and recruited his mental energies. He commenced a soliloquy.

"An it please Heaven, this deed of blood shall either be prevented, or visited with due punishment. It will be a deed of excellent service to the church. But what an I should perish, in working this good? Could the holy mother church afford to lose me? Truly, I fear not. Marry, this is my consolation, Sanguis martyrum semen ecclesiæ, as one saith. My singular eloquence hath often, in times past, edified the church; and I have done many other excellent things, which it becometh not me to name. And supposing I should die, at a sudden push, in defence of the church's purity -hem, hem," chuckled the friar" methinks it would sound indifferent well in after ages, for folks to beseech the intercession of Blessed St. Gootle! But I must be doing: ay, i'faith; and what shall I do?" Here a short pause ensued. "I will hie me to Wrexham, (which lieth at little more that half a mile's distance,) to Irongripe, the bailiff, and bring him, with some few other stout fellows, to Davie's house; and our Lady grant 1 may be in time to prevent the shedding of

blood!"

It is true, the fierce threats of the monk came to his remembrance; but then he easily consoled and fortified himself with mentioning the words, "Blessed St. Gootle." So away went the good father, as fast as his limbs could carry him, puffing all the way to Wrexham. He was successful. Irongripe, a very valiant and noted thieftaker, instantly accompanied him with three other bloodhound followers. They met the monk riding rapidly along on the horse of Davie.

"See-see the blood on his cloak! Look, stout Irongripe!"

The monk heard the voice of the friar, and looked up: for he was riding along moodily, with his eyes bent towards the ground. He saw Father Gootle, who had considerably preceded Irongripe and his party. He sprang from his horse, exclaiming,

"Thou here, caitiff? Die !"

Before he had seized the trembling friar, the monk was locked in the strong arms of the bailiff and his constables.

"Die! thou caitiff friar! Die, caitiff!" thundered the monk, his eye still singling out Father Gootle-at the same time that he struggled to burst from those who held him.

"Haste thee! Haste thee, holy father! Mount that horse, and ride off for thy life!" roared out one of the men. Fear lent agility to the exhausted friar : he managed to clamber, with some little difficulty, into the saddle, and was out of sight presently.

The infuriated monk struggled like a giant with his resolute and powerful assailants. Twice he burst from their united grasp, and flung Irongripe and his head constable on the ground with stunning violence. But his opponents, besides being familiar with such encounters, were well-trained wrestlers, and rose unhurt from every fall.

"Unhand me, knaves! Bloodthirsty villains, away!" roared the monk, as he hurled them off on all sides. He perceived, however, that his strength began to fail, while that of his assailants seemed wholly exhausted. His eyes glared furiously around him; in the darkness he discovered his revenge.

"The cliff! the cliff! He drags us to the cliff's edge! Hold, away, or we are lost!" shouted the constables. The powerful monk swayed his devoted foes nearer and nearer to the fatal verge. Around three he wreathed his giant arms: he had devoted them to destruction.

"Help, as ye are men! Help!" roared Irongripe, as a body of horsemen appeared, bearing torches, headed by the indefatigable friar. Again, trusting to their instant arrival, he rushed to the rescue of his companions. But the monk also had seen the approaching reinforcement; and, with a last tremendous effort, whirled himself and his four assailants from the

precipice. Close clasped together in the embrace of death, they fell, crashing from crag to crag, into the river beneath.

When the horsemen, with their waving torches, galloped to the scene of this terrible catastrophe, it was overspread with the pall of silence and darkness.

Ever after this terrible transaction, superstition hung her portentous ensign over the ancient forest of Monkwynd and the house of the murdered Davie. The peasant who dared to linger within its dreary precincts an hour after sunset, was esteemed unusually stout hearted. But as for Davie's mansion, if report may be credited, none ever had the temerity to enter its bloodstained walls, which were suffered, year after year, to crumble in solitary gloom and desolation. Many legends of the spectre monk (first promulgated, perhaps, by Father Gootle) were current in the neighbourhood. Nay, one very valiant fellow went so far as to say he had several times seen, in the gloom of evening, a tall, gaunt, dim shape, sitting on the edge of Monkwynd Cliff, (as it was called,) which then sank down out of sight which circumstance, as he very sagaciously predicted, evinced that his soul was doomed to suffer penance there, for nobody knows how many centuries.

As for Father Gootle, I have never been able to meet with any information respecting his history; and, as one never hears, in the Cornish calendar, of the name "Blessed St. Gootle," we may fairly infer that he was never thought worthy of canonization.

END OF MONKWYND..

THE BRACELET S.*

A SKETCH FROM THE GERMAN.

Ir was late on the evening of a gloomy and bitter day in December, about the middle of the seventeenth century, that Carl Koëcker, a student of Goettingen University, having sipped his last cup of coffee, was sitting thoughtfully in his room, with his feet crossed and resting on the fender of his little fireplace. His eyes were fixed on the fire, which crackled and blazed briskly, throwing a cheerful lustre over his snug study. On a All the tools of scholar craft lay about him. table by his side lay open various volumes of classic and metaphysic lore, which showed evident marks of service, being much thumbed and fingered; sundry note books, filled with memoranda of the day's studies, Two sides and a case of mathematical instruments.

of the chamber were lined with well-filled book shelves; on one side was the window, and the corresponding one was occupied by a large dusky picture of Martin Luther. All was silent as the most studious German could desire; for the stillness was, so to speak, but

* The subtle schemes resorted to by the Inquisition for the detection and seizure of its victims, are too well known for an intelligent reader to charge any portions of the ensuing narrative with improbability or exaggeration. In a word-all that the wit and power of devils can devise and execute, may wellnigh be believed of the mem bers of that execrable institution.

enhanced by the whispered tickings of an oldfashioned family watch, suspended over the mantelpiece. As for Carl himself, he was of "goodly look and stature." His shirt neck lay open, with the spotless collar turned down on each side; his right hand lay in his bosom, and his left, leaning on the table, supported his "learning-laden" head. His brow was furrowed with thoughtful anxiety, which, together with his sallow features and long black mustaches, gave him the appearance of a much older man than he really was. for his thoughts, it were difficult to say whether, at the moment when he is presented to the reader, they were occupied by the mysterious pneumatological speculations or Doctor Von Dunder Profondant, which Carl had been attempting to comprehend in the morning's lecture; whether his fancy was revelling in recollections of the romantic splendours of last night's opera, or whether they were fixed, with painful interest, on the facts of a seizure made that day in Goettingen by the terrible myrmidons of the Inquisition, on the double charge of heresy and sorcery. The frightful tribunal alluded to was then in the plenitude of its power, and its mysterious and ferocious doings were exciting nearly as much indignation as they had long occasioned consternation. Carl was of a very speculative, abstract turn, and having been early initiated into the gloomy depths of transcendentalism, had begun latterly to turn his thoughts towards the occult sciences.

About the period when this narrative commences, it was generally understood that a professor of the art diabolic had visited the principal places of Germany, and was supposed to have made several converts among the learned, as well as to have founded secret schools for teaching the principles of his science. The lynxeyed Inquisition soon searched him out, and the unfortunate professor of magic suddenly disappeared, without ever again being heard of. The present object of those holy censors of mankind, the principals of the Inquisition, was to discover the schools he had founded, and