The priest took others with him, and instantly set out for the place they described; but there they found a sight that made even the hearts of men accustomed to seek voluntarily every scene of human suffering, ache for the fate that was now past recall. There, indeed, lay the fair and powerful form of one in the earliest years of manhood, with the gray gown of a monk, indeed, cast over his shoulders, but beneath it the rich garments of a Norman noble, dyed with the flood of gore which had streamed from the death-wound in his breast. There, indeed, lay Richard de Lacy, slain by the hand of his own father; but he was not alone in death; for, cast upon his bosom, with her rich brown hair all dishevelled and unbound--with her garments, too, drenched in the blood that flowed from the heart of him she loved, lay the still, cold, but yet beautiful form of Eva de St. Clair. None could tell how she died; whether the intense cold of the night had aided, or whether grief had been alone enough to extinguish the warm spark of life within her bosom. All that was ever learned was the fact that, when the empress reached the bank of the river, Eva was not with her; and the fierceness of the pursuit compelled the rest of the party to go on without seeking the unhappy daughter of St. Clair. ANNIE DEER. ANNIE DEER. ---------- There is a little town on the coast of England, which at the present day is not exactly a seaport, though in former times, when the chivalrous race of Plantagenet held sway within these realms, it was not only reckoned as such, but sent its ships to the fleet under the command of a Mohun, a Grey, a De Lisle, or a Clinton. There is as little connexion, however, between the former state of the town and the present, as there is between those days and the time at which the events which I am about to relate took place. All that remains of its former splendour, indeed, is the ruin of an old castle, picturesquely perched on the extremity of a little slope, which, like the ambitious aspirations of youth that have no result, runs out, promontory fashion, into the sea, towering up as it goes, till, cut short in its career, it ends in a chalky cliff of no very great height. Upon the brow of that cliff is the castle we have mentioned, standing like the scull and cross-bones upon a nun's table, a memento of the transitory nature of all things, though the eyes once familiar with it seldom draw any moral from that memorial of the dead. Along the slope of the hill, towards the west, is built the little modern town, or, rather, the village, a congregation of small white houses looking over the ever-changing sea. Manifold are the gardens. Though Flora loves not to be fanned with the wings of Zephyr when his pen-feathers are dipped in brine, yet we are obliged to confess that the flowers there grown are sweet and beautiful; the shrubs, though rather diminutive in size, green and luxuriant.