gratified sense of vengeance, but now, how should he look on, and see him fall by another's pistol?--how see another expose his life in the place he felt to be his own? He could not forgive Talbot for this, and every painful thought the whole event suggested, embittered him against his friend as the cause of his suffering. And yet, was it possible for him ever himself to have challenged Travers? Did not the discovery of Kate's secret, as he called it to her, on the road below the cliff, at once and for ever, prevent such a catastrophe? Such were some of the harassing reflections which distracted Mark's mind, and to which his own wayward temper and natural excitability gave additional poignancy; while jealousy, a passion that fed and ministered to his hate, lived through every sentiment and tinctured every thought. Such had been his waking and sleeping thoughts for many a day-thoughts which, though lurking, like a slow poison, within him, had never become so palpable to his mind before; his very patriotism, the attachment he thought he felt to his native country, his ardent desire for liberty, his aspirations for national greatness, all sprung from this one sentiment of hate to the Saxon, and jealousy of the man who was his rival. Frederick Travers was the embodiment of all those feelings he himself believed were enlisted in the cause of his country. As these reflections crowded on him, they suggested new sources of suffering, and in the bewildered frame of mind to which he was now reduced, there seemed no possible issue to his difficulties. Mark was not, however, one of those who chalk out their line in life in moments of quiet reflection, and then pursue the career they have fixed upon. His course was rather to throw passion and impulse into the same scale with circumstances, and take his chance of the result. He had little power of anticipation, nor was his a mind that could calmly array facts before it, and draw the inferences from them. No, he met the dangers of life, as he would have done those of battle, with a heart undaunted, and a spirit resolved never to turn back. The sullen courage of his nature, if it did not suggest hope, at least supplied resolution--and how many go through life with no other star to guide them! At last the grey dawn of breaking day appeared above the house-tops, and the low distant sounds that prelude the movement of life in great cities, stirred faintly without. “Thank heaven, the night is over at last,” was Mark's exclamation, as he gazed upon the leaden streak of cloud that told of morning. All his preparations for departure were made, so that he had only to descend to the stable, and mount his horse. The animal, he was told, had formerly belonged to Talbot, and nothing save the especial favour of Billy Crossley could have procured him so admirable a mount.