the deepest distress of mind, Schroll wandered out towards nightfall, and strolled through the town. Coming to a solitary bridge in the outskirts, he looked down from the battlements upon the gloomy depths of the waters below, which seemed to regard him with looks of sympathy and strong fascination. "So be it then!" he exclaimed, and sprang over the railing; but instead of finding his grave in the waters, he felt himself below seized powerfully by the grasp of a man, whom, from his scornful laugh, he recognized as his evil counsellor. The man bore him to the shore, and said, "No, no! my good friend; he that once enters into a league with me, him I shall deliver from death even in his own despite."

Half crazy with despair, the next morning Schroll crept out of the town with a loaded pistol. Spring was abroad; spring flowers, spring breezes, and nightingales.* They were all abroad, but not for him or his delight. A crowd of itinerant tradesmen passed him, who were on the road to a neighboring fair. One of them, observing his dejected countenance with pity, attached himself to his side, and asked in a tone of sympathy what was the matter. Two others of the passers-by Schroll heard distinctly saying, "Faith, I should not like, for my part, to walk alone with such an ill-looking fellow." He darted a furious glance at the men, separated from his pitying companion with a fervent pressure of his hand, and struck off into a solitary track of the forest. In the first retired spot he fired the pistol, and behold the man who had spoken to him with so much kindness lies stretched in his blood, and he himself is without a wound. At this moment, while staring half

* It may be necessary to inform some readers, who have never lived far enough to the south to have any personal knowledge of the nightingale, that this bird sings in the daytime as well as the night.

unconsciously at the face of the murdered man, he feels himself seized from behind. Already he seems to himself in the hands of the public executioner. Turning round, however, he hardly knows whether to feel pleasure or pain on seeing his evil suggester in the dress of a grave-digger. "My friend," said the grave-digger, "if you cannot be content to wait for death until I send it, I must be forced to end with dragging you to that from which I began by saving you, a public execution. But think not thus, or by any other way, to escape me. assuredly be mine again."

After death, thou wilt

"Who, then," said the unhappy man, "who is the murderer of the poor traveller?"

"Who? why, who but yourself? Was it not yourself that fired the pistol?"

"Ay, but at my own head."

The fiend laughed in a way that made Schroll's flesh creep on his bones. "Understand this, friend, that he whose fate I hold in my hands cannot anticipate it by his own act. For the present, begone, if you would escape the scaffold. To oblige you once more, I shall throw a veil over this murder."

-

Thereupon the grave-digger set about making a grave for the corpse, whilst Schroll wandered away, more for the sake of escaping the hideous presence in which he stood, than with any view to his own security from punishment.

Seeing by accident a prisoner under arrest at the guardhouse, Schroll's thoughts reverted to his own confinement. "How happy," said he, "for me and for Charlotte, had I then refused to purchase life on such terms, and had better laid to heart the counsel of my good spiritual adviser!" Upon this a sudden thought struck him, that he would go and find out the old clergyman, and would unfold to him his wretched history and situation. He told his wife that

some private affairs required his attendance for a few days what he would, he could not prevail on her to desist from accompanying him.

at the town of

But, say

On the journey his chief anxiety was lest the clergyman, who was already advanced in years at the memorable scene of the sand-hill, might now be dead. But at the very entrance of the town he saw him walking in the street, and immediately felt himself more composed in mind than he had done for years. The venerable appearance of the old man confirmed him still more in his resolution of making a full disclosure to him of his whole past life: one only transaction, the murder of his first wife, he thought himself justified in concealing; since, with all his penitence for it, that act was now beyond the possibility of reparation.

For a long time the pious clergyman refused all belief to Schroll's narrative; but being at length convinced that he had a wounded spirit to deal with, and not a disordered intellect, he exerted himself to present all those views of religious consolation which his philanthropic character and his long experience suggested to him as likely to be effectual. Eight days' conversation with the clergyman restored Schroll to the hopes of a less miserable future. But the good man admonished him at parting to put away from himself whatsoever could in any way tend to support his unhallowed connection.

In this direction Schroll was aware that the dice were included: and he resolved firmly that his first measure on returning home should be to bury in an inaccessible place these accursed implements, that could not but bring mischief to every possessor. On entering the inn, he was met by his wife, who was in the highest spirits, and laughing profusely. He inquired the cause. "No," said she: “you refused to communicate your motive for coming hither, and the nature of your business for the last week: I, too,

shall have my mysteries. As to your leaving me in solitude at an inn, that is a sort of courtesy which marriage naturally brings with it; but that you should have travelled hither for no other purpose than that of trifling away your time in the company of an old tedious parson, that (you will allow me to say) is a caprice which seems scarcely worth the money it will cost."

"Who, then, has told you that I have passed my time with an old parson?" said the astonished Schroll.

"Who told me? Why, just let me know what your business was with the parson, and I'll let you know in turn who it was that told me. So much I will assure you, however, now, - that the cavalier, who was my informant, is a thousand times handsomer, and a more interesting companion, than an old dotard who is standing at the edge of the grave."

All the efforts of Madame von Schrollshausen to irritate the curiosity of her husband proved ineffectual to draw from him his secret. The next day, on their return homewards, she repeated her attempts. But he parried them all with firmness. A more severe trial to his firmness was prepared for him in the heavy bills which his wife presented to him on his reaching home. Her expenses in clothes and in jewels had been so profuse, that no expedient remained to Schroll but that of selling without delay the landed estate he had so lately purchased. A declaration to this effect was very ill received by his wife. "Sell the estate?" said she; "what, sell the sole resource I shall have to rely on when you are dead? And for what reason, I should be glad to know; when a very little of the customary luck of your dice will enable you to pay off these trifles? And whether the bills be payed to-day or to-morrow cannot be of any very great importance." Upon this, Schroll declared with firmness that he never

ment to play again. "Not play again!" exclaimed his wife, "pooh! pooh! you make me blush for you! So, then, I suppose it's all true, as was said, that scruples of conscience drove you to the old rusty parson; and that he enjoined as a penance that you should abstain from gaming? I was told as much: but I refused to believe it; for in your circumstances the thing seemed too senseless and irrational."

"My dear girl," said Schroll, "consider

"Consider! what's the use of considering? what is there to consider about?" interrupted Madame von Schrollshausen: and, recollecting the gay cavalier whom she had met at the inn, she now, for the first time, proposed a separation herself. "Very well," said her husband, "I am content." "So am I," said his father-in-law, who joined them at that moment. "But take notice that first of all I must have paid over to me an adequate sum of money for the creditable support of my daughter: else—”

Here he took Schroll aside, and the old threat of revealing the murder so utterly disheartened him, that at length in despair he consented to his terms.

Once more, therefore, the dice were to be tried; but only for the purpose of accomplishing the separation: that over, Schroll resolved to seek a livelihood in any other way, even if it were as a day-laborer. The stipulated sum was at length all collected within a few hundred dollars ; and Schroll was already looking out for some old disused well into which he might throw the dice, and then have it filled up; for even a river seemed to him a hiding-place not sufficiently secure for such instruments of misery.

Remarkable it was on the very night when the last arrears were to be obtained of his father-in-law's demand a night which Schroll had anticipated with so much bitter anxiety — that he became unusually gloomy and dejected.