tions, and had insisted that in appearance and manner she was equal to any lady in the south of France. So had Henrich Wetter, head clerk and cashier in the bank of Monsieur Krebs aforesaid, a tall, fair, lymphatic young man, who, until his acquaintance with Pauline, had thought of nothing but Vaterland and the first of exchange, but who professed himself ready to became naturalised as a Frenchman, and to take up his abode for life in Marseilles, if she would only listen to his suit. So had Frank Jenkins, attached to the British post-office, and in that capacity bringing the Indian mails from London to Marseilles, embarking them on board the Peninsular and Oriental steamer, and waiting the arrival of the return mail which carried them back to England; a big, jolly, massive creature, well known to everybody in the town as Monsieur Jenkins, or the "courrier Anglais," who had a bedroom at the Hotel de Paradis, but who spent the whole of his time at the Restaurant du Midi, drinking beer, or brandy, or absinthe, it was all the same to him, to keep the landlord "square,' as he phrased it, but never taking his eyes off the dame du comptoir, and never losing an opportunity of paying her the most outrageous compliments in the most outrageous French ever heard even in that city of polyglot strangers.

If Pauline Lunelle had a tenderness for any of them, it was for the sous-lieutenant; at the Englishmen, and, indeed, at a great many others- Frenchmen, commis-voyageurs, tradesmen in the city, or clerks in the merchants' offices on the Quai-she laughed unmercifully. Not to their faces, indeed, that would have been bad for business, and Pauline throughout her life had the keenest eye to her own benefit. Her worth as a decoy-duck was so fully appreciated by Monsieur Etienne, the proprietor of the restaurant, that she had insisted upon receiving a commission on all moneys paid by those whose visits thither were unquestionably due to her attraction. But when they had retired for the night, the little top bedroom which she occupied in conjunction with Mademoiselle Mathilde would ring with laughter caused by her repetition of the sweet things which had been said to her during the evening by her admirers, and her imitations of the manner and accents in which they had been delivered. So Adolphe de Noailles had it all his own way, and Pauline had seriously debated within herself whether she should not let

him run the risk of offending his family and marrying him out of hand (the disappointment to be occasioned thereby to Mademoiselle Krebs, a haughty and purseproud young lady, being one of her keenest incentives to the act), when another character appeared upon the scene.

This was another Englishman, but in every way as different as possible to poor Mr. Jenkins; not merely speaking French like a Parisian, but salting his conversation with a vast amount of Parisian idiomatic slang, full of fun and wild practical jokes; impervious to ridicule, impossible to be put down, and spending his money in the most lavish and free-handed manner possible. This was Tom Durham, who had suddenly turned up in Marseilles, no one knew why; he had been to Malta, he said, on a venture," and the venture had turned out favourably, and he was going back to England, and had determined to enjoy himself by the way. He was constantly at the Restaurant du Midi, paid immense attention to the dame du comptoir, and she in her turn was fascinated by his good temper, his generous ways, his strange, eccentric goings on. But Tom Durham, laughing, drinking, and spending his money, was the same cool, observant creature that he had been ever since he shipped as 'prentice on board the Gloucestershire, when he was fifteen years of age. All the time of his sojourn at the Restaurant du Midi he was carefully "taking stock," as he called it, of Pauline Lunelle. In his various schemes he had long felt the want of a female accomplice, and he thought he had at last found the person whom he had for some time been seeking. That she was worldly-wise he knew, or she would never have achieved the position which she held in Monsieur Etienne's establishment; that there was far more in her than she had ever yet given proof of, he believed, for Mr. Tom Durham was a strong believer in physiognomy, and had more than once found the study of some use to him. Sipping his lemonade and cognac and puffing at his cigar, he sat night after night, talking pleasantly with any chance acquaintance, but inwardly studying Pauline Lunelle, and when his studies were com pleted he had made up his mind that he saw in her a wonderful mixture of headstrong passion and calm common sense, unscrupulous, unfearful, devoted, and capable of carrying out anything, no matter what, which she had once made up her mind to perform. “A tameable tiger, in point of

fact," said Tom Durham to himself as he stepped out into the street and picked his way across the filthy gutters towards his home, "and if only kept in proper subjection, capable of being made anything of." He knew there was only one way by which Pauline could be secured, and he made up his mind to propose to her the next night.

He proposed accordingly, but Pauline begged for four and twenty hours to consider her decision, and in the early morning went out into the Prado to think it all through, and deliberately to weigh the merits of the propositions made respectively by Adolphe de Noailles and Tom Durham; the result being, that the souslieutenant's hopes were crushed for everor for fully a fortnight, when they blossomed in another direction-and that Pauline, dame du comptoir no longer, linked her fate with that of Tom Durham. Thenceforward they were all in all to each other; she had no relatives, nor, as he told her, had he ("I have not seen Alice for five years," he said to himself, "and from what I recollect of her, she was a stuck-up, strait-laced little minx, likely to look down upon my young friend, the tiger, here, and give herself airs which the tiger certainly would not understand, so as they are not likely to come together, it will be better to ignore her existence altogether"). In all his crooked schemes, and they were many and various, Pauline took her share, unflagging, indefatigable, clear in council, prompt in action, jealous of every word, of every look he gave to any other woman, at the same time the slave of his love, and the prop and mainstay of his affairs. Tom Durham himself had not that quality which he imputed to his halfsister he certainly was not strait-laced, but his escapades, if he had any, were carefully kept in the background, and Pauline, suspicious as she was, had never felt any real ground for jealousy until she had witnessed the scene at parting at the Southampton station.

The Prado and its associations had faded out of her mind, and she was trying to picture to herself the various chances which could possibly have detained her husband, when a porter halted before her, and civilly touching his cap, asked for what train she was waiting.

"The train for Weymouth," she replied. "For Weymouth!" echoed the porter; "the train for Weymouth has just gone." 'Yes, I know that," said Pauline, "but

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I was expecting some one-a gentleman to meet me. He will probably come in time for the next."

"You will have a longish waiting bout," said the man; "next train don't come till two forty-five, nigh upon three o'clock." "That is long," said Pauline. "And

the next ?"

"Only one more after that," said the porter, "eight-forty; gets into Weymouth somewhere between ten and eleven at night. You'll never think of waiting here, ma'am, for either of them! Better go into the town to one of the hotels, or have a row on the river, or something to pass the time."

"Thank you," said Pauline, to whom a sudden idea had occurred. "How far is it from here to how do you call the place-Hurstcastle ?"

"To where, ma'am? Oh, Hurst Castle; I didn't understand you, you see, at first; you didn't make two words of it. It is Hurst Castle, where the king was kept a prisoner-him as had his head cut off; and where there's a barracks and a telegraph station for the ships now?"

"Yes," she said, "exactly, that's the place: how far is it from here ?"

"Well, it's about seven mile, take it altogether, but you can't drive all the way. You could have a fly to take you four miles, and he'd bring you to a boat, and he'd take you in and out down a little river through the marshes, until you came to a beach, on the other side of which the castle stands. But lor' bless me, miss, what's the use o' going at all, there's nothing to see when you get there!"

وو

"I wish to go,' said Pauline, smiling. "You see I am a foreigner, and I want to see where your British king was kept a prisoner. Can I get a fly here ?"

The porter said he would find her one at once, and speedily redeemed his promise.

Through neat villages and wooded lanes Pauline was driven, until she came to a large, bare, open tract of country, on the borders of which the fly stopped, and the flyman descending handed her down some steps cut in the steep bank and into an old broad-bottomed boat, where a grizzled elderly man, with his son, were busy mending an old duck gun. They looked up with astonishment when the flyman said, "Lady wants to go down to have a look at the castle, Jack: I'll wait here, ma'am, until they bring you back."

They spread an old jacket for her in the

stern of the boat, and when she was seated, took to their oars and pulled away with a will. It was a narrow, intricate, winding course, a mere thread of shallow, sluggish water, twisting in and out among the great grey marshes fringed with tall flapping weeds; and Pauline, already overexcited and overwrought, was horribly depressed by the scene.

"Are you always plying in this boat?" she asked the old man.

"Most days, ma'am, in case we should be wanted up at the steps, there," he replied, "but night's our best time we reckon."

"Night!" she echoed. "Surely there are no passengers at night time ?"

"No, ma'am, not passengers, but officers and sportsmen: gentlemen coming out gunning after the ducks and the wild-fowl," he added, seeing she looked puzzled, and pointing to a flock of birds feeding at some distance from them.

"And are you out every night ?" she asked eagerly.

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Well, no, ma'am," said the old man, with a low chuckle. "It ain't a place where one meets many people, I reckon. Besides the ducks, a heron or two was about the strangest visitors we saw last night. Now, miss, here we are at the beach; you go straight up there, and you'll find the castle just the other side. When you come back, please shape your course for that black stump you see sticking up there; tide's falling, and we shan't be able to bide where we are now, but we will meet you there."

Lightly touching the old man's arm, Pauline jumped from the boat, and rapidly ascending the sloping head, found herself, on gaining the top, close by a one-storied, whitewashed cottage, in a little bit of reclaimed land, half garden, half yard, in which was a man in his shirt-sleeves washing vegetables, with a big black retriever dog lying at his feet. Accosting him, Pauline learned that the house was the telegraph station', whence the names of the outgoing and incoming ships are telegraphed to Lloyd's for the information of

their owners. In the course of further conversation the man said that the Massilia had anchored there during the night, had got her steam up and was off by daybreak; he took watch and watch with his comrade, and he turned out just in time to see her start.

Pauline thanked him and returned to the boat; but she did not speak to the old man on her return passage, and when she reached the fly which was waiting for her, she threw herself into a corner and remained buried in thought until she was deposited at the station.

A few minutes after, the train bound for Weymouth arrived. Through confusion, similar to that of the morning, she hurried along, criticising the passengers on the platform and in the carriages, and with the same vain result. The train proceeded on its way, and Pauline walked towards the hotel with the intention of getting some refreshment, which she needed. Suddenly she paused, reeled, and would have fallen, had she not leant against a wall for support. A thought like an arrow had passed through her brain-a thought which found its utterance in these words:

"It is a trick, a vile trick from first to last! He has deceived me-he never in tended to meet me, to take me to Weymouth or to Guernsey! It was merely a trick to keep me occupied and to put me off while he rejoined that woman!"

DON JUAN IN BRANDENBURG.

"Ir was long my opinion," said Maximilian, "that the story of Don Juan of Seville and the stone-guest stood alone among popular traditions; but I have lately found a faint resemblance of it among the legends of Stendal.

"You mean the city in the Old March of Brandenburg-the Altmark, as it is called ?" inquired Laurence.

"Precisely," replied Maximilian.

"Well, certainly," observed Laurence," "if you want to find a horrible story you could not go to a better place. If I recol lect right, there is a pathway near one of the gates of Stendal, that at midnight is haunted by ghosts so various, that one seldom has a chance of seeing the same apparition twice. Sometimes there is a procession of spectral nuns, with Saint Catherine at the head; sometimes a troop of monks, with large books in their hands; sometimes a couple of knights on horse

back; sometimes a skeleton hand, supposed to have belonged to a murderer, who avoided execution by suicide."

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That I cannot say," said Laurence, "nor do I know the stories with which these apparitions are connected. There is, however, another spectre appertaining to the same spot, of which a more satisfactory explanation is given. This is a great hecat, who sits on a tree, looking greedily at a coin which lies upon the ground, and springs upon any luckless wanderer who attempts to pick it up. His attacks, however, are generally confined to the male sex, and he is sometimes accompanied by a number of she-cats, who vent their spite upon trespassing females. Now it is explained that these feline apparitions are the ghosts of a spendthrift, and the ladies upon whom, no doubt, he wasted his substance."

"I wonder," remarked Edgar, "whether these various ghosts, who seem actuated by such diverse motives, ever jostle one another, or whether there is some mutual understanding that prevents a collision. An unexpected meeting of the monks, the nuns, the two horsemen, and the cats, to say nothing of the skeleton hand, would, I opine, cause something like a crash."

"You are getting beyond me," said Laurence; "I can only repeat what I have heard. Certainly, it is strange to find one narrow spot associated with superstitions scarcely traceable to one common source. Now, there is a rude image of a sheep or a lamb on St. Mary's Church, at Stendal, which probably points to something like a fact. It seems that, ages ago, a shepherd, watching his sheep while they grazed outside the city walls, was suddenly overtaken by sleep. When he awoke he found that his flock was dispersed in all directions, and though, with the assistance of his dog, he soon brought the other sheep together, one lamb was not to be moved, but remained bleating on the spot to which it had strayed. The shepherd followed the sound, and found the animal standing upon a heap of gold, silver, and precious stones, which it had scratched out of the ground with its foot. Of this treasure he possessed himself, and carried the lamb into the town, but the troublesome little animal effected its escape, and took refuge in the church, where the bleating was renewed. The shepherd regarded this as a sign that the treasure

"The shepherd, I presume, was content with the reward which virtue claims as its own," observed Edgar.

"Even the old story of the Prentice Column in Roslin Chapel, near Edinburgh, is to be found at Stendal in reference, not to a column, but to a gate. Some time in the fifteenth century, a skilful architect had built a gate at Stendal, and a few years afterwards another gate was built by one of his pupils. The work of the pupil proved to be better than that of the master, whereat the latter was so highly incensed that he slew the former with a blow of his hammer. A stone, which still exists, was raised to mark the spot where the crime was committed."

"That is the story of the Prentice Column exactly," exclaimed Edgar.

"With the slight addition," said Laurence, "that, according to popular belief, the form of a pale youth may be seen on a moonlight night, gloomily contemplating the pupil's gate, while round the battlements on the top of it floats a skeleton, armed with a hammer, with which it beats down stones from the wall."

"Nay," interposed Maximilian, "there is a similar story told in reference to another stone cross, set up at Grossmöringen, in the vicinity of Stendal, though here the cause of wrath was a bell, which an assistant had succeeded in casting, after an abortive attempt on the part of the master, and was stabbed accordingly."

"The disposition to crush rising talent is so very common," observed Laurence, "that these three stories, in spite of their similarity, probably record three separate events. Still the similarity is remarkable.”

"Especially in the cases of Stendal and Grossmöringen, which are about two leagues distant from each other," remarked Maximilian. "Grossmöringen, by the way, seems always to have made a noise with its bells. A swincherd once noticing a hollow place where one of his sows had deposited her pigs, discovered that it was lined with metal. Digging deeply, he further discovered that the metal belonged to a fine church bell. No sooner was the event made known, than the bell was claimed by the authorities of the cathedral at Stendal, who built an especially large waggon, and attached thereto sixteen horses, in order to bring the

prize home. But all the men and all the horses of Stendal were insufficient to make the bell stir a single inch. So the peasants of Grossmöringen thought they would try their luck, and succeeded in taking the bell to their village, though they employed only eight horses. Nay, according to some accounts, one peasant and one horse were found enough for the operation."

"We'll let the eight horses have the benefit of that doubt," suggested Edgar.

"The bell," proceeded Maximilian," was hung up in the village church, and now the people of Stendal grew disagreeable, and, as the fox found the grapes too sour, considered the bell of the village too loud. It was a nuisance, they declared, and moreover, a misleader, for whenever it rang, the sound seemed to come from the belfry of one of their own churches."

Although it was two leagues off! The citizens of Stendal were quick at hearing," said Edgar.

"At all events," retorted Maximilian, "it seems to be an undisputed fact that the villagers were obliged to close the opening in the belfry that looks towards the city."

"Nay, gratitude was not their only motive," replied Laurence. "They maintained the horse, not merely because they respected, but because they considered him useful. And good use they made of him. Whenever a fire occurred, the burgomaster mounted the back of the steed, went through the process prescribed on the previous occasion, and with a like fortunate result. At last the horse died, and the whole city, plunged into mourning, resounded with the shrieks of children and the sobs of adults. To make matters worse, a fire broke out, adding terror to grief. Fortunately the burgomaster thought he might as well try whether he could not do without the horse, and stay the spreading mischief by walking round the flaming edifice, praying as before. The walk proved to be as good as the ride, and so thoroughly was the efficiency of the process estab lished, that it was upheld, on the occasion of a fire, by successive burgomasters down to the year 1840."

"What is it ?" inquired Edgar.

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They say," answered Laurence, "that in the seventeenth century many fires took place in the city, and that at last there was one which defied every effort to extinguish it. Indeed, as the available means of extinguishment were scanty, the efforts were far from prompt. Under these inauspicious circumstances, the burgomaster betook himself to prayer, and his supplications were apparently answered by the appearance of a stranger, mounted on a white horse, from which he alighted, desiring the burgomaster to take his place in the saddle, and to ride round the burning house, still continuing his prayers in silence. If he did this, the spread of the fire beyond the precincts of the house would be prevented. The counsel was followed, and the plan succeeded; but when the burgomaster dismounted the stranger had disappeared. A stable was accordingly built for the horse, and abundant provision was made for his sustenance at the expense of the city."

"On this occasion," remarked Edgar, "the citizens of Stendal seem to have been more amiable than usual. At least they showed their gratitude."

tale together, as of one piece, the horse looks very like a humbug; indeed, he puts me in mind of a certain bear, of whom mention is made in a well-known political work entitled the Rights of Man."

"An odd place to look for legends," sneered Laurence.

"Many years have passed since the book was in my hands," retorted Edgar; "but whether I looked for the story or not, I am pretty sure I found it there. It a t appears that the inhabitants of one of the Swiss cantons maintained a bear at the public expense for many years, the death of each particular bear causing a vacancy, which had to be filled with the least possible delay. The bear was not expected to do any especial good or harm, but public opinion had decided that a bear was the proper sort of animal to keep, and that the canton could not possibly thrive without one. In the course of time a difficulty arose. A bear died, and a successor was not to be found. There was a scarcity of bears such as never had been known in the land. Week after week did a council sit discuss ing how the frightful loss was to be repaired; but though this council resolved itself into special committees, appointed sub-committees, and offered rewards that would have drained the resources of the land, no bear was forthcoming. At last