already found seemed to bear some relation to the Maudsley family. Having been sent upon an errand to Blaxton, in consequence of the knight's repugnance to visit Shawmut, he had been accidentally brought into contact with Henry Maudsley, and had communicated to him a part of the information he had acquired.

Maudsley would naturally have shrunk with horror from a surreptitious examination of papers obtained thus by stealth, even from one who was his deadly foe. The name of Edith Maudsley upon one of the documents, however, happened to strike his eye at the first glance which he threw upon them. Thereafter, and for very sufficient reasons, he felt no restraint, but without the slightest compunction, was ready to plunge, by any means, into the very heart of the mystery. Still, however, he was doomed to be baffled, for the information which he gained was but fragmentary and unsatisfactory. He acquired a clue which led him to some distance and awakened some deep and decided suspicions, but still the affair remained perplexed, and the proof incomplete. It was necessary for him to visit England, immediately and secretly, to probe the matter to the bottom, and he waited his restoration to tolerable health and strength with great impatience.

He had, in the solitary perverseness of a jealous and wounded spirit, thoroughly wrought himself up to a belief in Esther's infatuation for the adventurous knight. He felt that she was lost to him, but his generous nature recoiled from the thought of permitting her to lose herself forever. But there were other and still more powerful cords which bound him and the knight in one destiny. At least his suspicions, founded upon something much stronger than surmise, were now added to the inexplicable sensations which the first sight of Sir Christopher had excited in his mind. As far as he knew, he had never met him in any other part of the world, and yet there was a mysterious feeling excited by his presence a feeling like a dim reminiscence of a previous exist

tence, for which he could not account, and which, he could not, by any effort, wholly banish from his imagination. Had he been acquainted with the connection of the knight with the Gorges family, he would probably have made much more rapid strides towards an elucidation of the mysteries, but it so happened that the documents, heretofore submitted to him, contained no mention of Sir Ferdinando, and related mostly to a period of time long past away. Later papers, which very probably might be in existence, had not yet been found by the diligent Cakebread.

Under a full view of the circumstances, therefore, Maudsley could do no more than write the enigmatical letter to Esther, previous to his departure to England. To him, henceforth, Esther was as nothing, but his own honor demanded a thorough investigation of the character of the person at whose hands, as he now believed, he had suffered more than one outrage, and whom, he hoped ere long, to punish as a felon, not as a rival.

Cakebread had informed him of the safe delivery of his mission to Esther, and there was now nothing more to detain him in New England. A small vessel was to depart the next day from Naumkeak, with a cargo of furs to the company in England, and in that vessel he had determined secretly to embark.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GRAVE-DIGGER.

ALL that day there had been a long, low, purple bank of clouds brooding along the south-western quarter of the horizon. In spite of the genial temperature of the atmosphere, and indeed in consequence of it, Maudsley, who had lived long enough in the climate to understand its character, knew that a storm, and probably a heavy snow-storm, was impending.

He had, however, taken leave of his hospitable and eccentric entertainer soon after the interview with Cakebread, which took place early in the forenoon, and, assisted by a favoring breeze, he had made a rapid passage to Naumkeak in Blaxton's little skiff, which Cakebread was to restore, upon the succeeding day, to its owner.

It was not his purpose to make his presence known, either to the Ludlows or to any other of the colonists, and he had already placed his effects on board the vessel which was to sail for England early the following day.

Late in the afternoon he wandered about the woods in the neighborhood of the little settlement, carefully avoiding the vicinity of the Ludlows' residence, and concealing himself from the observation of any casual wayfarer from the village.

The scene was bare and desolate. The short-lived glory of an Indian summer's morning had long since given place to the chill, leaden atmosphere of a winter's afternoon. The rising north-easterly wind sighed mournfully through the leafless forest. The withered leaves, eddying and whirling with every sudden gust, swept around him with a ghost-like sound. The dried

branches crackled beneath his foot. The waving branches of the pine trees sent forth a dirge-like sound, in which he seemed to hear the requiem of all his earthly hopes. The boding cry of a sable company of ravens, which were winging their way across the tree-tops, jarred upon his ear like a funereal wail. A few flakes of snow were already flitting through the gloomy atmosphere, which was pregnant with the coming tempest. All around him looked barren, desolate, and in gloomy unison with his own broken existence and withered hopes.

As if in mockery, it seemed that the example and the enthusiasm of Esther had begun to work their natural effect upon his impressionable temperament, just at the very moment when she seemed lost to him forever. Bitterly did he reproach himself now, for the wanton reproaches which he had so profusely dealt upon her faith, or, as he had then termed it, her fanaticism. Every idle word which he had uttered in his scornful moods, recurred to his fancy now with vivid distinctness. Each word seemed a scorpion whip, and memory an avenging fury; and yet it was all too late. Whence, he thought, except from some juggling fiend, could come these holy promptings, at a moment when every thing swam around him, and when his faith in every thing pure and holy was destroyed by the discovery of Esther's feebleness and falsehood. It was all a mockery. He beat down the rising feelings of religious faith, as he would have trampled upon a tempting demon.

Thoughts like these were whirling through his brain, as he moved now slowly, now rapidly, through the melancholy woods. At last, as he approached the verge of the irregular clearing, at the extremity of which the infant village was situated, he heard a dull sound, as of an iron instrument striking the frozen turf. He stepped forward in the direction whence the sound proceeded, and found a solitary individual digging a rude grave. He gazed upon the scene with a gloomy kind of satisfaction.

The snow was already falling thick and fast, the shades of evening were prematurely approaching, all nature seemed arrayed in gloom.

The grave-digger was a thin, feeble figure, and as he ever and anon laid aside his rusty pickaxe, and struck his arms to and fro across his breast, to arouse the warmth in his shivering frame, he looked almost like a shadowy creation of the fancy. As he resumed his labor again, there seemed something in his countenance familiar to Maudsley, who presently recollected the features of Faint-not Mellowes, the Suffolkshire weaver and pilgrim from New Plymouth, whom, as has appeared in the earlier pages of this history, he had once rescued from the ruffianly hands of the Merry-Mount crew.

His gloomy task required no little labor, for his arms were weak and the earth was rigidly frost-bound. It seemed that the inhospitable wilderness, which had greeted those early pilgrims with so cold a welcome, and inflicted upon them so many fearful sufferings, would almost deny to their dead a restingplace in its bosom. It was a melancholy scene, in which, at that moment, Maudsley and the grave-digger were the only actors. They stood at the edge of a clearing of some twenty acres, at the opposite extremity of which were huddled together the few miserable mud-walled and coarsely thatched hovels, which, with the "fair house" of the governor, constituted the village of Naumkeak. A thin wreath of smoke rose above the forest a little beyond the farthest house, indicating to Maudsley the hidden residence of her who was all the world to him, and who yet was lost to him forever.

The ground immediately around him was rough and broken. Vast, blackened stumps, looking like the tomb-stones of the forest patriarchs, who had flourished there for centuries, encumbered the soil, and among them were thickly strewn the many recent and rudely finished graves, where the stricken