it was supposed that misfortune of some kind or other was close at hand. Mike's ugly face was always considered the shadow of the coming event, and it certainly proved to be an o'er correct criterion, in too many instances, of approaching evil.

With the Squire, however, this had no influence, and in opposition to John Hardy's strenuous opinion that he was in close league with the fiend, he always gave him a kind word of recognition when he met Mike, and it was generally accompanied with something of a more substantial form in token of compassion for the poor outcast.

Well, Mike!" exclaimed the Squire when he saw who it was, "although not an invited guest you're a welcome one. Come in, my good lad, and

have a glass of hot punch." "Thank ye, Sir," replied Mike with a grin; "but I'm afeard I should make one too many among ye."

"No, no, you'll not," rejoined the Squire. "At least," continued he correcting himself from a hint given by John Hardy's treading rather heavily on a tender corn, "at least not for the time it will take you to empty a glass and pocket half-a-crown. Go round, you will find the back door on the latch, Mike."

"You're very good, Sir," returned Mike, stretching down his long arms, and, sliding head foremost on to the floor, he gave a vault backwards upon reaching it with his hands, and fell lightly and nimbly upon the soles of his feet. "But like a rat," continued he, showing every tooth in his gigantic cavern of a mouth, " I can creep my body through any hole that I can pass my head."

It was great diversion for Mike to see the sensation this feat of agility occasioned. Every body endeavoured to assume composure and indifference at his dreaded presence: but at the same time their confusion was too apparent for concealment. There was no longer a mingling of noisy tongues and loud boisterous peals of mirth; all were silent, thoughtful, and uneasy, and stolen glances were exchanged expressive of the feelings that dictated them.

"There," said the Squire, who was the only one present in no way discomforted by the close proximity of Mike, "scoop a bumper from that bowl and pledge my health."

66

I humbly beg your pardon, Sir," replied Mike with a respectful bow; "but I don't like mixed liquors, and by your leave I'll take a sip of something raw and pure."

glass a flourish, and tipping it upon a thumb-nail he proved there was not a drop to be drained from the bottom. "Ha, ha, ha, and so you think, Mr. Hardy, that it would have choked any mortal throat, do ye?"

"How do you know what I think?" returned John almost passionately.

"Ha, ha, ha," rejoined Mike. "Ha, ha, ha." "Come, come," added the Squire in a reproving voice and manner, "remember to be respectful, Mike;" and as he said so, he threw to him a broad piece of silver.

"You're very good, Sir," replied he scraping a bow," and there's nothing like money to sharpen the memory. This," he continued, spinning the coin in the air and catching it adroitly, "puts me in mind of the errand I came about." "And what is that?"

"Hark!" rejoined Mike without heeding the question, and pointing to the roof above, "There are other messengers besides me. D'ye hear the rats over head ?”

"What do you mean?" said the Squire as a rushing noise was heard in the ceiling and adjoining panels.

"Ah! they're cute, cunning things," replied Mike admiringly. "I love rats better than many mothers love their babies. I've heard they leave the ship before it sinks, and quit the tottering house before it falls, and I know they're soon aware when one's on fire, and long before the owner."

ner,

"On fire!" ejaculated twenty tongues while horror and sickening fright paralysed every hearer. "Ay," returned Mike in a cool, collected man"I drank to your house-warming Mr. Lawrence, and if ye cast a look to the east end of this old rotten, worm-eaten pile of black bricks and mortar at this particular moment, you'll say that it was not ill-timed if it was ill-placed. For while ye've been " and he gave three or four awkward capers by way of a conclusion to the sentence- your house has been burning."

"Great God!" exclaimed the Squire, and the agony of his soul was portrayed in every linesment of his countenance.

For a brief moment, for the veriest grain and atom of time, there was such a break and pause and suppression of every sound, even to the beating of hearts and pulse, that the fall of a pin would have rung loudly upon the floor.

With this Mike gurgled a full half-pint glass from a bottle of fiery cogniac, and, holding it above his head, cried out "Here's to your house-warming, Mr. Lawrence," and he poured the stinging dram, without let or stop, down his throat, and gave a loud shrill whistle at the finish, by way of testing his powers of swallowing rebellious liquors.

"It would have choked any mortal," said John Hardy to himself, but neither lip nor tongue moved to measure the sentence.

"Ha, ha, ha," laughed Mike, giving the empty

untrue," and he shook his clenched fist threateningly as he spoke, perhaps for the first time in his life, " you shall be ducked in a horse-pond."

"Ducked in a horse-pond!" repeated Mike. "Pretty thanks I trow for my errand. But there's no fear o' that, Master. Go, and what I've said will soon be proved.”

Before Mike had finished his reply to John's threat, all had rushed terror-stricken from the hall, and they swept through the straight narrow passages and up the stairs and along the galleries, and, as they approached that part of the building alluded

John's blood curdled in his veins at these words, and even the Squire felt a shock as if he had received the contents of a galvanic battery, when they issued from Mike's lips in a loud and distinct tone. He had heard his friend's remark, and its being repeated so aptly by Mike, was, indeed, very startling, as it must have been without the reach of mortal hearing.

"Did ye hear that?" whispered John.

Black, begrimed, and sooty, he again commenced his labour at the bell, and as the light flared intensely bright upon him he looked like a demon summoning the condemned.

Between terror and astonishment, all eyes were bent upon Mike, and, notwithstanding the confusion his dangerous position created, many opinions were now expressed as to his being the author or instrument of the destruction of the Range. The tide of public compassion changed and set against him.

"I knew very well that something would happen directly I saw his ugly face through the window," observed one. "Ugly, indeed!" returned another. "He ought to have been strangled at his birth."

"Tut, tut, neighbour," added a third. "We can't choose our own faces, and we've no reason to think Mike would be so wicked. Besides, if he had fired the house, it is not very likely he'd have given notice of the act himself."

"I don't know that," rejoined a fourth. "He came and told me that my cow had broken her back; but there's very little doubt in my mind, that he drove her over the chalk-pit."

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"A murrain on ye for so speaking of it!" exclaimed a voice in the rear of the throng.

"Are you hurt, Mike?" asked the Squire, hurrying forwards to meet him.

No, and thank ye kindly, Sir," replied he.

Why did you remain so long there uselessly exposing yourself to danger?”

"An' may it please ye, Sir," returned Mike, “a little danger gives a fillip to sport."

"Sport!" angrily ejaculated the Squire.

Ay," coolly rejoined Mike. "Sport to some is often death and ruin to others; but that's no reason we shouldn't enjoy it."

"Hang the villain!" John Hardy was about to exclaim; but he checked the impulse just in time to prevent the sentence being uttered.

"The hemp isn't sown yet, Mr. Hardy, for the twisting of the cord," said Mike with a grin.

At this moment the ground on which they stood quivered again, as the remainder of the roof fell in with a terrific crash, and then a thick cloud of dust, ashes, and smoke, rose and completely obscured the burning pile; and when it had been wafted away, nothing remained to view of the Range, but the skeleton of the outward walls,—a

"If I thought that," replied he who was disposed to be more charitable towards Mike than the others, "I'd have let him want for a crust and a draught of milk before now, and he must have done both long ere this, if it hadn't been for me.' "He'll never beg another such meal of ye," remarked a bystander. "See, the fire has reached the bell-tower, and all escape is cut off." "Get a ladder, or he must perish ! Squire.

" cried the

But he might as well have called for wings to have flown, and snatched him from the wretched death which threatened him. The length of three ordinary ladders would not have reached the place where Mike stood, and not one was at hand for a useless attempt to be made with.

Scarcely, however, were the last words from the Squire's lips with a frantic gesture, than Mike gave a loud, thrilling "whoop," and, springing over the

"I say, my masters," observed Mike, as he pointed to the smouldering heap, "ye'll never hold your revel there again. No, no. The fiddle, the song, and the dance will not cheer and warm your hearts in the old manor-house when Christmas comes again. Ye'll think of that no matter where ye may be, I ween."

Sobs were now heard from various parts of the crowd of sorrowing spectators.

"Ay, ye can weep," continued Mike, "and so could I if I had the like cause. But then, d'ye see, Mike Crouch never had any. No, I often laugh; but a tear-by the Lord! I should like to know where tears are pumped from?" and then stretching his hands upon the ground, he threw himself over and over, after the fashion of a hoop in motion, and in this way trundled himself rapidly out of sight.

(To be continued.)

any questions I might wish to put to him. I ordered his memory to be refreshed with a glass of branntwein, which he took off in a very sensible manner; supplied him with a pipe, the universal master-key to the German heart, and, filling my own meerschaum, began to smoke and listen, as soon as a few questions had fairly opened the vein of his story. There is something in the vaporous fragrance of tobacco (especially if you can get good knaster) that reconciles me to the garrulous tales of old age, which one cannot always, at other times, hear without impatience.

The patois of the Saxon marches is almost unintelligible to a foreigner; but Jost spoke good German, a peculiarity, by the by, that I have remarked in other instances of deranged persons in this country. He began by relating his enlistment in youth as a soldier, and how he was wounded at Jena, where he was serving with the Prussians;-and afterwards got employment as keeper in the Weimar hospital; where he had recovered from his wounds, but with arms so fatally maimed, that he was no longer fit for the military trade, nor, indeed, for any other. Afterwards, when the Depository was established, he was selected to perform the office of watchman there.

"A quiet life," he said; " and I should not have been chosen for it, but that the older wardmen would not volunteer, although they had no reason to like their places in the hospital, either. It was something new and people used, as we Saxons are, to bury as soon as we can after the breath is gone, thought it a sad business to keep dead bodies lying with their eyes open, and a sentinel sitting outside, to come when they ring for him, like the waiter in a Wirthshaus! I did not much admire it myself, though I never feared to be with the dead, night or day; but it was no time for me to be nice; and, thinks I, a curious matter it must be, to startle a man who has known what it is to lie for two nights amongst the dying in the fields by Hassenhausen.

ing at each other! In this way I went on, further than did me any good,—for thoughts beset me now that I had never known before, and I grew as moping and fanciful as a girl in love. Something began to stir about me, too, that I have heard tell of in other lonely places :-whenever I touched the bell in sweeping down the walls, the door would shake, as if a hand was trying the lock; and I could not leave it ajar, without thinking that I caught glimpses of my own likeness peering at me through the chink. You have heard the bell, Mein Herr?-it has a spiteful, tingling note, that no blessed metal, I am sure, ever gave. I used to think (God be with us!) that Herr von Einsiedel must have paid some one to steal it from the porter's lodge at Hell gate!

"However, his Excellence, the highly-well-born minister and state privy councillor, was set on having his invention tried; and after much ado, he got me a customer now and then :—a child may be, or some young mother that had sunk away in her first delivery :-poor things that you could not have heartened into life again with all mother Ilse's liquors, that made Doctor Faust young. They were quiet guests as one could wish; but perhaps you have remarked, sir, that infants, and many women too, when young and fresh in life, sleep so fast, and look so calm, that they do not seem much changed if you see them after death. My poor Kätchen was one of these; a random shot killed her in my arms in 1804—and she lay for hours afterwards, smiling like a bride; I have seen her often paler when she was sleeping on my bosom,-the blessed one!-As for these stray guests of mine, they were mostly sorrowful creatures enough, and I fancy may have found it better for them in the world yonder, and never cared to look back. One after the other were quietly carried off to my old rival the sexton, who used to laugh in my face; until this way of his vexed me so, that I prayed one might recover, were it only to spite Claus Scheffel.

"Then came the French army's retreat from Moscow, and the rising of our country upon them; while I had to sit still, nursing my lame hands, and hear what better men were doing. This made other troubles worse, and kept me in a continual fever. In time, on the eve of the battle of Leipzig, the fighting came nearer to us; and many of the wounded in skirmishes which were now heard of in every direction, were brought into the hospitals here, mostly French officers. But I should sooner have expected old Rothbart* himself, than any of these for patients of mine: the ball and the sabre seldom leave much doubt when their work is finished, and war is not the best time for such curi. ous inquiries.

"So I thought; but one evening there came from the Infirmary the body of an officer. They said he had been struck by what is termed the wind of a ball;'-a strange death enough; he seemed as fast as a stone, although you could see no wounds, but some mere scratches, scarcely skin

*The Emperor Frederic Barbarossa-a favourite ob ject of the traditions still current amongst the Sav