"Oh," said May, eagerly, "do not be displeased with him on my account, I will go back at once. I will not be in the way.' The time had been when he would have flung the door in their faces; but he was now in extremity, and, besides, he was greatly weakened, in his body and in his passions, since that day when Miss Martha had been forced to fly from his presence. It might be that May's glowing face and appealing eyes touched some spot in the withered heart which was not altogether dead. At all events, he answered her with strange mildness.

"You may walk about the house," he said, "till our business is finished."

May thanked him, as gratefully as if she had been a tenant with a large family to whom he had granted a lease. The miser then led Paul across the hall, leaving May to find her way whither she pleased. And she noticed with another pang such as she had felt the night before, that Paul did not once turn his head to look back at her as he went. Might it be that the monstrous desire of wealth of which Paul had been so afraid, would yet so grow up within him that it would thrust her out of his heart? She paused on a step of the gloomy staircase, stricken by the thought of such an ending for her love. It had been so with Miss Martha; might it not be so with her? Might there not, after all, be some dire reality in the inevitable influence of that curse which had so eaten up all virtue born into the family of Finiston? She remembered that in the Bible there are histories of races which were cursed for generations because of the sins of some dead man. But so many had passed away since the first Finiston had sinned. "So many generations, oh, my God!" cried May.

She prayed out of the strength of her soul for the safety of her love. Rather let

him be sent away from her to the far end of the earth, than be drawn into the wretched circle round which his forefathers had travelled with weakened brains and withered hearts. Take her life, take her health; take even Paul's love out of her future; but save him from the evil that had overwhelmed his kin. Having thus emptied her heart of every selfish thought, courage returned; and with it the hope that was familiar to her. After all, it was but natural that Paul should be absorbed by the sudden change in his fortunes. And it was also natural that the old man should have grown tired of his dreary iniquity. It was coming then at last, the good time long expected at Tobereevil, and she must not be so ungrateful as to mourn for it. Having conquered her short agony, she took her way bravely through the mildewing house.

There was nothing to keep her from going into any room she pleased, and Simon had told her to "walk about the house." The aged locks had long ago rusted from their fastenings on the doors. She wandered into noble rooms where fragments of rich hangings fluttered dolefully in the breeze which came in through the broken windows. Ceilings that had been painted in mellow pictures still showed some faded tints between the blotches of the damp and the scars where the plaster had dropped in dust to the floor. There were a few articles of weatherbeaten furniture to be seen, but the rooms were mostly empty. Snow lay in heaps on the inner ledges of the windows, and the shriek of the wind went from passage to passage, and lamented along the corridors and up and down the staircases. There was but a little wind outside, but the crannies of the mansion of Tobereevil knew how to make much of a

little wind. It seemed to May as if some bird of ill omen had made his nest under the rafters of the roof, and that he flew from chamber to chamber, from garret to cellar, for ever on the wing, piercing the walls with his shrill cry of wrath at the hatefulness of the misers of Tobereevil. Desolation, and blight, and the print of wickedness were everywhere. It would be better, as Paul said, to take down the old building; every stone of it.

She sat in an old grim carven chair, standing solitary in its corner; and she began to think for the first time of what it would be to find herself mistress of all the wealth of Tobereevil. Should she really

be the lady of a great mansion, with jewels and satins, and rich furniture, and fine pictures all around her; with a library and a music - room, and drawing - rooms, and many servants? And should she be as happy in her grandeur, as in the little crooked parlour at Monasterlea? How could she know? If Paul should prove to be happy, then would she be happy too. In the mean time uncle and nephew had retreated to the miser's den. A half-shutter had been opened, so that they might see each other, and have light to make their bargain. The old man eyed the young one by the entering ray, as keenly as the watchman who scans a doubtful wayfarer by the gleam of his dark-lantern. He was looking for the signs of the spendthrift in his nephew's appearance. But Paul was no dandy; his dress was plain rough frieze. The miser looked grudgingly at his comfortable clothing, but there was nothing that he could exactly complain of. Had Paul come unbidden a little time ago, he would have railed at his apparel, merely because it was not threadbare; now, he only resented silently its decency and comfort. He would have threatened him for his imprudence in engaging to marry a wife; but he spoke no more of May. | He gathered about him such dignity as he could muster, as he sat down and leaned back in his chair, and motioned to Paul to take his seat on a little broken bench which stood opposite at the other side of the miserable hearth. This Paul did, and was conscious all through the scene which followed of a ridiculous and not very successful effort to balance himself on a seat to which a fourth leg was wanting.

"You have been abroad for some years, I understand," said Simon. "Do you intend to remain here, or to return to where you came from?"

"I mean to stay at home," said Paul. "That is, you made up your mind to it after you got my note last night."

"No, indeed," said Paul," your note had nothing to do with it. I had made up my mind to it long ago."

"And pray what had you marked out for yourself to do? Lie in wait among the hills for the old man's death, expecting to

be master of all he has ?"

"To tell you the truth, sir," said Paul, throwing back his head, "there is nothing I have dreaded and disliked all my life so much as the thought of being your heir. I went abroad to forget it, and I came home in reality only to seek a wife. For

various reasons I think it better now to stay where I am. I have found some employment, and I am content to be poor. If you had not sent for me you should never, as I told you, have seen my face."

Humph!" said Simon. "Upon my word, young man, you are very bold! So you dread and dislike me, and don't want to be my heir. And what if I show you the door, sir, in return for such a compliment ?"

"I have no objection, sir; I am not anxious to stay." And yet Paul felt himself even at the moment devoured by a new hunger for the favours which this dreadful dotard held in his lean hand to give. Such ambition, however, being still new to him, an honest shame held it in check, and he still carried himself with his habitual independent bearing. But had he been bent on pleasing the miser he could not have spoken better.

"Very well, sir, but I have not done with you yet. It seems that there will be no courtesy lost between us. What is this employment which you have got in the country ?"

"I have undertaken to manage the farm of a tenant of yours," said Paul, "and I have brought a little money home with me from abroad. Only a little, but I'll do well enough."

"Until the old man dies," sneered the miser.

"Sir!" said Paul, "I have already told you my mind. I came here to oblige you, and I will now go my way."

And he rose to his feet, burning inwardly with strange disappointment and despair. He felt that he had been made a fool of, and that he was no longer indif ferent as to the old man's intentions with regard to himself. Most truly the change in him had wrought very rapidly. The shadow of his race seemed to wrap him from the light. It had descended from this old roof-tree, which he had been rash enough to place between himself and the tranquil arch of heaven; it would depart with him over this threshold, which he had been wicked enough to cross. The demon of covetousness had at last got possession of him; and peace, and hope, and joy were for him no more.

"Stay,' said Simon. "Not so fast, young man! I do not want to fight, but to do honest business with you. I have been cheated and played upon by knaves. I want an agent to do my work among my tenants. I am at present all alone, without

agent or servant, and I cannot get on alone, for people would overreach me. So I ask you to be my agent, to manage my business for me. I will pay you something, of course; but money is very scarce."

Paul's passion subsided, and he bent his brows and considered the miser's offer. He seemed the sport of some mischievous spirit that ruled him for the hour with rapidly changing moods, whose fitful shiftings were imperceptible to himself. His pang of disappointment had vanished, and also his vision of lost contentment, and he only thought now of the value of the proposal that had been made to him. It was less than he had dreamed of while walking that morning through the Woods of Tobereevil; but in his present hunger for power any

morsel was a boon.

"I will be glad to do my best," he answered, presently.

"That is well," said the miser, "but you must work heart and soul for me. And if you can make a little money for me it will be better for yourself. If you serve me faithfully and learn thrifty habits you shall have any little penny I possess, when I die."

"Indeed, sir!" said Paul; and the idea of this heirship seemed to grow into some brilliant thing that dazzled him. His head got quite giddy, and he tingled with delight. He felt himself already the master of Tobereevil. Only yesterday morning he had held such a title to be the least desirable in the world; but now a different humour swayed him, and he craved it as if it were life. No curse should ever hurt him. He was a strong, brave man, and he would use his power well. He had shuddered at a myth, and wasted his strength upon a phantom. He had come face to face with the temptation he had so dreaded all his life, and found himself as triumphant and happy as a king.

"What now about that dread and dislike ?" jeered Simon, as he watched joy start suddenly into the young man's face.

"I have changed my mind," said Paul, "but only since you have treated me like an honest man."

When the interview was over this heir of the miser was in such a state of elation that he quite forgot May, and walked out several yards into the snow without thinking of her. And May, from an upper window, saw him thus leave the place. She was cold and tired, but she had been waiting for him patiently. Wounded, and distraught, and half blind with vexed tears,

she made her way through the rooms and down the staircases, pale as a ghost and shaken with misgivings. But Paul had come back for her, and her delight at seeing this swept away the sharp bitterness of a few minutes. Paul was in wonderful excitement during all the walk home. Even May's bright spirit had to get on tip-toe to be even with him.

CHRONICLES OF LONDON STREETS.

LONDON BRIDGE.

THERE is no certain record of when the first London Bridge was built. It is true that Dion Cassius, writing nearly two hundred years after the invasion of Britain by Claudius, speaks vaguely of a bridge across the Thames in the reign of that emperor; but it is more probable that no bridge really existed till the year 994, the year after the invasion of Olaf the Dane, in the reign of King Ethelred. It is at least certain that in the year 1008, in the reign of Ethelred the Second, the Unready, there was a bridge, for, according to Snorro Sturlesonius, an Icelandic historian, Olaf the Norwegian, an ally of Ethelred, attacking the Danes, who had fortified themselves in Southwark, fastened his vessels to the piles of London Bridge, which the Danes. held, and dragged down the whole structure. This Olaf, afterwards a martyr, is the patron saint from whom the church, now standing at the south-east corner of London Bridge, derived its christian name. Tooley-street below, a word corrupted from Saint Olave, also preserves the memory of the Norwegian king, eventually slain near Drontheim by Knut, King of Denmark.

Still, whenever the churchwardens and vestry of St. Mary Overies, on the Bankside, meet over their cups, the first toast, says an antiquary who has written an exhaustive history of London Bridge, is to their church's patron saint, "Old Moll." This Old Moll was, according to Stow, Mary, the daughter of a ferryman at this part of the river, who left all her money to build a house of sisters, where the east part of St. Mary Overies now stands. In time the nunnery became a house of priests, who built the first wooden bridge over the Thames. There is still existing at the church of St. Mary Overies a skeleton effigy, which some declare to be that of Audery, the ferryman, father of the immortal Moll. The legend goes that this John Overy, or Audery, was a rich and covetous

miser, mean, penurious, and insanely fond of hoarding his hard-earned fees. He had a pious and beautiful daughter who, though kept in seclusion by her father, was loved by a young gallant, who secretly wooed and won her. One day the old hunks, to save a day's food, resolved to feign himself dead for twenty-four hours, vainly expecting that his servants, from common decency, would fast till his funeral. With his daughter's help, he therefore laid himself out, wrapped in a sheet, with one taper burning at his head, and another at his feet. The lean, half-starved servants, however, instead of lamenting their master's decease, leaped up overjoyed, danced round the body, broke open the larder, and fell to feasting. The old ferryman bore all this as long as flesh and blood could bear it, but at last he scrambled up in his sheet, a candle in each hand, to scold and chase the rascals from the house; when one of the boldest of them, thinking it was the devil himself, snatched up the butt-end of a broken oar, and struck out his master's brains. On hearing of this unintentional homicide, the lover came posting up to London so fast, that his horse stumbled, and the eager lover, alas! broke his neck. On this second misfortune, Mary Overy, shrouding her beauty in a cowl, retired into a cloister for life. The corpse of the old usurer was refused Christian burial, he being deemed by the clergy a wicked and excommunicated man. The friars of Bermondsey Abbey, however, in the absence of their father abbot, were bribed to give the body a little earth for charity. The abbot on his return, enraged at the friars' cupidity, had the corpse dug up and thrown on the back of an ass, that was then turned out of the abbey gates. The patient beast carried the corpse up Kent-street, and shook it off under the gibbet, near the small pond once called St. Thomas-a-Waterings, where it was roughly interred. The effigy is really, as Gough, in his Sepulchral Monuments, says most of such figures are, the work of the fifteenth century; now, the real Audery, if he lived at all, lived long before the Conquest, for the first wooden bridge was, it is thought, probably built to stop the Danish pirate vessels.

The first wooden bridge was destroyed by a terrible flood and storm, mentioned in the Annals of Waverley Abbey, which, in the year 1091, blew down six hundred London houses and lifted the roof off Bow Church. In the second year of Stephen, a fire, that swept away all the wooden houses of London, from Aldgate to St. Paul's, destroyed the second wooden bridge.

The first stone London Bridge was begun in 1176, by Peter, a priest and chaplain of St. Mary Colechurch, a building whichtill the Great Fire made short work of it— stood in Conyhoop-lane, on the north side of the Poultry. There long existed a senseless tradition that pious Peter of the Poultry reared the arches of his bridge upon woolpacks; the fact, perhaps, being, that Henry the Second generously gave towards the building a new tax levied upon his subjects' wool. Peter's bridge, which took thirtythree years building, boasted nineteen pointed stone arches, and was nine hundred and twenty-six feet long, and forty feet wide. It included a wooden drawbridge, and the piers were raised upon platforms (called starlings) of strong elm piles, covered by thick planks bolted together, that impeded the passage of barges. On the tenth pier was erected a two-storied chapel, forty feet high and sixty feet long, to Saint Thomas A'Beckett. The lower chapel could be entered either from the chapel above, or from the river, by a flight of stone stairs. The founder himself was buried under the chapel staircase. Peter's bridge was partly destroyed by a great fire in 1212, four years after it was finished, and while its stones were still sharp and white. There were even then houses upon. it, and gate-towers, and many people crowding to help, or to see the sight, got wedged in between two fires by a shifting of the wind, and some three thousand were either burnt or drowned. King John, after this, granted certain tolls, levied on foreign merchants, towards the bridge repairs.

Henry the Third, according to a patent roll, dated from Portsmouth, 1252, permitted certain monks, called the Brethren of London Bridge, with his special sanction, to travel over England and collect alms. In this same reign (1263), the bridge became the scene of great scorn and insult, shown by the turbulent citizens to Henry's queen, Eleanor of Provence, who was opposed to the people's friends, the barons, who were still contending for the final settlement of Magna Charta. As the queen and her ladies, in their gilded barge, were on their way to Windsor, and preparing to shoot the dangerous bridge, the rabble above assailed her with shouts and reproaches, and casting heavy stones and mud into her boat, upon her and her brightclothed maidens, drove them back to the Tower, where the king was garrisoned. Towards the end of the same year, when Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, marched on London, the king and his

forces occupied Southwark, and, to thwart the citizens, locked up the bridge gates, and threw the ponderous keys into the Thames. But no locks can bar out Fate; the gates were broken open by a flood of citizens, the king was driven back, and Simon entered London. After the battle of Evesham, where the great earl fell, the king, perhaps remembering old grudges, took the half-ruinous bridge into his own hands, and delivered it over to the queen, who sadly neglected it. There were great complaints of this neglect in the reign of Edward the First, and again the holy brothers went forth to collect alms throughout the land. The king gave lands also for the support of the bridge; namely, near the Mansion House, Old Change, and Ivy-lane. He also appointed tolls-every man on foot, with merchandise, to pay one farthing; every horseman, one penny; every pack carried on horseback, one halfpenny. This same year, 1281, four arches of London Bridge were carried away by the same thaw-flood that destroyed Rochester Bridge.

The reign of Edward was disgraced by the cruel revenge taken by the warlike monarch on William Wallace. In August, 1305, on Edward's return from the fourth invasion of Scotland, "this man of Belial," as Matthew of Westminster calls Wallace, was drawn on a sledge to Smithfield, there hung, embowelled; beheaded, quartered, and his head set on a pole on London Bridge. An old ballad in the Harleian Collection, describing the execution of Simon Fraser, another Scotch guerilla leader, in the following year, concludes

thus:

So fierce man as he was.

Now stands the head above the town bridge,
Fast by Wallace's, sooth for to say.

The heads of these two Scotch patriots were placed side by side on the gate at the north or London end of the bridge.

The troublous reign of the young profligate, Richard the Second, brought more fighting to the bridge, for Wat Tyler and his fierce Kentish and Surrey men then came chafing to the gates, which the mayor, William Walworth, had chained and barred, pulling up the drawbridge. Upon this the wild men shouted across to the wardens of the bridge to let them over or they would destroy them all, and, from sheer fear, the wardens yielded. In that savage crowd the Brethren of the Bridge, as Thomas of Walsingham says, were pressing with processions and prayers for peace. In 1390,

fighting of a gayer and less bloodthirsty kind took place on the bridge. No dandy Eglinton tournament this, but a genuine grapple with spear, sword, and dagger. Sir David Lindsay, of Glenesk, who had married a daughter of Robert the Second, King of Scotland, challenged to the joust Lord Wells, our ambassador in Scotland, a man described by Andrew of Wyntoun, a poetical Scotch chronicler, as being

Manful, stout, and of good pith,

At

And high of heart he was therewith. Sir David arrived from Scotland with twenty-nine attendants and thirty horses. The king presided at the tournament. The arms Lindsay bore on his shield, banner, and trappings were gules, a fesse chequé argent and azure; those of Wells, or, a lion rampant, double queuée, sable. the first shock the spears broke, and the crowd shouted that Lindsay was secured to his saddle. The earl at that leaped off his charger, vaulted back, then dashed on to the collision. At the third crash Wells fell heavily, as if dead. In the final grapple Lindsay, fastening his dagger into the armour of the English knight, lifted him from the ground, and dashed him, finally vanquished, to the earth. According to Andrew of Wyntoun, the king called out from his " summer castle," "Good Cousin Lindsay, do forth that thou should do this day;" but the generous Scotchman threw himself on Wells and embraced him till he revived. Nor did he stop there; during Wells's sickness of three months Lindsay visited him in the gentlest manner, even like the most courteous companion, and did not omit one day. For he had fought, says Boethius, without anger, and but for glory." And to commemorate that glorious St. George's Day, the Scotch earl founded a chantry at Dundee, with a gift of fortyeight marks (thirty-two pounds) yearly for seven priests and divers virgins to sing anthems to the patron saint of England.

In 1392, when Richard the Second returned to London reconciled to the citizens, who had resented his reckless extravagance, London Bridge was the centre of splendid pageants. At the bridge gate the citizens presented the handsome young scapegrace with a milk-white charger, caparisoned in cloth of gold, and hung with silver bells, and gave the queen a white palfrey, caparisoned in white and red; while from every window hung cloths of gold and silver. The citizens ended by redeeming their forfeited charter by a payment of ten thousand pounds. In 1396, when Richard had lost his first queen, Anne of Bohemia, and