appear, no one was capable of more acute, more profound, more ineffaceable feeling, than this. very man. Impressions once made remained indelible; hidden they might be, closed over, as it were, and concealed under the stern impassable exterior, but they were as characters written upon the rock, and were never, never to be effaced. The fresh morning air, as he was carried rapidly over the breezy, open Cambridgeshire hills, far from the detested precincts of the University, had raised, however, an unwonted sense of exhilaration in the traveller. The fresh morning air is like the wine of life, crisping the nerves, cheering the spirits. It is irresistible. No ill-humour, no depression, no vexation, can withstand it. Randal felt, too, something like Alexander when he had cut the Gordian Knot, as if, by his resolution, he had solved a difficulty until then insolvable. He had manifested his contempt for the conventional laws of honour, his contempt for the opinion of his fellows, - his contempt for the University itself, by thus defying her regulations and insulting her authority. It was a triumph; and he enjoyed it thoroughly, as the coach careered gaily along, and the inspiriting horn seemed to blow in harmony with the voice of victory within. Rustication? Expulsion? What would the penalty be? He cared not. He should be at Ravenscliffe. He was heir of Ravenscliffe, the future Lord of Ravenscliffe! What mattered it to him what a few sheepish old heads of colleges, far less what a heap of empty, feather-headed under-graduates, - might say? But this intoxication lasted not long. The day darkened; the sun was covered with low, heavy clouds, not dark thunder-clouds, great and imposing, and elevating to look upon, but low, dusky, uncharacterised clouds, telling of mizzling rain, which soon began to fall in that regular, voiceless, baptizing, determined manner, which is more than sufficient to deaden any spirits and any courage. A mournful whistling wind every now and then broke the silence; the roads became heavy and muddy; the horses pranced and spanked no more. Nobody talked or laughed on the top of the coach. There was nothing to listen to with inward contempt; no proud comparsions to feed insolent self-esteem. Everbody seemed infected with the moodiness of the hour. He forgot that he had defied the University, and remembered that he had been horsewhipped. He forgot that he had scorned to challenge Marcus Fitzroy, and had held him so far at defiance. His shoulders tingled. Again a voice was ringing in his ears: 66 And that, and that, that!" and that, It echoed like the voice of a mocking demon to his memory. The mood into which he now sank was fearful. In his moments of triumphant defiance of Marcus, the under-graduates, and the University, he could have been almost forgiving. Had the neck of Fitzroy laid under his feet, he might have been generous; he might not have crushed it; he might have turned away. But when his feelings took their prewhen to the nervous excitement of the first few hours had succeeded that reaction which was sent turn, -- sure to come, when he recollected, with a sense of shame and rage indescribable, that all which had passed was no dream, but that he had been horsewhipped, that Fitzroy had horsewhipped him, and that he had taken no revenge! . . . nay, that he had abandoned the field to his rival, fairly run away, deserted, making his escape with his tail between his legs, like a lashed hound (for so the change in his spirit represented things now) when he felt his cheek, now burning with the deep sense of insult received, then whitening with unimaginable passion,for he felt himself sick with passion. . . . and reflected where he was, and where Fitzroy was, and contrasted the exulting laugh of the gay young fellows echoed by that of his admiring friends, with his own sullen, solitude of feeling, the victorious triumph of the one with his own degrading punishment, oh! then my pen wants means to describe what took place within his heart! Suffice it to say, that the agony subsided in this one resolution, the only one in which he could find consolation, a resolution to take refuge from this outrage against all that was dear to man, in one determination, at least; namely, that of maintaining henceforth and for ever a spirit of implacable unforgiveness Never to forget and never to pardon. The time would come, yes, life would present some opportunity or other, for exacting payment. The deep, bitter yearnings of his heart were mistaken for presentiments. In them he took refuge. He was in some degree restored to a sense of his own dignity by the iron determination with which this resolution was engraved upon his heart. He felt almost as if already half avenged by having made it, almost restored to his own esteem by the dark energy of his undying sense of injury, the unbending perseverance with which he knew he could, and he would, maintain it. He understood himself but too well. He nourished this dark temper in his heart, till it became a habit which was entwined with every lineament of his character a part of himself, not to be eradicated but with life. Restored to a sort of gloomy tranquillity by these last feelings and reflections, his countenance, though very dark, is no longer agonized. He slept a good part of the following night in his place beside the guard, for even his strong frame began to yield to the effects of the fierce emotions he had gone through. About twelve o'clock upon the second day, he was put down at a little hill-side inn, about seven miles from Ravenscliffe, being the nearest point at which the "Northern Highflyer" passed the domain. CHAPTER III. Darkly, darkly hath the curse of evil swept across the earth, Into a den of evil passions. .... JOHN WILLIAM FLETCHER. IT was a dark, dreary day high noon and the sun as completely hidden as if he had still been below the horizon. Gray, ill-defined clouds of vapour, one layer over the other, stretched to the very verge of a desolate landscape, penetrated by no gleams of light, and casting no shadow. The barren hills extended far on every side, a melancholy waste, without feature or character, except that of monotonous solitude. Not a tree not a shrub; no flocks bleating upon the hills no herds grazing in the valleys, which were filled with bogs and covered with bogmyrtle, or with coarse, reedy herbage, and the cottongrass. The cottage, built of rough stone, thatched, and low-roofed, with its narrow, slanting door, looking as if the roof was pressing it out of the perpendicular, and two or three small, ill-formed windows on each side, presented a picture of the wildest and most wretched description. There was not a plant higher than a gooseberry-bush about it, except, indeed, one old, tattered mountain-ash, broken and shattered by many a winter storm, which grew beside one of |