now; and as the sun sunk down below the waves, and the sudden southern night fell shrouding the Sicilian boat in its shadows, the phosphor light left in its track and the odour of its violet freight dying off from the sea and the air, he could have believed he had but been dreaming afresh.

Was he mad? Erceldoune almost asked himself the question as he leaned over the vessel's side looking down into the purple shadows of the water. High-born, by the beauty of her face, and by the luxury with which that little skiff was decked, how should she have been in the wild solitudes of the Moldavian forest? Compassionate to his peril and extremity, would she have cared nothing to know whether death or life had been at last his portion? -and could an act of such noble and pitying humanity have needed the veil of mystery and denial in which it had been shrouded by the serfs' repudiation of all knowledge that any save themselves had found him?

Yet, the face of which he had dreamed, he had seen now in the evening light of the Mediterranean -the mere phantom of a delirium could not have become vivid and living thus. A heavy oath was stifled in his teeth, as he stood with his eyes strained to pierce the cloudy offing. Why had he not been

alone, that—a few yards more sail flung out to the winds, and his own hand upon the helm-his boat could have given chase down the luminous sea, and have swept away with hers, no matter at what cost of sand-reef or of shipwreck, into that golden mist, that twilight darkness!

CHAPTER VI.

THE WISDOM OF MOTHER VERONICA.

THE pines were tipped with their lightest green, the torrents were swollen with the winter rains, the rafts were rushing, lightning-like, down the rivers in the impetus that the spring lends to nature and to labour, to the earth and the human swarm it bears; primroses strewed every inch of ground under the boughs of the pine-woods; and the light of the young year was on the solitary hills and ravines as Erceldoune rode once more into Moldavia, through the same defile where his assassins had waylaid him.

He checked his horse, and wondered if the horrors of that wild night had been all a dream, as he looked down: the tumbling water glistened in the sunlight, the grass had grown in ranker luxuriance where the good bay was laid in her last resting-place; over the place where he had fallen, bright clusters of spring-flowers blossomed among

the moss; two records of the night's work alone remained the black and broken pine-trunk that had been flung across the road, and had only been now lifted to one side, and a dark crimsoned stain, where the granite rock had been soaked and crusted with his life-blood, too deeply for even the snows of winter wholly to wash out the shade it left. The most thoughtless man would have felt some shadow of earnestness steal on him in such a place, with such a memory; Erceldoune, though used to meet death in every shape, and too habituated to danger to ever feel its terror, let the bridle slacken on his stallion's neck, and gazed down on the wild ravine round him, with something of solemnity upon him -had the shot been one hair's breadth nearer his heart, he had now been rotting there with his dead horse; had she who had come as his guardian angel been one instant later, his eyes had now been blind to the light of the sun, and his life numbered with the vast nameless multitudes of the grave.

It was a strange unreal knowledge to the man in whose veins life swept with such eager vivid force, and in whose every breath and every limb strength was so vital, that life and strength both seemed eternal.

It was very still, here in the depths of the Danu

bian defile; and in the flood of sunset light he seemed to see the face of the woman he had lost. His heart went out to her with a futile, passionate longing; the pine-boughs that bent over him had shadowed her, the water that foamed at his feet had been touched by her hand; here his head had rested on her bosom, here his eyes had looked upward through the mists of agony to hers. The very grasses whispered of her; the very rocks were witness of his debt. to her!

In madness with himself, in passionate thought of her, he dashed the spurs into his horse's flanks, and swept, full gallop, down the steep incline. Was this Love?

For a woman seen but twice, for a mere memory, for a loveliness, fugitive, nameless, dreamlike, mourned and lost!

In the first spring-time of the year, Holy Mother Veronica sat in her pleasant little chamber, which was panelled with maple wood, and filled with early flowers, and delicate carvings, and the soft-hued heads of saints, and had as little of conventual gloom as though it had been a boudoir in a château rather than an Abbess's "cell" in Monastica; for

they are no ascetics, but enjoy life in their way,

VOL. I.

K