to light his pipe, the excited Florian would ere long have thought him an unearthly object. The stranger now quitted his seat by the fire, took from a table near him a jug of wine, and approached the wondering Florian. "With your leave, my good sir," he began, "I will take a chair by your table. A little friendly gossip is the best of all seasoning to a glass of wine." Without waiting for a reply, the old man seated himself directly opposite to Florian, and again fixed a scrutinising gaze upon his countenance. The conscious fugitive, who felt a growing and unaccountable dread of this singular intruder, muttered a brief assent, and continued to eat his supper in silent but obvious embarrassment; stealing now and then a timid look at the stranger, but hastily withdrawing his furtive glances as he felt the beams of the old man's small and vivid eyes penetrating his very soul. He observed that the features of his tormentor were cast in a vulgar mould, but his gaze was widely different from that of clownish curiosity, and there was in his deportment a stern and steady self-possession, which suggested to the alarmed Florian a suspicion that he was an agent of the police, who had probably tracked him through the cross-roads he had traversed in his flight from D. The rich colour of his cheeks turned to an ashy paleness at this appalling conjecture; and, leaving his supper unfinished, he rose abruptly from the table to quit the room, when the old man, starting suddenly from his chair, seized the shaking hand of Florian, and, looking cautiously around him, said in subdued but impressive tones--"It is not accident, young man, which brings us together at this hour. I came in while you were asleep, and begged the landlord would not awaken you, that I might say a few words to you in confidence, after the servants had gone to bed." "To me?" exclaimed Florian, in anxious wonder. "Hush!" said the old man, again looking round the kitchen. "My object is to give you a friendly warning; for, if I am not for the first time mistaken in these matters, you are menaced with a formidable danger." "Danger?" repeated the pallid Florian, in a voice scarcely audible. "And have you not good reason to expect this danger?" continued the stranger. "Your sudden paleness tells me that you know it. I am an old man, and my life has been a rough pilgrimage, but I have still a warm heart, and can make large allowances for the headlong impetuosities which too often plunge a young man into crime. You may safely trust one," he continued, placing his hand upon his heart, "in whose bosom the confessions of many hapless fugitives repose, and will repose, so long as life beats in my pulses. I betray no man who confides in me, were he stained even with _blood_." Pausing a little, he fixed a keenly searching look upon the shrinking youth, and then whispered in his ear--"Young man! you have a _murder_ on your conscience!"