.

and tokens, and mysterious voices and noises, which he could vouch that the prisoners under his care had seen and heard during the forty years he had been in the prison. He had never yet gone so far as to venture to assert that an apparition had been actually palpable to vision within the building's dismal precincts. Perhaps a due consideration for his own nerves at the periods when he took his midnight rounds, held him back from this "pleasing, dreadful thought."

"I-I have a cell vacant next this," he stammered in alarm; "if you like you shall go into it-it is more comfortable than this."

In this second cell the turnkey lingered a few minutes as if to cheer his prisoner by his company, but in reality to talk of horrors which the dumb walls of the prison had witnessed.

"A man strangled himself in that place you have been lodged in," observed he, mysteriously. "I have often heard strange noises there about this time of night. Sometimes I have seen a pale light, such as you say, shining under the door, but when I looked in no light was to be seen."

"It was the figure of my own son," meditated the Pirate, speaking scarcely above his breath, for at that weird and silent hour even his own voice sounded charnel-like to him.

"Was your son ill?" insinuated the turnkey. "I have heard of dying persons being seen by their friends a long distance from the place in which they lay."

"Ill!-no. God forbid!" fervently exclaimed the Pirate.

"Yet he may have died to-night, nevertheless,"

"If I had seen

suggested the turnkey. "Death will not always wait for doctors," and he tried to laugh. what you say, I should reckon upon his being gone out of this world as surely as he ever came into it." Taking his lantern the speaker turned to go. But yet lingering, he entertained the oppressed captive, who wanted nothing to increase his gloom, with several of the darkest traditions with which his mind was furnished. When he was really departing, the Pirate begged a light and writing implements, which the turnkey promised to bring him after he should have gone through the wards to see that all was secure.

Wrapped in a rug on his prison-bed the Pirate now lay once more surrounded by unbroken silence and darkness. He could not close his eyes again, slumber had departed from him for the rest of the night. He was too courageous in his temperament and by habit to yield easily to fear; but as he mused on the shape which for one terrible moment had flitted before his eye, he trembled, and longed for the turnkey's return with the light.

He had not long to wait-the light came, and a pen and ink, with a quire of paper, accompanied it. Until the dawn he wrote and read, the turnkey having on the previous day obliged him with several books of divinity and criminal records.

With the first feeble gleam of daylight he became another man. The shadows which had harassed his spirit dispersed like mists before the sun. Until the return of evening again he was employed in preparing his defence, and then he read several hours, and afterwards slept. He awakened suddenly, disturbed by the

pattering feet of a number of rats who were sporting about the dungeon enjoying a high holiday. If the Pirate had a deep-seated antipathy for any breathing thing, that one was the rat. No other venomous, unclean creature, whose instinct it happily is to hide from the face of man, was in his idea so loathsome as this. Slowly he raised himself to a sitting posture. One of the rats was dragging a boot of his to its hole; another was gnawing a mouldy crust with horrid fierceness of appetite; a third was consuming an end of candle; and the rest frisked about, looking greedy and strong enough to devour himself. Bold as he was, his flesh tingled and crept with very unpleasant sensations. He instinctively felt about for some weapon, but remembering that he had none, griped hard the handle of an earthen pitcher, and would have levelled it without a moment's reflection at the boot-plunderer, had he not just then felt something stirring and scratching close at his back; he sprang up to his feet, and an enormous rat bounded from the mattrass into the midst of its merry companions, who cleared off in a second as the pitcher fell in shivers from the hand which had hurled it at their ill-fated comrades.

By the feeble light of a meagre oil wick, the Pirate surveyed his bleeding victim, whose expressive squeakings took a plaintive tone, and almost moved him to repent what he had done.

"Poor rat!" be philosophised, "why shouldest thou be abhorred? Thou hast not sinned against superior knowledge-thou hast not basely yielded to lust of power-thou hast not knowingly invaded the rights of thy fellows-thou hast not planted corroding sorrow in

hearts that loved thee-thou wilt not leave in thy community after thou hast drawn thy last painful breath a branded name. No-poor rat! betwixt me and thee thou art the worthiest animal of us twain. Yes!" he exclaimed, with gloomy bitterness, "rather would I be this expiring rat that I have killed than what I am!"

His cell looked on a court in the midst of the prison. The dull, unceasing plash of rain on the stones, came with dismal monotony on his ear, which listened thirstingly for some sound of life. The wind kept up a low, continuous moaning. A raven belonging to the turnkey ever and anon startled the silent hour with its evil boding croak; and an owl, which had found its way at some secret hour to a time-worn part of the prison, deserted for the present, and had built its nest there, in a murderer's vacant and ruinous cell, echoed the notes of the raven with her own harsh shriek.

The Pirate drew a bench under the window, and, mounting on it, looked through the iron bars into the court, whose tall confined bounds were rendered imperfectly visible by two lamps burning drearily one at each end of the paved space. The guard was not there. Suddenly something flitted past the window. The Pirate was startled. His imagination had been fairly roused during the two preceding nights. He scarcely breathed, scarcely moved a finger; but there was no more fear in his breast than served to impart keenness to the thrilling expectation with which he maintained his watch.

Again there flitted something past, swift as an arrow from a bow-to the eye like a beam of unearthly light. A third time it came, and more palpably; white garments rustled against the window-bars, but in the

twinkling of an eye the vision was gone again. The Pirate had rallied his firm nature to its utmost strength: he kept his watch still. The guard appeared, paced the court awhile, and passed out of sight. The rain, the wind, the cry of the owl and raven, were all the sounds that could be distinguished until the prison-bell rung two o'clock. Then the Pirate returned again to his slumbers.

The next day brought his children to his presence. Clinton wrung his hand in expressive silence, and retained it long, while Jane threw herself dissolved in tears on his neck, exclaiming in an agony of affliction— "O, father, has it come to this!"

The Pirate looked on both with a forehead contracted in intense gloom, and with compressed lips that showed the workings of a heart wrung by a thousand pangs.

Yes," my Jenny," he hoarsely articulated, "it has come to this! I have disgraced you for ever!"

"Do not think of that, father!" implored Jane"all will yet be well if you should be acquitted at your trial."

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If I should be acquitted at my trial, my love, I know all will be well. But I am fully convinced that my trial will have but one result." He spoke in such a manner that in his voice his tender daughter heard the knell of all her hopes on his behalf.

"And that result?" inquired Clinton.

"Will be my death," firmly rejoined the Pirate. Jane instantly fainted.

"What have I done!" exclaimed her father. "I spoke too abruptly. Gentle soul! how will she bear the event itself if she thus quails at the bare hearing