knife which lay upon the table, and flourished it before him, in the hope of terrifying his assailant. The latter, blinded with passion, grasped his intended prey still closer, and attempted to strangle him. Schwarz gasped for breath; his eyes were starting from their sockets: in the agony of suffocation, he brandished in every direction the fatal weapon with which chance had armed him. Staroste, heedless of all but vengeance, rushed upon its point; he fell instantly, pierced to the heart!

Julia had fainted from the commencement of the terrible struggle: the knife dropped from the hand of Schwarz, he moved not from the spot; horror was in his countenance, despair in his soul. "Wretched Fanny!" at length exclaimed he; 66 my

children too! Your father is an assassin !" The noise of the contest had roused every body in the house. The inmates rushed to the door of the apartment, knocked violently for admittance, and at last proceeded to burst it open. Flight was the only resource left for the unfortunate Schwarz. The window looking upon the courtyard presented a leap that made him pause: an

other moment, and it would have been too late: the door was torn from its hinges, and at the same instant Schwarz dropped into the courtyard beneath, and fled with all the swiftness which the horror of his deed of blood imparted to him.

"Fatal stranger of Prague!" cried he, as he endeavoured to gain the high road; "this is thy work!"

PART II.

SELF-CONDEMNED and horror-struck, like the first murderer, shrinking from the vengeful armn upheld to smite him, Schwarz continued his flight. His immediate idea was, to return but for a moment to his home, to gaze on the slumbers of peace and innocence, to behold his wife and children, to awaken them, to strain them to his heart; and then, in the wilderness or the forest, to seek refuge from a world where " every man's hand was against him." On the point of executing his purpose, he cast a frenzied glance upon his clothes, upon his hands. The blood of Staroste besmeared them, and seemed to cry aloud for vengeance. Despair chilled the heart of Schwarz; his faculties were paralysed, his limbs tottered under him. A distant shout aroused within his

breast the instinct that condemns the wretch to

For a

cling to life, when death were a release. moment his energy returned; the dread of discovery lent him wings, and could the speed with which he fled from human justice but have saved him from his bitterest enemy-himself, he had once more been secure.

The gate of the courtyard next the street was closed: Schwarz was forced to return. In crossing the court a second time, he could distinctly hear the voices of people in pursuit. To escape in the direction of the outhouses was his only chance, as, while they presented an easy outlet upon the fields and gardens behind the village, they afforded him a hope that his flight would remain undiscovered. Welcoming the idea as a lucky inspiration, he was on the point of bursting through the last issue that opposed itself to his escape, when he felt himself seized from behind by the skirt of his coat. Desperate with terror, he struggled, but in vain, to elude the gripe of his new assailant, when, suddenly, as a last horrible resource, he threw into a heap of straw a lighted flambeau, which he had seized in his flight from

the scene of the fatal tragedy. The effect was instantaneous. The flames spread with rapidity: his opponent immediately relaxed his hold, anxious only to arrest the progress of the devouring element, or, failing in that, to seek his own safety in flight. No further obstacle, therefore, impeded Schwarz, who escaped with the utmost precipitation across the open fields.

The world from which he fled with terror, seemed to close upon him; life appeared a blank. His home, his country, his wife and children, all were lost; and, like the first mortal chased from the abode of bliss by the avenging angel, Schwarz dared not even look back upon the paradise whence his crime had exiled him for ever. The instinct of self-preservation spoke louder than the voice of natural affection: his force was almost exhausted, still he paused not; yet when he thought of his rapturous anticipations, of his peaceful return, so soon succeeded by a precipitate, a guilty, and an eternal flight-he almost doubted the evidence of his senses. But the blood of Staroste was there; it was on his hands; it weighed upon his heart, and pressed it down to