implores Uncle Baldwin to assist him, and drops upon his knees to cover the retiring quarry with his useless weapon. The phantoms gather round; their mist-wreaths turn to muslin dresses, and their silver hair to glossy locks of mortal hues. The roaring tempest softens to an old familiar strain. Mary Delaval is before him. Her pale, sweet face is bent upon the kneeling boy with looks of unutterable love, and her white hand passes over his brow with an almost imperceptible caress. Her face sinks gradually to his--her breath is on his temples--his lips cling to hers--and he starts with horror at the kiss of love, striking cold and clammy from a grinning skull! Horror! the rifleman, whose skeleton he shuddered to find beneath his horse’s feet not eight-and-forty hours ago! What does he here in the drawing-room at home? _Home_--yes, he is at home, at last. It must have been fancy--the recollections of his African campaign! They are all gone to bed. He hears the General’s well-known tramp dying away along the passage; and he takes his candle to cross the spacious hall, dark and gloomy in that flickering light. Ha! seated on the stairs as on a throne frowns a presence that he dare not pass. A tall, dark figure, in the shape of a man, yet with angel beauty--no angel form of good--glorious in the grandeur of despair--magnificent in the pomp and glare of hell--those lineaments awful in their very beauty--those deep, unfathomable eyes, with their eternity of suffering, defiance, remorse, all but repentance or submission! Could mortal look and not quail? Could man front and not be blasted at the sight? On his lofty forehead sits a diadem, and on the centre of his brow, burned in and scorched, as it were, to the very bone, behold the seal of the Destroyer--the single imprint of a finger.