing
in this recent return of his old complaint. I fear we may not meet again
for many years. I shall then," she said, with her usual thoughtlessness,
"perhaps, find you Lady Lester! Forgive me, cousin Kate," she instantly
added, as she saw the expression of her face change; "I am a careless
creature, to wound at one moment where I have healed at another. But,"
she added, with playful assurance, "this may yet be even as I have said!
Nay, don't shake your head so determinedly! Lester is not so angry that
a word from you will not bring him to your feet."

"Cousin Grace, do you know what and of whom you are speaking?" said
Kate, startled that her feelings should have been so well divined;
shrinking with maidenly shame that the strength of her love and the
weakness of her resolution should be discovered to her observing cousin,
and involuntarily resenting, with the impulse of a woman at such a time,
the imputation.

"Indeed I do, dear coz! so do no injustice to your own feelings by
denying them. You will forgive Lester if I will bring him to your feet?"
she inquired, archly.

"Yes--no--that is--"

"That _you will_. Very well. Before to-morrow's sun be an hour old, he
shall kneel there."

"Not for the world, Grace!" she cried, trembling between fear and hope;
her love struggling with the respect due to her maidenly dignity, which
she could not but feel, still, that Lester had outraged.

"I don't care for your words, Kate; I know they mean just the opposite
of what you say. Robert Lester shall kneel at your feet to-morrow
morning, and sue for pardon for his offence," she added, with gentle
stubbornness.

"Without compromising my--" she half unconsciously began.

"I shall not compromise you in the least. There shall be no syllable of
concession on your part mentioned; let me manage it my own way, and see
if you do not love each other the better for it yet?"

"Coz!" she cried, placing her fore finger on her mouth reprovingly, yet
pleased and smiling with the first dawnings of bright returning hope.

"I am glad to see you smile once more, and I am resolved you shall yet
be happy," added Grace, who had shown that, beneath the light current of
gayety that usually characterized her, there was a flow of deep and
generous feeling; and that, with all her thoughtless levity, she was
susceptible both of the sincerest attachment and of the warmest
friendship. Her words conveyed the germe of hope to the breast of her
cousin. Her confident manner inspired confidence; and the happy Kate,
giving herself up to the direction of the sanguine feelings her language
and presence had caused to spring up in her sinking heart, became all at
once a different being.

"If I am happy in the way you mean, I shall owe it all to you," she
said, kissing her. "Now for your plan, my sweet diplomatist."

"Now for my plan, then. That Lord Robert has gone home very angry
indeed, there can be no question. Now, when a lover is angry, justly,
with his mistress, he will be ever ready to meet her, not only half, but
the whole, of the way, to bring about a reconciliation. When he has no
right to be angry with her, and is so foolish as to be so, how much the
more readily then will he be brought to her feet! There is a spice of
argument for you. Now, as Lord Robert has no cause in the world to be
offended with you, it follows that he has every cause in the world to
induce him to acknowledge his offence, and ask pardon therefor on the
very first opportunity. Now all that he wants cheerfully to do this, it
appears to me, is the assurance that, after such a philippic as that
with which you were pleased to send him off, he will be received
graciously."

"But how, if I should be inclined to be gracious, sage cousin of mine,
is Lester to know it?"

"That will very easily be brought about, I think. Let me see!" and she
seemed to muse very profoundly for a few seconds. "Ha! I have it. I will
borrow that curious locket he gave you--"

"Locket, Grace--Lord Robert gave me!" repeated Kate, colouring, and
looking out of the lattice as if some interesting object had at that
moment drawn her attention.

"Yes," replied Grace, dryly, and with a look of the most provoking
positiveness.

"It is no use, I see, to conceal anything from you, mischief! How _did_
you know he gave it to me?"

"Young ladies are not wont to take from their bosoms a boughten trinket,
and slyly kiss it a hundred times a day, and--"

"Grace, Grace!" cried Kate, attempting to stop her saucy speech.

"And sleep with it under their pillow."

"Cousin Grace!"

"I have done," she said, quietly.

"You well may be. Oh, if I do not wish you had a lover, that I could
repay you in kind!"

"Perhaps I have!" was the imperturbable rejoinder of the maiden.

"I dare say fifty whom you call so. Among the gay Oxford gallants, the
heiress of a coronet could not be without admirers; but oh, if I knew
only of one _lover_ who could set that little heart of yours a
trembling!"

"You forget your locket, cousin," said the other, gravely.

"What shall be done with it, Grace?"

"Send it to Lester, with this message: '_He who returns this gift of
love to her who sends it, shall with love be met_.' Now is not that very
pretty, and as it should be?"

"What a wild creature! Would you have me send such a message to Lester,
child? He would think me jesting with him."

"No, never. Is it not just what you want to say--what you feel--what you
wish, above all things, he should know you feel?"

"Yes, indeed, Grace," she replied, with the most ingenuous naivete.

"Then it shall go. Give me the token. Nay, part not with it so
reluctantly; 'twill soon be back, with a prize worth a thousand of it.
Give it me, coz. Nay, then, kiss it! and so will I."

"No, you shall not!" cried Kate, with laughing earnestness.

"Oh, I _do_ hope _I_ never shall be in love!" said Grace, getting
possession of the locket. "Here is pencil and paper. Can you write by
this moonlight? Lovers, methinks, should write by no other light." She
spread the paper on the window as she spoke.

"Write! what do you mean, Grace?" exclaimed Kate, with surprise.

"I mean for you to put down, in your nicest hand, my gem of a message to
Robert."

"Never, Grace. What will he think of me?"

"He will think you love him very much."

"Just what I don't wish him to think," she said, with singular decision.

"Was there ever!" cried Grace, holding up both hands. "Well, this love
is an odd thing! What instinctive coquetry! Like John Milton's Eve,

                'All conscious of your worth,
    You would be woo'd, and, not unsought, be won.'

I don't understand this disguising love under a show of
coldness--seeming to hate where the heart pants and glows with devotion.
Oh, if this be love, I'll none of it. Here is the pencil, and there is a
fair sheet, and the moon is patiently holding her silver lamp for you;
will you write?"

"I will, to gratify you, cousin Grace;" she said, taking the pencil and
placing her fingers lightly on the paper which lay in the window.

"To please _me_! very well, be it so. Who could have believed, a quarter
of an hour ago, that I should have had to coax you to send a line to
Robert Lester! You may well hide your telltale face."

Kate bent her head over the gilded sheet and began to write, or, at
least, to make characters with her pencil, when Grace, impatient at her
slow progress, looked over her shoulder and exclaimed,

"Why, what are you writing? _Lester Robert, Robert Lester, Robert
Lester, Lester Rob--._"

Kate glanced at what she had written, hastily run her pencil through it,
and said, with a mortified laugh,

"I had forgotten what to write."

"And so put down what was deepest in your memory," said Grace, with a
vexatious air. "Now take this fair page, and write as I repeat:

"'_He who shall bring again this gift of love to her who sends it, shall
with love be met._'

"Is it written?"

"Letter for letter."

"And you will find that each letter will act as a charm. Never so few
monosyllables as I have strung together here held so much magic."

"Who will be its bearer?" Kate now inquired in a lively tone.

"I will find a Mercury both sure and swift," she said, folding the
locket in the billet.

This _gage d'amour_ was oval in shape, of plain gold, with a chased rim,
a little raised, enclosing an azure field, on which, in exquisite
enamel, were inlaid the crests of Lester and Bellamont, joined together
by two clasped hands: beneath was the sanguine motto,

    DURANTE VITA.

"Now, coz, for one of your raven ringlets to bind around it!"

"No, I will not, Grace!"

"Then I will tie it with a lock of my own hair," she said, in a sportive
manner, running her fingers through her auburn tresses; and, selecting
one that was like a silken braid for its soft and shining texture, she
prepared to sever it from her temples.

"You provoking child, you will have your own way," said Kate, shaking
forward the dark cloud of her abundant hair, and intwining her finger in
a jetty tress that rivalled the sable hue of the night swallow's dark
and glossy wing.

"Half an hour since you verily would have parted with every lock to be
assured the sacrifice would bring him to you; and now, forsooth,
scarcely will you part with a strand to bind a note. There!" she added,
clipping a beautiful ringlet that Kate had selected from the rest; "now
all that is wanted is wax--no, not that! I will fasten it with a
true-lover's-knot, which will be far better; will it not, coz?"

As she said this she looked up with a bright light dancing in her dark
hazel eyes; and, without waiting for a reply, in a few seconds tied,
with great gravity, the mysterious knot she had mentioned, and gave the
billet to her cousin for the superscription. "Write, 'These: to the
hands of Robert, Lord Lester, of Castle More, greeting,'" she said, with
gravity.

"Nay, I will direct it simply 'Lester, Castle More,'" she said,
decidedly.

"By which," said Grace, laughing, "you avoid the distant respect
conveyed in my own on the one hand, and the tenderness that is ready
to gush from your heart on the other. Love certainly does make his
votaries skilful tacticians! Truly, now, is not this a proper
love-billet--written in a lattice by the light of the moon, and tied
with a braid of the lady's hair in a true-love-knot? Well, when I am in
love I shall know how to manage rightly all these little affairs."

"Who is to be our Mercury on this occasion?" inquired Kate, with a
little doubt in the tones of her voice. "I fear we shall have to trust
it to a moonbeam also."

"Something more substantial, I assure you," said the good-humoured
maiden, in a very positive manner.

"Not one of the menials, for the world!"

"No, no!" she answered, with quickness; and then approaching her
cousin's ear, she pronounced, very mysteriously, the very homely
monosyllable,

"Mark!"

"That proud boy! _He_ become the bearer of a message to Lester!" she
exclaimed, looking at her with surprise.

"For _me_ he will!" replied Grace, confidently.

"Two such spirits to come in contact! No, no! Have you forgotten how
they parted to-day?"

"No."

"Then why do you propose so wild a scheme?"

"Mark will do as I bid him," she said, with a naive and pertinaciousness
that was wholly irresistible.

Kate burst into such a merry, musical peal of laughter, that at first
the maiden looked very grave, but at length found it in vain to withhold
her sympathy, and laughed with her; while the rich blood mounted to her
cheeks, and invested her with surpassing beauty.

"Oh, oh!" cried Kate, triumphantly, "so you are a _very_ little in love!
I half guessed it! Doubtless there is blood enough in thy noble veins
for both of you."

"Very well, cousin, you may think what you choose," she replied; adding,
in a tone and manner that left her cousin in doubt if she were not half
in earnest, "but if I were in love with him, is he not noble in person?
handsome, gallant, and brave? Why may he not be worthy a noble maiden's
love? I would not give him as he is, for Lester, with all his nobility,
coupled as it is with his terrible passions."

"Out upon you, jade," said Kate, good-humouredly; "will you revile in
this vein my noble Lester--compare him to a fisher's lad? Where is your
pride of birth and rank, Grace Fitzgerald! Really, I should not wonder
if, with your levelling notions, you should some day throw yourself away
upon some one unworthy to wear so fair and rich a flower in his bosom."

"I have both wealth and rank, and shall be my own mistress soon! that I
will give my hand where my heart goes, you may rest assured, cousin
Kate," said the maiden, with spirited, yet sportive decision.

"Marry come up! I shall not wonder if I come to be cousin to a
cordwainer's 'prentice yet! I shall assuredly allow you to go to the
good old earl, your father, to-morrow, and shall not fail to bid him, in
a letter, to lock you up."

"Love laughs at locksmiths, you have heard it said, cousin. But a truce
to this. I am not yet in love, so be not alarmed. I will sally forth and
find Mark, and at once despatch him with this message to Castle More."

As she spoke she threw a cloak over her shoulders and prepared to
envelop her head and face in its hood. At this crisis Kate's troubled
countenance indicated a wavering purpose; and as Grace was fastening the
hood beneath her chin, she laid her hand on her arm:

"No, Grace, you must not. Lester will scorn me; let him go for ever
first!" she added, in a sad, irresolute tone of voice.

"No, no! In ten minutes afterward you would be playing Niobe. Have your
feelings towards Lester changed an iota?"

"No; but--"

"Yet you know not, if you delay, how his may change, nor what rash act
he may commit!"

"I will send the token," she said, after a moment's struggle.

"I will soon return with news of my success," she said, placing her hand
on the latch of the door.

"Go, then, quickly! But you will not venture to the beach alone?"

"'Tis light as noonday! A step across the lawn, and a short trip down
the path, and old Meredith's hut is within a stone's throw. I will not
be three minutes gone."

"I must certainly go with you, Grace."

"Not for the world!"

"Lest I interrupt the tender moonlight interview you have in prospect
with the handsome fisherman, I dare say. Ah, you arch girl! I verily
believe you have an eye to your own interests, which accounts for your
devotion to me in this matter," said Kate, laughing, and shaking her
head at her.

"A fisher's lad!" she repeated, in the slightly scornful tone her cousin
had hitherto used.

"Nay, I was not in earnest, Grace," said Kate, apologetically, kissing
her as she was leaving the chamber.

"Nor was I," replied the lively maiden. "Watch me from the opposite
window as I cross the lawn. Courage, dear cousin! You will soon have
Lester at your feet, and be folded in his--"

"Go!" cried the blushing Kate, closing the door upon her ere she could
finish her sentence.

She listened to her light footstep echoing through the hall till it was
lost on the lawn; then turning to her window, she shortly afterward
discovered her gliding across the archery-field towards the cliff, and,
with a wave of her hand towards the lattice, rapidly descend the path
that led to the beach. With her heart fluttering with mingled hopes,
fears, and desires, she sat watching in the window for her return. Her
thoughts the while were busy. She followed, in imagination, the message
to Castle More; pictured Lester's reception of the token; fancied his
surprise, his rapture, perhaps his scornful indifference! No! she would
not believe he could feel _this_, for she judged his truth by her own!
Then, in her imagination, she heard his loud and hasty demand for his
horse! she could see him on his swift course towards Castle Cor. He
approaches! she can almost hear his horse's hoofs in the court! the next
moment he is kneeling at her feet for forgiveness! Wonderful power of
the imagination! How delightful to yield the soul to its influences when
the images it paints on the mind are all pleasing; all as vivid as the
reality of which they are only the shadows! While the meditative maiden
is leaning from her lonely lattice, indulging her happy visions, the
mind naturally turns to the adventurous Grace and the young fisher's
lad, who was to become the bearer of the message which should be the
magical instrument of converting all these delightful dreams into
reality.

After the attack upon his life by the impetuous noble, taking advantage
of the exciting scene that followed between him and Kate Bellamont, Mark
quietly withdrew from the party, gained, unobserved, the path, and was
out of sight, far down the cliff, before his absence was discovered. He
had remained long enough, however, to witness the disgrace of Lester,
and to hear the indignant and bitter words of the offended maiden. With
a fleet foot he reached the beach, hastened along the shore to his cot,
and, crossing its lonely threshold, cast himself upon a block by the
hearth, and buried his face between his hands. His heart heaved
strongly, and he seemed to labour under deep and great emotion. It was
clearly apparent that he was undergoing a severe mental struggle, and
that the tide of his life would turn on the issue. At length he lifted
his fine face and looked around upon the interior of his humble home;
poverty and its signs met his eye wherever it fell! His glance then
rested on his own coarse habiliments, and he started to his feet, and
with a lofty expression of resolution and an air of stern decision,
said, half aloud,

"This day shall end my servitude to poverty. Because the accident of
_birth_ has cast my lot within these wretched walls, and made me
fellow-prisoner with penury, therefore shall I not throw off my chains
when I will? Have I not a soul--a mind? Do I not think, feel, act,
speak, like those whom men call noble? May I not, in spite of nature,
yet become the builder of my own name--the carver of my own fortunes? By
the light of the bright sun, I will no longer be the slave of others!
the 'lowborn serf'--the 'humble fisher's lad'--the peasant, hind, and
what not, that means baseness of birth and degradation of soul! No;
henceforth I will take my place among the highest of them all, or leave
my bones to bleach on the sand!"

He paced the bare ground-floor of the wretched shed for a few moments
with an energy of tread and a determined air that well harmonized with
his words. At length he stopped short in his excited walk; his face
assumed a gentler aspect; and in a voice low and melancholy, he
continued,

"And this beauteous being, whose bright form fills my dreams like a
celestial visitant; who is in all my thoughts; whom to gaze upon at an
_humble_ distance is bliss; whose voice strangely thrills my soul: her,
for whom I would lay down my life! whom to make happy I would forego all
earthly, ay, future hopes of happiness, I am forbidden to love! I cannot
gaze on her without reproof! I am denied the bliss of speaking to her
and listening to the music of her voice in reply; of attending her in
her walks; of sharing in her pursuits and pleasures, because I am
_lowborn_. Yes, I am 'the poor fisher's lad!' and scarce deemed worthy
to be her footman. My approach into her presence is rudeness! my adoring
gaze vulgar impertinence! _I am the fisher's lad!_ 'Tis not for such to
love such a glorious creature! Though his heart may be of the noblest
mould; his taste refined; his spirit proud; his nature lofty and
aspiring, yet he may not love where love points him. 'Tis not for him to
place his affections on the gentle and lovely: on those worthy of his
heart's deep devotion, and to whom he can distribute the rich treasure
of his love. He must degrade his pure and sacred passion by linking his
fate with one of his own class, who may never appreciate him; or let his
wealth of love exhaust itself on his own life, and consume it with its
fire! Nevertheless," he added, with a sparkling eye, "the fisher's boy
dares to love, and love _high_! Love knows no rank. I have placed my
affections on a noble object, my gaze on a lofty eyry--and never will I
clip the wing that once has taken so high and bold a flight. I love her!
highborn as she is, I have dared to send my thoughts up to her! Yet,
alas!" he continued, moodily folding his arms on his breast, and
speaking slowly and bitterly, "alas! what shall this avail? Will she
requite the daring love of a peasant? Will she not scorn--will she not
laugh at me? Will she listen to the deep outpourings of my passion? No,
no, no! She must mate with _her_ mates, and she would bid me mate with
_mine_! Yet, may I not rise above my condition," he exclaimed, with a
glowing brow and flashing eye; "may I not win rank and name that shall
make me worthy of her? Shall I stand here idle, and see this haughty
Lester bear away a prize of which he is no more worthy than I? No, I
will perish first. From this day I am a man! Henceforth I belong to no
degree, no rank. I am to choose what I will be. This hour I burst the
degrading fetters that chain me to the class in which birth has cast me.
From this moment I am the architect of my own fortune, and I will erect
a temple that men shall admire, or bury myself beneath its ruins! The
sea, on which I have been cradled, is open before me like a mother's
bosom, welcoming me to its embrace; and on it, with the aid of God and
my own spirit, I will win a name that shall hide the humble one I wear,
and under it yet lay at the feet of her, who would scorn me under my
present one, laurels that shall have made me worthy of her love!"

As he concluded his cheek was flushed; his eye sparkling; his step rapid
and firm; his countenance elevated and glowing; and he strode the little
cabin as if he was for the moment all that he had resolved to be. He was
so lost in his feelings, so wrapped in the noble vision of the future
his ambitious and ardent mind had pictured, that the old fisherman, who
had slowly followed him from the cliff, entered without attracting his
notice. The aged man gazed on the animated and excited youth with
astonishment, and for a few moments was silent from surprise. At length
he called him by name. He started, and was for the first time sensible
that he was not alone:

"Well!" was the short, stern response.

"Do you know who speaks to you, my boy?" asked the old man, with mild
reproof.

"Yes I do, my good father," he said, instantly resuming his wonted
kindness of manner, and taking his hand; "forgive me; I had forgotten
myself!"

"Do not be angry, child, at this freak of my young lord," said the old
fisherman, in a tone habitual to his class in speaking of those above
them; "it was but a little outbreak of spirit; and you know it is not
for the like of us to be angry at the nobility for such things. They are
our lords, and we must do as they will."

"And let them take my life--ay, if they will, make me their slave, which
is far worse! Never! 'Tis the language of a bondman you utter, and
unworthy the lips of manhood!"

"You talk as if you was one of the quality, boy! You will find it
different when you get to be as old as I am. I have put up with many
wrongs in my day from gentle blood."

"And have not resented it?" demanded the youth, with spirit.

"What could a poor fisherman do? Is it not their right to act what they
will to? We poor fishermen have only to pray to God to give them gentle
wills towards us!"

"And is this the creed you would teach me? Debasing, grovelling, mean
obedience to the tyranny of an order! Before I do it, may my hand wither
at the shoulder, my tongue palsy in my mouth! I should indeed deserve to
be a slave! You would forbid me to resent this wrong from this hotheaded
young noble?"

"It will do thee no good; if thou shouldst take his life, thou wouldst
hang for't."

"And, if he should take mine?"

"There would be none to avenge thee, boy. The judges, who are always on
the side of the great, would say thy life was forfeited because thou
hadst lifted thy hand against one of the privileged."

"God! I cannot believe that all men do spring from Adam and Eve,"
exclaimed the youth, impetuously. "Father," he said, after a moment's
silence, speaking in a tone of mingled shame and sorrow, "thou hast,
fortunately, a spirit fitted to thy station--I pity thee! For myself, I
will be no man's serf, no lord's menial! If accident has made me almost
on a level with the brute, nature has endowed me with the feelings of a
man. Father, I leave you with to-morrow's sun."

"My child! my child! what evil hath taken possession of thee?" cried the
old man, holding him by both hands.

"No evil, but good! To-morrow I go from you!" he replied, resolutely.

"And leave me destitute in my old age, my boy?"

The youth was touched more by the accent in which this was said than by
the words. He buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud; then, with
a sudden burst of filial affection, he cried, throwing himself upon his
aged breast,

"No, no! I will bend my neck to every insult, rather than thou, my more
than father, shouldst be left helpless."

"Thou wilt not go away?" reiterated the old man, pleadingly, as if
doubting the sincerity of his words.

"Not while thou art spared to me, beloved grandsire. Thou hast protected
my infancy and youth! been to me both father and mother. If I be not a
faithful son to thee, and protect not thy old age, may I fail to attain
the rank and honour among men to which I aspire, and which, if purchased
at the expense of filial gratitude, I should be unworthy to wear!"

"Bless thee, bless thee, Mark!" said he, fondly embracing him.
"Providence has made our lot a humble one; let us submit to it with
obedience. Come, my boy, think no more of it, but launch the skiff, and
bring home our evening meal from the vast storehouse that has ever fed
us, and which never holds its life even from the undeserving. Go, my
son: on the rocking wave, and in the silence of the lone deep, your
heart will become calm, and peace will return to your soul. At such
times it is that the good and devout Christian is the most happy! I
sometimes think the holy apostles did owe much of the holy piety which
they possessed to their lowly occupation of fishers."

"_They were Christians._ You are a Christian, father! I am not one save
in name. Would to God I were! perhaps I then might bear my humble lot
more calmly. Now farewell a while; I will be in again ere the moon
rises."

He rushed from the cabin with his heart almost bursting in his breast,
launched his little bark, hoisted the frail latteen sail, and committed
himself to the deep.

Seated in the narrow stern of his fragile skiff, the thwarts and bottom
of which were covered with fishing-lines, a dip-net, and other signs of
his lowly pursuit, holding the rude tiller in one hand and the sheet of
his narrow white sail in the other, he shot swiftly out from the shore,
wafted by a light and fitful wind. From habit he steered his course, and
shifted the sail from side to side to woo the baffling airs, without
giving his thoughts to his occupation. His lips were compressed with
thought, his brow was set, and every feature of his silent face was
eloquent with the feelings that occupied his bosom. His mind was
struggling between filial affection and ambition--between love for the
highborn maiden and duty to his grandsire. The sufferings of the latter,
who looked to his labours for his daily bread, were, if he should desert
him, present and positive. The hopes connected with the former were
altogether future and uncertain. Should he inflict a present evil for a
future good? Would his filial attachment compare with his love? Which
should he sacrifice? He felt that he could not make his grandsire the
victim, either of his love or of his ambition, without the forfeiture of
that filial virtue, wanting which he would be unworthy the prize he
should incur this penalty to obtain. His thoughts became insupportable;
and, for a time, he was nearly wrought up to phrensy by the intensity of
the mental conflict. At this crisis, while his eyes were fixed vacantly
on the crisp waves as they went singing and rippling past him, his bosom
far more disturbed than they, he was startled by a loud, quick hail.

"Boat ahoy! Helm-a-starboard, or you will be into us!"

He mechanically obeyed; and, as he looked up, saw the dark hull of the
yacht, that had lain all day at anchor in the bay, within reach of his
hand, while his boat was gliding safely along its side, directly against
which he had been unconsciously steering.

"You must keep a look-out, lad, how you run aboard a king's yacht, or
you will stand a chance of getting a shot in your locker!" said a gruff,
yet good-humoured voice. "But you have a quick ear and ready hand to
clear our counter as you did. What say you to serving his majesty, my
lad? It's better than catching herring; and, then, many's the younker of
your inches that's come in over the cat-head, and afterward walked the
quarter-deck with a brace of gold bobs on his shoulders."

The young fisherman's ears greedily received every word; they struck a
chord within his bosom that strongly vibrated again. Involuntarily he
put his helm down, and brought his boat up into the wind. He looked
longingly upon the vessel's deck; measured the beautiful and light
proportions of her hull, and surveyed with delight the graceful spars,
following them with his eye to their tapering tops, from which gay flags
streamed in the breeze: he admired, apparently with all a seaman's
gratification, the tracery and interlacing of the neatly-set rigging,
and the snowy sails, some of which were hanging in festoons from the
yards, while one or two lazily spread their broad white fields from yard
to yard: he observed the neat appearance of the men; their happy faces;
their frank, good-humoured manners: he thought over the blunt but kindly
offer he had received, and his hopes whispered,

"Fortune has opened this way for me! my destiny must be linked with this
vessel!"

He then thought of his father, and his head dropped despondingly on his
bosom; he thought of Kate Bellamont, and his eyes sparkled, and he felt
like bursting all filial ties and leaping at once on board.

"What say you, my lad, will you ship?" said the man, observing his
hesitation; "I'll give you ten rix-dollars as bounty."

"Now?" he eagerly asked, starting up in his boat, and extending his
hands with intense earnestness.

"The instant you enter your name on the yacht's books."

"I will go with you."

"Done! come alongside."

Mark hesitated ere he obeyed. Ten rix-dollars had, at first, seemed to
him an inexhaustible sum: a moment's reflection convinced him that it
would not support his grandfather six months without labour, for which
he was nearly unfitted on account of his age. If, he thought, at the end
of six months, therefore, he should not be able to return to him, or if
his own life should be lost in the interim, would not the misery and
want such an event would entail upon him fall heavy to his charge?

All this passed through his mind as he drew aft the tack and pressed the
tiller up to windward to run under the vessel's bows. Instantly he
shifted his helm, let the sheet fly free to the wind, and shot suddenly
away in the opposite direction.

"He's off with a flowing sheet!" said one of the seamen, laughing.

"He's gone to bid the old man good-by," cried another; "he'll be
alongside before morning, kit and kid."

"He's gone to take leave of his lass," added a third. "A wise lad to
anchor his last night ashore."

"I wouldn't lose him for six months' pay," said the captain of the
forecastle, who had first hailed him; "but I am afraid we shall see no
more of him than what he now shows us," he added, shaking his head, and
turning to pace the deck.

Scarce hearing, and heedless of these characteristic remarks, the young
fisherman kept on his course seaward till he had got a league from the
land, when he hove to and lowered his sail; then baiting and casting his
lines, he plied his humble task, his eyes the while often fixed on the
distant towers of Castle Cor, and his thoughts now with its fair inmate,
now brooding over his own lowly destiny. When at length the sun dipped
the edge of his burnished shield into the sea, he for the last time drew
in his lines, each heavy with a fish, hoisted his sail, flung it broad
to the evening wind that blew gently landward, and, taking the helm,
steered towards home. But the wind grew lighter, and soon came only at
intervals in "cat's-paws;" his progress was therefore slow, and he was
yet a mile from the land when it left his sail altogether. Night came
on, and the moon rose above the battlements of the castle, and flung its
scarf of silver far out upon the scarcely dimpled bay. From time to time
he held his open palm to windward, in vain trying to catch a passing
current. He threw back the dark curls that clustered about his forehead,
and laid it bare to receive the faintest breath that might promise the
return of the wind. But the air was motionless! His boat rose and fell
on the glassy undulations, but moved not towards the shore, save by the
slow landward heave of the sea. Springing upon the thwarts, he brailed
up his sail and bound it to the mast, and then, bending to the slender
oars, sent his light skiff over the water with a speed that mocked the
idle winds. He soon got within the dark shadow flung by the cliff along
the water far beyond the land, and run his boat on the beach beside his
cot. The old fisherman welcomed him with a kindness that not only
touched his heart, but rewarded him for the sacrifice he had made on his
account. He also assisted him in conveying the fish into the hut, and
set about himself to prepare their rude repast. Mark placed his oars in
the beckets over the door, and walked out to indulge his thoughts; to
brood over his deferred, if not blasted hopes; and to struggle again and
again against the unfilial temptations that assailed him. He insensibly
wandered along the beach, that sparkled in the moonlight like snow
beneath his feet, until he came to the narrow strip of sand that
stretched beneath the over-hanging cliff from which he had leaped, and
connected his hut with the path up the rocks. He looked up to its dark
and terrific roof, and then down into the black pool at his feet, and a
half-formed wish that he had never risen again from its silent depths,
escaped him.

"That I had perished, ere life had been preserved to be dragged out in
this miserable servitude," he said aloud. "What is life to me? Its
refined joys; its courtly pleasures; its fair forms; its wealth; its
honours! This is _my_ world--these slimy rocks--this lonely bay; yonder
hut my palace, and to fish for daily sustenance my pastime. This is _my_
life--this my universe! What have I to do with aught beyond it? The
world was made for others, not for me--not for the peasant boy! No, no!
Madness! Must I endure this?" he cried, with fierce impatience. "Filial
love, filial gratitude, how bitter, bitter are ye!"

He struck his forehead violently, and turned on the belt of sand with a
fevered step. Suddenly he felt a touch on his shoulder, as light as if a
fairy's foot had lit upon it. He started, and, turning quickly round,
beheld a female, enveloped in a hood and cloak, standing immediately
behind him. The grace of her attitude, and the easy decision of her
whole manner, assured him that she was not lowborn. His heart would have
whispered the name that was enshrined in it, but the figure was not tall
enough for _hers_. With an instinctive consciousness that he was in the
presence of rank and beauty, to which, in this union, his independent
spirit never refused to do homage, he doffed his cap, and addressed her
with that native grace and dignity which characterized him:

"Lady, seek you aught in which I can aid you, that you have come to the
seaside at this lonely hour?"

The moon shone full on his youthful features, which were shaded with
locks of dark-flowing hair, parted across his high, pale forehead, and
descending to his shoulder. She gazed for an instant, ere she replied,
on his youthful face, on each lineament of which his bold character was
written, while his ardent spirit spoke eloquently in every look. As he
bent forward to catch her answer, with his bonnet in his hand, the cloud
had vanished from his brow before the supposed presence of youth and
beauty, and his deferential manner, so opposite to his former bearing,
seemed to inspire her with confidence.

"My business is with you alone, Mark!" spoke, from beneath the shaded
hood, the sweet, hesitating voice of Grace Fitzgerald, intuitively
shrinking within the shadow of the cliff as she addressed him, just out
of which, in the full light of the moon, the young fisherman himself
stood.

"Lady Grace!" he exclaimed, with surprise, as her voice fell on his ear.

"Grace Fitzgerald, in body and spirit," said she, with her usual gayety.

"Can the highborn heiress of Earl Fitzgerald be served by one so
humble?" he asked, in a tone slightly tinged with his former gloomy
humour.

She seemed to be at a loss, for a moment, how to reply, scarcely knowing
in what way to interpret his words. At length she said, advancing
frankly towards him,

"I have not come to command your services, Mark, but to beg of you a
favour; to ask you to execute a mission of delicacy, that can be
intrusted to no one so well as yourself."

The frank and kind manner in which she spoke, the graceful propriety
with which she overstepped the barrier of _caste_ that separated them,
sensibly affected him. It was the first time he had been so addressed by
those above him in birth and station; the first time his services had
not been demanded as a right by those who needed them.

Her suavity and condescension of manner were perhaps prompted by the
remembrance of the outrage he had received at Lester's hands, and by a
knowledge of his intrepidity, and of his pride of spirit, which she knew
to be chafed and goaded by the insults inseparable from his station. She
therefore generously wished to sooth and bind up his injured feelings.
She had, too, her own notions of what constitutes true nobility; and it
is plain, from her conversation with Kate, that she was less governed by
the social canons which regulate such things, and was infinitely more of
a democrat than her haughty and beautiful cousin. That her heart had
anything to do in the matter, though Mark was so handsome, so gentle,
and so brave withal, cannot be supposed; inasmuch as the little god
seldom ensconces himself behind a peajacket to take aim at a heart
mailed beneath a silken spencer. But, then, Cupid is very blind, and,
besides, is so given to odd whims, that but little calculation can be
made as to the direction from which his shafts will fly.

"Command me, lady," he replied, with grateful emotion, as she concluded.

"Are you angry with Lord Robert?" she asked, falteringly.

"Can I forgive him?"

"But you will forgive him--for--for--the sake of--my cousin Kate!"

"If _she_ were to bid me kiss his hand, I would not refuse her," he
exclaimed, with a sudden glow of animation.

Grace sighed, and was for a moment silent; for she plainly saw that her
influence had but little weight in this quarter in comparison with her
cousin's. She then took the locket from the folds of her cloak, and
said, in a very slightly mortified tone,

"It is _her_ wish that you bear this token of her forgiveness to Lord
Robert. You will see that it is tied with a braid of _her own hair_!"

(Was there not a spice of feminine pique in this last clause, lady?)

"Bear this from _her_ to _him_?" he inquired, in a voice trembling with
emotion.

"Yes."

"Never!" replied he, with vehemence.

"Mark!" she said, in a tone of gentle reproof, placing her hand lightly
upon his arm.

"Pardon me," he said, hastily, "but--but--" His voice choked for
utterance. "Oh God! Lady Grace," he suddenly cried, with an outbreak of
terrible and ungovernable emotion, "you know not what it is to be--to
be--" Here his feelings were too strong to be controlled, and, turning
his face from her, he gave way to a paroxysm of the wildest grief.

She stood by in silence! She appreciated fully his feelings, for she had
overheard the soliloquy he gave utterance to before he had become aware
of her presence. She knew what he was and what he aspired to be, and how
deeply his degradation preyed upon him. She sympathized with him with
her whole heart; and with her sympathy there entered into her breast
another emotion, which in woman's heart is so nearly allied to love,
namely, gentle pity! When she saw that the first strong tide of his
feelings had in some degree subsided, in a voice so full of what she
felt that it touched all the finer sensibilities of his nature, and
seemed to breathe peace throughout his soul, stilling every billow of
passion, she said to him,

"Mark, I do pity you from my heart! I know you are not fitted by nature
for the state to which you were born. But to the bold spirit and
determined will there is a wide road open to distinction; and in it men,
humble as yourself, have won honourable renown, in the splendour of
which the mere accident of their birth has been lost. The same road to
honour lies open before you!"

The vivid eloquence, the animation of voice, the spirited manner, and
the lofty energy of look with which this was spoken, united with the
depth and sincerity of her interest in him, which she disdained to
disguise, language can inadequately express. Its effect on him was
electrical. He sprang forward, knelt at her feet, seized her hand, and,
in the fulness of his heart, pressed it gratefully to his lips. She
withdrew it in confusion, and he instantly buried his face in his hands,
overcome with the painful feeling of having offended. She was the first
to speak.

"Mark, bear this packet to Lord Robert; deliver it into his own hand,
and immediately leave him, so that you give him no opportunity of
renewing his feud. In the morning, on the earl's return from Kinsale,
come to the castle, and I will represent your case to him."

"Dear lady, I will leave this message for you at Castle More; but pardon
me if I decline your offer to serve me!"

"Then cousin Kate shall make it," she said, good-humouredly.

"Forgive me, but it will be still more firmly declined."

Grace was puzzled; and half sportively, half sincerely, it entered her
thoughts that she had played her hand well if already, as his words
seemed to imply, she had found more favour in the young fisherman's eyes
than her cousin. But, all at once, the thought flashed upon her mind
that it was alone the pride of love that led him to refuse any favour at
her cousin's hands.

"You mean," she said in revenge, smiling as she spoke, "that you dislike
my cousin Kate so much that you will not receive any kindness at her
hands."

"If such could be inferred from my words, I recall every letter of
them," he said, with an earnestness that amused her.

"I will then speak for you to my uncle."

"Lady, you will think me very ungrateful," he replied, "but--"

"But you will take no favour from the father of Kate Bellamont. Really,
my cousin is complimented."

He was embarrassed by the light in which she seemed to take his words,
and, in attempting to explain, involved himself still deeper.

"Do not be distressed; I perfectly understand you, Mark," she said, with
a laugh that relieved him. "Will you be obliged to _me_?"

"Pardon me if I say no!" he answered, gratefully but firmly. "No, lady,"
he added, in a grateful tone of voice, yet sadly, "I must work out
brighter fortunes for myself by my own energies."

"I admire your independence. But, if you should need my--I would say,
the assistance of any one--will you remember Grace Fitzgerald?"

He did not reply; his heart was swelling, but he laid his hand upon his
bosom with an eloquent gesture that conveyed more than words.

"Enough!" she said, touched with his impressive manner. "I shall ever be
ready to do for you all that can advance you to name and rank; and for
your own sake, for the sake of--" here she paused with embarrassment,
and then added, "those who take an interest in you, it becomes you to
rise from this humble station, and win for yourself a name and station
among men. Do not forget that the proudest names in England sprang from
the lowest rank. My own maternal ancestor was a favourite groom of
William the Conqueror, who, for his prowess in a certain battle,
knighted and parcelled out to him an equal division of land with his own
knightly companions in arms. Shall I not yet hear of _you_ with pride?"
she added, extending her hand to him with characteristic frankness.

"Lady," he said, with animation, "if ever a lowborn youth, who would
rise above his adverse fortunes, had cause to go forward, have I. The
memory of your words will shine like a star of hope to guide me through
the future. God help me! Lady Grace, you shall never blush with shame
for him in whose fate you this night have shown an interest," he
continued, with emotion. "For your sake I will achieve whatever man can
accomplish."

"And will you do nothing for my poor cousin's sake?" she asked,
significantly, and in a tone of raillery, not able, even at such a time,
to subdue altogether her natural temperament.

"There is little hope that one so humble is ever in her thoughts," he
replied, doubting, yet half believing.

"Little hope, I fear, while Lester lives," she said, smiling. "But think
not of her--think not of love now," continued she, with animation; "let
honour be your idol, and woo fame alone as your bride. There are
some--there is _one_, Mark, who would rather see you honoured and
ennobled by your own hand than--than--but no matter, I have already said
too much. Kate will have good reason to suspect I had cause to come
alone," she said, mentally, "if I linger here longer;" she then added
aloud,

"Fly, Mark, with this message. If you would serve me, bear it safely; if
you would do my cousin Kate a favour, bear it quickly; and, lastly, for
your own sake, get into no quarrel."

They had insensibly walked along while speaking, and were now at the
foot of the path by which she had descended to the beach.

Mark took the packet from her hand, and, as he did so, pressed it with
an air of native gallantry blended with gratitude, greatly to her not
unpleasurable surprise and confusion, and then hastened at a rapid pace
along the beach in the direction of Castle More. She followed him for a
few moments with her eyes, and then, sighing unconsciously (for it is in
vain longer to disguise the interest she felt in the interesting
fisher's lad), ascended the steep path and safely gained the castle,
where, still at her lattice waiting her return, she found her cousin, to
whom forthwith she communicated her success.

With a swift tread Mark traversed the curving shore till he had left a
full league between him and the spot where he had separated from Grace
Fitzgerald. Then striking into a path that led inland, he followed it
with undiminished speed, and with a light and confident step, that
showed his familiarity with every intricate winding of his moonlit way.

How often he pressed to his adoring lips the locket of hair that secured
the billet; how often he paused to read over and over again, by the
light of the moon, the delicate characters traced by the pencil her
fingers had guided, let each one that has loved enumerate for himself.
As he went along, he could not help revolving in his mind the manner of
Grace Fitzgerald, and asking himself a hundred times if she could mean
anything; and when it could not be concealed from his penetrating mind
that she did mean something, or affected to do so--the wish rose to his
lips that Kate Bellamont had been in her place. Yet the very next
moment, so contradictory is love, he congratulated himself that she was
not, feeling that he should never have had the courage to meet her face
to face alone, as he had met her cousin. Love surely endows his votaries
with a singular union of boldness and timidity! Your lover is either an
arrant coward or a lion, and sometimes he is both in one, as he happens
to be in or out of his mistress's presence.

At length he came in sight of an ancient and extensive ruin in the midst
of the forest, and was picking his way among the fallen fragments, along
which his road wound, when he was startled by the sound of horses' feet
coming from the direction of Castle More; the moment afterward, he saw,
by the light of the moon, two horsemen emerge from the wood, and rapidly
approach the ruin. He instinctively drew to one side of the path to
escape observation, when he heard one of them utter an exclamation of
surprise; both then suddenly reined up, and, from the sound of a third
voice, they appeared to be holding conversation with some one they had
unexpectedly encountered.




CHAPTER IV.

    "Away, away my steed and I
    Upon the pinions of the wind!"

    _Mazeppa._

                "Thou false fiend, thou liest!
    I do defy--deny--spurn back and scorn ye!"

    "That thus a son should stand and hear
    The tale of his disgrace."

    BYRON.


The indignant Lester, to whom the story now reverts, had no sooner left
the presence of Kate Bellamont and the field of archery, than he
hastened to the stables, saddled his horse with his own hand, and threw
himself across his back. Then, turning his head northward towards Castle
More, he gave him the rein, and, without forming any definite aim or
object, but goaded onward simply by the fiery impetus of his feelings,
with a feverish desire to leave far behind the scene of his disgrace,
rode away at full speed.

His thoughts were dark and confused; his heart full; his spirit sore! He
looked neither to the right nor left, and gave backward glance to turret
nor lattice--for he was all unskilled in that book of riddles, woman's
heart! and what hope then had he, that he should turn his head for beck
or signal of return? If he had been a little more experienced, or
somewhat better read in this book of mysteries, where every line of the
text is contradicted by a page of annotations, he might have known that
a signal would have been flying for him--at the very last moment! But,
alas for poor Kate Bellamont! alas for both! her voice, and the wave of
her snowy arm were alike in vain! He rode onward, seeing, feeling, being
conscious of nothing save his own deep disgrace and misery; and at each
fierce pang that reflection inflicted, he buried his spurs deep, and
dashed forward as if he would fly from his thoughts, or find relief from
them in swift motion.

The forest into which he rode, and in the depths of which he disappeared
from the earnest gaze of Kate Bellamont, was very ancient and of great
extent, and intersected by many roads winding in all directions through
its dark bosom: it was inhabited chiefly by woodsmen and foresters, but
contained, besides, two solitary hunting-lodges, a league asunder,
appertaining to the contiguous estates of Bellamont and Castle More. At
the northern termination of this wood, two leagues distant from Castle
Cor, on the crest of a rock that overhung a small woodland lake or mere,
was situated Castle More; a single square tower, with a low turret
rising at each angle, and defended on the inland side by a high wall
with bastions and a deep moat. It was, at the date of this narrative,
the abode of Lady Lester, the widow of General Lord Lester, who had
fallen a few years before while gallantly fighting in Spain. Since his
death she had withdrawn herself from the sphere of the court, and
excluded herself almost altogether from society; devoting her time to
the performance of the severe religious duties usually imposed by the
Catholic church only on religieuses, and to the observance of rigorous
and frequent fasts; and it was rumoured that she even inflicted upon
herself painful penance with rods, and slept through Lent in a crown of
thorns. In these austerities her friends, and, also, sensible and
discreet people, saw only the diseased melancholy of a widowed wife who
had been fondly devoted to her departed lord, finding relief, as woman's
sorrow often will, in a life of religious seclusion. But the suspicious
and evil disposed, the humble labourer and marvel-loving hind, saw in
her stern religious life only painful penance for crimes committed in
early life, and were wont to shake their heads and lower their voices
whenever the "Dark Lady of the Rock" was named.

But, notwithstanding her austere life, Lady Lester was not indifferent
to the claims of young Lord Robert. Her heart had been wrapped up in the
high-spirited boy from his childhood; and as he grew in stature and
grace, next to her graven images, she worshipped him. Unrestrained by
paternal fear, and indulged by Lady Lester in every idle wish, he grew
up to the age of seventeen with a spirit that never had been curbed;
with a temper that never had known a check. Though by nature of a
generous and noble disposition, as the unavoidable result of such a
course, he was the slave of passion and the victim of self-impulse; with
the will to act justly, but without the power to guide that will: like a
noble bark that has lost its rudder and is driven furiously along by its
out-spread sails, which, managed by skill and discipline, might yet
become the instruments of its safety, to irremediable shipwreck and
ruin. If educated at all, he was taught to regard all the retainers of
his vast estates as vassals; beings of meaner mould; a race of mortals
who had somehow smuggled themselves into existence long after Adam
founded his ancient family--poachers on the world's manor--now doomed,
for their punishment, to crawl as slaves on the earth they had dared to
come upon unbidden. He was taught to regard all unnoble as ignoble; and
to consider them as an inferior and secondary race, and only created to
be subservient to the will of those of his caste and rank. With such
notions he became haughty and arrogant, and cherished a spirit of pride
of birth, combined with a jealousy of his privileges, that at all times
was sufficiently prompt to show itself.

With two such opposite characters; a generous and just one--the gift of
nature; an imperious and haughty one--the result of education, he was as
uncertain as the wind, variable as the evening cloud. There was but one
mind that could control his; one spirit to whose power his own would
bend; but one voice that could act upon his passions with a gentle
influence, and, with a word, chase the darkest cloud from his brow, even
as the harp of the youthful minstrel banished the gloomy spirit of evil
from the soul of Saul! This potent person was Kate Bellamont: the wand
she used, Cupid's magical bow. By its aid she brought his haughty will
in subjection to her own mild sway, and converted the lion into the
lamb. She had been his playfellow from childhood; they had strolled,
fished, hunted, boated together. Others might be in company, but somehow
Kate and Robert seemed to be attracted to each other by a mysterious
affinity: if they fished, he baited her hook and took off the fish when
she caught them; if there was a ramble, they were certain to stray off
together and lose themselves in the forest, and always were the last
back to the castle; if there was a party to sail on the mere, Robert and
Kate were sure to be seated near each other!

By-and-by they began to advance into their teens: when Kate got to be
fifteen, she began to grow very shy of her playfellow; would not let him
kiss her as he was wont; nor ramble with her his arm encircling her
little round waist. She ceased running races with him, and began to call
him "Lord Robert;" and would blush if he happened to turn and catch her
eye fixed musingly upon his face. Robert himself also began to show
signs of change. He grew diffident and silent in her company; looked at
her for a long time together without saying a word; then would turn away
and sigh, and look again, and sigh again. He became less violent, less
frequently angry; his voice became gentle and subdued: and he began to
show signs of fear in her presence, and trembled if she laid her hand on
his arm, which, of late, she was very careful not to do. Indeed, there
is no describing half the signs by which their progress from the
playmate state of chrysalis to the lovemate state of ripe youth was
marked. Robert Lester very soon found that he was very unhappy away from
Kate, and very happy in her presence. The maiden, on her part, was not
long in discovering that the days were very long when Robert did not
visit Castle Cor, and that she thought of him, somehow, a great deal
more than she used to do. It evidently was very clear that she loved to
look from the battlement of the tower at the four distant turrets on the
top of Castle More, when he was away, much oftener than she had done the
year before. Things went on in this manner, though from worse to worse,
till about a week before Kate's sixteenth birthday, when it chanced that
she and her quondam playfellow were riding slowly homeward, after an
unsuccessful pursuit of a stag, which, after having led them within a
mile of Castle More, doubled and turned upon its track towards the
south, and plunged into a morass not far from Castle Cor; so, as night
was approaching, they had given up the pursuit, and turned their horses
heads towards the castle.

They had been slowly riding side by side for some time, breathing their
horses, neither speaking a word, but occasionally exchanging timid
side-glances in the way young people sometimes do without lifting their
eyelids. If by chance their eyes met, both instantly averted their
heads, switched their horses, or plucked a leaf; but, in a few seconds,
their heads would gradually come round, the pupil of the eyes steal into
the corners and again meet, causing a second time very great
embarrassment, and very guilty colouring of cheek and brow, as if each
had been detected by the other in some crime. So they rode together in
this pleasant manner for full half a mile; and one would believe, from
their silence and the wide space they guardedly preserved between each
other, that they had quarrelled. But their countenances, though grave,
looked too happy and sentimental for that; besides, a slight smile, or,
rather, just the soft reflection of one, played about their mouths. This
for several weeks past had been precisely their bearing towards one
another whenever they happened to be alone together; but, when in the
presence of others, they both gave way to the highest tone of gayety and
spirits. It was all very strange, very!

The lover at length looked ahead, and saw, through an opening in the
forest, the towers of Castle Cor not a quarter of a mile distant. He
involuntarily reined in his horse, and looked full in Kate's face; his
lips parted; he essayed to speak, but his voice adhered to his jaws. So
he gasped, sighed, and laid his hand eloquently on his heart. Kate also
saw the towers, and reined up at the same moment he did; looked demurely
on the ground, and then, as if she had nothing better to do, let fall
her riding whip, notwithstanding she had to untie it from her wrist to
do so. Instantly Lord Robert threw himself from his saddle, giving the
bridle a slight shake as his foot left the stirrup, a hint which the
sagacious animal obeyed by bounding off towards the stables, and took it
from the ground; then blushingly, and with a conscious look, as if
contemplating a daring deed, he presented it to her. As, with averted
eyes, she extended her hand for it, he placed in it tremblingly, instead
of the whip, his own hand. She neither started nor turned her head, but
her young bosom rose and fell quick, and he thought the hand fluttered
with a new pulsation as it lay in his. She did not withdraw it. He grew
confident, and slightly, very slightly, pressed a finger. Thereupon the
little hand only throbbed the quicker. He pressed two, then three
fingers, and then, with a boldness that grew with the occasion, he
folded the soft, gloved hand all in his own. The next moment he coloured
with conscious guilt, and looked up into her face as if about to throw
himself upon her mercy. But she was so intently watching the rich dies
of a sunset cloud that she evidently did not know what he was about; so,
instead of asking pardon and looking very sad, he put on a very happy
countenance, and, ever and anon casting his glance upward to her face,
began, little by little, to draw off her glove. But, as she made no
demonstrations of being aware of what he was doing, he pulled the glove
quite off. For an instant he held it suspended, while he stole a very
doubtful glance into her half-averted face; the next moment the warm,
snowy hand was pressed between his own, and then, growing bolder apace,
he began to cover it with kisses. Hereupon the maiden slowly turned her
head and looked down at the bold youth with a look that she doubtless
meant to be a reproving one; he cast his eyes to the ground, still
holding the quiet hand nestled between both his own, and said, in a soft
whisper,

"Kate!"

"Robert!" was the equally gentle suspiration in reply.

"Are you angry?"

"I ought to be."

"Then you are not?" was the half-joyful, half-doubting interrogation.

"No," was breathed in accents so very gentle that it was conveyed to him
by the movements of the lips alone.

"Shall we walk to the castle?"

"Yes."

And the young lady, studiously avoiding his eyes, was gently and
passively assisted to the ground; as she touched it, his arm glided
about her taper waist, and somehow their lips met, and again met, and
met again, and met so often, that the horse was far out of sight before
the fact forced itself on the mind of the maiden.

"Robert, desist! There! my horse has galloped off!"

"Shall I bring him to you?" asked the delighted youth, in a tone that
showed he did not very much apprehend she would despatch him on such a
mission.

"No, we can walk. But it is so foolish!"

"What?"

"Nothing."

And they walked on together for a few moments in silence.

"Kate!"

"Robert."

"Do you love me?"

"Yes."

"May I seal the confession?"

"A fine time to ask leave now!" she said, laughing.

Another kiss, and then another, and then a great many others, firmly
sealed this little love affair, and placed them on a perfect
understanding with each other. They were from this moment lovers! They
quarrelled only twenty times in the subsequent interval of a week that
preceded her birthday; than which no greater proof need be advanced to
show the new relation in which they stood to each other. But, then, they
always made up again; the youth, whose hasty spirit caused him five
times out of seven to be the offender, being ever ready to atone by
every loverlike device.

But such a sad breach as had been made between them this day was without
a parallel. To his own mind it seemed too wide to be repaired; too gross
to be atoned for by words. He, on his part, felt that the lofty
character and proud spirit of Kate, though love plead never so loudly,
would not brook the insult her feelings had received by the wild
outbreak of his passions in her presence. He felt that he had forfeited
all title to a place in her affections; and that her indignation was
justly roused by the outrageous deed he had madly attempted: with
bitterness of heart he acknowledged that he deserved to be banished for
ever from her presence, and to be remembered by her only with contempt.
But he knew not of what enduring material a maiden's heart is composed;
he knew not that, when love takes possession of it, like a magnet thrown
among some delicate machinery of steel communicating to every part a
portion of its own mysterious nature, it penetrates and pervades every
attribute, converts every passion to its own hue, and renders each
feeling subservient to itself. To its arbitrament all things are
referred. Reason, judgment, prudence, and even piety become secondary to
the will of this autocrat of the heart; and a deaf ear is turned even to
the counsels of the wise and good when they do not conform to its
dictates. Such is the power of love--wondrous, vast, incomprehensible! A
religion without a god or a future; unbounded in its power; universal in
its extent; all-pervading in its influences!

He galloped along through the winding avenues of the silent forest,
scarce roused from his sad meditations by the startled deer that fled at
his approach, yet stooping mechanically as some old oak flung its
gigantic arm low across the path. Unconsciously he urged on his noble
horse to its utmost speed; his bonnet pressed down over his gloomy brow;
his eyes dark and settled in their expression; and his hand nervously
grasping the rein. At one moment he would drop his head upon his breast,
and be overcome by the bitterness of grief. At the next he would throw
back his head, and with eyes flashing fire, gnash his glittering teeth,
shake his clinched hands above his head, and curse in the face of
Heaven; while the horse, catching his fierce spirit, would erect his
bristling mane, and bound madly forward like the wind. These terrible
paroxysms of mingled grief and rage would pass away, and then he would
ride slowly, with his arms folded, and with an expression of settled
despondency. Three several times did he check his horse, and,
half-turning him round towards Castle Cor, pause, and seem to deliberate
between the suggestions of mingled hope and doubt. But, after a few
seconds' thought, he would shake his head despairingly and again spur
forward.

In one of his moods of sullen gloom, with his arms folded across his
breast, his head drooped, the reins lying loosely upon the horse's neck,
he came upon an old ruin half a league from Castle More, and within the
boundaries of its wide domain. Here and there, amid a confusion of
moss-grown fragments that everywhere strewed the ground, rose to his eye
a mouldering buttress; the half of a Gothic window; a ruined tower,
lifting itself in melancholy loneliness, in the last stages of decay;
or, a doorway choked to its lintel with rubbish. Over all crept the ivy,
that lovely emblem of charity, binding up, with its slender fingers, the
wounded towers; covering with its thick robe of leaves the nakedness
that time had exposed; and, where it could neither heal nor strengthen,
wreathing about the dilapidated walls garlands of enduring verdure.

It was the ruins of a chapel, where, centuries before, the barons of
Castle More had worshipped. Now all was desolation. Its bell was hushed;
its choir for ever silent. The priests--the worshippers, where were
they? sleeping beneath the ruins of the crumbling chancel; their high or
holy names, which no man remembers, carved deep in the superincumbent
marble. Apparently coeval with the fallen temple, near its eastern end
grew an aged tree, spreading over half the ruin its huge broad arms as
if it would fain protect, in its desolation, the relics of that
structure whose days of honour it had witnessed. A soft evening
sunlight, struggling through the tops of the surrounding forest, shed a
crimson glow over the whole scene, and imparted a quiet and sacred
character to the spot that took from it its aspect of desolation. It
stood there lonely and majestic in its ruin, forcibly suggesting to the
mind the idea (for there does exist a mysterious sympathy of association
between man and inanimate objects) of calm, Christian old age, ripe in
years and holiness, gathering about itself, with dignity and grace, its
mantle of decay.

Wrapped in his gloomy thoughts, the horseman was absently following the
path that wound among the ruins, when, as he turned a sudden angle of
the pile, his horse started and nearly threw him from his saddle. Roused
to a sense of his situation, he recovered his seat, seized the bridle,
and looked up. Directly in his path stood a woman, in a short scarlet
cloak, then, as now, the favourite colour of the Irish peasantry,
leaning on a long white staff, curiously carved with mysterious figures.
She was beneath the middle height, and hideously hunch-backed. Her hair
was bright red, of extraordinary length, and hung down in masses nearly
to the ground. Around her forehead was bound a cincture of beads, woven
into singular devices, which confined a sort of turban of green silk.
Her complexion was bronzed by exposure, but evidently once had been
fair. Her features were stern and almost masculine, yet bearing traces
of feminine beauty: the straight forehead, contracted by a rigid frown;
the aquiline nose; the arched brow, and thin, well-shaped lips, with a
roundly turned chin, were all, evidently, wrecks of what had once been
beautiful. Her eye was large, full, and clear, and would still have been
handsome but for a lurking devil in it. But the unsightly deformity of
her person, if natural, must always have served to render nugatory any
charm of countenance; and, whatever might have been her attractions in
youth, her present appearance was calculated to excite only feelings of
mingled fear and disgust. The young man gazed at her a moment as she
stood in his path, and then, in a tone that was in unison with his
present humour, said fiercely,

"Curses light on thee, hag! Stand from my path, or I will ride over
thee, and trample thy hideous carcass with my horse's hoofs."

"Robert Lester, as men call thee," she said, without changing her
position, in a cold, hard voice, and with a malicious laugh, "thou hast
been crossed in thy will, and art out of temper. Dost wish revenge?"

"Woman, avaunt! I want none of thy counsel. From my path, or I will ride
thee down!"

As he spoke, the impatient horseman struck his spurs deep into his
horse's flanks, and urged the animal forward; the beast reared and
plunged fearfully to either side, but refused to advance.

"Ha, ha, Robert More! If men will obey thee thy brute will not. He has
the eye to see dangers that are hidden from mortal vision."

"Witch--fiend!" cried the young man, fiercely, "I will dismount and hurl
thee from the path if thou bar my way fa

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