He I sat there as if struck by lightning, disabled, paralyzed. My poor brother lay moaning under the wheel. Such a thing I had never dreamed of. I dragged my self slowly from the carriage. I sank down beside him. The heavy wheel had gone over his breast. With a low, tremulous voice I called him by name. heard me no more; he recognized me no more. It was all over with him. I was the accursed one who had robbed him of a life as dear to me as my own. Horrible! two murders in the same night! both, indeed, involuntary, both committed in despair. But they were still committed, and the consequences of the first crime, which I might have avoided. could I save myself this time. For I never was a complete villain, although the most thoughtless. So thought I to myself, forgetting all my resolutions, and already in imagination I was in a remote solitude, where, under a strange name, unknown to the world, I could live with my wife and children. Occupied with these thoughts, I had still gone forward. As the road opened I saw right before me horses standing, a carriage upset with a broken wheel, and, to my horror, or to my delight,⚫ standing near, the well-known red-coat. When he saw me he grinned after his usual fashion. "Welcome here!" said he. “Did I not tell you that we should find each other again? I have been waiting all night; my coachman has gone back to the town for help, and has not returned." "His help is wanted more there than here," said I; "the whole town is on fire." "I thought so," returned he, “for I saw the light in the sky. But what do you want in the woods? What are you seeking here? Why are you not helping to extinguish the fire?" "I have quite other fires to extinguish," said I. "I thought so; didn't I tell you so?" "O, save me! I have become a wretch My eyes were wet, but not with tears of grief over the beloved dead, but tears of frantic rage against my fate, against Heaven. Never in my life had I stained myself with an atrocious crime. I had been alive to all that was beautiful, good, great, and true. I had had no sweeter joy than to make others happy. And now, a cursed thoughtlessness, a single unhappy moment of self-forgetfulness, and ed criminal, a faithless husband, a murthen this guilty play of accident or neces-derer, an incendiary, a highway robber, sity had made me the most miserable and a fratricide-all since the moment you wretch under heaven. O, let no one boast left me-all within three hours. And yet of his virtue, his strength, or his circum- I am not a wicked man. spection! It needs only a minute for a man to thrust aside a little his firmest principles, only a minute, and the pure angel is capable of the greatest crimes. Well for him is it, if fate, more favorable to him than to me, throws no brother in his way to be run over like mine! But let the moral go. For him who has not found it out of himself there is no moral. I will hasten to the end of my unhappy story, than which no poet ever invented anything more horrible. THE TEMPTER AGAIN. I soon heard the neighing of horses before me. I was startled; the love of life awoke in me anew. I thought of fleeing back into the wood. I had been very wicked; I was a criminal of the worst kind; but I might hope still to be happy The red-coat stamped on the ground with his club foot as I said this, apparently in high displeasure. But his features remained hard and stern. He made me no answer. I then related to him the unprecedented history of the night. He kept quiet. "Do you not now know who I am, and what I want of you?" "My soul! my soul!" shrieked I; "And that person was- 99 "Then fall down and worship me!" bellowed he, in a horrible voice. I fell upon my knees before him like a crazy man, raised my clasped hands, and cried, "Save me! Save my wife and my children from destruction! They are in nocent. Carry us to some desert, where we may have bread and water, and a cave to live in. We shall be as happy there as in paradise. But blot this night from my memory, or else paradise itself would be a hell. If you cannot do that, it were better for me to atone for my crimes on the scaffold." As I said this he raised his club foot, and pushed me contemptuously with it, so that I fell backward to the earth. I sprang up. I was about to repeat my entreaties, but he interrupted me: There, commend me," said he, "to your pious, tender-hearted man! Look at the proud mortal in the majesty of his reason! Look at the philosopher who denies the devil, and brings eternity itself into learned doubt! he crowns his crimes with the worship of Satan." "Now I know thee, Satan," cried I, raving. "I see now that not a touch of the sympathy which dwells in the human heart has a place in your iron breast. I want no sympathy from thee. Thou feelest nothing but malicious scorn. I would have purchased thy favor, purchased it with my soul. But my soul will do better. It will find the way to repentance and mercy. It will escape you yet, and when you fancy yourself most sure of it." Scowling grimly he replied, "No, sir, I am not the devil, as you suppose. I am a man like you. You have been a criminal; now you are a madman. But he who has once broken with his better faith is soon done with reason too. I despise you. Truly, I would not help you if I could. I do not want your soul. It is all ripe for hell, and Satan need not of fer a brass farthing for it." HOPE. FOR a few moments I stood before him, doubtful and embarrassed. Shame and rage, remorse and a readiness for any crime that could save me, for the moment struggled within me. I cannot describe what I felt; for the history of that single moment would grow into a volume under my pen, and yet I could not do it justice. "If you are not he for whom I take you," said I at last, "I cannot help wishing you were he. Save me, or I am lost. Save me, for you alone are to blame for my horrible fate." "That's the way with man," said he, grinning; "he always makes himself out perfectly innocent, even when stained with a brother's blood." "Yes; you, sir, were the first cause of all my terrible sufferings. Why did you come in the night to my summer-house, where I was sleeping, harmless and quiet, awaiting the break of day? Had you not awakened me, all this never would have happened.' "But did I awake you to conjugal infidelity and to arson? That's just the way with man. When he has assassinated some thousands he would lay all the blame on the miner who has dug the steel out of the earth. Your breath, sir, is the cause of your crimes, because, if you could not breathe, you never would have committed them; but without breath you could have no life." "But why did you play the part of the devil with me in the garden, and say so significantly that whoever lets the devil have hold of a hair, it will be the string by which he will get his whole head." "True that! Did I tell you a lie? Who can testify more fearfully to that truth than yourself? Have I asked a hair of you? or did you offer it to me? But, sir, when you saw Julia, your first love, you ought to have remembered Fanny. You trusted too much to your virtue, or rather you did not think of virtue at all. Religion and virtue would have told you, flee home to the summer-house. Sir, the instant temptation appears man must take care how he permits himself in the slightest thought that favors sin; for the first little thought of evil, which one allows himself to entertain, is the aforesaid hair in the claw of the devil." Right! O right! but could I have foreseen that?" "To be sure you could." "It was impossible. Think only of the horrible coincidence of circumstances!" "Of that, as a possibility, you ought to have thought. Could you not have thought of the count when you held his wife in your arms? of the conflagration when you threw the candle into the hay? of fratricide when you drove the horses over the body of their owner? for, whether he or another, every man is your brother." "Too true! But drive me not to greater despair. You must at least grant that the first fault might have happened without all the other horrors if there had not been the most terrible combination of circumstances." "You are mistaken! What was there so terrible in the count's coming to his wife? What was there so very terrible in there being hay in the barn as in all other barns? What so strange in your brother's happening to pass that way? No, sir; what you call a horrible coincidence might have been for you, had you kept in the right path, most happy. The world is good; it is the mind that turns it into a hell. It is man that first makes the dagger and the poison, which else would have been the peaceful plowshare or the healing medicine. Do not pretend to vindicate yourself." Here I could not help crying out in utter despair when I saw the full extent of my enormities. "O," cried I, "up to this night I have been innocent; a good father, a faithful husband, without reproach; now I am without rest, without honor, without consolation!" "No, sir; there, too, I must contradict you. You have not become what you are in one night, but you became it long ago. One cannot change from an angel to a devil in an hour, unless he possesses already every disposition to become a devil. Opportunity only is wanting for the inner man to become the outer. You only needed to see Julia alone. The fire sleeps in the steel and flint, although we see it not; strike them together and the sparks fly. The spark falls into a powder-cask near by, and half a city, with all its prosperity, is thrown into the sky." 66 "For God's sake, sir!" cried I, beside myself, "save me, for time flies. If I have been bad, I can become better." Certainly. Need brings strength." "Save me, and my wife and children! I can be better; I will be better, for I see now with horror of what crimes I was capable; crimes which I never could have believed that I could commit." "It may be. But you are a weakling. Weakness is the foster-nurse of all wickedness. I will save you, if you can save yourself. Do you know me now, and what I want of you?" "You are an angel! my guardian spirit." "I did not, then, appear to you in vain in the summer-house before the perpetration of all these enormities. But courage! Whoever has faith and spirit for the divine retains everything." RESCUE. "BLOT out the remembrance of my guilt forever, if thou canst." The old man spoke, "I will blot it out; it will trouble thee no more." As he said this he dissolved away over me like a mist, and I gazed at the gray rocks above me, and understood nothing of what had happened. But I was filled with an unspeakable peace. And yet it was all like a fairy tale. While I still gazed at the rocks above me the lips of an unseen being were pressed to mine. I felt a warm kiss. A NEW WORLD. THAT kiss brought me back to earth. I thought my eyes were open, but I found that they were shut; for I heard light footsteps around me, and yet saw no one in the cave. There came a soft breath upon my cheek, and two sweet lips once more touched mine. The feeling of life again returned to my outward senses. I heard the whispering of children's voices. Dream and reality were mingled confusedly together; but they soon began to be parted the one from the other more distinctly, until I came fully to myself, and perceived clearly what was round me. I became aware that I was lying in a stiff, uncomfortable posture. It seemed to me as if I were on the sofa in my summerhouse. I opened my eyes, and my Fanny hung over me. It was her kisses that had awakened me. Our children clapped their hands for joy when they saw me awaking, and clambered up on the sofa upon me, crying, one after the other, "Papa! papa! good morning!" And my dear little wife locked me in her arms, and, with eyes filled with tears, chid me for having slept all night in the cold summer-house; and had not Christopher, our man-servant, come back but a quarter of an hour before from the post-house, and told the maids in the kitchen of my arrival, not a soul would have known that I had come. But the heavy dream had affected me to such a degree that I lay still for some time, not venturing to trust my eyes or my ears. I looked around for the fantastic cave in the desert, but still I was in the summer-house. There lay still the drums, whips, and playthings on the floor. Upon the table still stood Fanny's "To be sure, you strange creature!" said Fanny, and patted my cheek. "He says, too, that you yourself told him to do so. Why have you passed the night on this sofa, which is as hard as a rock? Why did you not rout us out of our beds? How gladly would we all have been prepared for your reception!" I started with delight. “You have slept, then, safely and quietly all night?" asked I. "Only too soundly"" said Fanny. "Could I have guessed that you were here in the summer-house there would have been an end of all sleep. I would have slipped to you like a ghost." I clasped the lovely Fanny more fondly to my heart; and with her and the children upon my lap, I felt, now more vividly than ever, the peace of a good heart and a quiet conscience. I INSIDE A PALANQUIN. leaf toys for the children. All these, in addition to carrying the Burrah Sahib to his office, and fetching him home in the evening. A fine, sturdy, healthy, good-humored people are these Hindoo bearers, full of good feeling, willing, active, and of Herculean strength. Seldom jangling among themselves, always neatly clad, and profuse and scrupulous in ablutions; respectful and respectable, and usually all of a like stature and equal strength. I speak of private sets that are chosen by the head bearer, who is himself a perfect Adonis, with a voice that can be heard a mile off on a calm day, and who is usually possessed of the faculty of telling poocheycarah (tamul, ogre, or ghost) stories, which hush the most obstreperous of AngloIndian children into terrified slumber. Such, at least, is a fair picture of the sets employed by us; ordinarily they are the same all over the presidency, and carry you with a precision and ease that renders the motion hardly perceptible, and tends to soothe one to rest. Such is not the case, however, with hired bearers, who carry hack palkees at so much a day. These are a very inferior class of people, and seldom of the true caste; rarely of an up by a mass of shoulder cushions, the slipping or mal-arrangement of which cause excruciating joltings to the victim inside. CARE not who asserts to the contrary, and this is a bold challenge, but I main-equal height, the deficiency has to be made tain that there is no mode of conveyance at once so luxurious and convenient as a good Indian palanquin. Admitting that for speed it will bear no comparison with other vehicles, and for appearance is far less dignified than a four-in-hand; still I persist that for distance, night traveling, and a hot climate, for a country where hotels or inns are things yet to come, nothing can compete with a good palanquin, carried by a well-assorted private set of bearers. Every respectable resident in India employs private sets of palanquin bearers, who are in regular monthly pay; and, in addition to their stipulated business of carrying to and fro, make themselves useful in a dozen different ways; they dust the furniture, sweep up the dry leaves and litter in front of the house, help to water the garden, carry cocked-hatted looking "chits," (the Indian for billet-doux,) or scented invitations to balls from house to house, run for the doctor, help to pull the punkah, water the euscuss blinds during the prevalence of fierce hot winds, fetch chatties of water to the bath, rig up swings, or make palm Sometimes it occurs that ludicrous mistakes, rather aggravating to the bearers themselves, are brought about from ignorance of the people's language and customs. An old anecdote is current at Madras of a very corpulent shipmaster, whose weight threatened to force the bottom out of the palanquin, and grievously oppressed the unhappy men, who could only just crawl along with their burden. Conscious of his own misfortune, annoyed at the notice he evidently attracted, and enraged at the snail's pace they were creeping along at, the stout man lay smothering his anger till his fevered imagination interpreted the usual sing-song nasal drawl of the poor bearers into insulting insinuations toward himself. Their ah-be-fahpe, ground over and over again, sounded to him amazingly like a big fat pig, and so roused his indignation, that he jumped out of the palanquin, and violently assaulted the astonished and unoffending men. But to return to the argument with which I started. Traveling by train is doubtless agreeable and expeditious, when the journey occupies only a few hours, or at most a day and night. Travel as I have done, with hardly an hour's interval, more than a thousand miles, and however warm and comfortable the cars, the thing is no longer a joke; you feel as if every bone in your body was bruised; you feel as every man feels that has not winked at sleep for three nights; you are fit to go to bed, and to do nothing else. Travel, as I have done, also, on horseback, for thirty hours at a stretch, and tell it not, ye Fates, what is the result? If you had been broken on a wheel you could hardly be a greater martyr for a period. Travel on a camel's back, as I have been idiot enough to travel, and how do you feel after the first hour or so, with regard to breath and stiffness? Journey upon an elephant, with a well-fitted howdah, and, | apart from the elephant's vagaries, such as filling his trunk at every puddle, and deliberately squirting the contents all over you the very recollection is productive of an ague. So with regard to stagecoaches, carriages, cabs, carts, wagons, omnibuses, all these are agreeable enough, and full useful for a measured distance. But I should like to see the man who would undertake to travel night and day in these without dismounting, save for a few minutes at a time, and so continue traveling through eight successive days and nights, as I have traveled, dawk in a palanquin. With a couple of thousand miles to traverse, give me the palanquin before any other mode of conveyance. I remember an old anecdote told of a stage coachman, when railways first came into vogue, which certainly was the most clearly-defined explanation of the difference between where are you? and there you are. The "old whip," hard upon the | new-fangled innovations, brought matters to a crisis, and his argument to a dead settler, by illustrating two imaginary accidents, and drawing his own satisfactory conclusions from the results. "A railway," said he, "why there's the engine goes a bursting, or is blown up, or running into each other, or over pressempieces, (precipices,) and then where are ye? Whereas a coach-wheel may bolt off, or a haccident occur—mayhap you get a bruise or two-mayhap a broken limb; but-there you are we sees you, and we picks you up, and carries you to a hospital-now that's what I call a hadequate advantage." Precisely so; I am perfectly of honest John's opinion, with this even more" hadequate advantage," that my palanquin has no wheels to lose; no restive or kicking horses to contend with; if an accident happens at all, it's the poor bearers' shins that suffer, not mine, and the utmost inconvenience I am put to is the abruptness of the jolt. And now for the inside of my palanquin -that palanquin in which I traveled, and where I always found myself cosy and snug. My palanquin, then, was about six feet long by three broad, and three in height. It was lined throughout with green morocco, well padded and stuffed. The mattress and the cushions (one flat and one round one) were covered with the same material, also well stuffed and padded; over these, at night-time, or when anxious for a nap, the head bearer carefully spread blankets and sheets, and placed a couple of bed-pillows, when my palanquin became as luxuriant a four-poster as one could wish for in a hot climate. At other times, these were removed and folded together, and placed behind the palanquin cushion, so as to prop one up into a comfortable sitting posture; then the palanquin answered for an easy chair or a couch. The cushion, moreover, was so arranged by means of leather straps and buttons, as to admit of my altering the angle of support for the back, by raising or lowering the cushion at pleasure, when growing weary of one posture. Behind my head, and over either shoulder, were a couple of carriage lamps, fixed outside the palanquin, but which threw all the light, when they were lit at night, into the interior, through small panes of glass, which had curtains to shroud the glare at pleasure. On the other hand, also, were pockets and contrivances for holding a tumbler, a bottle, a small goglet (Indian porous jars) of water, biscuits, sandwiches, newspapers, and a book or two. So much for the upper end. From the knees downward extended, at an elevation of a foot and a half from the bedding, a firm shelf, with a ledge, and a good secure drawer in it. Here was packed away hat-box, dressing-case, desk, more books, more papers, (and in most gentlemen's palkees, cigars,) and other odds and ends, while in the drawer itself were brushes and combs, looking-glass, pens |