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No. 330.]

WE

talk of the grandeur and magnificence of the empires of a remote

past with wonderment and rapture, but how poor and paltry are our monuments of their existence! A handful of books of doubtful authenticity, a column of dates of questionable accuracy, a list of names of mythical heroes, and a sprinkling of ruins half-trodden underground. To

go back one thousand

years is to reach the

evening of the day
of history; another
thousand years fur-

ther back one has to
grope for monuments;
and a third thousand
years puts us not only
Into the dark, but
leaves us without all

points d'appui before

and behind us.

This is true es

pecially in regard to the history of Europe, but by leaping from the Peloponnesus across the Mediterranean, into the land of the Nile, one may enjoy the twilight of by gone ages for three and perhaps five thousand years longer. But, should we set over the Ægean, and land on the coasts of Asia Minor, all around us would

be night. Schlie

mann's recent excavations on the site of Homeric Troy were but an attempt, more or less successful, to kindle a flame on a spot which was of

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[VOL. XIV.

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historical interest in

every age of Aryan civilization. If we proceed to Armenia, all that strikes our ear of the story of its ancient days is but an assonance to a Babylonian myth. But farther to the south and east, from the banks of the Indus to the Syrian shore, bright pencils of light illumine in parts the burial-grounds of the early masters of the world. There are Assyria, Babylonia, and Elam, with their tab

lets of clay and cu neiform inscriptions; there is Phoenicia, of whose maritime relations the pages of antiquity are filled; and

between them is Palestine, with records

of its own, and corroborated by the history of all the surrounding nations.

Palestine is the great centre of research in Oriental amtiquities, partly and principally because it is the land of the Bible, but greatly also for purely scientific reasons. Long be fore the tribes of Israel and Judah seized the region from the Sea of Tiberias to the Sea of Sodom, mighty agricultural and commercial races possessed the land and defended it against the conquering armies of Egypt and Chaldæa. Thousands of years before the period of Hebrew kings, powerful princes,

masters of towns and fortified cities, residents of gorgeous palaces, leaders of vast armies, and worshipers in magnificent temples, disputed here each other's sway. The tributes paid by them in wine, honey, figs, spices, iron, silver, and gold, were large enough to cripple any modern empire of Europe. But how scanty is the material with which to reconstruct the history of these Syrian nations! The monuments of the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, and the records of the ancient Hebrews, speak only of their numbers and their wealth, and the evidences of their art and industry still lie hidden in the earth, and the history of their deeds is carved in rocks or told in books not yet discovered.

Without any further testimony, one may reasonably suppose that the territory of Edom and Moab, the one point at which all the lines of Egyptian, Phoenician, Assyrian, Indian, and Arabian traffic were intersecting each other, was a populous commercial district; and it was but natural that, in this period of Oriental and antiquarian researches, great pains were taken to explore it. The portion that once belonged to Moab has been more favored than Edom's. The geographical features of Moab have been carefully investigated, the sites of the ruins of ancient cities have been visited and described, stones and pottery with inscriptions have been collected, and many of the traditions of the native population have been gathered. A mass of material has thus been laid before the world that awaits only the appearance of some architect to be built up again into historical order and symmetry.

The results of these explorations are of special interest to the American public, as by arrangement with the English Palestine Exploration Fund the future examination of the geographical features, ruins, inscriptions, and other historical remains, have been left entirely to the care of the American Palestine Exploration Society.

To summarize, then, the knowledge so far gathered, the land of Moab, owing to an abundant supply of water, is not only covered with plants and studded with deciduous trees, but even palms grow luxuriantly among the rocks overhanging the sea, and on the lower ranges of mountains.

Everywhere are ruined walls, which once served as inclosures for fields and gardens, and every thing indicates that the country was once very wealthy and fertile. And even at this day the fertility of the soil is very great. According to the season, there are always patches of land laden with grain, or yokes of oxen tilling the ground. No manure is needed to reap a rich harvest of wheat year after year from the fine, red, and sandy loam, and even the little care and the great unskillfulness of the inhabitants do not endanger the crop.

Beginning with a shallow furrow, the wadys come from the east, and dig deeper and deeper into the ground, hollowing out wide and deep channels, through which they swiftly flow, leaping from cascade to cascade, into the border lake. Every traveler coming from the sterile cis-Jordan has looked with astonishment upon these rippling brooklets and occasional woods of this trans-Jordanic land.

Between two deep wadys, flanking it to the north and south, and on a platform thirty-seven hundred and twenty feet above the level of the sea, stands the ancient fortress Kerak, or Kir-Moab. Its position is so strong by nature that its great advantages as a place of defense must have been apparent to the most primitive people. A considerable portion of the wall which once encircled the almost level summit is still standing. From the appearance of the work one should judge it to be older than the Crusading or Saracenic times, and in several inscriptions in the upper part of the fortress the Mohammedans lay claim to its erection. The perfection of the great castle of Kerak, however, is a magnificent monument of the enterprise and energy of the Crusaders.

Dr. Tristram came across several interesting evidences of the Roman occupation of the town. The floor of a hovel was a beautiful, tesselated pavement of marble, surrounded with the bases of some old columns. It was probably a part of a Roman bath, for in the next house were the remains of the marble bath-room, with the water-pipes still protruding from the walls.

The party proceeded by the way of the old Roman road running due north and south. Though broken up, the pavement is still there, with the two parallel lines of walls flanking it. They reached very soon the ancient Rabbath - Moab, the Areopolis of Greek and Roman writers. The ruins bear all the marks of a city of the late Roman period, and show abundant traces of an earlier age. The whole of it is only a mass of walls, broken-down fragments of carved work and Corinthian capitals, with broken sarcophagi here and there, blocks of basalt, and vaults and arched cellars of all sizes. At the eastern end of the city are the remains of a large square building, whichjudging from some of the bases still standing-had once a colonnade around a central court, probably the prætorium.

About fifteen miles north of RabbathMoab, and a short distance to the east from the Roman road, were found the ruins of Dhibân, and they were quite as dreary and featureless as any of the hundreds of desolate heaps of Moab. The place is full of caverns, cisterns, vaulted underground storehouses, and rude semicircular arches. The party went to see the spot where the famous Moabite stone, or monolith of King Mesha, of which we shall speak further on, was found. It seems to have been near what is presumed to have been the gate-way of the old city, close to where the road once crossed it.

Yet as basalt blocks must have been brought here from some distance, and as there are many others at Dhibân many times the original size and weight of the Moabite stone, it is to be supposed that these stones were carried there by the Romans, or some of their predecessors, from a neighboring locality, to be used as building-material.

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night of his marriage. In order to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy, the father built this tower, and when the time came for the betrothal of the son, he caused him and his bride to spend in it their wedding-night. But that was a sad mistake; for the bride was a ghoul herself-one of those demons of Eastern superstition that feed on human flesh. In the morning the son had been devoured, and the maiden, who had assumed the form of a wild beast, flew away from the top of the tower.

Um Rasas has many other objects of interest, for it is a vast and uninterrupted mass of ruins. Three churches, one near the northeastern angle, another at the southeastern corner, and the third near the centre of the east part of the two, are its principal features. The two churches in the southwest quarter are completely ruined, while of the other three the apse remains, though not the roof. Close to the central church was found a large slab with a Greek cross engraved on its face, and also on several of the lintels were carved crosses and other sculptures. In another are still lying the old pillars of the side - aisles, as well as the enceinte of the walls and of a porch. How strange it must have been to Dr. Tristram's party thus to stand before these silent witnesses of a great population, and that a Christian one, in a lonely wilderness, and where, as far as known, they were the second European visitors since the Crusades !

Also remains of a more ancient date were before them. They could not identify any temples, but it was evident that their camp was under the lee of an old amphitheatre now entirely covered with turf, and near the mounds of what must have been a circus. There were cisterns hewn in the rocks, also channels, dams, and sluices, though only faintly outlined. But the only inhabitants of the place are now the wild-cat, jackal, mole, and the like, which can be more easily trapped than seen.

The most curious discovery of the Tristram expedition was, however, the wonderful Palace of Mashitâ, a place unknown to history, and unnamed in the maps. There is no trace of any house or buildings around it; in its solitary grandeur it stands out on the waste, a marvelous example of the sumptuousness and selfishness of ancient princes. The richness of the arabesque carvings, though in the same style, are not equaled by those of the Alhambra. Built of finely-dressed hard stone, it presents a large, square edifice, more than two hundred feet each way, with round bastions at each angle, and five others, semicircular, between them. On the eastern side bold, octagonal bastions, protruding from the fretted front, form a magnificent gate-way, of which both sides present the most splendid façades imaginable. A large pattern, like a continued W, with a large rose-boss between every two lines, runs along the walls. Upward of fifty different animals are sculptured into the open spaces, and fretted work of fruit and foliage carved into the surface and all the interstices. The inside of the edifice seems to have been divided into three parallelograms, of which the centre one has also three sections. One section shows still

the foundations of numerous chambers, seventeen or eighteen perhaps, and the others have uncertain traces of large fountains.

Yet it is very difficult to determine what purpose this building has served, and still more so to discover what prince caused its erection. The name Mashitâ conveys no idea, except, perhaps, as it means "winter-quarters," that it has often been used as such by the Arabs for their flocks and herds. That the palace is no relic of Saladin or the caliphs seems to be certain, for otherwise the Bedouins would surely have preserved some tradition of it. Its ante-Moslem origin may be inferred from the human and animal figures sculptured into the walls, yet it is hardly possible that it has been a Christian work. The great historian of architecture, Fergusson, supposes that it belongs to the Sassanian dynasty of Persia and to the times of Chosroes II., which would fix its date at the beginning of the seventh century of our era. But, though the wealth of this king was enormous, and though his empire extended for a short time to the Hellespont and the Nile, it is incredible that he should have taken pleasure in possessing so magnificent a hunting-box, as it is proposed to call it, in an utterly desert region. It is true that there is nothing decidedly Jewish, Greek, Roman, or Saracenic, either in the plan or in the details of the building, but it is equally uncertain that its origin is Persian or Arabian.

Dr. Tristram was also so successful as to explore the castle where John the Baptist was imprisoned and beheaded, and which became so famous by its desperate resistance in the Jewish war against Titus and the Romans. In spite of its historical interest, his party were the first Western travelers since the Roman times who ever visited it. The situation of Machærus, lying out of the track from north to south, was well known to all the neighboring tribes, and even its name at present is the exact Arabic translationM'khaur. The ruins occupy a ground of undulating hillocks, and cover in solid mass more than a square mile of ground. Among them is a small temple, which plainly shows that, up to a period not far removed from its final destruction, there must have been in Macharus a large population who, in the midst of fanatic Jews, were at liberty to practise the rites of the sun-god worship. Exactly one hundred yards in diameter stands the circular citadel on the summit of a long, flat ridge of hills. The only remains of it still clearly definable were two dungeons, one of which must have been the prison-house of John the Baptist.

Riding to the north until they reached the Wady Zerka Main, and following its course until they came upon the Roman road, they met, a short distance farther north, the ruins of Medeba. There is no doubt that this city enjoyed, during the Roman period, a high state of prosperity, and its mention in the antiqué poem of the Book of Numbers indicates that it was one of the most ancient cities of Moab. Conspicuous objects from afar are two columns standing erect, one Ionian and the other Corinthian, about eighteen feet high, with a large block of stone laid across. These columns are as fruitful

subjects of archæological conjecture as can be imagined, for there is nothing to tell what their actual purpose has been.

In the northern quarter of the ancient city, there is an oblong building, the use of which could not be divined. It was fifty yards from east to west, by twenty-five from north to south, and had doorways in the centre of the eastern and the western faces. Beneath it were solid vaulted cisterns of great depth, beautifully arched. A round temple standing near by seems to have for a time been converted into a Christian church. A beautiful piece of workmanship is a mass of masonry that once served as a dam, and as the sustaining wall of an immense reservoir, which might easily be restored, and used again for the fertilization of the neighborhood.

It is scarcely ten miles from Medeba to Heshbon, following the Roman road, but every traveler to whom the localities, in which the scenes of Holy Scripture are placed, are dear, turns to the west about midway the distance, climbs the Jebel Muslubeiyeh, and pushes to the north until he reaches Mounts Nebo and Pisgah, from the summit of which Moses before dying surveyed the promised land.

It is not easy to identify a hill in a whole ridge of mountains as the scene of an event of more than three thousand years ago, and especially when there are neither ruins nor written monuments to guide in the choice. The identification of Mount Pisgah has accordingly been a matter of much dispute among Biblical orientalists. This much alone is certain, that the elevation which witnessed the death of Moses must have been one of the highest points of the hill-land of Northwestern Moab. The other requirements of the site, in order to establish a complete harmony with the Scriptural narrative, are such as may easily exist with a large number of mountains.

All the hills that have been proposed for the honor of being called Mount Pisgah possess most of the features demanded by the sacred text. It is apt to be the case that the scholar who writes the longest argument in favor of his own particular identification, carries the palm, yet no greater certainty and precision are really attained. Thus, the American Palestine Exploration Society is now glorying over its own success in the identification of Mount Pisgah, for it has published not less than sixty thousand words to prove the correctness of the choice, but in a little while will appear a treatise of one hundred thousand words favoring another hill, which will be looked upon as the final authority until another appears. There is a great deal of truth in the remark recently made by an eminent American scholar and critic: "One urges the identity of a hill because its name is written without an accent, and another because it is written with an accent."

It was Mount Pisgah from the summit of which Moses, shortly before his death, surveyed the land on the other side of the Jordan to the foot of Hermon, the mountainous region to the north, and to the south as far as Zoar, the city of palms on the southeastern

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AF

CHAPTER III.

FTER they have disappeared, I draw my eyes nearer home, to the fountain that plays from out the imperial crown atop in a spray down over the figures of Rizzio, and Mary, and Elizabeth; and, as the sun sinks behind the Canongate, I watch the water fret over their faces.

The window at which I stand is embedded, as it were, between the turrets projected on either hand, in a square recess that is paneled quite apart from the main chamber, which, as I turn to it now, nervous with restrained thought, I see clouded with a dry fog of shade, which blows from every corner, with almost my thought, to the window I have left.

Fortunately, this gloom, born so suddenly, does not dye deeper all at once, but continues gray and vivacious, as these northern twilights always do, for a long while yet.

As I pace to and fro, I am awed from out my feverish thoughts by the air of desolation that every thing about me asserts. Involuntarily I look behind me to see whether I am leaving tracks in the dust on the floor, and in so doing run against the four-posted bed which stands jutting far out from the wall, a square of dry-rot, which cries out upon me at the contact in rickety creaks and cracks of denunciation that are heart-breaking enough for a real voice.

The hangings of crimson damask are moth-eaten and decayed; the silken fringes and tassels, mouldy-green in color, stretch from post to post, edging the canopy that Mary Stuart pillowed her uneasy head under so many, many years ago.

I picture her lying there, as fair and young as Cecile, just as she came fresh from the beloved shores of France, to rule the savages of this wild, rebellious country. I forget her sins-I forget every thing but her beauty and her misfortunes, and reach up to gather, in memory of her, a bit of the sad old fringe.

I hold it, as I walk to and fro, reverently in my hand; and I touch, just where she may have touched, the faded tapestry hanging on the walls. I am becoming so possessed with thought of her that, as I look up at her picture, the sweet, plaintive face made by God to snare the souls of men, I have to think hard to prevent myself from bending the knee.

Over my head, the ceiling is divided in

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diamond and hexagonal panels, as frames to the coats of arms and initials of royalty, and the cobwebs are in each notch, like phantom sponges, with a spider hiding in every pore.

I stand in front of the fireplace to look up at Elizabeth's wooden face, set in her halter of ruff, as antagonistically as though she were my own picked and chosen enemy. I regret the pistol left lying in my trunk at the hotel, thinking how agreeably I might make the time fly by peppering away at the target of her nose.

This serves to remind me of Dundas's last request, and, as I unscrew the top of his flask, I am reminded again that on the table the game-pie awaits my attack, and that it would be perhaps as well not to defer operations.

I am more cadaverous at the end of my feast than I was at its beginning, for I have had a vision wedded to every mouthful-of Cecile eating hers elsewhere than at my side, and start up from my seat insane with a desire to have it out with some man of my size.

Then I am startling again awake the ghostly footsteps that echo mine so from the audience-chamber yonder, and the little turretroom where Rizzio ate his last supper.

In the dim light I see the figured hangings of silk, blotched with mildew and eaten in ghastly holes, stringing down from the skeleton frames on the walls; and upon the mantel-piece, as I enter, I find the name "Mary Stuart" written in the dust lying an inch thick upon it.

I begin to wonder, in the midst of the decay and desolation, if Cecile's finger was the one which traced it there, and at the thought I begin tenderly to widen out the limits of each letter by writing it over again with my

own.

When I stop in my ramble, the entire world of the old palace seems to catch its breath for fear of making the least sign of life, and the intense silence stands as if on tiptoe, awaiting another break which comes whenever I move an uneasy foot, or touch, in passing, any of the quaint old furniture.

Here, in the turret, I hear a sound go wailing up, like the wind crying in a rigging with pain, and I know that it is a sudden swing of the breeze about the stern, gray towers.

I seek, just outside the turret-room door, the one half-hidden by tapestry, through the bars of which Cecile crept so mischievously that day.

There is a clang of echoes as I walk to it and touch tenderly the cold iron that has pressed so closely her dear flesh. I press my face against them, and the heat of my lips is killed at once. Through the rusty rounds I see dimly the narrow stone steps go winding down. The air, cool with the rush, up the draft of the spiral, beats upon my cheek like a ghost's breath trying to blow me cold.

All at once I am seized with a desire to go everywhere that she has been, and am stooping to put my leg through, and trying to crowd between the bars, which are not placed here as below-stairs-so very close together.

I succeed well enough to know that, in order to be entirely successful, only an addi

tional incentive to reach the other side is required.

Now I am back again in the perpendicular, and walking away to the window to look at my watch, and count how many hours are left me to stay here.

It is eight o'clock, and the stars are beginning to spot out from their field of blue in a thick blossoming as of dandelions.

The guide will be here at five o'clock with the keys, and there are nine hours yet to be made the best of in this place of rust, and blight, and mildew.

As I lean up against the window-sash I am a little stirred by hearing a noise not made by myself, a tick-tick that sounds at once foreboding and unearthly, and when I think again I know that I am listening for the first time to the "death-watch"-which is said so surely to foretell misfortune.

It is in the wainscoting near my feet, and I reach down with my hand to find in the dark, if I may, the haunt of the beetle. As I do so, feeling squeamish and ashamed of myself, only the flapping of a raven's wing against the window, or the hooting of an owl about the turrets, could fitly play an accompaniment to my mood.

I am glad to raise my head again to see the moon risen behind the palace, silvering the house-tops; and below, how the shadow of the palace sprawls grotesquely across the

square.

It is not long before I find my eyes opening and shutting drowsily, while a peculiar torpor begins all at once to penetrate and take possession of every bone in my body.

I cast about in my mind for a memory in this room of any thing to sit or lie upon.

The bed yonder is guiltless either of mattress or pillow, and the chairs that I remember standing about, covered with embroidery wrought by the fair fingers of Mary and her maids-of-honor, are altogether too prim and stately for a lounge.

Cecile's throne is there, the cavernous arm-chair, and perhaps she has left it warm behind her. At the thought I am groping || away from the recess to the spot where I know it must be.

In the dark I stumble up against its back, and then, feeling with my hands for its seat, I tumble sleepily upon it.

As I do so, I think of Rip Van Winkle's encounter with mischievous spirits with just such peaked gray caps upon their heads as these turrets wear, and I wonder if, like him, the drink that I have taken is accountable for the strange lethargy which is crawling stealthily over me through every vein.

Are these rooms really haunted by the ghosts of Mary Stuart and her courtiers, and, in order that they may enjoy to-night's frolic unmolested, are they binding me over in this way to keep the peace?

I believe that I hunt for the flask and find it. And the draught brings out, like a bright enamel upon the gloom, not Cecile's face exactly, but one that has a look of her -from the frame that I saw in the daylight hanging on yonder wall-pallid and sweet, and bruised with feeling as a flower bent by a storm.

I shut my eyes against it, it is so real and pleading, and I am so helpless to save. I cannot get away from her though, for I hear the rustle of her silken dress, the clinking of golden chains coming nearer and nearer-I hear her sweet voice singing her lament for France-I feel the light, awakening touch of her warm, soft fingers upon my face!

When I open my eyes again, it is almost with a spring out from my chair.

There is certainly the music of a dress sweeping close by-there is surely a light changing the whole complexion of the room from ebony to a ghastly green, and in it I see a wraith of Mary Stuart, standing almost within reach of my hand.

My heart leaps fairly into my mouth, and I swallow hard in the next breath to get it back again into its proper place. I am trembling as if just awakening from a nightmare, and too numb with astonishment to move hand or foot. It is only left me to stare breathlessly at the marvel of the scene!

In the ghastly green glare she is moving slowly about, singing a plaint which is heart-breaking, and the sweep of her silken train across the floor is as a wail following after. There is a black coif upon her head, pointed about her pallid, frozen face like the rim of a heart, a white veil hanging down behind a stiff ruff about her neck. I see her as she sings, fingering with deathly fingers, bead by bead, the rosary upon her breast.

I hear a voice now from the outer chamber-and at its sound she stops in her walk, to raise her hands with a gesture of mingled weariness and passion, to lay them closely over her ears.

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It is a stern, hollow voice, saying: 'Ah, fair ladies, how pleasant were this life of yours if it should ever abide, and then in the end we might pass to heaven with this gear! But fie on that knave Death, that will come whether ye will or not! and when he hath laid on the arrest, then foul worms will be busy with this flesh, be it never so fair and tender; and the silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, that it can carry with it neither gold, garnishing pearl, nor precious stones."

"Will I never be rid of him?" I hear the queen cry, and then with it mocking laughter as of many voices in the cabinet without.

"Good Knox," comes another shrill voice -"fare you well; and it were better with you if your trumpet-blasts against the monstrous regimen of women were blown only in the pulpit. So you keep far from her majesty's hearing."

Then there is more derisive laughter, and another train comes rustling across the floor, and a tall, spare woman comforts Mary, who is wringing her hands and sobbing.

"My subjects, it would appear, must obey him, not me. I must be subject to them, not they to me."

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His back is turned upon me, so I cannot Through the window in the recess behind see his face, but the visor of his cap is raised, them I see the moon sinking in the sky, look-disclosing it to Mary, and at its sight the ing strangely dead and white, in contrast with this green radiance.

Now the arras dropped over the door leading into the turret-room is drawn aside by an unseen hand, and a man steps out to stand aside, holding his cap so low in his hand that its white feather sweeps the floor as Mary passes in.

In his other hand I see suspended a lute, and, recovering from my first great start as I am, yet his face looks also so dead in this weird atmosphere that I feel as though I would not touch him for the world.

Inside the turret-room is a table spread, and, as Mary seats herself silently upon the sofa at one side, and the candle-lights fight to conquer the spectral glare which fills every nook and cranny, there is the sound of footsteps approaching from the audience-chamber without, and a dame, attired in brocade and feathers, steps loftily across the room, followed by two courtiers, into the suppingcloset.

I am fully persuaded of being wide awake now, for, as they passed, my hand hanging down was brushed slightly against by the velvet of her train. Really interested to see what is going to happen next, I do not stir.

I see them drink from the cups, and their lips move stiffly in conversation, but I cannot hear a word they utter. Only shrill laughter sometimes murders the silence, and is echoed in a smothered way from another crew in the outer chamber.

Presently the queen, waited upon by the two courtiers standing at her back, leans across the table to speak to the man who drew the arras and stepped aside as she entered.

"Give us, David," I hear her say in a hoarse whisper, "a madrigal of swift repeats and reports, that I may live out of the fancies which this night puts upon me."

At this Rizzio raises the lute lying at his side, and, drawing his fingers across its strings, I hear begun the refrain of a song which is quaint with old-time meaning, and so tenderly given that the queen bows her head upon the edge of the table to listen.

As he plays and sings in a low, breathless way, there is no other sound. But when he drops the lute and reaches forward to accept a cup of wine from the queen's own hand, all at once a tall, slim figure stalks out from the gloom of the arras to stand upon the threshold of the closet.

As he appears, each occupant of the room starts with astonishment, and the gentlemen waiting upon the queen step aside that he may enter and seat himself upon the sofa.

“What pleasure have you here, Darnley ?” asks the queen, hoarsely; then, as he moves still nearer and essays putting his arm about

queen springs to her feet, crying out upon the man seated at her side the one word "Judas!"

"What dare you here, my Lord Ruthven?" She turns to face the man upon the threshold. "I command you quit my sight."

He does not follow even with his eyes the line indicated by the point of her imperiously extended finger, but remains standing grimly and motionless before her.

"Let yon man come forth. He has been here over-long," comes in a hollow, reverberating voice, while he points at Rizzio behind and sheltered by the queen's body.

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"What has he done? He is here by my will." She turns, with her proud air broken, to Darnley. "Why do you this thing? "Tis not I," Darnley half stutters, half laughs; "it is nothing."

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"Madame," interrupts Ruthven, in the same terrible voice, "this villain David has offended us. He has caused your majesty to banish a great part of the nobility, that he might be made a lord. He has been the destroyer of the commonwealth, and must learn his duty better.-Take the queen, your wife, to you," he adds, as Mary, trembling violently, throws herself still more in his way.

Rizzio is kneeling upon the floor behind, and clinging in affright to her dress.

"Lay no hands on me," cries Ruthven, unsheathing his dagger, as the gentlemen in waiting hasten now to fall upon him. "I will not be handled." And then there is a tramp of more feet, a rush of armed forms crowding to back him, until the little room bristles with the gleaming points of swords and daggers.

"No harm is intended to you, madame; but only to that villain."

They are reaching over her shoulder to get at Rizzio, crouched upon the train of her dress.

"Justice! Save my life, madame-save

my life!"

"Do not hurt him!"-the queen stretches out her arms entreatingly. "If he has done wrong, he shall answer to justice."

But she cannot stay them. The lawless crew are forgetting her sex and royalty, and a brutal borderer has pushed his pistol against her bosom.

"Give way!" he cries, fiercely; and I can stand it no longer.

The queen's voice has been altogether too much like Cecile's, and my brain is all awhirl with excitement. Just as I hear the table topple over with the crash of dishes, and out from the closet they come dragging almost by his hair the struggling wretch, I am in their midst, and, true to the instinct of my day, hitting hard and straight out from the

To my

shoulder at Ruthven's steel cap. dying hour I shall carry the scars of that contact on my knuckles.

"Confound you for a set of unmannerly hounds!" I cry, as they hustle past me to disappear through the doorway opening into the presence-chamber, and with them, at the sound of my voice, the green glare also goes out, and I am left standing there in the dark, feeling about with my hands to grasp at the silken skirts slipping past me in flight. The ends of my fingers are cheated just as they close. I tread upon broken dishes, I smell the greasy odor of candles suddenly quenched, I am exactly on the spot where I saw her standing last, and searching in vain with my

arms.

"Cecile !" I cry, passionately.

Now that the spectral light is put out, I see over my shoulder how the moon shines in upon the bedchamber floor in a patch as of white velvet laid upon the soft, taick gloom, and I know that, if my bird is here, she may not fly unseen.

I search with my feet slipping among the dishes crashed upon the floor about the overthrown table, grope around the walls with my fingers catching in the rags of old silk, and just as I am about to complete my circuit the corner before me is forsaken by a white form tiptoeing to the door.

The legs of the fallen table are stretching out between us, and she has the start of me by a few steps.

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," I call to her, "do not run—

Cecile,"

speak to me!"

But she is gone, and her white veil floats over the moonlight on the roor like a cloud. I reach to grasp it, and my fingers meet together as in real vapor.

"I can run faster than you, you foolish child;" for I have reached before her the door leading into the presence-chamber, and, thus heading her off, lean my back up against it.

I am not answered save by a few dull echoes as of persons moving about below, and I am aware that they may return for her at any moment. The thought startles me into a rapid study of the room. Just as I decide to make a rush for the corner opposite I hear the click of something striking against iron. I am across the room in a breath, and reaching through the bars with both hands. They just escape touching her, and that is all. Then there is the cautious rustling of silk against the narrow limits of the stairs, and the air blown past her is scented with a faint sweetness of violet, and I know well that it is she.

"Child, do not!" I cry, earnestly; "you will surely fall."

But she does not listen. The rustling and the scent of violet grow fainter, and die loiteringly.

For a moment I struggle and crowd, but I have found the incentive which I lacked hours ago to reach the other side, and I fight hard inch by inch.

The thought of catching her alone on these dark stairs is enough. Gasping for breath, at last I whisper :

"Cecile, I am afraid of the dark; wait for

me!"

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