ent, an awful joy, in thinking of the Maker of the Universe, as the Father and Friend of every living soul. No! there was strife and pain, and impotent self-abasement, and as impotent, because as blind, aspiration within me. forgot I was not alone. I cried out in the strange agony, and clenched my hands.

Then I felt myself clasped in his arms, I was turned round, I could see no longer, I felt as if some divine inspiration had been kept off from me by that human presence. Harold's calm, kind voice, was saying

"You are too excitable, my darling: I would not have brought you here, if I had known it; you will make yourself ill; be quiet, and lean upon me."

But I struggled till I was free. Struggled so fiercely out of the darkness in which he held me, into the red, glorious, glowing light, that he let me go, and stood looking at me, wonderingly. The calmness of his half-pitying look, irritated me yet more. I poured out a torrent of wildly passionate words: as soon as they were spoken I would have given more than my life to recall them: but we were both silent. Harold drew my arm through his, and led me down.

clined to indulge something like contempt for her weakness of character and timidity of nature.

While I lived with the Stones, Sunday after Sunday saw my place in the church-pew regularly filled by my person. My person, say advisedly, for in my life of slavery the time of service on the Sunday, had always been a time of liberty; a time for the indulgence of day-dreamings, and wild, strange fancyings. The Stones lived in an old cathedral-town, and we always attended the cathedral-service; the music there was very fine; the organ was magnificent, and its tones gave a mystical elevation to my musings. Mine was the darkest corner of the pew; there I shrank back, and dreamed with open eyes the long sermon through.

The first Sunday we were in the Highlands, my husband had taken pains to reach a place where the church would be within an easy distance, the evening before.

It was a wild country place; the houses were scattered far and wide, and apparently there were but few of them; yet the church was full to overflowing, and the people in the plain, unadorned old building, neat and I was miserable; ungrateful wretch that I sober in attire, serene and reverent in counwas! I shed bitter tears as we proceeded tenance, impressed me forcibly. Everything home in the twilight. I thought I had wound- was sternly simple about the service and the ed my husband deeply by my mad, impatient, preacher. Sitting beside my husband, I, ungracious words. Before I slept, I had glancing up into his composed and attentive thrown myself on my knees, sobbed out my face, liked its expression, it was grand in sorrow, my wretchedness, and entreated his its calmness. I would not have ruffled it pardon. I remember he took me up and for the world; and as I found that once or kissed me, as he might have done a child; he twice his eyes sought mine, and that he then did not understand, one whit, what it was all looked uneasy, observing my straying and about; he had almost forgotten that he had dreamy glances, I tried to listen too; but the received any cause of offence: I found that art could not be learned in one day, and my to him it seemed a light matter; that in fu- thoughts would wander. ture I need not give way to any such agonizing apprehensions of having wounded his calm, not easily-perturbed spirit.

In the evening Harold asked me, rather doubtfully, if I would go again to church or stay at home-he was going. I would go, 1 He was too simply, unperplexedly, good said, and his face brightened. The evening for my comprehension. Yet I throned my-service was very short, and we were soon out self on an imagined elevation of intellectual again. It was a lovely evening. I felt in my superiority, and scorned his child-like single- husband's words-in many a little expression ness of heart. But this unhappy feeling grew and turn of thought, that this Sabbath worup gradually there was many a struggle shipping was, for him, no empty form; that first. I wished to believe my husband a he came from it holier and happier. That hero, and so to worship him; but the only evening there was a kind of sweet, serious, heroic aspect of his character, was the very chastened gravity in his tone and in his tenone in which my eyes could not see him. derness that drew my heart nearer his than I was a heathen, my husband a Christian! I had felt it before, and yet made me feel Do not be startled and call up visions of Hot-half afraid of him. Very docile in spirit as tentots, or dark-skinned creatures of any well as in act; for once, I tried to learn of my nation: I was only spiritually dark. I had husband.

always lived with professing Christians; We paced along the low, wild sea-shore, I had heard their professions, and felt their under the stars, in the balmy night air, and practice, and I was in heart truly a heathen. I tried to make him speak plainly to me of My aunt Aston was the only person of Chris- his faith and hope as a Christian. A girlish tian practice with whom I had been acquainted; shyness on his part-or what appeared to me of her I had seen little, and had always in- such-prevented my getting at the depth of

his religious feeling. He seemed to have a everything went smoothly and prosperously; vague awe and dread of speaking of these I guarded Harold's heart from the only thing things. If this Religion were a real thing, it that would wound it; in cherishing his happiseemed to me that it would bear to be looked ness I found my own. But I had no real and at in the face-to be spoken of in plain sufficient occupation; so much time and nowords; but I could get from Harold nothing thing to do in it; such a superfluity of unapbut indefinite generalizations: of his indi- plied power-such a lack of necessary pavidual experience I could learn nothing, and tience. I soon became conscious that there I did not want to hear from his lips any of was always a great aching void at my heart. the trite common-places that I heard so often Where I thought to find sympathy with every before. I found that my husband could not thought and emotion, a constant stimulus to reason-could not even give a reason for his all aspiration and mental exertion, I did not faith. I ought to have looked to his life for always find myself even understood. After the teaching I wanted. awhile my vague uneasiness deepened into After this evening, the subject of religion torturing longing and disquiet. came to be an avoided one between us. I In my drawing-room I had found a splendid am sure I had unwittingly pained Harold piano. Harold had said he liked music. I by my tone, and I think he dreaded to find thought I had discovered both an occupation out how shallow were the waters of my belief. He loved me so well, that even this shadowy imagining and dread weakened his own faith. He loosed his anchor from its firmest hold in the haven of true rest, and so was more at the mercy of the wind and waves, liable to be wearily driven about and tossed.

and a motive for it, when I applied myself heart and soul to the cultivation of my musical power. The slightest expression of a wish to take lessons placed the services of a firstrate master at my disposal. I had the taste of a real musician, and was already more than ordinarily accomplished in the art; now I All my influence-and I gradually grew to studied root and branch, theory and practice, have much-over my husband was injurious throwing all my unapplied energy into my to him-unhappy for him. It was of a de- endeavor. My zeal lasted through a whole structive kind for a woman to possess of a autumn and winter: I wanted to surprise Hafiendish kind for any woman to wield. Herold by my performance, so never let him grew to fear my uncertain temper, my scorn hear my practice. I employed myself in the or sarcasm, expressed seldom perhaps by composition of a piece. I had attempted this words, but often by look and gesture, which he read too much aright. I loved power diabolically, because for its own sake. I felt my power over him, and made him feel it too.

before in the long, lonely evenings often spent at the school-room piano at the Stones. The theme of this present effort was very wild and fanciful; mournful in the beginning-more Our sojourn in the Highlands was, on the mournful in the end-dying out into the exwhole, a happy one: looked back on from a treme silence of death. Midway between belater time, it showed very fair and bright. Iginning and end was a lively movement, full would willingly have prolonged it, but I fan- of some great tumultuous joy. cied my husband began to show signs of weariness at the close of a month. So we went home.

CHAPTER III.

I submitted my MS. to my master's perusal. He played it through once or twice. I interrupted him impatiently to show him an ill-expressed meaning. When he had finished he bowed and paid me some compliments, showing me tears in his eyes; but I did not listen or heed-I only wanted the use of his knowledge, not the expression of his praise; and so I somewhat haughtily gave him to understand. He bowed again, and then favored me with some straightforward criticisms that were really useful.

My home was very beautiful. Harold's thoughtful love had collected there, books, birds, pictures, music, flowers; everything he could think of that should help to make my solitary morning hours pass away swiftly and pleasantly. My heart would have been very, very hard had it not been deeply grateful in its first surprise. Our coming to such a home It was the London season; my husband could not be anything but happy. I thought, wished to see me do the honors of his beautiwhen he planned and arranged all these things, ful house. So we were to give a very large how many beautiful anticipations of future party. It rather pleased me to be the centre happiness must have been clustering and of attraction in a large circle, and yet I debrightening round my dear husband's heart. spised myself for the pleasure it gave me. In Such reflections quite subdued me, filling this, as in many things, I felt my two natures me with a strange pitying love for him. For at war. awhile I kept such a strict watch and ward This particular evening it was more pride over my tongue and temper, ruled my rebel- for my husband than any care for the opinion lious nature with such an iron hand, that formed of me, that determined me to appear

I thought I could discern misery, vista after "O Harold! I see it now. You are too vista, opening before me. How could I live good,-I am not worthy-forgive me! What with this torturing, craving, perpetual restless- a wife I am to you! I owe you everything, ness at my heart? It had been gone a little and I poison your peace-make you miserwhile; now it came back worse than ever; able. No! I will not get up, I will stay here. it would abide there always, I thought. Must You must tell me,--how shall I make you my soul live all those future long, long years, happy? How can I grow good and quiet? alone; wandering on without aim or purpose, How can I alter myself? You must tell me ; finding no rest for her world-worn feet? No! you must teach me!" I would die first; or, at least, I should go mad.

And I sat harboring like bitter thoughts; gazing before me with hot, dry eyes, though my passionate tears still wetted my cheeks.

Harold had not spoken. At last I glanced at him; he too sat looking into the fire; he had seated himself near me. A world of perplexed thought troubled and clouded his face. He felt my eyes on him, and turned his head slowly round to me. He spoke very gently and tenderly.

But he would not listen. He took me up in his arms, soothing and caressing me, as if indeed I had been a child, a penitent, passionweary child, he carried me up-stairs. I was obliged to be passive now, because I felt utterly weary; so my head lay quietly on his shoulder, and my tears rained down quietly, without effort to control or restrain them. But this sweet tenderness was not what I had wanted,-I wanted him really to teach me—I wanted to have learnt from him the secret of quiet happiness. Ah! if I could only have "I see how it is, Annie. Yes, I do not governed myself-have spoken calmly and always understand you; sometimes I disap- gently, and without tears, passion, or re point and pain you. You have often borne proaches, have let him known how it was with with my dulness patiently, but to-night your me! That night I lay awake with the miserdisappointment was more than you could bear. able consciousness that I had done no good, Yes it was very hard, after you had been but great harm,-that now, indeed, poor Hathinking you should please him, to have your rold's heart must be wounded, that I had husband the only one who did not admire told my husband that his love could not make your music. You are very clever, and have me happy,-that I was miserable! many thoughts and feelings into which I do Tormented for the few hours before daynot enter. I did not know you, Annie, when I asked you to marry me; if I had-"

fight by such thoughts as these, I grew more and more restless and feverish. Next day, and for many days after, I was very ill, and during all the time my husband's tender, selfforgetting care of me was a constant reproach and cause of remorse.

"You would not have done so!" I exclaimed,—“ oh, misery! Then you have left off loving me. I have wearied you with my temper and my violence! You thought you had won a good and quiet wife-one who The first day I was down-stairs again, and would have kept your house in order be al- tolerably calm and strong, I made a great ways ruled by you--make your world her effort to speak to Harold about that miserable world- one who would be always grateful evening. He would hear no explanations. and cheerful, and content; and instead I was to forget all about it. I had not made Indeed, I do not wonder you cannot love the creature."

myself ill then, he was sure; I was feverish be fore. It was all his fault, he ought to have "You shall not speak so!-hush! I love known better than to subject me to so much you-you know I love you. Cannot I make fatigue and excitement. We had both talked you happy, my poor wife? I have been nonsense. Not happy? We were both as wrong and selfish; in my hurry to get the happy as the day was long. Could I look in treasure I wanted, I did not pause to think if his face and tell him that I was not happy? I were worthy to keep it. You were not he asked. He had come to the side of my happy, I thought, presumptuously, that I sofa-had sat down by me and drawn my could make you so,-that my great, entire love head from its resting-place, to pillow it on his would satisfy you. If I was mistaken and heart, Lying there, looking up into those wrong, Heaven forgive me. Heaven pity us most loving eyes of his, I said I was happy both—you most-my yoor, poor wife!" then.

He spoke so sadly that my heart melted utterly. I threw myself on the ground, clasping his knees, and sobbed out:

From Notes and Queries.

ABDUCTIONS IN IRELAND.

nounced that verdict which saved their characters, and the offenders were executed."

Again

Sir Henry Hayes was found guilty, and received sentence of death, which was commuted to transportation for life; he was, however, subsequently pardoned, and permitted to return

The recent attempt of Mr. John Carden, a magistrate, a Deputy-Lieutenant, and lately High Sheriff of the county of Tipperary, to carry In the case of the Misses Kennedy, the young off by force Miss Eleanor Arbuthnot, a young ladies had been obliged to submit to a marriage Scotch lady, sister of the Honorable Mrs. Gough, and cohabitation for a length of time, yet the of has excited great indignation throughout the fenders were most justly convicted, and suffered empire. The crime of abduction was formerly death." Curran and his Contemporaries, by very common in Ireland amongst the rural classes; Charles Phillips, edit. 1851, pp. 390, 391, 392. gentlemen were not altogether free from a disposition to follow their example; and a few details will be illustrative of the former state of society in that country. The trial and conviction of Sir Henry Brown Hayes, Knt., before Mr. Justice Day, at the Cork Spring Assizes of 1801, for the abduction of Miss Mary Pike, a Quaker heiress, was a very remarkable one; the prosecution having been specially conducted by the celebrated John Philpot Curran. The anecdote is well known, that when the mob cheered Curran, who was very popular, on his way to court, with a genuine Irish greeting: "Counsellor, we hope you'll gain the day!" his reply was: "If I do, take care you don't lose the knight !"

quarter:

home.

Catherine and Ann Kennedy lived with their mother, a widow in the county of Waterford; and having, on September 14, 1779, gone to witness a dramatic performance at Graiguenamanagh, in the county of Kilkenny, two young men, James Strange of Ullard, in that county, and Garrett Byrne of Ballyanne, in the county of Carlow, reingly surrounded the house with a hundred armed solved to carry them off by force. They accordTwo very young girls, sisters, of the name of men, with shirts covering their dress as a disguise, Kennedy, who were supposed to be entitled to a habit which procured for the Irish peasantry of fortunes of £2000. each, considerable sums in that day the name of Whiteboys. They broke those days in Ireland, had been some years pre- and seized them; having two horses saddled in into the room in which the girls sought shelter, viously carried off under circumstances which created a great sensation at the time, and the readiness, Catherine was placed before Byrne on case was alluded to by Mr. Curran in his address one, and Anne before Strange on the other, and to the jury. An application had been made on surrounded by a desperate clan, sufficient to overthe part of Sir Henry Hayes to the Court of awe the county, they were carried off from their Queen's Bench, that his trial should take place friends. A person, who represented himself to be in Dublin instead of in the city of Cork, where a priest, was introduced in the night; a mock the offence had been committed; on the ground, ceremony performed, and the terrified victims that great prejudice existed against him in that were obliged to submit. They were subsequently attended by a lawless cavalcade through several counties, put on board a vessel at Rush, north of That application, he observed, "was refused; Dublin; and after six weeks, were rescued by an and justly did you, my Lord, and the learned armed party at Wicklow. Byrne and Strange judges, your brethern, ground yourselves upon escaped to Wales; but were pursued, appre the reason you gave: "We will not," said you, hended at Milford, and, on July 6, lodged in "give a judicial sanction to a reproach of such Carnarvon jail. They were subsequently tried at scandalous atrocity upon any county in the the Kilkenny Spring Assizes on March 24, 1780, land, much less upon the second city in it." before Chief Justice Annally; when letters were "I do remember," said one of you, a" case which produced written by the girls, speaking of the happened not twenty years since. A similar men, with whom they had so long cohabited, in crime was committed on two young women of an affectionate manner, calling them their dear the name of Kennedy; it was actually necessary husbands; but these were proved to have been to guard them through two counties with a mil-dictated to them, and written under strong imitary force as they went to prosecute. That pressions of terror. The prisoners were both mean and odious bias, that the dregs of every convicted, and although much powerful intercescommunity will feel by natural sympathy with sion was made to spare their lives, in which the everything base, was in favor of the prisoners. Every means was used to try and baffle justice by practising upon the modesty and constancy of the prosecutrixes and their friends; but the infuriated populace, that had assembled to celebrate the triumph of an acquittal, were the unwilling spectators of the vindication of the law. The Court recollected that particular respect is due to the female who nobly comes forward to vindicate the law, and give protection to her sex. The jury remembered what they owed to their paths, to their families, to their country. They felt as became the fathers of families, and foresaw what the hideous consequences would be of impunity in a case of manifest guilt; they pro

Austrian ambassador participated; yet, in accord ance with the sanguinary administration of our criminal code in those days, they were both executed. (Ireland Sixty Years Ago: M'Glashan, Dublin, edit. 1851. pp. 36—39.)

The Times has justly arraigned the feeling expressed at Clonmel in favor of Mr. Carden; who is now undergoing, for his failure, two years imprisonment with hard labor, to which he was so justly and impressively sentenced by Judge Ball. We are however told, so deep was the sympathy felt for those whose example he sought to follow, that all the shops were closed and business suspended on the occasion in Kilkenny, and other neighboring towns.

From Household Words.

AN ACCURSED RACE.

the Cagots. They were forbidden by one act to have more than twenty sheep, a pig, a ram, and six geese. The pig was to be fattened and We have our prejudices in England. Or if brilled for winter food; the fleece of the sheep that assertion offends any of my readers, I was to clothe them; but, if the said sheep had will modify it. We have had our prejudices lambs, they were forbidden to eat them. Their in England. We have tortured Jews; we only privilege arising from this increase was, have burnt Catholics and Protestants, to say that they might choose out the strongest and nothing of a few witches and wizards. We finest in preference to keeping the old sheep. have satirized Puritans, and we have dressed At Martinmas the authorities of the commune up Guys. But, after all, I do not think came round, and counted over the stock of we have been so bad as our Continental each Cagot. If he had more than his appointed friends. To be sure our insular position has number they were forfeited; half went to the kept us free, to a certain degree, from the commune, and half to the baillie, or chief maginroads of alien races; who, driven from one istrate of the commune. The poor beasts were land of refuge, steal into another equally un- limited as to the amount of common land which willing to receive them; and where, for long they might stray over in search of grass. centuries, their presence is barely endured, and While the cattle of the inhabitants of the comno pains is taken to conceal the repugnance mune might wander hither and thither in which the natives of "pure blood" experience search of the sweetest herbage, the deepest towards them. shade, or the coolest pool in which to stand on There yet remains a remnant of the miser- the hot days, and lazily switch their dappled able people called Cagots in the valleys of the sides, the Cagot sheep and pig had to learn Pyrenees; in the Landes near Bordeaux; imaginary bounds, beyond which if they strayed and, stretching up on the west side of France, any one might snap them up, and kill them, their numbers become larger in Lower Brit-reserving a part of the flesh for his own use, tany. Even now, the origin of these families but graciously restoring the inferior parts to is a word of shame to them among their neigh- their original owner. Any damage done by bors; although they are protected by the law, the sheep was however fairly appraised, and which confirmed them in the equal rights of the Cagot paid no more for it than any other citizens about the end of the last century. Be- man would have done. fore then they had lived, for hundreds of years, isolated from all those who boasted of pure blood, and they had been all this time, oppressed by cruel local edicts. They were truly, what they were popularly called, The Accursed Race.

Did a Cagot leave his poor cabin and venture into the towns, even to render services required of him in the way of his trade, he was bidden by all the municipal laws to stand by and remember his rude old state. In all the towns and villages in the large districts exAll distinct traces of their origin are lost. tending on both sides of the Pyrenees-in all Even at the close of that period which we call that part of Spain-they were forbidden to The Middle Ages, this was a problem which buy or sell anything eatable, to walk in the no one could solve; and as the traces, which middle (esteemed the better) part of the even then were faint and uncertain, have van- streets, to come within the gates before sunished away one by one, it is a complete mys-rise, or to be found after sunset within the tery at the present day. Why they were ac- walls of the town. But still, as the Cagots cursed in the first instance, why isolated from were good-looking men and (although they bore their kind, no one knows. From the earliest certain natural marks of their caste, of which I accounts of their state that are yet remaining shall speak by-and-by) were not easily disto us, it seems that the names which they gave tinguished by casual passers-by from other men, each other were ignored by the population they were compelled to wear some distinctive they lived amongst, who spoke of them as Cres- peculiarity which should arrest the eye; and, tiaa, or Cagots, just as we speak of animals by in the great number of towns, it was decreed their generic names. Their houses or huts that the outward sign of a Cagot should be a were always placed at some distance out of the piece of red cloth sewed conspicuously on the villages of the country-folk, who unwillingly front of his dress. In other towns, the mark called in the services of the Cagots as carpen- of Cagoterie was the foot of a duck or a goose ters, or tilers, or slaters-trades which seemed hung over their left shoulder, so as to be seen appropriated by this unfortunate race-who by any one meeting them. After a time, the were forbidden to occupy land, or to bear more convenient badge of a piece of yellow arms; the usual occupations of those times. cloth cut out in the shape of a duck's foot, was They had some small right of pasturage on the adopted. If any Cagot was found in any town common lands, and in the forests: but the or village without his badge, he had to pay a number of their cattle and live-stock was fine of five sous and to lose his dress. He was strictly limited by the earliest laws relating to expected to shrink away from any passer-by,