nerve under every inch of flesh in his system. I laughed aloud as I beheld him. 66 Why do you shrink?" I demanded, now in turn becoming the questioner. “Shink—I shrink-did I shrink?" he answered me confusedly, scarcely conscious what he said. "Ay-did you," I responded with a glance intended to go through him. "You shrank as if my finger were fire-as if you feared that I meant to harm you.” His pride came to his relief. He plucked up strength to say, "You mistake, Richard. I did not shrink, and if I did, it was not through fear of you or any other man." My hand again rested on his shoulder, as I replied-my eye searching through him all the while with a keenness, beneath which, it was a pleasure to me to behold him again shrink and falter. "You may deceive yourself, John Hurdis, but you can not deceive me. You did shrink from my touch, even as you shrink now beneath mine eye. More than this, John Hurdis, you do fear me whatever may be your ordinary courage in the presence of other men. I see I feel that you fear me; and I am not less assured on the subject of your fears. You would not fear were you not guilty-nor tremble now while I speak were you less deserving of my punishment. But you need not tremble. You are secure, John Hurdis. That which you have in your bosom of my blood is your protection for the greater quantity which you have that is not mine, and with which my soul scorns all communion." His face grew black as he gazed upon me. The foam flecked his blanched lips even as it gathers upon the bit of the driven and infuriated horse. His frame quivered-his tongue muttered inaudible sounds, and he gazed on me, laboring, but in vain, to speak. I laughed as I beheld his feeble fury-I laughed in the abundance of my scorn, and he then spoke. "Boy!” he cried-"boy-but for your mother, I should lay this whip over your shoulders." He shook it before me as he spoke, and I grappled with him on the instant. With a sudden grasp, and an effort, to oppose which, he had neither strength of soul nor of body, I dragged him from his horse. Straining feebly and ineffectually to resist his coward tendency, he, at length, after a few struggles, fell heavily upon the ground and almost under the feet of my animal. His own horse passed away, and at the same moment, I leaped down from mine. My blood was in a dreadful tumult— my fingers twitched nervously to grapple with him again, but ere I could do so, a sound- a scream-the sudden and repeated shrieks of a woman's voice, arrested me in my angry purpose, and I stood rooted to the spot. Too well I knew that voice, and the tremor of rage which an instant before had shaken me to the centre was now succeeded by a tremor far more powerful. Unlike the former it was enfeebling, palsying -it took from me the wolfish strength with which the former seemed to have endued me. The voice of a girl had given me the weakness of a girl, and like a culprit I stood, as if fixed and frozen, until my brother had arisen from the ground where I had thrown him, and Mary Easterby stood between us. CHAPTER V. PARTING SCENES. “I thought to chide thee, but it will not be; HEYWOOD-Love's Mistress. "You have led me Into a subtle labyrinth, where I never Shall have fruition of my former freedom." The Lady's Privilege. SHE stood between us like some judge suddenly descended from heaven, and armed with power to punish, and I stood before her like a criminal conscious of my demerits and waiting for the doom. An instant before she came, and I had a thousand arguments, each, to my mind, sufficient to justify me for any violence which I might execute upon John Hurdis. Now I had not one. The enormity of the act of which I had been guilty, seemed to expand and swell with every accumulated thought upon it; and my tongue, that had been eloquent with indignation but a little while before, was now frozen with silence, and without even the power of evasion or appeal. I did not venture to look her in the face-I did not venture even to look upon my brother. What were his feelings I know not; but if they partook, at that moment, of any of the intense humility which made up the greater part of mine, then was he almost sufficiently punished for the injuries which he had done me. I certainly felt that he was almost if not quite avenged in my present humility for the unbrotherly anger of which he had been the victim. "Oh, Richard Hurdis," she exclaimed, "this violence, and upon your brother too." Why had she not addressed her speech to him? Was I alone guilty? Had he not provoked-had he not even threatened me? The thought that she was now again showing the partiality in his favor which had been the source of my unhappiness, changed the tenor of my feelings. My sense of humiliation gave way to offended pride, and I answered with sullen defiance. "And am I only to blame, Mary Easterby? Can you see fault in no other than me? Methinks this is less than justice, and I may safely deny the authority which so openly affronts justice with an avowal of its partialities.” "I have no partialities, Richard-it is you that are unjust. The violence that I witnessed was only yours. I saw not any other." "There was indignity and insolence-provocation enough, Mary Easterby," I replied hastily, "if not violence, to justify me in what I did. But I knew not that you beheld us. I would not else have punished John Hurdis. I would have borne with his insolence-I would have spared him his shame - if not on his account, on yours. I regret that you have seen us, though I have no regret for what I have done." I confronted my brother as I spoke these words, as if to satisfy him that I was ready to give him the only form of atonement which I felt his due. He seemed to understand me, and to do him all justice, his port was as manly as I could desire that of my father's son to be at all times. His eye flashed back a family expression of defiance, and his lips were closed with a resoluteness that showed him to be fully roused. But for the presence of Mary Easterby, we had come to the death struggle in that very hour. But we felt ourselves too greatly wrong not to acknowledge her superiority. Vexed and sullen as I was, I was doubly vexed with the consciousness of error; and when she spoke again in answer to my last words my chagrin found due increase in what she said. "I know nothing of the provocation, Richard, and need nothing to believe that there was provocation, or that you thought so, which moved you to what did. I could not suppose, for you an instant, that you would proceed to such violence without provocation; but that any provocation short of violence itself, will justify violence—and violence too upon a brother-I can not admit, nor, in your secret heart, Richard, do you admit it yourself. What would your mother say, Richard, were she to hear this story?" "She might be less angry, and less pained, Mary Easterby, than you imagine, if she knew all the story. If she knew but no! why should I recount his villanies, Mary Easterby, and least of all why recount them to you? I will not." "Nor do I wish-nor would I hear them, Richard," she replied promptly, though gently. I saw the eyes of John Hurdis brighten, and my soul felt full of bitterness. "What! you would not believe me, then, Mary Easterby. Can it be that your prejudices go so far as that?" The tears gathered in her eyes as they were fixed upon mine and beheld the sarcastic and scornful expression in them, but she replied without hesitation. "You are unjust, and unkind to me, Richard;" and her voice trembled: she proceeded: "I would be unwilling to believe, and am quite as unwilling to hear anything which could be prejudicial to the good name of any of your family, your brother or yourself. I have loved them all too long and too truly, Richard, to find pleasure in anything which spoke against their worth. I should be not less unwilling, Richard, to think that you could say anything which did not merit and command belief. I might think you guilty of error, never of falsehood." “Thank you, Mary; for so much, at least, let me thank you. You do me justice only. When I speak falsely, of man or woman, brother or stranger, friend or foe, let my tongue cleave to my mouth in blisters.” John Hurdis mounted his horse at that moment, and an air of dissatisfaction seemed to hang upon his features. He muttered something to himself, the words of which were unintelligible to us; then speaking hurriedly to Mary, he declared his intention of riding on to her father's farm, then but a short mile off. She begged him to do so, courteously, but, as I thought coldly; and giving a bitter glance of enmity towards me, he put spurs to his horse and was soon out of sight. His absence had a visible effect upon her, and I felt that much of the vexation was passing from my own heart. There |