see Jeffrey's blunderbuss brought into action; and I have a trust which never yet proved wanting."

So saying, Polydore rang the bell, a summons which speedily assembled all the household for family prayer, according to old usage; and when the rite was over, the members sought their respective resting-places, and silence reigned in the castle.

But Randolph could not sleep. Throwing a cloak around him, and shading his lamp with his hand, he proceeded with the stealthy step of one who dreads he knows not what, along the desolate corridors to the state apartments. Through their faded grandeur he wandered on, until he reached the great chamber which was the scene of his father's death. He placed his light so that only a faint glimmer fell upon the bed, and leant against one of the pillars, and resumed his reverie of the afternoon with such vividness of imagination, that he fancied he again beheld the bright eyes of the dying man, and heard the injunctions which seemed now to separate him from what he held dearest upon earth. But his reverie had not terminated with those gloomy forebodings, nor did his dream. A frail and slender form, veiled in gossamer-like drapery, bent dimly over the couch for a short space and floated away, beckoning him to follow. It rested a moment in the doorway, for he had only obeyed the sign with his eyes. But when he hastily seized the lamp, it flitted fast before him, fading and fading away, until it disappeared entirely as he crossed the threshold of his own chamber. He flung himself on his bed, and closed his eyes for sleep; and as the last gleam of consciousness vanished, a face which he appeared to have known in days long past, meek and lovely,—that of a woman, in her morning of beauty,—bent down upon his, and kissed his lips.

The kiss seemed yet fresh upon them when he woke, and found the sun shining gaily into the apartment.

CHAPTER II.

The hamlet of Trevethlan nestled snugly under the slope, at the summit of which stood the castle, and was screened by the rising ground from the sea breezes. It surrounded a green of limited extent, which was only separated from the base-court by the gate Michael Sinson opened for Mrs. Pendarrel's carriage, when that lady was returning from her frustrated attack. On the right, a small wicket led into the churchyard, so full of trees that, except at the present season, the church itself could scarcely be seen. This was a plain edifice, with no pretensions to beauty, deriving all its picturesqueness from the ivy with which it was overgrown. Opposite to it, across the green, a beam projecting from the front of an old-fashioned house, supported the escutcheon of the lords of the village, and, by its inscription, promised good entertainment to man and beast. But the inn had shared the fortunes of the castle: the windows of the wings, which advanced with scalloped gables beyond the centre, were blocked up with boards, and the middle part only appeared to be now occupied. But Dame Miniver, the hostess, had inherited the savings of more prosperous days. She was a trim, bustling widow woman, tidy and rosy, notable and talkative, whose only sighs were divided between the good-man who slept on the other side of the green, and the splendour which had departed from the castle on the cliff. She never fretted because her stables now held none but a few farm horses, nor because there were no longer any swaggering lackeys to come and crack a bottle of the port, some of which might still be slumbering in her cellars. She would hardly have been a Cornish woman if she did not know how to exchange a wink with the good fellow who had a keg of hollands or brandy to dispose of; and it pleased her mightily to treat a revenue man with a drop of the spirits that had been run under his very nose.

The other habitations surrounding the green were of various sizes, some with small gardens in front, some neat, and some neglected,—almost all thatched and whitewashed. A sleepy, listless air hung about the place. A stranger wandering accidentally into it, would feel at once that it had known better days; the children might seem to play with less liveliness than usual, and the very geese to waddle over the grass with a lazy gait. He would fancy the gossips at the cottage doors to be inanimate in their chat, and might himself be yielding to a sense of drowsiness, when the sight of Dame Miniver, in her neat brown silk gown, and snow-white apron, looking complacently at the visitor, with an inviting smile that was irresistible, would recall his fleeting spirits, and guide his steps to the friendly shelter of the Trevethlan Arms.

The late owner of the castle, it has already been said, was extremely unpopular with his tenantry, for some time both before and after his marriage. Proud themselves of the family upon which they had depended beyond the memory of man, they hated to see it stripped, acre by acre, of its broad lands, and so impoverished as to be unable to afford them the old advantages. Remembering the current prophecy, they loathed a match which seemed to harbinger its fulfilment, and at the same time rendered it next to impossible for Pendarrel to come to Trevethlan, although the reverse might happen on several contingencies. But after the death of poor Margaret, and when an infant son and daughter stood in the way of any such consummation, and their lord came often among them, haughty indeed, but not unkind; poor, but still generous; and they could not avoid seeing the melancholy written in his face, and recollected his reported courtship, years before, of Esther Pendarrel, and thought of the kinsman who had sold his name; their animosity gradually melted into compassion, and a deep and sullen hatred grew up among them against the house of Pendarrel and everything connected with it.

The discontent now pervading the country had not spared Trevethlan. It was true, that if the sentiment—war to the mansions—were diffused at all in the village, it had no reference to the castle. There was not a man on the estate but was ready to die in defence of the towers on the cliff. But other feelings might be entertained towards some of their neighbours. Hitherto they had exhausted their animosity in conflicts arising at wrestling-matches and country fairs, but now there were symptoms discoverable of more dangerous hostilities.

And the movement was encouraged by the absence of the young master. The villagers regretted, without blaming, a departure which was intended, they hoped, in some way or other, to restore prosperity to the family. But it removed a check which might have soothed their exasperation. And in like manner the return of the orphans would probably turn aside any ideas of immediate violence, if such had really gained any footing in the hamlet.

On the evening of their arrival, some of the notables met to discuss things in general, around the fire in Dame Miniver's hall. There were farmer Colan, and Germoe the tailor of the hamlet, and Breage whose wife kept the shop where everything was sold, and, among divers others, Edward Owen, Sinson's unsuccessful rival for the affections of pretty Mercy Page. Owen, formerly one of the best-conducted men in the hamlet, was now sulky and perverse, and Mercy had obtained no slight odium by her too great fidelity to one who was regarded as a deserter. She