Hood.

CUPID GREYBEARD.

A LEGEND OF THE RHINE.

[Tom Hood, born at Lake House, Wanstead, Essex, 19th January, 1835; son of the humourist, Thomas He was educated at University College School, and at Pembroke College, Oxford. His first work, Pen and Pencil Sketches, was published in 1854, and was followed by Quips and Cranks; The Daughters of King

Daher, and other Poems; The Loves of Tom Tucker and Little Bo-Peep: Vere Veresler's Vengeance—a Sensation; Jingles and Jokes for Little Folks; Kules of Rhyme, a Guide to Versification, &c. His most popular novels are: A Disputed Inheritance; Captain Master's Children; A Golden Heart; The Lost Link; Love and Valour; and Money's Worth. In 1865 he became editor of Fun, and still (1873) retains that post. He has also for several years edited Hood's Annual, which is one of the best of the Christmas publications. Whilst honoured by the inheritance of a name prominent in modern literature, he has successfully overcome the difficulties which such an inheritance involved, and earned reputation by his own merits as a poet, novelist, and humourist.]

Upon a gray peak, overlooking the town of Verzenach, on the Rhine, stands a lonely tower, known to the traveller as The Young

Tower. It owes its name to the luxuriant

growth of the ivy, which clothes it completely from base to battlements with never-fading

verdure. Viewed from the river it appears fully to merit its title, standing like a living green monument among the barren gray rocks, whose loftiest crags rise behind it against the sky, cold, unpeopled, inaccessible. But upon a nearer approach it is easy to see, in spite of the bright green ivy which vails it, that the tower is a very ancient and a very ruinous structure. Roof and floors are gone, and the stone stairs have fallen, and lie, a confused heap of masonry, in the basement. windows are blank as the eye-sockets of a skull, and the doorways yawn over their mossgrown untrodden thresholds with a terrible suggestion of desolation. The very ivy, which gives it such a delusive appearance of youth, can no longer deceive the eye. Its gnarled and twisted branches cling about the ruin with a strange resemblance to the withered and shrunken arms of old age.

The

Bats and owls are the only tenants of the tower, and their occupation is left undisputed, for the good folk of Verzenach are superstitious, and such strange legends are told about the ruin that it is seldom visited by day, and never approached after nightfall.

Tower while on a sketching tour in the beau tiful autumn of 184-. I was a stranger to Verzenach, and had therefore heard nothing of the reputation which the tower possessed of being haunted. Had I heard it, it is very improbable that I should have paid any atten tion to the traditions of the superstitious. It was towards sunset when I saw it, and the glory of the declining day lent its aid to the fresh greenery of the ivy, and made the tower look young indeed, in spite of the signs of age which were visible from the point of view I

had taken.

The rosy light of the sinking

sun, reflected from the glossy leaves of the ivy, bathed the tower with a strange warm glow, but could not give life and colour to the dull gray barrier of mountain behind it, which threw out the building in strong relief. Sunset effects are so fleeting that an experienced artist loses no time in noting down their salient points. In less time than it takes to write this I had pitched my camp-stool, opened colour-box and sketch-book, and set about making a hasty memorandum of the

scene.

which I was working. I looked up, and sa Suddenly a shadow fell across the page on handled stick, and watching my operations a grave elderly gentleman, leaning on a crutchmade a hurried movement with his hand, as if with eager and all-absorbing attention. He to urge me not to lose time, which impressed

me with the notion that he himself was a painter and knew the necessity for speed.

I obeyed his gesture. But there is a certain awkwardness in such a silence as ensued, and I was compelled to speak.

"Can you tell me the name of the ruin!" I asked him, without looking up.

He drew a long breath like a sigh of extreme relief, and answered me in a feeble and hollow voice,

"It has ever been called The Young Tower. Young!"-here he gave a dreary ghost of s laugh-"Young! Such a youth as that de ceives no eyes! It is old-old — centuries

old!"

"It has all the picturesqueness of age," I

said.

"How can age be picturesque? Decay is never beautiful, truly. How can the young admire age? There is no charm in death, and age is but living death.”

1 See Casquet, vol. i. p. 298.

with the ruin.

He gave another long sigh of relief, and immediately, and without invitation, commenced the following narrative, which I regret much I cannot give in his exact words, for they were quaint, forcible, and vivid.

His

The latest occupant of The Young Tower was Eberhardt Mulhaus, a studious and retiring man, considerably past middle age. life was so simple, and his wants were so few, that he lived there quite alone, unattended, and uncompanioned, save by his books. Of books he had an enormous number, and was accounted a great scholar by the townsfolk. He was indeed an indefatigable student, and had read everything-except the human heart. How little had he learned, therefore, in all his long years of study and research!

The years had passed him by almost unnoticed. He seemed to be aware that his hair had grown whiter and whiter, and that the hand that turned the page trembled more and more, and wasted away. His eyes grew dim, but that is the fate of the student.

While he had been tracing figures in the sand the tide of his life had crept slowly up to the full of manhood's prime, and was sinking slowly to the extreme ebb of old age.

He was solitary, for he made no acquaintances among the people of Verzenach. They used to see his lamp in his window burning all night long as he pored over his books, and they felt a secret awe of him, and never dreamed of breaking in upon his solitude.

There was one bright spot in the past, not so bright in itself as it was by contrast with the dark monotony of all other memories, which had never quite died out of his mind, though it had grown faint as a star towards daybreak. He recalled it sometimes with a dreamy sort of wonder, and whenever he did so his sympathies for his fellow-creatures seemed to be stirred, and he looked down from his lone watch-tower upon the sleeping town that lay beneath with an unusual interest.

This was the story of the bright remembrance.

He had been a feeble and delicate child, and had therefore few, if any, playfellows among the boys of the town. His one constant companion was a little girl, Gretchen by name, a gentle, kind-hearted little soul.

Between these two quiet thoughtful children there sprang up an attachment which was in truth love, but seemed to their innocent youth only friendship. One day, as they stood hand in hand on the little footbridge over a tiny brook that brawled down to the Rhine from the

mountains behind the town, they beheld themselves reflected in the water. They were exactly of the same height.

"I

"You will never grow taller than me, will you, Eberhardt?" asked little Gretchen. should not like you to be up there above me, so that I should have to look up, you would seem farther away."

He did not answer, but he clasped her hand closely.

"We shall always walk side by side, hand in hand, for ever, and ever, and ever, shall we not?" continued little Gretchen.

"For ever, and ever, and ever!" said he, and then he turned and put his arms round her neck and kissed her. At this moment a heavy hand was laid on his shoulder. He looked up and saw Father Gerome. Father Gerome was his pastor, confessor, and teacher, for Eberhardt was intended for the priesthood. The father was a stern man, ascetic, severe, unrelenting.

"My son," he said, sternly, "the servants of Heaven have nought to do with folly such as this. The rebellious spirit must be chastised. Come with me.'

Eberhardt never saw Gretchen again. Father Gerome set him a heavy penance, and took him away at once to the seminary, where he remained many years—until, indeed, it was seen that he was not fitted for holy orders, and was too fond of earthly wisdom and secular philosophy. But the seclusion of the seminary had wrought upon him; and when he left its quiet walls he could not face the stir of life, and was fain to retire to his tower and dwell in solitude and seclusion.

The recollection of Gretchen was the faint gleam that lit up the past of that lonely student as he sat among his learned books, and grew more gray and feeble, and bowed his head lower and lower as Time laid his heavy hand upon him.

It was one night at the end of the year, as he sat by his lofty window gazing out at the cold white stars, and thinking over all that the astronomers and wise men of old times had said about them, when he heard a clear, sweet, childish voice singing under his window.

He flung open the lattice to listen, for there was a something strangely touching in the sound, so unusual as it was too. He leaned his head out in order to hear the words. It was a hymn that the child was singing-such a hymn as the gray-headed student had sung as a child standing beside his mother after he had risen from his knees before her at bedtime. It was a simple hymn enough, prais

ing in child-like language the love of the Saviour, and its surpassing power and beauty. "What can the poor little thing be doing up here at such an hour on a wintry night?" asked the student of himself. He could think of no solution, and it vexed him, so he closed, the lattice, and turned to his books again.

But the sweet silvery voice was not to be shut out. It soared to the window, and beat its wings against the pane, asking for admittance. It stirred the long quiescent sympathies in the old student's breast, and filled his eyes with the dimness of unshed tears. The words of the tome he endeavoured to read in order to distract his attention seemed to adapt themselves to the melody.

The night was cold, with a keen breeze from the mountains blowing steadily. Those mountains were white with the first snows of the year. Every morning earth was clad in the white shroud of rime, and seemed like a fair maiden dead on her bier, until the sun rose to show that the shroud was really a diamond-besprinkled vail.

Still the sweet beseeching voice fluttered at the window, as it fluttered at the student's heart too, craving for admittance.

He lit a lamp, and descended the winding stair, and opened the tower-door. There stood a tiny child, with a mass of golden curls that looked like a glory, and with soft confiding blue eyes. The poor little face was white and thin, and the poor little feet were bare. Scant and worn were the garments of the child-singer, who still warbled on the simple hymn.

The old man's heart yearned towards the child, and grew so tender, that the small bright speck in memory's dark waste seemed to burn brighter, fed with unaccustomed warmth. Or was there something in the song that touched some vibrating chord of recollection?

"Come hither, little one," said the student, with a tremulous voice.

The child came forward with an innocent confidence, and placed her tiny cold hand in his as he held it forth to her. He drew her inside the tower, and closed the door. Then he lifted her in his arms and bore her up the winding stair to his chamber.

The fire had burned low, so he hastened to replenish it with logs, and then drawing an easy chair to the fireside, he placed the child in it, and wrapped her in his furred gown.

"How came you out at such an hour on such a night, pretty one?" he asked at last, after he had made the little thing comfortable, and sat chafing its cold hands between his withered palms. How came your parents to

let this little bird wander so far from the next? Where dwell your father and mother?"

Her soft blue eyes filled in a moment with big tears as the child pointed upwards. Her heart was too full to speak, but the gesture was eloquent.

"An orphan, my poor babe? Where is your home?"

"I have none now," answered the child. "Tell me how that is," said the student. "When they came to bury my mother this morning I followed them at a distance, and sat by her grave all day. When the evening came I went back to the room in which we used to live, but strangers had come to live there."

The old man looked at the child's thin face, and read the story of her young life. "Your mother was poor, I fear, child."

Yes, she was very poor. She used to sit at her needlework all day-and long, long into the night, for when sometimes I woke from the cold I could see her still at work. And a few mornings ago she did not come to dress me as she always used to do; and then I felt lonely and frightened, and at last I stole out of bed into the next room, and she was sitting by the table with her work in her lap, and her head bent down on her arm, and the candle had burned into the socket. I would not wake her, for she must have been terribly weary. But by-and-by the landlord came for his rent, and he spoke to her loudly; but she did not wake, and he shook her angrily, and then he found she would never wake again."

"Have you no friends, my poor darling?" asked the old man, passing his thin hand caressingly over her curls.

"Only you," was the guileless answer; "except our Father and the beautiful angels in heaven." "I will be your friend, poor babe. But how came you to wander up here?"

"Because you were the only friend I had."

The student gazed wonderingly at the girl at these words. There was a simple good faith in the way she spoke that made it impossible to doubt her. But what could she mean by speaking of him as her only friend?

"Tell me," he said at last, "what made you think I was your friend?"

"Oh! I forgot I hadn't told you that; I thought you would know it. When first my dear mother taught me to pray I used to kneel down beside her, and she would tell me all about the good God, and the Saviour's love, and all the beautiful things of heaven, and she used to point up to it through the window. And as you looked up from our window you