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sue, and be afraid when no fear is thou hast built thy fortunes in thy master's blood; some around thee shall build theirs in thine; as thou hast hated so shall others hate thee scorn, and sorrow, and affliction, and want, -every evil thou hast wrought on us,-shall cleave fourfold and forever to thee and thine—yea, cleave as the flesh cleaveth to the bone. Ay, go thy way, man of blood ! brace thy helmet and mount thy steed. Thou mayest escape me now; but I shall see thee again, where neither horse nor armor will avail thee-before God, who will condemn the murderer in the face of heaven, in the day of judgment. Lionel Wethamstede, thou shalt meet me there."

She ceased. The livid paleness and the damps of death had gradually gathered on her countenance: every sentence had been uttered in mortal anguish: nevertheless, she had maintained, throughout, the cold, calm bearing of one already separated from the body. The wretch to whom her words had been addressed shivered under their influence, as though exposed to an ice-blast; superstitious horror mastered the ferocious spirit till then scarcely satisfied with its revenge; and, setting spurs to his horse, he departed from the spot like one pursued by an evil spirit. "Let those who shot the arrows complete their work!" said the dying maiden to the men, who remained fixed to the spot, subdued as by some supernatural agency, and scarcely conscious of their leader's departure-" let them wrap us in one shroud, and bury us in the same grave! One of the archers stepped forward: he was rude, even savage in his exterior, but nature was not utterly extinct : he kneeled down beside the dying and the dead, and swore to observe the request. Thy victim blesses thee," replied Blanche; "farewell!" She spoke no more, for death claimed his conquest. She stretched herself on the ground beside him whom in life she had loved so well, whom dying she could not forget: placing one arm be

neath his head, and the other across his bosom, so that her cheek rested against his, she meekly closed her eyes, like a wearied child that sleeps on its mother's lap.

Thus died Lacy and Blanche de Vere, twins in birth, and twins also in the manner of their death. They slept not, as their fathers before them, in marble monuments adorned with stately devices; they were laid in the peasant's grave, beneath the green and trodden turf, with no record more lasting than its bright but perishable flowers. There was none to mourn over them, none to have them in remembrance, none to perpetuate their name: when they died, they died altogether; and with them the memory of a noble race passed forever from the earth.

"So fails, so languishes, grows dim, and dies,

All that this world is proud of."

FORGET ME NOT, FOR 1827.

CALUM DHU;-A HIGHLAND TALE.

CALUM DHU was the bravest warrior that followed the banners of the chief of Colquhoun, with which clan the powerful and warlike M'Gregors were at inveterate feud. Calum lived in a sequestered glen in the vicinity of Ben Lomond. His cottage stood at the base of a steep, ferny hill retired from the rest of the clan, he lived alone. This solitary being was the deadliest foe of the M'Gregors, when the clans were in the red, unyielding battle of their mountain chiefs. His weapon was a bow, in the use of which he was so skilful, that he could bring down the smallest bird when on the wing. No man but himself had ever bent his bow; and his arrows were driven with

such resistless force, that their feathery wings were always drenched with his foeman's best blood. In the use of the sword, also, he had few equals; but the bow was the weapon of his heart.

The son of the chief of the M'Gregors, with two of his clansmen, having gone to hunt, and their game being wide, they wandered far, and found themselves, a little after midday, on the top of the hill at the foot of which stood Calum Dhu's cottage. "Come," ," said the young chief, "let us go

down and try to bend Calum Dhu's bow. Evan, you and I have got the name of being the best bowmen of our clan: it is said no man but Calum himself can bend his bow; but it will go hard with us if we cannot show him that the M'Gregors are men of thews and sinews equal to the bending of his long bow, with which he has so often sent his arrows through and through our best warriors, as if they had been men of straw set up to practise on. Come, he will not know us-and if he should, we are three to one; and I owe him something," added he, touching the hilt of his dirk, "since the last conflict, when he sent an arrow through my uncle's gallant bosom. Come, follow me down!" he continued, his eye gleaming with determined vengeance, and his voice quivering with suppressed passion. The will of a Highland chieftain was law at the time of which we speak. "We will go down, if a score of his best clansmen were with him," said Evan. "Ay, but be cautious." "We shall bend his bow, then break it," replied the young M'Gregor; "and then-then for my uncle's blood." "He is good at the sword," said the third M'Gregor; "but this (showing his dirk) will stretch him on the sward." "Strike him not behind," said the young chief: "hew him down in front: he deserves honorable wounds, for he is brave, though an enemy.'

They had been concealed by a rising knoll from being seen from the cottage, which they now reached. Knocking loudly at the door, after some delay, they were answer

ed by the appearance of a little, thick-set, gray-eyea, oldish-looking man, with long arms and a black, bushy beard, hung with gray threads and thrums, as if he had been employed in weaving the coarse linen of the country and the time. But as he had none of the muscular symptoms of prodigious strength which Calum Dhu was reported to possess, and which had often proved so fatal to their clan, they could not suppose this to be their redoubted foeman; and, to the querulous question of what they wanted, uttered in the impatient tone of one who has been interrupted in some necessary worldly employment, they replied by inquiring if Calum Dhu was at home. "Na, he's gane to the fishing; but an ye hae ony message frae our chief (Heaven guard him!) about the coming of the red M'Gregors, and will trust me with it, Calum will get it frae me. Ye may as well tell me as him; he stays lang when he gaes out, for he is a keen fisher." "We were only wanting to try the bending of his bow," said the disappointed young chief, "which we have heard no man can do save himself." "Hoo! gin that is a', ye might hae tell'd it at first, an' no keepit me sae lang frae my loom," said the old man; "but stop"-and giving his shoulders an impatient shrug, which, to a keen observer, would have passed for one of satisfaction, triumph, and determination, he went into the house, and quickly returned, bringing out a strong bow, and a sheaf of arrows, and flung them carelessly on the ground, saying, "Ye'll be for trying your strength at a flight?" pointing to the arrows; "I have seen Calum send an arrow over the highest point o' that hill, like a glance o' lightning; and when the M'Gregors were coming raging up the glen, like red deevels as they are, mony o' their best warriors fell at the farthest entry o' the pass, every man o' them wi' a hole in his breast and its fellow at his back."

He had taken a long arrow out of the sheaf, and stood playing with it in his hand while speaking, seemingly

ready to give to the first man who should bend the bow. The M'Gregors were tall, muscular men, in the prime of youth and manhood. The young chief took up the bow, and, after examining its unbending strength, laying all his might to it, strained till the blood rushed to his face, and his temples throbbed almost to bursting-but in vain; the string remained slack as ever. Evan and the other M'Gregor were alike unsuccessful; they might as well have tried to root up the gnarled oaks of their native mountains.

"There is not a man," cried the young chief of M'Gregor, greatly chagrined at the absence of Calum Dhu, and his own and clansmen's vain attempts to bend the bow," there is not a man in your clan can bend that bow; and if Calum Dhu were here, he should not long bend it!" Here he bit his lip, and suppressed the rest of the sentence; for the third M'Gregor gave him a glance of caution. "Ha!" said the old man, still playing with the long arrow in his hand, and without seeming to observe the latter part of the M'Gregor's speech. "If Calum was here, he would bend it as easily as ye wad bend that rush; and gin ony o' the M'Gregors were in sight, he wad drive this lang arrow through them as easily as ye wad drive your dirk through my old plaid, and the feather wad come out at the other side, wet wi' their heart's bluid. Sometimes even the man behind is wounded, if they are ony way thick in their battle. I once saw a pair o' them stretched on the heather, pinned together with ane of Calum's lang arrows."

This was spoken with the cool composure and simplicity of one who is talking to friends, or is careless if they are foes. A looker-on could have discerned a chequered shade of pleasure and triumph cross his countenance, as M'Gregor's lip quivered, and the scowl of anger fell along his brow at the tale of his kinsmen's destruction by the arm of his most hated enemy.