[figure description] Page 149.[end figure description]

In the commencement of the seventeenth century, there stood
among the woody hills and romantic gorges which sweep southwardly
down from the bleak expanse of Dartmoor, one of those
fine old English halls, which, dating from the reign of the last
of the Tudors, united so much of modern comfort with so much
of antique architectural beauty. Many specimens of this style
of building are still found to be scattered throughout England,
with their broad terraces, their quaintly-sculptured porticoes,
their tall projecting oriels, their many stacks of richly decorated
chimneys, and their heraldic bearings adorning every salient
point, grotesquely carved in the red freestone, which is
their most usual, as indeed their most appropriate material.
No one, however, existed, it is probable, at that day, more perfect
in proportion to its size, or more admirably suited to its
wild and romantic site, than the manor-house of Widecomb-Under-Moor,
or, as it was more generally called, in its somewhat
sequestered neighborhood, the House in the Woods. Even
at the present time, that is a very rural and little-frequented district;
its woods are more extensive, its moorlands wilder, its
streams less often turned to purposes of manufacturing utility,

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than in any other tract of the southern counties; but at the
time of which I write, when all England, was, comparatively
speaking, an agricultural country — when miles and miles of
forest existed, where there now can scarcely be found acres —
when the communications even between the neighboring country
towns were difficult and tedious, and those between the
country and metropolis almost impracticable — the region of
Dartmoor and its surrounding woodlands was less known and
less frequented, except by its own inhabitants, rude for the most
part and uncultured as their native hills, than the prairies of the
far west, or the solitudes of the Rocky mountains.

The few gentry, and lords of manors who own estates, and
had their castellated or Elizabethan dwellings, scattered here
and there, at long intervals, among the sylvan scenery of that
lonely region, were for the greater part little superior in habits,
in refinement, and in mental culture, to the boors around them.
Stanch hunters and hard drinkers, up with the lark and abed
before the curfew, loyal to their king, kind and liberal to their
dependants, and devout before their God, they led obscure and
blameless lives, careless of the great world, a rumor of which
rarely wandered so far as to reach their ears, unknown to fame,
yet neither useless nor unhonored within the sphere of their
humble influence, marked by few faults and many unpretending
virtues.

To this general rule, however, the lords of Widecomb manor
had long been an exception. Endowed with larger territorial
possessions than most of their neighbors, connected with many
of the noblest families of the realm, the St. Aubyns of Widecomb
manor had, for several generations, held themselves high
above the squires of the vicinity, and the burghers of the circumjacent
towns. Not confining themselves to the remote limits
of their rural possessions, many of them had shone in the
court and in the camp; several had held offices of trust and

[figure description] Page 151.[end figure description]

honor under Elizabeth and her successor; and when, in the
reign of the unfortunate Charles, the troubles between the king
and his parliament broke out at length into open war, the St.
Aubyn of that day, like many another gallant gentleman, emptied
his patrimonial coffers to replenish the exhausted treasury;
and melted his old plate and felled his older oaks, in order to
support the king's cause in the field, at the head of his own
regiment of horse.

Thence, when the good cause succumbed for a time, and
democratic license, hardly restrained by puritanic rigor, strode
rampant over the prerogative of England's crown, and the liberties
of England's people, fines, sequestrations, confiscations,
fell heavily on the confirmed malignancy, as it was then termed,
of the lord of Widecomb; and he might well esteem himself
fortunate, that he escaped beyond the seas with his head upon
his shoulders, although he certainly had not where to lay it.

Returning at the restoration with the second Charles, more
fortunate than many of his friends, Sir Miles St. Aubyn recovered
a considerable portion of his demesnes, which, though sequestrated,
had not been sold, and with these the old mansion,
now, alas! all too grand and stately for the diminished revenues
of its owner, and the shrunken estates which it overlooked.

It would not, perhaps, have been too late even then, for prudence
and economy, joined to a resolute will and energetic purpose,
to retrieve the shaken fortunes of the house; but having
recovered peace and a settled government, the people and the
court of England appear simultaneously to have lost their
senses. The overstrained and somewhat hypocritical morality
of the protectorate was succeeded by the wildest license, the
most extravagant debauchery; and in the orgies which followed
their restoration to their patrimonial honors, too many of the
gallant cavaliers discreditably squandered the last remnants of

[figure description] Page 152.[end figure description]

fortunes which had been half ruined in a cause so noble and
so holy.

Such was the fate of Sir Miles St. Aubyn. The brave and
generous soldier of the first Charles sank into the selfish, dissipated
roysterer, under his unworthy successor. He never
visited again the beautiful oak-woods and sparkling waters of
his native place, but frittered away a frivolous and useless life
among the orgies of Alsatia and the revels of Whitehall; and
died, unfriended, and almost alone, leaving an only son, who
had scarce seen his father, the heir to his impoverished fortunes
and little honored name.

His son, who was born before the commencement of the
troubles, of a lady highly bred, and endowed as highly, who
died — as the highly endowed die but too often — in the first
prime of womanhood, was already a man when the restoration
brought his father back to his native land, though not to his
patrimonial estates or his paternal duties.

Miles St. Aubyn, the younger, had been educated during the
period of the civil war, and during the protracted absence of
his father, by a distant maternal relative, whose neutrality and
humble position alike protected him from persecution by either
of the hostile parties. He grew up, like his race, strong, active,
bold, and gallant; and if he had not received much of
that peculiar nurture which renders men graceful and courtly-mannered,
almost from their cradles, he was at least educated
under the influence of those traditional principles which make
them at the bottom, even if they lack something of external
polish, high-souled and honorable gentlemen.

After the restoration he was sent abroad, as was the habit
of the day, to push his fortunes with his sword in the Netherlands,
then, as in all ages of the world, the chosen battle-ground
of nations. There he served many years, if not with high distinction,
at least with credit to his name; and if he did not

[figure description] Page 153.[end figure description]

win high fortune with his sword — and indeed the day for such
winnings had already passed in Europe — he at least enjoyed
the advantage of mingling, during his adventurous career, with
the great, the noble, and the famous of the age. When, on his
return to his native land after his father's death, he turned his
sword into a ploughshare, and sought repose among the old
staghorned oaks at Widecomb, he was no longer the enthusiastic,
wild, and headstrong youth of twenty years before; but
a grave, polished, calm, accomplished man, with something of
Spanish dignity and sternness engrafted on the frankness of his
English character, and with the self-possession of one used
familiarly to courts and camps showing itself in every word
and motion.

He was a man moreover of worth, energy, and resolution,
and sitting down peacefully under the shadow of his own woods,
he applied himself quietly, but with an iron steadiness of purpose
that insured success, to retrieving in some degree the fortunes
of his race.

Soon after he returned he had taken unto himself a wife, not
perhaps very wisely chosen, from a family of descent prouder
and haughtier even than his own, and of fortunes if not as
much impoverished, at least so greatly diminished, as to render
the lady's dower a matter merely nominal. But it was an
old affection — a long promise, hallowed by love, and constancy,
and honor.

She was, moreover, a beautiful and charming creature, and,
so long as she lived, rendered the old soldier a very proud and
very happy husband, and when she died — which, most unhappily
for all concerned, was but a few months after giving birth
to an only son — left him so comfortless, and at the same time
so wedded to the memory of the dead, that he never so much
as envisaged the idea of a second marriage.

This gentleman it was, who, many long years after the death

[figure description] Page 154.[end figure description]

of the gentle Lady Alice, dwelt in serene and dignified seclusion
in the old hall, which he had never quitted since he became
a widower; devoting his whole abilities to nursing his
dilapidated estates, and educating his only son, whom he regarded
with affection bordering on idolatry.

With the last Miles St. Aubyn, however, we shall have little
to do henceforth, for the soldier of the Netherlands had departed
so far from the traditions of his family — the eldest son of which
had for generations borne the same name of Miles — as to drop
that patrimonial appellation in the person of his son, whom he
had caused to be christened Jasper, after a beloved friend, a
brother of the lady, afterward his wife, who had fallen by his
side on a well-fought field in the Luxembourg.

What was the cause which induced the veteran, in other respects
so severe a stickler for ancient habitudes, to swerve from this
time-honored custom, it would be difficult to state; some of those
who knew him best, attributing it merely to the desire of perpetuating
the memory of his best friend in the person of his
only child; while others ascribed it to a sort of superstitious
feeling, which, attaching the continued decline of the house to
the continual recurrence of the patronymic, looked forward in
some degree to a revival of its honors with a new name to its
lord.

Whatever might have been the cause, the consequences of
this deviation from old family usage, as prognosticated by the
dependants of Widecomb, and the superstitious inhabitants of
the neighboring woods and wolds, were anything but likely to
better the fortunes of the lords of the manor; for not a few of
them asserted, with undoubting faith, that the last St. Aubyn
had seen the light of day, and that in the same generation
which had seen the extinction of the old name the old race
should itself pass away. Nor did they lack some sage authority
to which they might refer for confirmation of their dark

[figure description] Page 155.[end figure description]

forebodings; for there existed, living yet in the mouths of men,
one of those ancient saws, which were so common a century or
two ago in the rural districts of England, as connected with the
fortunes of the old houses; and which were referred to some
Mother Shipton, or other equally infallible soothsayer of the
county, whose dicta to the vulgar minds of the feudal tenantry
were confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ.

The prophecy in question was certainly exceeding old; and
had been handed down through many generations, by direct oral
tradition, among a race of men wholly illiterate and uneducated;
to whom perhaps alone, owing to the long expatriation of
the late and present lords of the manor, it was now familiar;
although in past times it had doubtless been accredited by the
family to which it related.

It ran as follows, and, not being deficient in a sort of wild
harmony and rugged solemnity, produced, by no means unnaturally,
a powerful effect on the minds of hearers, when recited
in awe-stricken tones and with a bended brow beside some feebly-glimmering
hearth, in the lulls of the tempest haply raving
without, among the leafless trees, under the starless night. It
ran as follows, and, universally believed by the vassals of the
house, it remains for us to see how far its predictions were confirmed
by events, and how far it influenced or foretold the
course of passion, or the course of fate —

Thus far it has been necessary for us to tread back the path
of departed generations, and to retrace the fortunes of the

[figure description] Page 156.[end figure description]

Widecomb family, inasmuch as many of the events, which we shall
have to narrate hereafter, and very much of the character of
the principal personage, to whom our tale relates, have a direct
relation to these precedents, and would have been to a certain
degree incomprehensible but for this retrogression. If it obtain
no other end, it will serve at least to explain how, amid
scenes so rural and sequestered, and dwelling almost in solitude,
among neighbors so rugged and uncivilized, there should
have been found a family, deprived of all advantages of intercommunication
with equals or superiors in intellect or demeanor,
and even unassisted by the humanizing influence of familiar
female society, which had yet maintained, as if traditionally, all
the principles, all the ideas, and all the habitudes of the brightest
schools of knightly courtesy and gentlemanly bearing, all
the graces and easy dignity of courts, among the remote solitudes
of the country.

At the time when our narrative commences, the soldier of
the Netherlands, Sir Miles St. Aubyn — for though he cared
not to bear a foreign title, he had been stricken a knight banneret
on a bloody battle-field of Flanders — had fallen long into
the sere, the yellow leaf; and though his cheek was still ruddy
as a winter pippin, his eye bright and clear, and his foot firm
as ever, his hair was as white as the drifted snow; his arm had
lost its nervous power; and if his mind was still sane, and his
body sound, he was now more addicted to sit beside the glowing
hearth in winter, or to bask in the summer sunshine, poring
over some old chronicle or antique legend, than to wake the
echoes of the oak-woods with his bugle-born, or to rouse the
heathcock from the heathy moorland with his blythe springers.

Not so, however, the child of his heart, Jasper. The boy
on whom such anxious pains had been bestowed, on whom
hopes so intense reposed, had reached his seventeenth summer.
Like all his race, he was unusually tall, and admirably formed,

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for both agility and strength. Never, from his childhood upward,
having mingled with any persons of vulgar station or unpolished
demeanor, he was, as if by nature, graceful and easy.
His manners, although proud, and marked by something of that
stern dignity which we have mentioned as a characteristic of
the father, but which in one so youthful appeared strange and
out of place, were ever those of a high and perfect gentleman.
His features were marked with all the ancestral beauties, which
may be traced in unmixed races through so many generations;
and as it was a matter of notorious truth, that from the date of
the conquest, no drop of Saxon or of Celtic blood had been infused
into the pure Norman stream which flowed through the
veins of the proud St. Aubyns, it was no marvel that after the
lapse of so many ages the youthful Jasper should display, in
both face and form, the characteristic lines and coloring peculiar
to the noblest tribe of men that has ever issued from the great
northern hive of nations. Accordingly, he had the rich dark
chestnut hair, not curled, but waving in loose clusters; the clear
gray eye; the aquiline nose; the keen and fiery look; the resolute
mouth, and the iron jaw, which in all ages have belonged
to the descendant of the Northman. While the spare yet
sinewy frame, the deep, round chest, thin flanks, and limbs
long and muscular and singularly agile, were not less perfect
indications of his blood than the sharp eagle-like expression of
the bold countenance.

Trained in his early boyhood to all those exercises of activity
and strength, which were in those days held essential to
the gentleman, it needs not to say that Jasper St. Aubyn could
ride, swim, fence, shoot, run, leap, pitch the bar, and go through
every manœuvre of the salle d' armes, the tilt-yard, and the man
ége, with equal grace and power. Nor had his lighter accomplishments
been neglected; for the age of his father and grandfather,
if profligate and dissolute even to debauchery, was still

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refined and polished, and to dance gracefully, and touch the
lute or sing tastefully, was as much expected from the cavalier
as to have a firm foot in the stirrup, or a strong and supple
wrist with the backsword and rapier.

His mind had been richly stored also, if not very sagely
trained and regulated. For Sir Miles, in the course of his irregular
and adventurous life, had read much more than he had
meditated; had picked up much more of learning than he had
of philosophy; and what philosophy he had belonged much
more to the cold self-reliance of the camp than to the sounder
tenets of the schools.

While filling his son's mind, therefore, with much curious
lore of all sorts; while making him a master of many tongues,
and laying before him books of all kinds, the old banneret had
taken little pains — perhaps he would not have succeeded had
he taken more — to point the lessons which the books contained;
to draw deductions from the facts which he inculcated;
or to direct the course of the young man's opinions.

Self-taught himself, or taught only in the hard school of experience,
and having himself arrived at sound principles of conduct,
he never seemed to recollect that the boy would run
through no such ordeal, and reap no such lessons; nor did he
ever reflect that the deductions which he had himself drawn
from certain facts, acquired in one way, and under one set of
circumstances, would probably be entirely different from those
at which another would arrive, when his data were acquired in
a very different manner, and under circumstances altogether
diverse and dissimilar.

Thence it came that Jasper St. Aubyn, at the age of seventeen
years, was in all qualities of body thoroughly trained and
disciplined; and in all mental faculties perfectly educated, but
entirely untrained, uncorrected, and unchastened.

In manner, he was a perfect gentleman; in body, he was a

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perfect man; in mind, he was almost a perfect scholar. And
what, our reader will perhaps inquire, what could he have been
more; or what more could education have effected in his behalf?

Much — very much — good friend.

For as there is an education of the body, and an education
of the brain, so is there also an education of the heart. And
that is an education which men rarely have the faculty of imparting,
and which few men ever have obtained, who have not
enjoyed the inestimable advantage of female nurture during their
youth, as well as their childhood; unless they have learned it
in the course of painful years, from those severe and bitter
teachers, those chasteners and purifiers of the heart — sorrow
and suffering, which two constitute experience.

This, then, was the education in which Jasper St. Aubyn
was altogether deficient; which Sir Miles had never so much
as attempted to impart to him; and which, had he endeavored,
he probably would have failed, to bestow.

We do not mean to say that the boy was heartless — boys
rarely are so, we might almost say never — nor that the impulses
of his heart were toward evil rather than good; far from it.
His heart, like all young and untainted hearts, was full of noble
impulses — but they were impulses; full of fresh springing
generous desires, of gracious sympathies and lofty aspirations—
but he had not one principle — he never had been taught to
question one impulse, before acting upon it — he never had
learned to check one desire, to doubt the genuineness of one
sympathy, to moderate the eagerness of one aspiration. He
never had been brought to suspect that there were such virtues
as self-control, or self-devotion; such vices as selfishness or
self-abandonment — in a word, he never had so much as heard,


“That Right is right, and that to follow Right
Were wisdom, in the scorn of consepuence”—

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and therefore he was, at the day of which we write, even what
he was; and thereafter, what we propose to show you.

At the time when the youthful heir had attained his seventeenth
year, the great object of his father's life was accomplished;
the fortunes of the family were so far at least retrieved,
that if the St. Aubyns no longer aspired, as of old, to be the
first or wealthiest family of the county, they were at least able
to maintain the household on that footing of generous liberality
and hospitable ease which has been at all times the pride and
passion of the English country gentleman.

For many years Sir Miles had undergone the severest privations,
and it was only by the endurance of actual poverty within
doors, that he was enabled to maintain that footing abroad, without
which he could scarcely have preserved his position in society.

For many years the park had been neglected, the gardens
overrun with weeds and brambles, the courts grass-grown, and
the house itself dilapidated, literally from the impossibility of
supporting domestics sufficiently numerous to perform the necessary
labors of the estate.

During much of this period it was to the beasts of the forest,
the fowl of the moorland, and the fish of the streams, that the
household of Widecomb had looked for their support; nor did
the table of the banneret himself boast any liquor more generous
than that afforded by the ale-vats of March and October.

Throughout the whole of this dark and difficult time, however,
the stout old soldier had never suffered one particle of
that ceremonial, which he deemed essential as well to the formation
as the preservation of the character of a true gentleman
to be relaxed or neglected by his diminished household.

Personally, he was at all times clad point device; nor did he
ever fail in being mounted, himself and at least one attendant,
as became a cavalier of honor. The hours of the early dinner,

[figure description] Page 161.[end figure description]

and of the more agreeable and social supper, were announced
duly by the clang of trumpets, even when there were no guests
to be summoned, save the old banneret and his motherless
child, and perhaps the only visiter for years at Widecomb
manor, the gray-haired vicar of the village, who had served
years before as chaplain of an English regiment in the Low
Countries, with Sir Miles. Nor was the pewter tankard, containing
at the best but toast and ale, stirred with a sprig of rosemary,
handed around the board with less solemnity than had it
been a silver hanap mantling with the first vintages of Burgundy
or Xeres.

Thus it was that, as Jasper advanced gradually toward years
of manhood, the fortunes of the house improving in proportion
to his growth, seeing no alteration in the routine of the household,
he scarcely was aware that any change had taken place
in more essential points.

The eye and ear of the child had been taken by the banners,
the trumpets, and the glittering board, and his fancy riveted by
the solemnity and grave decorum which characterized the meals
partaken in the great hall; and naturally enough he never knew
that the pewter platters and tankards had been exchanged, since
those days, for plate of silver, and the strong ale converted into
claret or canary.

The consequence of this was simply that he found himself a
youth of seventeen, surrounded by all the means and appliances
of luxury, with servants, horses, hounds, and falcons at his
command, the leading personage, beyond all comparison, of the
neighborhood, highly-born, handsome, well-bred, and accomplished.
All this, by the way, was entirely uncorrected by any
memory of past sufferings or sorrows, either on his own part or
on that of his family, or by any knowledge of the privations and
exertions on the part of Sir Miles, by which this present affluence
had been purchased; and he became, naturally enough,

[figure description] Page 162.[end figure description]

somewhat over-confident in his own qualities, somewhat overbearing
in his manner, and not a little intolerant and inconsiderate
as to the opinions and feelings of others. He then presented
in a word, the not unusual picture of an arrogant, self-sufficient,
proud and fiery youth, with many generous and noble
points, and many high qualities, which, duly cultivated, might
have rendered him a good, a happy, and perhaps even a great
man; but which, untrained as they were, and suffered to run
up into a rank and unpruned overgrowth, were but too likely to
degenerate themselves into vices, and to render him at some
future day a tormentor of himself, and an opposer of others.

Now, however, he was a general favorite, for largely endowed
with animal spirits, indulged in every wish that his fancy could
form, never crossed in the least particular, it was rarely that
his violent temper would display itself, or his innate selfishness
rise conspicuous above the superficial face of good-nature and
somewhat careless affability, which he presented to the general
observer.

It was, perhaps, unfortunate for Jasper, no less than for those
who were in after-days connected with him, whether for good
or evil, that, at this critical period of his adolescence, when the
character of the man is developed from the accidents of boyhood,
in proportion as his increasing years and altered habits
and pursuits led him to be more abroad, and cast him in some
degree into the world, the advancing years and growing infirmities
of his father kept him closer to the library and the hall.

So that at the very time when his expanding mind and nascent
passions most needed sage advice and moderate coercion,
or at least wary guidance, he was abandoned almost entirely to
his own direction. The first outbreaks, therefore, of evil principles,
the germs of a masterful will, the seeds of fierce and
fiery passions, and, above all, the growing recklessness with
regard to the feelings and the rights of others, which could

[figure description] Page 163.[end figure description]

scarcely have escaped the notice of the shrewd old man had
he accompanied his son abroad, and which, if noticed, would
surely have been repressed, were allowed to increase hourly
by self-indulgence and the want of restraint, unknown and unsuspected
to the youth himself, for whom one day they were
to be the cause of so many and so bitter trials.

But it is now time that, turning from this brief retrospect of
previous events, and this short analysis of the early constitution
of the mind of him whose singular career is to form the subject
of this narrative, we should introduce our reader to the
scene of action, and to the person whose adventures in after-life
will perhaps excuse the space which has necessarily been
allotted to the antecedents of the first marked event which befell
him, and from which all the rest took their rise in a train
of connection, which, although difficult to trace by a casual observer,
was in reality close and perfect.

The manor-house of Widecomb, such as it has been slightly
sketched above, stood on a broad flat terrace, paved with slabs
of red freestone, and adorned with a massive balustrade of the
same material, interspersed with grotesque images at the points
where it was reached from the esplanade below, by three or
four flights of broad and easy steps.

The mansion itself was large, and singularly picturesque,
but the beauties of the building were as nothing to those of the
scenery which it overlooked.

It was built on the last and lowest slope of one of those romantic
spurs which tread southerly from the wild and heathery
heights of Dartmoor. And although the broad and beautifullykept
lawn was embosomed in a very woody and sylvan chase,
full of deep glens and tangled dingles, which was in turn framed
on three sides by the deep oak-woods, covering all the rounded
hills in the rear of the estate, and to the right and left hand,
yet as the land continued to fall toward the south for many and

[figure description] Page 164.[end figure description]

many a mile, the sight could range from the oriel windows of
the great hall, and of the fine old library, situated on either
hand of the entrance and armory, over a wide expanse of richly-cultivated
country, with more than one navigable river winding
among the woods and corn-fields, and many a village steeple
glittering among the hedgerows, until in the far distance it
was bounded by a blue, hazy line, which seemed to melt into
the sky, but which was in truth—though not to be distinguished
as such, unless by a practised eye—the British channel.

The hall itself, and even the southern verge of the chase,
which bounded the estate in that direction, lay, however, at a
considerable distance from the cultivated country, and was divided
from it by a vast broken chasm, with banks so precipitous
and rocky that no road had ever been carried through it,
while its great width had deterred men from the idea of bridging
it. Through this strange and terrific gorge there rushed
an impetuous and powerful torrent, broken by many falls and
rapids, with many a deep and limpid pool between them, favorite
haunts of the large salmon and sea-trout which abounded in
its waters. This brook, for it scarcely can be called a river,
although, after the rains of autumn or the melting snows of
spring, it sent down an immense volume of dark, rust-colored
water, with a roar that could be heard for miles, to the distant
Tamar, swept down the hills in a series of cascades from the
right hand, or western side of the park, until it reached the
brink of the chasm we have described, lying at right angles to
its former course, down which it plunged into an impetuous fall
and rapid of nearly three hundred feet, and rushed thence eastearly
away, walled on each side by the precipitous rock, until
some five miles thence it was crossed at a deep and somewhat
dangerous ford, by the only great road which traversed that
district, and by which alone strangers could reach the hall and
its beautiful demesnes.

[figure description] Page 165.[end figure description]

To the westward or right hand side of the chase the country
was entirely wild and savage, covered with thick woods, interspersed
with lonely heaths, and intersected by hundreds of
clear brawling rills. To the eastward, however, although much
broken by forest-ground, there was a wide range of rich pasture-fields
and meadows, divided by great overgrown hawthorn
hedges, each hedge almost a thicket, and penetrated by numerous
lanes and horse-roads, buried between deep banks, and
overcanopied by foliage, that, even at noonday, was almost
impenetrable to the sunshine.

Here and there lay scattered among the fields and woods,
innumerable farm-houses and granges, the abodes of small free-holders,
once tenants and vassals of the great St. Aubyns; and,
at about six miles from the hall, nestled in a green valley,
through which ran a clear, bright trout-stream to join the turbulent
torrent, stood the little market-town of Widecomb-Under-Moor,
from their unalienated property in which the family of
St. Aubyn derived the most valuable portion of their income.

Over the whole of this pleasant aud peaceful tract, whether
it was still owned by themselves, or had passed into the hands
of the free yeomanry, the lords of Widecomb still held manorial
rights, and the few feudal privileges which had survived the
revolution; and through the whole of it, Sir Miles St. Aubyn
was regarded with unmixed love and veneration, while the boy
Jasper was looked upon almost as a son in every family, though
some old men would shake their heads doubtfully, and mutter
sage but unregarded saws concerning his present disposition
and future prospects; and some old grandames would prognosticate
disasters, horrors, and even crimes, as hanging over his
career, in consequence, perhaps, of the inauspicious change in
the patronymic of his race.

They were a happy and an unsophisticated race that inhabited
those lonely glens. Sufficiently well provided to be above

[figure description] Page 166.[end figure description]

the want of necessaries, or the fears of poverty, they were not
so far removed from the necessity of labor as to have incurred
vicious ambitions — moderate, frugal, and industrious, they
lived uncorrupted, and died happy in their unlearned innocence.

It was the boast of the district, that bars and locks were appendages
to doors entirely unusual and useless; that the cage
of Widecomb had not held a tenant since the days of stiff old
Oliver; and that no deed of violence or blood had ever tainted
those calm vales with horror.

Alas! how soon was that boast to be annulled; how soon
were the details of a dread, domestic tragedy, full of dark horrors,
to render the very name of Widecomb a terror, and to invest
the beauteous scenery with images of superstitious awe
and hatred. But we must not anticipate, nor seek as yet to
penetrate the secrets of that destiny, which even during the
morn of promising young life, seemed to overhang the house—

CHAPTER I. THE PERIL.

“I say beware—
That way perdition lies, the very path
Of seeming safety leading to the abyss.”
—MS.

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It was as fair a morning of July as ever dawned in the blue
summer sky; the sun as yet had risen but a little way above
the waves of fresh green foliage which formed the horizon of
the woodland scenery surrounding Widecomb manor; and his
heat, which promised ere mid-day to become excessive, was
tempered now by the exhalations of the copious night-dews,
and by the cool breath of the western breeze, which came down
through the leafy gorges, in long, soft swells from the open
moorland.

All nature was alive and joyous; the air was vocal with the
piping melody of the blackbirds and thrushes, carolling in every
brake and bosky dingle; the smooth, green lawn, before
the windows of the old hall, was peopled with whole tribes of
fat, lazy hares, limping about among the dewy herbage, fearless,
as it would seem, of man's aggression; and to complete
the picture, above a score of splendid peacocks were strutting
to and fro on the paved terraces, or perched upon the carved
stone balustrades, displaying their gorgeous plumage to the early
sunshine.

The shadowy mists of the first morning twilight had not been

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long dispersed from the lower regions, and were suspended
still in the middle air in broad fleecy masses, though melting
rapidly away in the increasing warmth and brightness of the
day.

And still a faint blue line hovered over the bed of the long
rocky gorge, which divided the chase from the open country,
floating about like the steam of a seething caldron, and rising
here and there into tall smoke-like columns, probably where
some steeper cataract of the mountain-stream sent its foam skyward.

So early, indeed, was the hour, that had my tale been recited
of these degenerate days, there would have been no gentle eyes
awake to look upon the loveliness of newly-awakened nature.

In the good days of old, however, when daylight was still
deemed to be the fitting time for labor and for pastime, and
night the appointed time for natural and healthful sleep, the
dawn was wont to brighten beheld by other eyes than those of
clowns and milkmaids, and the gay songs of the matutinal birds
were listened to by ears that could appreciate their untaught
melodies.

And now, just as the stable-clock was striking four, the great
oaken door of the old hall was thrown open with a vigorous
swing that made it rattle on its hinges, and Jasper St. Aubyn
came bounding out into the fresh morning air, with a foot as
elastic as that of the mountain roe, singing a snatch of some
quaint old ballad.

He was dressed simply in a close-fitting jacket and tight hose
of dark-green cloth, without any lace or embroidery, light boots
of untanned leather, and a broad-leafed hat, with a single eagle's
feather thrust carelessly through the band. He wore neither
cloak nor sword, though it was a period at which gentlemen
rarely went abroad without both these, their distinctive attributes;
but in the broad black belt which girt his rounded waist

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he carried a stout wood-knife with a buckhorn hilt; and over
his shoulder there swung, from a leathern thong, a large wicker
fishing-basket.

Nothing, indeed, could be simpler or less indicative of any
particular rank or station in society than young St. Aubyn's
garb, yet it would have been a very dull and unobservant eye
which should take him for aught less than a high-born and
high-bred gentleman.

His fine intellectual face, his bearing erect before heaven,
the graceful ease of his every motion, as he hurried down the
flagged steps of the terrace, and planted his light foot on the
dewy greensward, all betokened gentle birth and gentle associations.

But he thought nothing of himself, nor cared for his advantages,
acquired or natural. The long and heavy salmon-rod
which he carried in his right hand, in three pieces as yet unconnected,
did not more clearly indicate his purpose than the
quick marking glance which he cast toward the half-veiled sun
and hazy sky, scanning the signs of the weather.

“It will do, it will do,” he said to himself, thinking as it were
aloud, “for three or four hours at least; the sun will not shake
off those vapors before eight o'clock at the earliest, and if he do
come out then hot and strong, I do not know but the water is
dark enough after the late rains to serve my turn awhile longer.
It will blow up, too, I think from the westward, and there will
be a brisk curl on the pools. But come, I must be moving, if I
would reach Darringford to breakfast.

And as he spoke he strode out rapidly across the park toward
the deep chasm of the stream, crushing a thousand aromatic
perfumes from the dewy wild-flowers with his heedless foot,
and thinking little of the beauties of nature, as he hastened to
the scene of his loved exercise.

It was not long, accordingly, before he reached the brink of

[figure description] Page 170.[end figure description]

the steep rocky bank above the stream, which he proposed to
fish that morning, and paused to select the best place for descending
to the water's edge.

It was, indeed, a striking and romantic scene as ever met
the eye of painter or of poet. On the farther side of the gorge,
scarcely a hundred yards distant, the dark limestone rocks rose
sheer and precipitous from the very brink of the stream, rifted
and broken into angular blocks and tall columnar masses, from
the clefts of which, wherever they could find soil enough to
support their scanty growth, a few stunted oaks shot out almost
horizontally with their gnarled arms and dark-green foliage, and
here and there the silvery bark and quivering tresses of the
birch relieved the monotony of color by their gay brightness.
Above, the cliffs were crowned with the beautiful purple
heather, now in its very glow of summer bloom, about which
were buzzing myriads of wild bees sipping their nectar from its
cups of amethyst.

The hither side, though rough and steep and broken, was not
in the place where Jasper stood precipitous; indeed, it seemed
as if at some distant period a sort of landslip had occurred, by
which the fall of the rocky wall had been broken into massive
fragments, and hurled down in an inclined plane into the bed
of the stream, on which it had encroached with its shattered
blocks and rounded boulders.

Time, however, had covered all this abrupt and broken slope
with a beautiful growth of oak and hazel coppice, among which,
only at distant intervals, could the dun weather-beaten flanks
of the great stones be discovered.

At the base of this descent, a hundred and fifty feet perhaps
below the stand of the young sportsman, flowed the dark arrowy
stream — a wild and perilous water. As clear as crystal, yet
as dark as the brown cairn-gorm, it came pouring down among
the broken rocks with a rapidity and force which showed what

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must be its fury when swollen by a storm among the mountains,
here breaking into wreaths of rippling foam where some unseen
ledge chafed its current, there roaring and surging white as
December's snow among the great round-headed rocks, and
there again wheeling in sullen eddies, dark and deceitful, round
and round some deep rock-brimmed basin.

Here and there, indeed, it spread into wide shallow rippling
rapids, filling the whole bottom of the ravine from side to side,
but more generally it did not occupy above a fourth part of the
space below, leaving sometimes on this margin, sometimes on
that, broad pebbly banks, or slaty ledges, affording an easy footing,
and a clear path to the angler of its troubled waters.

After a rapid glance over the well-known scene, Jasper
plunged into the coppice, and following a faint track worn by
the feet of the wild-deer in the first instance, and widened by
his own bolder tread, soon reached the bottom of the chasm,
though not until he had flushed from the dense oak covert two
noble black cocks with their superb forked tails, and glossy
purple-lustred plumage, which soared away, crowing their bold
defiance, over the heathery moorlands.

Once at the water's edge, the young man's tackle was speedily
made ready, and in a few minutes his long line went whistling
through the air, as he wielded the powerful two-handed
rod, as easily as if it had been a stripling's reed; and the large
gaudy peacock-fly alighted on the wheeling eddies, at the tail
of a long arrowy shoot, as gently as if it had settled from too
long a flight. Delicately, deftly, it was made to dance and
skim the clear, brown surface, until it had crossed the pool and
neared the hither bank; then again, obedient to the pliant wrist,
it arose on glittering wing, circled half round the angler's head,
and was sent thirty yards aloof, straight as a wild bee's flight,
into a little mimic whirlpool, scarce larger than the hat of the
skilful fisherman, which spun round and round just below a

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gray ledge of limestone. Scarce had it reached its mark before
the water broke all around it, and the gay deceit vanished,
the heavy swirl of the surface, as the break was closing, indicating
the great size of the fish which had risen. Just as the
swirl was subsiding, and the forked tail of the monarch of the
stream was half seen as he descended, that indescribable but
well-known turn of the angler's wrist, fixed the barbed hook,
and taught the scaly victim the nature of the prey he had gorged
so heedlessly.

With a wild bound he threw himself three feet out of the water,
showing his silver sides, with the sea-lice yet clinging to
his scales, a fresh sea-run fish of fifteen, ay, eighteen pounds,
and perhaps over.

On his broad back he strikes the water, but not as he meant
the tightened line; for as he leaped the practised hand had
lowered the rod's tip, that it fell in a loose bight below him.
Again! again! again; and yet a fourth time he bounded into the
air with desperate and vigorous soubresaults, like an unbroken
steed that would dismount his rider, lashing the eddies of the
dark stream into bright bubbling streaks, and making the heart
of his captor beat high with anticipation of the desperate struggle
that should follow, before the monster would lie panting and
exhausted on the yellow sand or moist greensward.

Away! with the rush of an eagle through the air, he is gone
like an arrow down the rapids — how the reel rings, and the
line whistles from the swift-working wheel; he is too swift,
too headstrong to be checked as yet; tenfold the strength of
that slender tackle might not control him in his first fiery
rush.

But Jasper, although young in years, was old in the art, and
skilful as the craftiest of the gentle craftsmen. He gives him
the butt of his rod steadily, trying the strength of his tackle
with a delicate and gentle finger, giving him line at every rush,

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yet firmly, cautiously, feeling his mouth all the while, and moderating
his speed even while he yields to his fury.

Meanwhile, with the eye of intuition and the nerve of iron,
he bounds along the difficult shore, he leaps from rock to rock,
alighting on their silvery tops with the firm agility of the ropedancer,
he splashes knee-deep through the slippery shallows,
keeping his line ever taut, inclining his rod over his shoulder,
bearing on his fish ever with a killing pull, steering him clear
of every rock or stump against which he would fain smash the
tackle, and landing him at length in a fine open roomy pool, at
the foot of a long stretch of white and foamy rapids, down
which he has just piloted him with the eye of faith, and the
foot of instinct.

And now the great salmon has turned sulky; like a piece of
lead he has sunk to the bottom of the deep black pool, and lies
on the gravel bottom in the sullenness of despair.

Jasper stooped, gathered up in his left hand a heavy pebble,
and pitched it into the pool, as nearly as he could guess to the
whereabout of his game — another — and another! Ah! that
last has roused him. Again he throws himself clear out of
water, and again foiled in his attempt to smash the tackle, dashes
away down stream impetuous.

But his strength is departing — the vigor of his rush is broken.
The angler gives him the butt abundantly, strains on him
with a heavier pull, yet ever yields a little as he exerts his failing
powers; see, his broad silver side has thrice turned up,
even turned to the surface, and though each time he was recovered
himself, each time it has been with a heavier and more
sickly motion.

Brave fellow! his last race is run, his last spring sprung —
no more shall he disport himself in the bright reaches of the
Tamar; no more shall the Naiads wreathe his clear silver
scales with river-greens and flowery rushes.

[figure description] Page 174.[end figure description]

The cruel gaff is in his side — his cold blood stains the eddies
for a moment — he flaps out his death-pang on the hard
limestone.

“Who-whoop! a nineteen-pounder!”

Meantime the morning had worn onward, and ere the great
fish was brought to the basket the sun had soared clear above
the mist-wreaths, and had risen so high into the summer heaven
that his slant rays poured down into the gorge of the stream,
and lighted up the clear depths with a lustre so transparent that
every pebble at the bottom might have been discerned, with the
large fish here and there floating mid depth, with their heads
up stream, their gills working with a quick motion, and their
broad tails vibrating at short intervals slowly but powerfully, as
they lay motionless in opposition to the very strongest of the
swift current.

The breeze had died away, there was no curl upon the water,
and the heat was oppressive.

Under such circumstances, to whip the stream was little better
than mere loss of time, yet, as he hurried with a fleet foot
down the gorge, perhaps with some ulterior object, beyond the
mere love of sport, Jasper at times cast his fly across the stream,
and drew it neatly, and, as he thought, irresistibly right over
the recusant fish; but though once or twice a large lazy salmon
would sail up slowly from the depths, and almost touch the fly
with his nose, he either sunk down slowly in disgust, without
breaking the water, or flapped his broad tail over the shining
fraud as if to mark his contempt.

It had now got to be near noon, for in the ardor of his success
the angler had forgotten all about his intended breakfast;
and, his first fish captured, had contented himself with a slender
meal furnished from out his fishing-basket and his leathern
bottle.

Jasper had traversed by this time some ten miles in length,

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following the sinuosities of the stream, and had reached a favorite
pool at the head of a long, straight, narrow trench, cut
by the waters themselves in the course of time, through the
hard schistous rock which walls the torrent on each hand, not
leaving the slightest ledge or margin between the rapids and
the precipice.

Through this wild gorge, of some fifty yards in length, the
river shoots like an arrow over a steep inclined plain of limestone
rock, the surface of which is polished by the action of
the water, till it is as slippery as ice, and at the extremity leaps
down a sheer descent of some twelve feet into a large, wide
basin, surrounded by softly swelling banks of greensward, and
a fair amphitheatre of woodland.

At the upper end this pool is so deep as to be vulgarly deemed
unfathomable; below, however, it expands yet wider into a
shallow rippling ford, where it is crossed by the high-road,
down stream of which again there is another long, sharp-rapid,
and another fall, over the last steps of the hill; after which the
nature of the stream becomes changed, and it murmurs gently
onward through a green pastoral country unrippled and uninterrupted.

Just in the inner angle of the high-road, on the right hand of
the stream, there stood an old-fashioned, low-browed, thatch-covered,
stone cottage, with a rude portico of rustic woodwork
overrun with jasmine and virgin-bower, and a pretty flower-garden
sloping down in successive terraces to the edge of the
basin. Beside this, there was no other house in sight, unless
it were part of the roof of a mill which stood in the low ground
on the brink of the second fall, surrounded with a mass of willows.
But the tall steeple of a country-church raising itself
heavenward above the brow of the hill, seemed to show that,
although concealed by the undulations of the ground, a village
was hard at hand.

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The morning had changed a second time, a hazy film had
crept up to the zenith, and the sun was now covered with a
pale golden veil, and a slight current of air down the gorge ruffled
the water.

It was a capital pool, famous for being the temporary haunt
of the very finest fish, which were wont to lay there awhile, as
if to recruit themselves after the exertion of leaping the two
falls and stemming the double rapid, before attempting to ascend
the stream farther.

Few, however, even of the best and boldest fishermen cared
to wet a line in its waters, in consequence of the supposed impossibility
of following a heavy fish through the gorge below or
checking him at the brink of the fall. It is true, that throughout
the length of the pass, the current was broken by bare, slippery
rocks peering above the waters, at intervals, which might be
cleared by an active cragsman; and it had been in fact reconnoitred
by Jasper and others in cool blood, but the result of the
examination was that it was deemed impracticable as a fishing
ground.

Thinking, however, little of striking a large fish, and perhaps
desiring to waste a little time before scaling the banks and
emerging on the high road, Jasper threw a favorite fly of peacock's
harl and gold tinsel lightly across the water; and, almost
before he had time to think, had hooked a monstrous fish, which
at the very first leap, he set down as weighing at least thirty
pounds.

Thereupon followed a splendid display of piscatory skill.
Well known that his fish must be lost if he once should succeed
in getting his head down the rapid, Jasper exerted every nerve,
and exhausted every art to humor, to meet, to restrain, to check
him. Four times the fish rushed for the pass, and four times,
Jasper met him so stoutly with the butt, trying his tackle to the
very utmost, that he succeeded in forcing him from the perilous

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spot. Round and round the pool he had piloted him, and had
taken post at length, hoping that the worst was already over,
close to the opening of the rocky chasm.

And now, perhaps waxing too confident, he checked his fish
too sharply. Stung into fury, the monster sprang five times in
succession into the air, lashing the water with his angry tail,
and then rushed like an arrow down the chasm.

He was gone — but Jasper's blood was up, and thinking of
nothing but his sport, he dashed forward and embarked with a
fearless foot in the terrible descent.

Leap after leap he took with beautiful precision, alighting
firm and erect on the centre of each slippery block, and bounding
thence to the next with unerring instinct, guiding his fish the
while with consummate skill through the intricacies of the pass.

There were now but three more leaps to be taken before he
would reach the flat table-rock above the fall, which once attained,
he would have firm foot-hold and a fair field. Already
he rejoiced, triumphant in the success of his bold attainment,
and confident in victory, when a shrill female shriek reached
his ears, from the pretty flower-garden; caught by the sound
he diverted his eyes, just as he leaped, toward the place whence
it came; his foot slipped, and the next instant he was flat on
his back in the swift stream, where it shot the most furiously
over the glassy rock. He struggled manfully, but in vain.
The smooth, slippery surface afforded no purchase to his griping
fingers, no hold to his laboring feet. One fearful, agonizing
conflict with the wild waters, and he was swept helplessly
over the edge of the fall, his head, as he glanced down foot
foremost, striking the rocky brink not without violence.

He was plunged into the deep pool, and whirled round and
round by the dark eddies long before he rose, but still, though
stunned and half disabled, he strove terribly to support himself,
but it was all in vain.

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Again he sunk and rose once more, and as he rose that wild
shriek again reached his ears, and his last glance fell upon a
female form wringing her hands in terror on the bank, and a
young man rushing down in wild haste from the cottage on the
hill-side.

He felt that aid was at hand, and struck out again for life —
for dear life.

But the water seemed to fail beneath him.

A slight flash sprang across his eyes, his brain reeled, and
all was blackness.

He sunk to the bottom, spurned it with his feet, and rose
once more, but not to the surface.

His quivering blue hands emerged alone above the relentless
waters, grasped for a little moment at empty space and then disappeared.

The circling ripples closed over him, and subsided into stillness.

He felt, knew, suffered nothing more.

His young, warm heart was cold and lifeless — his soul had
lost its consciousness — the vital spark had faded into darkness—
perhaps was quenched for ever.

CHAPTER II. THE WAKENING.

When first she dawned upon my sight,
She deemed a vision of delight.
Wordsworth.

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When Jasper St. Aubyn opened his eyes, dim with the
struggle of returning consciousness and life, they met a pair of
eyes fixed with an expression of the most earnest anxiety on
his own — a pair of eyes, the loveliest into which he ever had yet
gazed, large, dark, unfathomably deep, and soft withal and tender,
as the day-dream of a love-sick poet. He could not mark
their color; he scarce knew whether they were mortal eyes,
whether they were realities at all, so sickly did his brain reel
and so confused and wandering were his fancies.

Then a sweet, low voice fell upon his ear, in tones the gentlest,
yet the gladdest, that ever he had heard, exclaiming:—

“Oh! father, father, he lives — he is saved.”

But he heard, saw no more; for again he relapsed into unconsciousness,
and felt nothing further, until he became sensible
of a balmy coolness on his brow, a pleasant flavor on his
parched lips, and a kindly glow creeping as it were through all
his limbs, and gradually expanding into life.

Again his eyes were unclosed, and again they met the earnest,
hopeful gaze of those other eyes, which he now might perceive
belonging to a face so exquisite, and a form so lovely, as
to be worthy of those great glorious wells of lustrous tenderness.

It was a young girl who bent over him, perhaps a few months
older than himself, so beautiful that had she appeared suddenly
even in her simple garb, which seemed to announce her but one
degree above the peasants of the neighborhood, in the midst of

[figure description] Page 180.[end figure description]

the noblest and most aristocratical assembly, she would have
become on the instant the cynosure of all eyes, and the magnet
of all hearts.

Of that age when the heart, yet unsunned by passion, and
unused to strong emotion, thrills sensibly to every feeling awakened
for the first time within it, and bounds at every appeal to
its sympathies; when the ingenuous countenance, unhardened
by the sad knowledge of the world, and untaught to conceal one
emotion, reflects like a perfect mirror every gleam of sunshine
that illuminates, every passing cloud that overshadows it pure
and spotless surface, the maiden sought not to hide her delight,
as she witnessed the hue of life return to his pale cheeks, and
the spark of intelligence relume his handsome features.

A bright, mirthful glance, which told how radiant they might
be in moments of unmingled bliss, laughed for an instant in
those deep blue eyes, and a soft, sunny smile played over her
warm lips; but the next minute, she dropped the young man's
hand, which she had been chafing between both her own, buried
her face in her palms, and wept those sweet and happy
tears which flow only from innocent hearts, at the call of greatitude
and sympathy.

“Bless God, young sir,” said a deep, solemn voice at the
other side of the bed on which he was lying, “that your life is
spared. May it be unto good ends! Yours was a daring venture,
and for a trivial object against which to stake an immortal
soul. But, thanks to Him! you are preserved, snatched as it
were from the gates of death; and, though you feel faint now,
I doubt not — and your soul trembles as if on the verge of another
world — you will be well anon, and in a little while as strong as
ever in that youthful strength on which you have ta'en such
pride. Drink this, and sleep awhile, and you shall wake refreshed,
and as a new man, from the dreamless slumber which
the draught shall give you. And you, silly child,” he continued,

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turning toward the lovely girl, who had sunk forward on the
bed, so that her fair tresses rested on the same pillow which
supported Jasper's head, with the big tears trickling silently
between her slender fingers, “dry up your tears; for the youth
shall live, and not die.”

The boy's eyes had turned immediately to the sound of the
speaker's accents, and in his weak state remained fixed on his
face so long as the sound continued, although his senses followed
the meaning but imperfectly.

It was a tall, venerable-looking old man who spoke, with
long locks, as white as snow, falling down over the straight
cut collar of his plain black doublet, and an expression of the
highest intellect, combined with something which was not melancholy,
much less sadness, but which told volumes of hardships
borne, and sorrows endured, the fruits of which were
piety, and gentleness, and that wisdom which cometh not of
this world.

He smiled thoughtfully, as he saw that his words were hardly
comprehended, and his mild glance wandered from the pale
face of the handsome boy to the fair head of the young girl
bending over him, like a white lily overcharged with rain.

“Poor things,” he whispered softly, as if speaking to himself,
“to both it is the first experience of the mixed pain and pleasure
of this world's daily trials. God save them scatheless to the
end!”

Then recovering himself, as if by a little effort, from his
brief fit of musing, he held forth a large glass goblet which was
in his right hand, full of some bright ruby-colored liquid, to the
lips of Jasper, saying:—

“Drink, youth, it will give thee strength. Drink, and fear
nothing.”

The young man grasped the bright bowl with both hands,

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but even then he had lacked strength to guide it to his lips, had
not his host still supported it.

The flavor was agreeable, and the coolness of the draught
was so delicious to the feverish palate and parched tongue of
Jasper, that he drained it to the very bottom, and then, as if exhausted
by the effort, relaxed his hold, and sunk back on his
pillow in a state of conscious languor, exquisitely soft and entracing.

More and more that voluptuous dream-like trance overcame
him, and though his eyes were still open he saw not the things
that were around him, but a multitude of radiant and lovely visions,
which came and went, and returned again, in mystic evolutions.

With a last effort of his failing senses, half conscious of the
interest which she took in him, yet wholly ignorant who or
what was that gentle she, he stretched out his hand and mastered
one of hers with gentle violence, and holding it imprisoned
in his burning fingers, closed his swimming eyes, and sunk
into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The old man, who had watched every symptom that appeared
in succession on his expressive face, saw that the potion had
taken the desired effect, and drawing a short sigh, which
seemed to indicate a sense of relief from apprehension, looked
toward the maiden, and addressed her in a low voice, not so
much from fear of wakening the sleeper, as that the voice of
affection is ever low and gentle.

“He sleeps, Theresa, and will sleep until the sun has sunk
far toward the west, and then he will waken restored to all his
youthful power and spirits. Come, my child, we may leave
him to his slumbers, he shall no longer need a watcher. I will
go to my study and would have you turn to your household duties.
Scenes such as this which you have passed will call up
soft and pitiful fancies in the mind, but it behooves us not

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over-much to yield to them. This life has too much of stern and
dark reality, that we should give the reins to truant imagination.
Come, Theresa.”

The young girl raised her head from the pillows, and shook
away the long, fair curls from her smooth forehead. Her tears
had ceased to flow, and there was a smile on her lip, as she
replied, pointing to her hand which he held fast grasped, in his
unconscious slumber

“See, father, I am a prisoner. I fear me I can not withdraw
my hand without arousing him.”

“Do not so, then, Theresa; to arouse him now, ere the effects
of the potion have passed away, would be dangerous,
might be fatal, Perchance, however, he will release you when
he sleeps quite soundly. If he do so, I pray you, come to me.
Meantime, I leave you to your own good thoughts, my own little
girl.”

And with these words, he leaned across the narrow bed, over
the form of the sleeping youth, and kissed her fair white brow.

“Bless thee, my gentle child. May God in goodness bless,
and be about thee.”

“Amen! dear father,” said the little girl, as he ended; and
in her turn she pressed her soft and balmy lips to his withered
cheek.

A tear, rare visitant, rose all unbidden to the parent's eye as
he turned to leave her, but ere he reached the door, her low
tones arrested him, and he came back to her.

“Will you not put my books within reach of me, dear father?”
she said. “I can not work, since the poor youth has made my
left hand his sure captive, but I would not be altogether idle,
and I can read while I watch him. Pardon my troubling you,
who should wait on you, not be waited on.”

“And do you not wait on me ever, and most neat-handedly,
dear child?” returned her father, moving toward a small, round

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table, on which were scattered a few books, and many implements
of feminine industry. “Which of these will you have,
Theresa?”

“All of them, if you please, dear father. The table is not
heavy, for I can carry it about where I will, myself, and if you
will lift it to me, I can help myself, and cull the gems of each
in turn. I am a poor student, I fear, and love better, like a little
bee, to flit from flower to flower, drinking from every chalice
its particular honey, than to sit down, like the sloth, and
surfeit me on one tree, how green soever.”

“There is but little industry, I am afraid, Theresa, if there be
little sloth in your mode of reading. Such desultory studies are
wont to leave small traces on the memory. I doubt me much
if you long keep these gems you speak of, which you cull so
lightly.”

“Oh! but you are mistaken, father dear, for all you are so
wise,” she replied, laughing softly. “Everything grand or
noble, of which I read, everything high or holy, finds a sort of
echo in my little heart, and lies there for ever. Your grave,
heavy, moral teachings speak to my reason, it is true, but when
I read of brave deeds done, of noble self-sacrifices made, of
great sufferings endured, in high causes, those things teach my
heart, those things speak to my soul, father. Then I reason no
longer, but feel — feel how much virtue there is, after all, and
generosity, and nobleness, and charity, and love, in poor, frail
human nature. Then I learn not to judge mildly of myself,
nor harshly of my brothers. Then I feel happy, father, yet in
my happiness I wish to weep. For I think, noble sentiments
and generous emotions sooner bring tears to the eye than mere
pity, or mere sorrow.”

And, even as she spoke, her own bright orbs were suffused
with drops, like dew in the violet's cups, and she shook her
head with its profusion of long, fair ringlets archly, as if she

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would have made light of her own sentiment, and gazed up into
his face with a tearful smile.

“You are a good child, Theresa, and good children are very
dear to the Lord,” said the old man. “But of a truth, I would
I could see you more practically-minded; less given to these
singular romantic dreamings. I say, not that they are hurtful,
or unwise, or untrue, but in a mere child, as you are, Theresa,
they are strange and out of place, if not unnatural. I would I
could see you more merry, my little girl, and more given to the
company of your equals in age, even if I were to be the loser
thereby of something of your gentle company. But you love
not, I think, the young girls of the village.”

“Oh! yes, I love them dearly, father. I would do anything
for any one of them; I would give up anything I have got to
make them happy. Oh, yes, I love Anna Harlande, and Rose
Merrivale, and Mary Mitford, dearly, but — but —”

“But you love not their company, you would say, would you
not, my child?”

“That is not what I was about to say; but I know not how
it is, their merriment is so loud, and their glee so very joyous,
that it seems to me that I can not sympathize with them in
their joy, as I can in their sorrow; and they view things with
eyes so different from mine, and laugh at thoughts that go nigh
to make me weep, and see or feel so little of the loveliness of
nature, and care so little for what I care most of all, soft, sad
poetry, or heart-stirring romance, or inspired music, that when
I am among them, I do almost long to be away from them all,
in the calm of this pleasant chamber, or in the fragrance of my
bower beside the stream. And I do feel my spirit jangled and
perplexed by their light-hearted, thoughtless mirth, as one feels
at hearing a false note struck in the midst of a sweet symphony.
What is this? what means this, my father?”

“It is a gift, Theresa,” replied the old man, half mournfully.

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“It means that you are endowed rarely, by God himself, with
powers the most unusual, the most wondrous, the most beautiful,
most high and godlike of any which are allowed to mortals.
I have seen this long, long ago — I have mused over it; hoped,
prayed, that it might not be so; nay, striven to repress the
germs of it in your young spirit, yet never have I spoken of it
until now; for I knew not that you were conscious, and would
not be he that should awaken you to the consciousness of the
grand but perilous possession which you hold, delegated to you
direct from Omnipotence.”

He paused, and she gazed at him with lips apart, and eyes
wide in wonder. The color died away in a sort of mysterious
awe from her warm cheek. The blood rushed tumultuously to
her heart. She listened, breathless and amazed. Never had
she heard him speak thus, never imagined that he felt thus, before—
yet now that she did hear, she felt as though she were
but listening again to that which she had heard many times
already; and though she understood not his words altogether,
they had struck a kindred chord in her inmost soul, and while
its vibration was almost too much for her powers of endurance,
it yet told her that his words were true.

She could not, for her life, have bid him go on, but for worlds
she would not have failed to hear him out.

He watched the changed expression of her features, and
half struck with a feeling of self-reproach that he should have
created doubts, perhaps fears, in that ingenuous soul, smiled on
her kindly, and asked in a confident tone:—

“You have felt this already, have you not, my dear child?”

“Not as you put it to me, father; no, I have never dreamed
or hoped that I had any such particular gift of God, such glorious
and pre-eminent possession as this of which you speak.
I may, indeed, have fancied at times that there was something
within me, in which I differed from others around me —

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something which made me feel more joy — deeper, and fuller, and more
soul-fraught joy, than they feel; and sorrow, softer, and moved
more easily, if not more piercing or more permanent — which
made me love the world, and its inhabitants, and above all its
Maker, with a far different love from theirs — something which
evermore seems struggling within me, as if it would forth and
find tongue, but can not. But now, that you have spoken, I
know that it indeed must be as you say, and that this unknown
something is a gift, is a possession from on high. What is this
thing, my father?”

“My child, this thing is genius,” replied the old man solemnly.

The bright blood rushed back to her cheek in a flood of crimson
glory; a strange, clear light, which never had enkindled
them before, sprang from her soft, dark eyes; she leaned forward
eagerly. “Genius!” she cried. “Genius and I! Father,
you dream, dear father.”

“Would that I did; but I do not, Theresa.”

“And wherefore, if it be so, indeed, that I am so gifted,
wherefore would you alter it, my father?”

“I would not alter it,” he replied, “my little girl. Far be it
from my thoughts, weak worm that I am, to alter, even if I
could alter, the least of the gifts of the great Giver. And this,
whether it be for good, or unto evil, is one of the greatest and
most glorious. I would not alter it, Theresa. But I would
guide, would direct, would moderate it. I would accustom you
to know and comprehend the vast power of which you, all unconsciously,
are the possessor. For, as I said, it is a fearful
and a perilous power. God forbid that I should pronounce the
most marvellous and godlike of the gifts which he vouchsafes
to man, a curse and not a blessing; God forbid that, even while
I see how oft it is turned into bitterness and blight by the coldness
of the world, and the check of its heaven-soaring

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aspirations, I should doubt that it has within itself a sovereign balm
against its own diseases, a rapture mightier than any of its
woes, an inborn and eternal consciousness which bears it up as
on immortal pinions, above the cares of the world, and the poor
realities of life. Nevertheless, it is a perilous gift, and too
often, to your sex, a fatal one. Yet I would not alarm you, my
own child, for you have gentleness of soul, such as may well
temper the coruscations of a spirit which waxes oftentimes too
strong to be womanly, and piety, which shall, I trust, preserve
you, should any aspiration of your heart wax over-vigorous and
daring to be contented with the limitations of humanity. In
the meantime, my child, fear nothing, follow the dictates of
your own pure heart, and pray for his aid, who neither giveth
aught, nor taketh away, without reason. Hark!” he interrupted
himself, starting slightly, “there is a sound of horses' hoofs
without; your brother has returned, and it may be Sir Miles is
with him. We will speak more of this hereafter.”

And with the word he turned and left the room.

When he was gone she raised her eyes to heaven, and with
a strange rapt expression on her fair features rose to her feet,
exclaiming:—

“Genius! Genius! Great God, great God, I thank thee.”

Then, in the fervor of the moment, which led her naturally
to clasp her hands together, she made a movement to withdraw
her fingers from Jasper's death-like grasp, unconscious, for the
time, of everything around her.

But, as she did so, a tightened pressure of his hand, and
some inarticulate sounds which proceeded from his lips, recalled
her with a start to herself.

She dropped into her seat, as if conscience-stricken, gazed
fixedly in his face, then stooped and pressed her lips on his inanimate
brow; started again, looked about the room with a half
guilty glance, bowed her head on his pillow, and wept bitterly.

CHAPTER III. THE RECOGNITION.

“They had been friends in youth.”

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The evening had advanced far into night before the effects
of the potion he had swallowed passed away, and left the mind
of Jasper clear, and his pulse regular and steady. When he
awoke from his long stupor, and turned his eyes around him, it
seemed as if he had dreamed of what he saw before him; for
the inanimate objects of the room, nay, the very faces which
met his eye, had something in them that was not altogether unfamiliar,
yet for his life he could not have recalled when, or if
ever he had seen them before.

The old dark-wainscoted walls of the irregular, many-recessed
apartment, adorned with a few water-color drawings,
and specimens of needlework, the huge black and gold Indian
cabinet in one corner, the tall clock-stand of some foreign wood
in another, the slab above the yawning hearth covered with
tropical shells and rare foreign curiosities, the quaint and grotesque
chairs and tables, with strangely-contorted legs and
arms, and wild satyr-like faces grinning from their bosses, the
very bed on which he lay, with its carved headboard, and
groined canopy of oak, and dark-green damask curtains, were
all things which he felt he must have seen, though where and
how he knew not.

So was the face of the slight fair-haired girl who sat a little
way removed from his bed's head, by a small round work-table,
on which stood a waxen taper, bending over some one of those
light tasks of embroidery or knitting which women love, and
are wont to dignify by the name of work.

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On her he fixed his eyes long and wistfully, gazing at her, as
he would have done at a fair picture, without any desire to address
her, or to do aught that should induce her to move from
the graceful attitude in which she sat, giving no sign of life
save in the twinkling of her long, downcast eyelashes, in the
calm rise and fall of her gentle bosom, and the quick motion of
her busy fingers.

Jasper St. Aubyn was still weak, but he was unconscious of
any pain or ailment, though he now began gradually to remember
all that had passed before he lost his consciousness in the
deep pool above the fords of Widecomb.

So weak was he, indeed, that it was almost too great an effort
for him to consider where he was, or how he had been saved,
much more to move his body, or ask any question of that fair
watcher. He felt indeed that he should be perfectly contented
to lie there all his life, in that painless, tranquil mood, gazing
upon that fair picture.

But while he lay there, with his large eyes wide open and
fixed upon her, as if by their influence he would have charmed
her soul out of its graceful habitation, a word or two spoken in
a louder voice than had yet struck his ear, for persons had been
speaking in the room all the time, although he had not observed
them, attracted his notice to the other side of his bed.

It was not so much the words, for he scarce heard, and did
not heed their import, as the tone of voice which struck him;
for though well-known and most familiar, he could in no wise
connect it with the other things around him.

With the desire to ascertain what this might mean, there
came into his mind, he knew not wherefore, a wish to do so
unobserved; and he proceeded forthwith to turn himself over
on his pillow so noiselessly as to excite no attention in the
watchers, whoever they might be.

He had not made two efforts, however, to do this, before he

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became aware of what, while he lay still, he did not suspect,
that several of his limbs had received severe contusions, and
could not as yet be moved with impunity.

He was a singular youth, however, and an almost Spartan
endurance of physical pain, with a strange persistency in whatever
he undertook, had been from very early boyhood two of
his strongest characteristics.

In spite, therefore, of his weakness, in spite of the pain every
motion gave him, he persevered, and turning himself inch by
inch, at length gained a position which enabled him clearly to
discern the speakers.

They were two in number, the one facing him, the other
having his back turned so completely that all he could see was
a head covered with long-curled locks of snow-white hair, a
dark-velvet cloak, and the velvet scabbard of a long rapier protruding
far beyond the legs of the oak-chair on which he sat.
The lower limbs of this person were almost lost in darkness as
they lay carelessly crossed under the table, so that he divined
rather than saw that they were cased in heavy riding-boots, on
the heels of which a faint golden glimmer gave token of the
wearer's rank in the knightly spurs he wore.

The lamp which stood upon the table by which they were
conversing was set between the two, so that it was quite invisible
to Jasper, and its light, which to his eyes barely touched
the edges of the figure he had first observed, fell full upon the
pale high brow and serene lineaments of the other person, who
was in fact no other than the old man who had spoken to the
youth in the intervals of his trance, and administered the potion
from the effects of which he was but now recovering.

Of this, however, Jasper had no recollection, although he
wondered, as he had done concerning the girl, where he had
before seen that fine countenance and benevolent expression,
and how once seen he ever should have forgotten it.

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There was yet a third person in the group, though he took
no part in the conversation, and appeared to be, like Jasper,
rather an interested and observant witness of what was going
on, than an actor in the scene.

He was a tall, dark-haired and dark-eyed man, in the first
years of manhood, not perhaps above five or six years Jasper's
senior; but his bronzed and sunburnt cheeks curiously contrasted
with the fairness of his forehead, where it had not been exposed
to the sun, and an indescribable blending of boldness —
it might have almost been called audacity — with calm self-confidence
and cold composure, which made up the expression
of his face, seemed to indicate that he had seen much of the
world, and learned many of its secrets, perhaps by the stern
lessoning of the great teachers, suffering and sorrow.

The fignre of this young man was but imperfectly visible, as
he stood behind the high-backed chair, on which the old man,
from whom the similarity in their features, if not in their expression,
Jasper took to be his father, was seated. But his
face, his muscular neck, his well-developed chest and broad
shoulders, displayed by a close-fitting jerkin of some dark stuff,
were all in strong light; and as the features and expression of
the countenance gave token of a powerful character and energetic
will, so did the frame give promise of ability to carry out
the workings of the mind.

The dialogue, which had been interrupted by a silence of
some seconds following on the words that had attracted Jasper's
notice, was now continued by the old man who sat facing
him.

“That question,” he said, in a firm yet somewhat mournful
tone, “is not an easy one to answer. The difficulty of subduing
prejudices on my own part, the fear of wounding pride on
yours — these might have had their share in influencing my
conduct. Beside, you must remember that years have elapsed

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— the very years which most form the character of men — since
we parted; that they have elapsed under circumstances the
most widely different for you and for me; that we are not, in
short, in anything the same men we then were — that the
gnarled, weather-beaten, earth-fast oak of centuries differs not
so much from the green pliant sapling of half a dozen summers,
as the old man, with his heart chilled and hardened into living
steel by contact with the world, from the youth full of generous
impulses and lofty aspirations, loving all men, and doubting
naught either in heaven above, or in the earth beneath. You
must remember, moreover, that although, as you have truly
said, we were friends in youth, our swords, our purses, and
our hearts in common, we had even then many points of serious
difference; and lastly, and most of all, you must remember
that if we had been friends, we were not friends when we
last parted —”

“What! what!” exclaimed a voice, which Jasper instantly
recognised for his father's, though for years he had not heard
him speak in tones of the like animation. “What, William
Allan, do you mean to say that you imagined that any enmity
could have dwelt in my mind, for so slight a cause —”

“Slight a cause!” interrupted the other. “Do you call that
slight which made my heart drop blood, and my brain boil with
agony for years — which changed my course of life, altered my
fortunes, character, heart, soul, for ever; which made me, in a
word, what I now am? Do you call that a slight cause, Miles
St. Aubyn? Show me, then, what you call a grave one.”

“I had forgotten, William, I had forgotten,” replied, Sir
Miles, gently, and perhaps self-reproachfully. “I mean, I
had forgotten that the rivaling in a strife which to the winner
seems a little thing, may to the loser be death, or worse than
death! Forgive me, William Allan, I had forgotten in my selfish
thoughtlessness, and galled you unawares. But let us say

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no more of this — let the past be forgotten — let wrongs done,
if wrongs were done, be buried in her grave, who was the most
innocent cause of them; and let us now remember only that we
were friends in youth, and that after long years of separation,
we are thus wonderfully brought together in old age; let me
hope to be friends henceforth unto the grave.”

“Amen, I say to that. Miles St. Aubyn, amen!”

And the two old men clasped their withered hands across the
table, and Jasper might see the big drops tricking slowly down
the face of him who was called William Allan, while from the
agitation of his father's frame he judged that he was not free
from the like agitation.

There was a little pause, during which, as he fancied, the
young man looked somewhat frowningly on the scene of reconciliation;
but the frown, it frown it were, passed speedily away,
and left the bold, dark face as calm and impassive as the surface
of a deep unruffled water.

A moment or two afterward, Sir Miles raised his head, which
he had bowed a little, perhaps to conceal the feelings which
might have agitated it, and again clasping the hand of the other,
said eagerly,—

“It is you, William, who have saved my boy, my Jasper;
and this is not the first time that a scion of your house has preserved
one of mine from death, or yet worse, ruin!”

Wilham Allan started, as if a sharp weapon had pierced him.

“And how,” he cried, “Miles St. Aubyn, how was the debt
repaid? I tell you it is written in the books that can not err.
that our houses were ordained for mutual destruction!”

“What, man,” exclaimed Sir Miles, half-jestingly, “do you
still cling to the black art? Do you still read the dark book of
fate? Methought that fancy would have taken wing with other
youthful follies.”

The old man shook his head sadly, but made no reply.

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“And what has it taught thee, William, unless it be that this
life is short, and this world's treasures worthless; and that I
have learned from a better book, a book of wider margin.
What, I say, has it taught thee, William Allan?”

“All things,” replied the old man, sorrowfully. “Even unto
this meeting — every action, every event of my own life, past
or to come, happy or miserable, virtuous or evil, it has taught
me.”

“But has it taught thee, William, whereby to win the good
and eschew the evil; whereby to hold fast to the virtuous, and
say unto the evil, `Get behind me.' Has it taught thee, I say
not to be wiser, but to be happier or better?”

“What is, is! What shall be, shall be! What is written,
shall be done! We may flap, or flutter, or even fight, like fish
or birds, or, if you will, like lions in the toil; but we are nettled,
and may not escape, from the beginning! The man may
learn the workings of the God, but how shall he control them?”

“And this is thy philosophy — this all that thine art teaches?”

“It is. No more.”

“A sad philosophy — a vain art,” replied the other. “I 'll
none of them.”

“I tell thee, Miles St. Aubyn, that years ago, years ere I had
heard of Widecomb or its water, I saw you deep, red-whirling
pool; I saw that drowning youth; I saw the ready rescue, and
the gentle nursing; and now,” he cried, stretching his hands
out widely, and gazing into vacancy, “I see a wilder and a sadder
sight — a deeper pool, a stronger cataract, a fierce storm
bellowing among the hills, and torrents thundering down every
gorge and gully to swell the flooded rivers. A young man and
a maiden — yet no! no! not a maiden! mounted on gallant
horses, are struggling in the whelming eddies. Great God!
avert — hold! hold! He lifts his arm, he smites her with his
loaded whip — smites her between the eyes that smiles upon

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him; she falls, she is down, down in the whirling waters —
rider and horse swept over the mad cataract; but who — who?—
ha!” and with a wild shriek he started to his feet, and fell
back into the arms of the young man, who from the beginning
of the paroxysm evidently had expected its catastrophe, and
who, with the assistance of the girl, supported him, now quite
inanimate and powerless, from the room, merely saying to Sir
Miles, “Be not alarmed, I will return forthwith.”

“My father!” exclaimed Jasper, in a faint voice, as the door
closed upon them.

The old man turned hastily to the well-known accents, and
hurried to the bedside. “My boy, my own boy, Jasper. Now,
may God's name be praised for ever!”

And falling into a chair by his pillow, the same chair on
which that sweet girl had sat a few hours before, he bent over
him, and asked him a thousand questions, waiting for no reply,
but bathing his face with his tears, and covering his brow with
kisses.

When he had at length satisfied the old man that he was well
and free from pain, except a few slight bruises, he asked his
father eagerly where he was, and who was that strange, old man.

“You are in the cottage, my dear boy,” replied the old knight,
“above Widecomb pool, tended by those who, by the grace of
God and his exceeding mercy, saved you from the consequences
of the frantic act which so nearly left me childless. Oh!
Jasper, Jasper, 't was a fearful risk, and it had well nigh been
fatal.”

“It was but one mis-step, father,” replied the youth, who, as
he rapidly recovered his strength, recovered also his bold
speech and daring courage. “Had there been but foothold at
the tunnel's end, I had landed my fish bravely; and, on my
honor, I believe, had I such another on my line's end, I should
risk it again. Why, father, he was at least a thirty-pounder.”