A shout from the spectators, now congregated in considerable numbers, announced the anxiously expected arrival of Eugene Trevor. One second's pause, as raising himself in his stirrups, he seemed in one wild, hurried, desperate glance to review the fearful scene--then casting away the reins and springing to the ground, called out in a hoarse loud voice an inquiry for his father; but without waiting an answer--or perhaps reading the full truth too plainly revealed on the countenances of those around him--he darted forward, almost as the servant had related (it might have appeared with the desperate impulse to attempt even then the rescue of his father's remains); when, either repelled by the violent heat or suddenly recalled to recollection, he staggered back, struck his clenched hand wildly against his brow, and turned away just as that part of the roofing gave way; the flames bursting out with increasing fury necessitating a hasty retreat. The conflagration presented altogether a scene of awful grandeur. Engines were playing on the other extremity of the mansion, though little hopes of checking the devastation were entertained. All the furniture and other valuable property which it had been possible to rescue had been already removed, and now lay strewn out in the park before the house; and there, a little aloof from the rest of the crowd, with arms folded on his breast, stood Eugene Trevor watching the progress of the demolition--the terrible glare distinctly revealing the expression of dark despair settled in his glazed eyes and upturned countenance. A few gentlemen of the neighbourhood were on the spot, but a feeling of delicacy restrained them from intruding on the sufferer their sympathy at that dreadful moment. The feelings of a man who stands beholding the house of his forefathers burning before his eyes, with the fearful knowledge that a parent's blackened corpse is consuming to ashes beneath the ruins, might seem indeed to require no other consideration to render their harrowing nature complete. But were these the subject matter of the thoughts which pressed upon the soul of Eugene Trevor at that awful moment?--or had it been the natural promptings of filial piety alone which at first had impelled him to rush forwards in that fatal direction? Alas! no--rather must we fear it was the impulse of the man, goaded by the consciousness that there too was consuming the papers on whose existence all which he had staked his greedy soul to obtain, and the destruction of which must be the total demolition of all his unrighteous hopes and prospects, bring him to the feet of an injured and offended brother, and prove, in short, his ruin. * * * * *