"An owl," replied Benzel; and mocking the cry, with a happiness of imitation that was peculiar to him, he emitted a "too-whoo!" so loud and clear that the whole forest rang with it. Scarcely had its echoes died away when at least a score of the same owlish voices, some near, some further off, and some scarcely audible in the distance, took up the strain; and Carl, partly to amuse the fears of Magdalene, and partly in remembrance of his boyish feats of the same kind, was about to repeat the successful experiment.

"Silence!" cried Ishmael, fiercely.

"What is it?" said Magdalene, in breathless terror. "I will go and see," replied her lover; and without another word he darted into the thicket, and disappeared.

"I will follow him," said Magdalene, faintly.

“No, no, let us wait. What frenzy can have seized the Jew?-but he will return presently; let us wait."

"I will follow him," repeated she; "I must follow him, and alone. Lead me to the side of the road, for my eyes are dim, and I cannot see it."

"You follow him! why this is worse frenzy still! I will cry 'whoo' again, as if a whole legion of owls were in my throat, and, since he is attracted by such music, we shall have him back on the instant."

"Oh, hush, for mercy's sake!" cried Magdalene, covering his mouth suddenly with her hand, "these are no owls, but vultures!"

Carl-startled suddenly into a consciousness of their situation, but unwilling to attribute the conduct of this strange Ishmael to a complicity with the robbers, if robbers they were-hurried the trembling and weeping girl towards a quarter from which there had been no reply

to his call, and forsaking the road, entered the forest. "To follow him in utter darkness," said he, as he almost carried her along, "would be fruitless toil; and to remain on the highway would be to deliver ourselves up voluntarily to the danger you apprehend. Whatever may be the motive of Ishmael's rashness, if he escape the fate which it would seem to merit, he will think himself all the more fortunate for finding his mistress in safety." Magdalene resisted for a moment, but at last yielded with a heavy sigh.

"My appearance," said she, speaking in the tone of soliloquy," would be his death-warrant !-O God deliver him!"

The call, of whatever nature it might be, whether of men or birds, was occasionally heard long after the two wanderers had left the road; but by degrees the sound became more distant, and Carl had the satisfaction of finding that they were actually receding from their supposed enemies. His situation, notwithstanding, was by no means void of danger; and of the two kinds, he began speedily to inquire whether the one they had just escaped were not the slighter. The forests in this part of the country, he knew, were sometimes many leagues in extent, and he was well aware that neither his companion nor himself, in their present state of exhaustion, and on a route so tangled with underwood and interrupted by trees, had the least chance of being able to walk a mile. As their pace slackened, partly from weariness, and partly from the obstructions of the road, the temperature of their heated blood cooled suddenly; and a sensation of extreme cold, attended by shivering and stiffness of the limbs, informed them that their journey was drawing to a close, whether premature or otherwise.

To lie down in the funereal shade of that leafy canopy which, even in the day time, must have excluded the light and warmth of the sun, would be like stretching themselves in a grave; and there was little chance of their encountering even a woodman's hut in a place where there seemed, as far as their observation could extend in the darkness visible, to be not a vestige of the work of the hatchet.

Carl, however, endeavoured, as well as possible, to keep up the spirits of his companion; but although his remarks were assented to, sometimes by a sound half moan half murmur, and sometimes, when her strength failed to produce even this, by a feeble pressure of the arm, he soon found that these were only the answers of an automaton worked by the machinery of habit, and that her soul was unconscious of the import of his words. It seemed probable, indeed, that she was not even aware of her actual situation, but that the sense of pain, and cold, and fatigue, was dead in her limbs, and the feelings of the body absorbed in those of the mind. This mental suffering, however, when indicated by such phenomena, is less acute than is generally imagined. It is like a dream in which half the terror is made up by its indistinctness, and half the pain produced by the inability of the mind to fix upon and grapple with the cause of its suffering. Were this not the case, were there not a merciful limit affixed in most constitutions, beyond which the soul cannot suffer, calamities afflicting the mind would kill oftener than they do. As it is, even suicide, the last resource of misfortune, is perhaps caused more by a confused and almost unconscious desire of relief, than by any intensity of agony; and if so, the usual verdict of the English coroner is strictly

philosophical,—"temporary insanity." As for poor Magdalene, she sometimes started, and looked up in her companion's face, as if doubting his identity; and once, clinging to him with both arms, she cried in the voice of one who dreams

"Ay-to the guillotine! Go on, for I will follow thee!"

It was probably owing to this indistinctness in her perceptions that she held out so long. Had her sufferings been less they would have been fatal. As it was, Carl was amazed at the strength and apparent fortitude of this poor young creature, whose delicate form resembled one of those phantoms of the poet, which he calls up simultaneously with green and sloping banks, and sunny skies, and gentle winds perfumed by the first faint incense of summer. He was amazed at her; and, if the truth must be told, somewhat ashamed of himself-for already his limbs began to fail, his breath to come languid, and yet pantingly, and he felt a conviction gathering upon his mind that very soon he should be able to go no further.

This is the precise moment when, in the eventful journey of life, relief usually presents itself, and the traveller arrives at the "turning" in the "long lane" alluded to in the proverb. We are never picked up at sea, adrift in the long boat, till just on the eve of perishing; there is not a poor devil in the streets of London who ever wins, or steals, or finds a shilling till his last is spent; and no one who has lost his way in a wood need hope to reach the borders as long as he can drag one leg after the other.

Carl Benzel had arrived exactly at this point. Magdalene was continuing to get on, as feebly but as unfailingly as ever; and her supporter, on whom she

leant with no more mercy than if he had been a crutch, after attempting to calculate, in some discontent, the specific gravity of a sylph, slackened his pace gradually, and at length stood still, leaning his back against a tree.

Let us sit down; I cannot walk another step, " he was just about to falter, when, luckily for the pride of manhood, a steady light appeared in front, at not more than a hundred yards distant; and with a strong catching of the breath, he contrived to substitute

"Cheer up, my brave girl! we are at our journey's end. Let it be a den of robbers," continued he to himself as he bore her forward with renewed strength; "what have I to fear, who have nothing to lose, except a life that can be of no consequence to them? My liberty, indeed, which is still more precious, they might deprive me of; but for what purpose? Why put themselves to the trouble of providing lodging and sustenance for a homeless wanderer, who has no means of repaying their hospitality either with vengeance or reward?" He at length reasoned himself into the conviction that he had acted a very foolish part in making so painful an escape from imaginary danger; and when they emerged from the black shadow of the trees, and reached a solitary house which stood by the side of a road skirting the forest, he prepared to demand admittance with the freedom of one of those lucky fellows who know that their property is beyond the reach of robbery, and their life secure in its insignificance from murder.

His anticipations of welcome, however, were a little cooled when he saw, by a sign-board swinging above his head, that the house was an inn. Your "jolly host," he knew, is only jolly in certain company; he is too anxi