night outside he looked in upon them through the open window. They were startled. The Obi woman fled to the door; the midwife hesitated a moment, then going to the window loosened the hold of his fingers upon the sill, and he dropped a height of three stories among some loose stones and rubbish below; and thus, and not from any violence of my poor friend Bruton, he met his wounds.

And now the skein was unravelled, and the whole dark maze of evil laid open to the light. This woman it was plain had had in her mind the removal at once of her brother and the child, who both stood between her and the immense property of her father-a property which she had dreamt of and hoped for so long that it began to be to her a thing more to be desired than heaven itself, and which upon her father's death, when she had fondly hoped to grasp it, she found bestowed upon an illegitimate mulatto. Bruton's violence of temper, his jealousy, and his having frequently denounced curses and threats against his wife and her child, afforded her an opportunity, she believed, of ridding herself of both by one happy stroke; an opportunity of which she so successfully availed herself as you have seen, unaware that in the act she was becoming the double murderess of her own offspring. But this was not all the sin consummated at the old Grange. There were other crimes, heinous and intricate, which I will not call up to pollute my pages again withal; suffice it that each met a punishment, even in this world, dreadful as its own dark nature.

In two hours after delivering this narration our patient was delirious, inflammation of the membranes of the brain had come on, a common consequence of the operation of the trephine.

I felt myself now placed in a situation of much embarrassment with regard to my proceedings. Should I give information against her on the strength of this statement or not. I was perplexed with doubt. In the first place, from my ignorance of law, I was not sure that a person could be accused of a crime of which another person had already been convicted, and for which that person had been condemned; next, how could I convince a jury that the whole statement was not a mere portion of the delirious ravings of the patient, especially since these had commenced so closely upon its delivery that it ran into them. Impressed with these considerations, I resolved to take advice before I committed myself.

I took the opportunity however that same evening to communicate the account I had received to her, a step for which I shall perhaps incur your censure. We stood together in one of the windows. As I proceeded she became pale as a corpse, and aware seemingly of this, turned her back to the glass, thus throwing her face into shade. She heard me out, standing erect as a statue, only I noticed she clutched firmly a broad brass knob, that served to hold aside the curtains. When I had done,

"Now, sir," said she, "I know not which to admire the most, the extravagance of my poor son's raving, if you have told me truth, or your egregious folly in believing it, or thinking to make it a bugbear with which to frighten me; for whatever proceedings you may adopt you will find me prepared. Only any thing you may say derogatory to character will be at your peril. In the mean time you will oblige me by immediately leaving my house. I will take care-"

my

Here she was interrupted by a servant, who entered hurriedly with "Madam, madam, the young master is dead!"

It came upon her like a thunderbolt. She fell back at once against the window, shivering the glass, and cutting her neck and arms. As soon as I saw in her signs of recovery, I left the room and the house. After that night this woman was never more seen.

I slept at the old inn of the Traveller's Joy, now kept by strangers. Shortly after midnight I was awakened by a glow of light illuminating the room. I was much startled at this, and on going to the window to ascertain its cause, was struck by beholding a bright flame rising over the woods, in the direction of the Grange. I stood gazing for a while. Presently I heard windows thrown up in the village, then voices speaking quickly and anxiously, then bolts withdrawn, doors opened, then heavy footsteps hurrying rapidly along. Anon the whole place was aroused, and all was commotion.

Before morning the old Grange was burnt to the ground, fit end for a scene of such accumulated evil. The more modern division however remained uninjured comparatively, a double gable of brick and stone having separated the two.

The only human being that was missing was the lady of the mansion, and some bones having been found among the ruins in a calcined and half-charred state, were pronounced to be her remains by a coroner's jury, their verdict being death by accidental fire. These bones afterwards came temporarily into my possession. To the subjects of osteology and natural history I had devoted much attention, and had studied closely the papers of M. Desmoulins on these points.

The skull was very marked; the cranium being much compressed, the forehead depressed, and what are called the alveolar processes of the upper jaw projecting obliquely. From these and other particulars I was enabled with absolute accuracy to pronounce them the bones of a female of the negro race. Of this I was perfectly certain, and there was as little doubt that they formed the remains of the Obi sorceress. In farther prosecuting the search among the ruins, way was made into a little arched coal-cellar. In this was found a small, uncouthly shaped apparatus, which proved to be a still of an exceedingly singular and primitive description. Beside it lay a bag of leaves, stems, and flowers. One look showed them to be those of the PRUNUS LAUROCERASUS, or poison laurel.

She

Whether the other woman perished in the fire or not I could never ascertain; neither can I tell the ulterior fate of Bruton's wife. had disappeared during my absence on the continent, and I never heard of her after.

THE TWO SKELETONS:

A TALE OF FLORENCE.

BY CAPTAIN MEDWIN.

IL tempo di Francesi is looked upon by the Italians as a sort of golden age, and referred to on all occasions when they seek to draw an unfavourable comparison between the present and the past. Certainly, whatever their fetters might have been, they were silken ones to those of the Goth; and when they became an integral part of the empire, and the flower of their youth was incorporated in the French army, they deemed and no better soldiers had Napoleon-a portion of his military glory and renown reflected on themselves.

Among the many wholesome reforms which their temporary masters introduced, none was hailed with more satisfaction than the forced disgorgement of the bloated wealth of the church.

Tuscany was one of those dukedoms, and not the poorest of them, whose ecclesiastical revenues suffered by confiscation. Its monastries, with the exception of Vallombrosa, and two or three more, and these wofully curtailed in the number of their anchorites, were abolished altogether.

The convents shared the same fate-it was no longer permitted to take the veil. Great Britain, where every thing exploded, worn out, and discarded, is sure to fine refuge, is the land par excellence for nuns and Jesuits at the present day. The aged religieuses were turned into schoolmistresses, the young ones absolved from their vows, and the establishments converted into pensions, or, as they are termed, conser

vatorios.

Thus much premised, I shall, in my own rambling way, proceed with my narrative.

I have a sieve-like memory for some things, and strongly suspect that, according to the chart laid down by the phrenologists, my cranium has many an ill-supplied and vacant cell-a depression where it should have a boss. Now, strange as it may appear, it is no less perfectly true, that there is a street in Florence, through which I was in the daily habit of riding for months, and though it was called after a saint, I cannot, for the life of me, even remember his name, and have equally forgotten that of a new one, made when I was residing there, expressly for the weavers, on whom it was justly considered hard to be without a patron and protector.

This street, however, runs parallel with the Eastern wall of the city; and I was in the habit of taking the ride I have mentioned, with a Frenchman, of an old Huguenot family, who had been converted to the ancient faith at Rome, and was, unlike me, perfectly well read in the lives of every saint in the Calendar.

He was of a particularly religious temperament; though he did not actually believe that the dove, which on a certain day announces, by its flight from the duomo, an abundance of corn, wine, and oil, was,

as the peasants thought, directed by the hand of Providence, but rather by wires from that of a priest.

Many a time and oft, when I have visited the Santa Maria Novella, to examine the wonderful frescos that adorn its cupola, have I spied my friend in some niche of the building lost in devout abstraction.

Boccacio is right in making the party that figure in the Decameron, formed in that church, which continues to be what it was in his day, the resort of all the beauty and fashion of the capital.

Religion is very nearly and intimately allied to love. It is the text of my story; and if I do not work it out as well as he of the Hundred Tales would have done, it is not the fault of the subject.

My companion, though he would have made but a poor addition to the great novelist's circle, had a passion for churches, and as often as we cavalcaded through this street, sighed at the sight of a dilapidated chapel, whose vast gothic window looked him most piteously, deploringly in the face. The monastery, of which it had formed a part, was in total ruin; trees of some size having here and there found sufficient nourishment for their roots in the interstices of the mouldering walls. The continual repetition of this spectacle, clouded more and more my friend's brow. He at length took compassion on its decay— purchased the skeleton, together with a considerable vineyard and garden attached to it, and began to execute the design of piously restoring the place of worship, and imbodying from out the disjecta membra of the pile, a villa.

The situation, like that of most monastic buildings, was well chosen. The view from the Podere at the back, owing to a slight inequality of the ground, magical-for it took in on one side the heights of Fiesole, with a circular range of Appennines, a sort of mantle, as Alfieri calls them; and on the other, was bounded by the Observatory of Galileo, and the fortress, that commands the Pitti and Boboli Gardens; whilst all between rose above the mass of foliage that intercepted the houses of the city, the gigantic dome of the cathedral, the Campanile, the Battisterio, and the Tower of the Palazzo Vecchio.

No site could therefore be better adapted for a Rus in Urbe. The idea was not amiss.

The chapel soon echoed again with the mass, and the deep tones of the organ, not without psalm, mingled strangely with the rattling of stones and the crash of falling timbers from without.

Now exactly opposite was one of the most melancholy, desolate, dreary-looking convents I ever set eyes on, which, to judge from several screens attached to the windows that admitted the light, without allowing more to be seen than the sky, was partially inhabited. The edifice had no pretensions to architecture, consisting of ranges of cells, story above story, from the ground-floor.

I sometimes had the curiosity to stop my horse whenever the massy gateway was open, and peep into the quadrangle to which it gave access, and then discovered tall spiral cypresses, that revealed the area to have been once the Campo Santo, or burial place of the cloister. Let us, however, not lose our time here. In company with my friend I frequently superintended his work of demolition, and the rubbish

having been cleared away, we were about to lay the foundation of the new mansion, when on removing the floor of the last cell in the Terreno, the masons broke into what shall I call it ?-a mine, or a key to mines—an excavation-an aperture, of a most suspicious character, to an underground passage-a covered way of love's construction that pointed towards the convent.

"Ho! ho!" I exclaimed, "what have we here? Materials for a new version of the history of Abelard and Heloise. You see old Withers's words have come true

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage ;

or rather, we have a confirmation of the truth of our wise law, that

Love laughs at locksmiths.

What shall I compare this convenient outlet or inlet to-a fox-earth, or a rabbit-burrow-though the terrier or ferret must have been a small one. None but a bold man would have ventured into that hole; for my part, though none of the stoutest, I should be very sorry to make the experiment, and without possessing the volubility of a snake, should have been mighty afraid of sticking fast in a trap."

My friend looked serious; he seemed little disposed to joke about the virtue of the recluses of either sex, and I should perhaps have forgotten the circumstance altogether, deeming there was nothing extraordinary in such a Sotterraneo, but that my valet Philippo, a droll and inquisitive rascal, who had heard of the discovery a few days afterwards, while I was under his hands, said,

"Eccellenza, I am acquainted with the old porteress of the Convent of Santa-and have learnt something about the vomitorio !"

I must here remark, that the easy terms on which Terence places Davus and Pamphilus, are by no means an overdrawing. The same familiarity continues to exist between masters and their servants at the present day. It is something that in manners, address, and education, they are a superior class to our own; and nothing hurts their feelings so much as the morgue and hauteur shown towards them by English families.

Lord Byron, who was become more than half Italianized, and naturally kind and benevolent, treated his domestics less like menials than equals, and hence the zeal, that sometimes overstepped the bounds of discretion, which they displayed in his service.

Every one knows the affair that took place with Serjeant-major Masi; and I am reminded of it from the circumstance of much of the scene of this drama being laid in the palace where it occurred. The Tuscan police are not remarkable for clear-sightedness, and overlooked the right culprit. Both one and the other are dead, and therefore there can be no great indiscretion in the following anecdote :

When I was at Sienna, a mendicant with a wooden leg, who was begging his way to his native place, Rome, called on me for alms, and when I had given him a trifle, he said,

"Don't you remember me,-I was Lord Byron's coachman at Pisa, and used to drive you every day to the Contadinos."

The man was so much changed, that it was some time before I could