voice. At one moment it seemed in gay tones to be calling me back to the sparry grotto and bright sunshine behind me, while the very next it appeared with sudden and harsh intonation to warn me against proceeding further. Anon it would die away with a mournful cadence, a melancholy wailing, like the requiem of one who was beyond the reach of all earthly counsel or assistance.

I

Again and again did I pause in my career to listen to this wild chanting, while my feelings would for the moment take their hue and complexion from the sources which thus bewildered my senses. thought of my early dreams of fame and honour, of the singing hopes that lured me on my path, when one fatal image stepped between my soul and all its high endeavour. I thought of that buoyancy of spirit, once so irrepressible in its elasticity that it seemed proof alike against time and sorrow, now sapped, wasted, and destroyed by the frenzied pursuit of one object. I thought of the home which had so much to embellish and endear it, and which yet with all its heart-cheering joys had been neglected and left, like the sunlit grotto, to follow a shifting phantom through a heartless world. I thought of the reproachful voices around me, and the ceaseless upbraider in my own bosom, which told of time and talents wasted, of opportunities thrown away, of mental energies squandered, of heart, brain and soul consumed in a devotion deeper and more absorbing than Heaven itself exacts from its votaries. I thought, and I looked at the object for which I had lavished them all. I thought that my life must have been some hideous dream, some dread vision in which my fated soul was bound by imaginary ties to a being doomed to be its bane upon earth, and shut it out at last from heaven; and I laughed in scornful glee as I twisted my bodily frame in the hope that at length I might wake from that long. enduring sleep. I caught a smile from the lips; I saw a beckon from the hand of the phantom, and I wished still to dream, and to follow for I plunged into the abyss of darkness to which it pointed; and reckless of everything I might leave behind followed wheresoever it might marshal me.

ever.

A damp and chilling atmosphere now pervaded the place, and the clammy moisture stood thick upon my brow as I groped my way through a labyrinth of winding galleries which intersected each other so often, both obliquely and transversely, that the whole mountain seemed honey. combed. At one moment the steep and broken pathway led up acclivities almost impossible to scale; at another the black edge of a precipice indicated our hazardous route along the brink of some unfathomed gulf; while again a savage torrent, roaring through the sinuous vault, left scarcely room enough for a foot-hold between the base of the wall and its furious tide.

And still my guide kept on and still I followed. Returning indeed, had the thought occurred to me, was now impossible; for the pale light which seemed to hang around her person, emanating as it were from her white raiment, was all that guided me through these shadowy realms. But not for a moment did I now think of retracing my steps, or pausing in that wild pursuit. Onward and still onward it led, while my spirit once set upon its purpose seemed to gather sterner determination from every difficulty it encountered, and to kindle once more with that indomitable buoyancy which was once the chief attribute of my

nature.

At length the chase seemed ended, as we approached one of those

abrupt and startling turns common in these caverns, where the pas. sage, suddenly veering to the right or left, leads you, as if by design, to the sheer edge of some gulf that is impassable. My strange companion seemed pausing for a moment upon the brink of the abyss. It was a moment to me of delirious joy, mingled with more than mortal agony; the object of my wild pursuit seemed at length within my grasp. A single bound, and my outstretched arms would have encircled her person; a single bound-nay, the least movement towards her-might only have precipitated the destruction upon whose brink she hovered. Her form seemed to flutter upon the very edge of that horrid precipice, as gazing like one fascinated over it, she stretched her hand backward toward me. It was like inviting me to perdition. And yet, forgive me Heaven! to perish with her was my proudest hope, as I sprang to grasp it. But, oh God! what held I in that withering clasp? The ice of death seemed curdling in my veins as I touched those clammy and pulseless fingers. A strange and unhallowed light shot upward from the black abyss; and the features from which I could not take my eyes away were changed to those of a DEMON in that hideous glare. And now the hand that I had so longed to clasp closed with remorseless pressure round my own, and drew me toward the yawning gulf,-it tightened in its grasp, and I hovered still nearer to my horrid doom,-it clenched yet more closely, and the frenzied shriek I gave—

AWOKE ME.

A soft palm was gently pressed against my own; a pair of laughing blue eyes were bent archly upon me; and the fair locks which floated over her blooming cheeks revealed the joyous and romping damsel who had promised to act as my guide through the cavern. She had been prevented by some household cares from keeping her appointment until the approach of evening made it too late, and she had taken it for granted that I had then returned to my lodgings at the inn. My absence from the breakfast table in the morning, however, had awakened some concern in the family, and induced her to seek me where we then met. The pressure of her hand in trying to awaken me will partially account for the latter part of my hideous dream; the general tenor of it is easily traceable to the impression made upon my mind by the prevalent superstition connected with the cavern; but no metaphysical ingenuity of which I am master can explain how one whose daily thoughts flow in so careless, if not gay a current as mine, even in a dream could have conjured up such a train of wild and bitter fancies; much less how the fearful tissue should have been so interwoven with the memory of an idle caprice of boyhood as to give new shape and reality to a phantom long-long since faded. And I could not but think that had a vision so strange and vivid swept athwart my brain at an earlier period of life, I should have regarded it as something more than an unmeaning phantasy! That mystical romance which is the religion of life's spring time would have interpreted my dream as a dark foreboding of the future, prophetic of hopes misplaced, of opportunities misapplied, of a joy. less and barren youth, and a manhood whose best endeavour would be only a restless effort to lose in action the memory of the dreary past.

If half be true however that is told concerning them, still more extravagant sallies of the imagination overtake persons of quite as easy and indolent a disposition as my own, when venturing to pass a night upon the Enchanted Mountains.

OLIVER TWIST;

OR, THE PARISH BOY'S PRogress.

BY BOZ.

BOOK THE THIRD.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAPTER.

It was fortunate for the girl that the possession of money occasioned Mr. Sikes so much employment next day in the way of eating and drinking, and withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing down the asperities of his temper that he had neither time nor inclination to be very critical upon her behaviour and deportment. That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would have been obvious to his lynx-eyed friend the Jew, who would most probably have taken the alarm at once; but Mr. Sikes lacking the niceties of discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of behaviour towards every body; and being furthermore in an unusually amiable condition, as has been already observed, saw nothing unusual in her demeanour, and indeed troubled himself so little about her, that had her agitation been far more perceptible than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have awakened his suspicions. As the day closed in the girl's excitement increased, and when night came on, and she sat by, watching till the house-breaker should drink himself asleep, there were an unusual paleness in her cheek and fire in her eye, that even Sikes observed with astonishment.

Mr. Sikes, being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot water with his gin to render it less inflammatory, and had pushed his glass towards Nancy to be replenished for the third or fourth time, when these symptoms first struck him.

"Why, burn my body !" said the man, raising himself on his hands as he stared the girl in the face. "You look like a corpse come to life again. What's the matter?" "Matter!" replied the girl.

me so hard for ?"

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Nothing. What do you look at

"What foolery is this ?" demanded Sikes, grasping her by the arm, and shaking her roughly. "What is it? What do you mean? What are you thinking of, ha ?"

"Of many things, Bill," replied the girl, shuddering, and as she did so pressing her hands upon her eyes. "But, Lord! what odds in

that ?"

The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken seem

ed to produce a deeper impression on Sikes than the wild and rigid look which had preceded them.

66

"I tell you wot it is," said Sikes," If you havn't caught the fever and got it comin' on now, there's something more than usual in the wind, and something dangerous too. You're not a-going to damme! you wouldn't do that!" "Do what?" asked the girl.

No,

"There ain't," said Sikes, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering the words to himself, " there ain't a stauncher-hearted gal going, or I'd have cut her throat three months ago. She's got the fever coming on; that's it."

Fortifying himself with this assurance, Sikes drained the glass to the bottom, and then with many grumbling oaths called for his physic. The girl jumped up with great alacrity, poured it quickly out, but with her back towards him and held the vessel to his lips while he drank it off.

:

"Now," said the robber, "come and sit aside of me, and put on your own face, or I'll alter it so that you won't know it again when you do want it."

The girl obeyed, and Sikes locking her hand in his fell back upon the pillow, turning his eyes upon her face. They closed, opened again; closed once more, again opened; the house-breaker shifted his posi. tion restlessly, and after dozing again and again for-two or three minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were, while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy sleep. The grasp of his hand relaxed, the upraised arm fell languidly by his side,and he lay like one in a profound trance.

"The laudanum has taken effect at last," murmured the girl as she rose from the bedside. "I may be too late even now."

She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl, looking fearfully round from time to time as if despite the sleeping draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of Sikes' heavy hand upon her shoulder; then stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the robber's lips, and opening and closing the room-door with noiseless touch, hurried from the house.

A watchman was crying half-past nine down a dark passage through which she had to pass in gaining the main thorough-fare.

"Has it long gone the half hour ?" asked the girl.

"It'll strike the hour in another quarter," said the man, raising his lantern to her face.

"And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more," muttered Nancy, brushing swiftly past him and gliding rapidly down the street. Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and avenues through which she tracked her way in making from Spitalfields towards the West-End of London. The clock

struck ten, increasing her impatience. She tore along the narrow pavement, elbowing the passengers from side to side and darting almost under the horses' heads, crossed crowded streets, where clusters of persons were eagerly watching their opportunity to do the like.

"The woman is mad!" said the people, turning to look after her as she rushed away.

When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the streets were comparatively deserted, and here her headlong progress seemed to excite a greater curiosity in the stragglers whom she hurried past. Some quickened their pace behind, as though to see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her undiminished speed, but they fell off one by one; and when she neared her place of destination she was alone.

It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its door guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped into the hall. The porter's seat was vacant. She looked around with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.

"Now, young woman," said a smartly-dressed female, looking out from a door behind her, "who do you want here?"

"A lady who is stopping in this house," answered the girl.

"A lady!" was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. "What lady, pray?"

"Miss Maylie," said Nancy.

The young woman, who had by this time noted her appearance, replied only by a look of virtuous disdain, and summoned a man to answer her. To him Nancy repeated her request.

"What name am I to say?" asked the waiter.

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It's of no use saying any," replied Nancy.

"Nor business ?" said the man.

"No, nor that neither," rejoined the girl. "I must see the lady." "Come," said the man, pushing her towards the door, "none of this! Take yourself off, will you?"

"I shall be carried out if I go !" said the girl violently, “and I can make that a job that two of you won't like to do. Isn't there anybody here," she said, looking round, “ that will see a simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?"

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This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook, who with some other of the servants was looking on, and who stepped forward to interfere.

"Take it up for her, Joe, can't you?" said this person. "What's the good ?" replied the man. "You don't suppose the

young lady will see such as her, do you?”