so heaven pardon me as I keep mine oath, that if, in two hours hence, thy stubborn purpose melts not, these eyes of mine shall look on thee in life no more!"

With these words Anthony Monkshaw strode out of the bower. Floralice followed him with her eyes, and long her gaze was strained upon the doorway by which her sire had so sternly departed, although nothing but the closed tapestry met her piteous despairing look.

Then, blinding tears gushed into her eyes, and, ere the furious voice of the grim Franklin, rating poor Phyllis, had died along the echoing cloister below, Floralice was in her oratory on her knees, numbering her golden beads with crystal drops, severing her orisons with sighs like frankincence, but still not insensible to the consolations which devotion always bestows, whether before the pall-clad altar of the high cathedral, or in the inscrutable sanctuary of a humbled and suppliant heart.

The sun-set of this eventful day, was succeeded by hoarse and wild gales, that roamed shrieking over the smooth meadows of Heronswood, brushed, with solemn moan, through the court of the solitary Grange, and murmured about its venerable pines.

Among the majestic trees that stood about a bowshot from the mansion, testifying the antiquity and grandeur of the forest of which they were superb relics, the summer night-gusts swelled with impressive melancholy.

That old and reverend grove was indeed a gloomy yet attractive spot; spreading out into wide patches of velvet sward, where the trefoil and the moss were starred with the yellow tormentil; and, winding its green undulating slopes around single trunks of colossal size, it lost them occasionally in the deep, still bosoms of the oaken and elmine thicket.

The whole place, thus diversified, received its last charm from the bushes of golden gorse and purple heather, which exhaling their luscious odours amidst beds of woodsage and wild thyme, streamed, as from a censer, upon the air, fanned by the heavy wings of the night wind.

"Paths there were many, Winding through palmy fern and rushes fenny: And ivy banks, all leading pleasantly To a wide lawn; whence one could only see Stems thronging all around between the swell. Of turf and slanting branches who could tell The freshness of the space of heaven above, Edged round with dark tree tops, through which a dove

Would often beat its wings, and often too A little cloud would move across the blue." * Keat's Endymion.

In

Aged and enormous, however, as the trees were, they did not constitute a wood, except in one spot; where either chance or design had left about three or four acres completely buried in antique shade. In the centre of this thicket expanded a little turfy area, swelling with the grass-grown fragments of a down-fallen chapel, which, having belonged to a fraternity of knight templars, had been involved in their ruin. front of these deserted remains, and protected by the burly trunk and overshadowing branches of a gigantic elm, arose a most beautiful altar-tomb, of extraordinary dimensions, and the most elaborate sculpture. The sides were enriched with some score panels, containing, in alternate niches, richly stoled saints, and armed warriors; a fascia of armorial shields composed the massive and projecting cornice; and, at the four angles, boldly relieved, stood a gigantic Heron.

This mighty cenotaph sustained on the surface of its ponderous slab, the effigy in full panoply of Sir Ottorick of Heronswood, or "The Bloody Templar," as he was called, either from the dark red colour of the freestone, in which his helmet and habergeon were sculptured, or from the blushing sanguine hue of his charac ter; which was in such vile odour in that part of Warwickshire, that few within the verge of Dunsmoor, but would have encountered the black demon himself, rather than have ventured, after sunset, into the vicinity of the bloody templar's tomb.

Nearly two centuries had elapsed since the death of Sir Ottorick; but tradition told that he spared neither man in his anger, nor woman in his lust and he was said to have perished ignobly, at last, under the massive arm and knotty club of some village hind, whose sweetheart he had seduced.

The sides of this great sepulchre were a solid foot in thickness, and the venerable elm which had stood guard by it for centuries, suspended over its sculptures that foilage at once full and airy, massed with shadow yet scintillated with light, so picturesque in woodland fells. The monument itself had suffered much from spoilation as well as time; the images were greatly mutilated; and, at one end, the panelling had been completely broken away, so as to present an easy entrance to the vaulty interior.

At this tomb, silently watching the summer moon as she streamed through the narrow vistas of the wood, or, betost

Nothing could be more simple, nor at the same time more graceful than his costume. Fine cloth of white and azure, the Lancastrian colours, composed a thickly plaited pourpoint, cut off level with his broad shoulders, and shewing the bordure of a very fine shirt, above which his stately throat rose bare; a red embossed belt tightened his waist, and his hose developed the symmetry of his well-turned limbs. A bonnet nearly a quarter of an ell in height, richly purfled with the red roses of Lancaster, and a long rapier, with crosletted hilt, together with a massive gold chain twisted several times around his neck, completed Sir Baldwin's attire, which imparted no.ornament it did not tenfold derive from his stately stature, his vigorous form, and his noble countenance.

He stood near the broken panel of the templar's tomb, in the genuine lover's attitude; his broad back leaning against the elm trunk, his nervous arms folded pensively across his breast, and his face upturned to the maiden moon, that kissed and fled, and fled and kissed again those large Hesperean eyes and full red lips, as though she thought herself at Latmos; while, ever and anon, like some envious pantaloon in the pantomime, the ugly clouds came tumbling over and whirling her away.

A stir, not of the night wind, in the thicket behind the ruined chapel,awaken. ed the young lover from his dreams at once. He sprang forwards from the chequered shade of the elm, into the moon-light grass, and hurrying towards the figure he perceived stirring in the opposite shade, had all but clasped to his bosom.. -Master Luke Tyler!

Sir Baldwin recoiled, and not without

reason.

Repulsive, Luke's appearance always was, but now it really was revolting. Like the hideous vestiges of a conflagration among the brambles and pitfalls of some ill-favoured common, traces of the most outrageous passions disfigured a face unprepossessing at best. His eyes seemed to have burnt out with fury, and glimmered like ashy embers; his cheeks were white and clammy; his lips clung back from his teeth, like a wretch dying

of thirst in a desart, and his voice seemed to expend its last gasp in saying, thick and hoarse, to Sir Baldwin,

"Your life is beset! the Franklin has found out your meetings here; but fear not!—he will come alone, and, kinsman though I be, it shall go hard but I will throw in my odds on your behalf!"

Nay! that shalt thou never, my kind Luke! besides man, there is no need; trust me, my own arm can keep my head!" "True!-but will not thy heart unnerve thy arm, will it not hear the absent Floralice imploring her lover to spare her sire ?"

"Spare him? I tell thee Tyler, I would not scath one hair on that gray head were it to win me even Floralice! hurt the kind old Franklin-the protector of my boyhood? oh no, Luke! testy and implacable as he now is, I would as soon strike my own father, if he lived!" "He will kill thee then! Fate is not more unrelenting than his fury."

"Fear me not! I shall easily hold him at bay and if not,-sooner than fight with my old white-headed guardian,faith, good Luke, I shall hold it no shame to trust my life to my legs!"

And Baldwin laughed.

"That shalt thou not, if I can hamper them!" muttered the malignant Luke. "Sayest thou?"

"Only that, whether thou wilt or no, my fine foolhardy friend!-Luke Tyler shall stand by to see fair play!"

Sir Baldwin coloured, and was about to reply with resentment; but, at that instant, Luke hurriedly glanced over his shoulder, and, grasping Sir Baldwin's arm, had only time to breathe the single sentence, "Beware! the grim Franklin is upon thee!" and to retire behind the templar's tomb,-when, like some Indian buffalo, rending his way through the thicket, and heralding his approach by crashing branches, ominous bellowings, and menaces of hoof and horn, the Franklin of Heronswood came bounding over the turf-clad fragments of the chapel, and stood at the templar's monument, absolutely incapable of articulating for passion.

Whether he was invoking the Thor and Woden of his Saxon ancestry, or the saints of the Romish calendar,-angels above, or fiends below,-was not to be distinguished; but there stood Anthony Monkshaw, the foaming, stamping, bellowing personification of rage.

No. 49.

THE SOLITARY GRANGE. BY HORACE GUILFORD.

In fact, the Grim Franklin was fresh from a second ineffectual assault upon the mild but immoveable resolution of Floralice; and every step of his approach to the Templar's Sepulchre had been numbered with memories of wrongs, and oaths of vengeance.

Sir Baldwin's feelings, at encountering the unwelcome substitute for his serene and heavenly Floralice, may be best imagined by that school-boy, who, having thrust his hand into the nest, far hid among ground ivy and moss, under some deep old hedge,-feels and draws out, what he conceives to be the soft fledgling, and discovers it to be a full grown puffing toad. Soon, however, did Hercey rally his startled and confounded spirits; and, indeed, there was need, for, shouting as far as his hoarse passionate tones would articulate

"Rebel! robber! seducer! defend thyself! for I am upon thee for the death!" Monkshaw launched from the trees his Titan form, and brandished his huge steel full in front of the knight, who had

just time to put aside the blow with his sheathed rapier; but that was the sole effort he made at self-defence. The next moment, he stood with his arms folded, his head erect, and his eyes steadily rivetted on old Anthony's glaring orbs, and simply said,

"If the Franklin of Heronswood, can forget the laws of chivalry, he is no antagonist for Baldwin Hercey!"

It has been said that the lunatic, in the very pitch of his paroxysms, quails before a steady eye, and a determined tone.

Such undoubtedly was the first effect thus produced upon Anthony Monkshaw: he stood transfixed in his career of fury, lowered his weapon, and for a few moments was silent; but the glare of his eye might be seen in the moonlight from under his shaggy brow, like a smouldering fire in the cave which the bandit has just quitted.

"Harkye, sir knight of the red rose !" he at length said, and his voice trembled with suppressed passion, "you may think you have me at a vantage;-and, certes a brazen front and oily tongue are great odds against downright honest anger;-but if

I curb my sacred indignation, think not it is at thy bidding-but from very shame, to waste in words, a vengeance which should be as the dread calm before the thunderbolt!"

"I would to heaven that ill word vengeance, were blotted from thy vocabulary, Franklin! it shall have no place in mine."

"Peace! thou whom I so loathe, that thy sword were more welcome to my heart, than thy name to my tongue! peace, and thank me for one chance of life. Wilt swear, by this monument of my dead ancestor, never, by thought or word, further to practise on my foolish child's affections?"

"Be satisfied Master Monkshaw! I will take no such oath; and, least of all, will I resign my pure affection at the tomb of Sir Ottorick, the bloody and the licentious!"

"Then is that tomb thine own!" roared Monkshaw; and again, with uplifted glaive, he rushed on Sir Baldwin, who still abstained from drawing his rapier, and now retreated several paces before the frantic assault of Anthony.

Luke Tyler had hitherto watched this encounter, ensconced behind the Templar's monument; it would not be easy, perhaps, to decypher the various feelings which conflicted in his dark spirit.

It was almost a matter of indifference to him which of the two perished.

The one had, that very day, loaded him with brutal insults, and even in his savage mood spurned and struck him;but he might yet be won over to his views; while, in the other, from whom he had received many kindnesses, there existed an insurmountable obstacle.

In far less time, however, than we have written this, were the conflicting causes weighed and decided in Luke's mind.

Envy of past and fear of future superiority, sank before the trampled feeling of raw and recent contumely; and, ere Hercey with his back against the great elm, parrying, as he might, with his sheathed rapier, the deadly lunges of his assailant, had received a second wound, Tyler, leaping from his lair, had planted his short broad dagger so unerringly in Monkshaw's naked neck, that the raging monster, in a moment, rolled heavily over, and could not even groan, before the blood, spouting in fountains from the lanced artery, hurried life along with its red cataract.

Sir Baldwin stood utterly thunderstruck-motionless, speechless, breathless: and the murderer stooped low over the

quivering corse as if to scrutinize the departure of the vital principle from a frame so dreaded and so abhorred.

When the homicide raised his face, its horrible ghastliness first recalled Sir Baldwin to a sense of his situation.

He turned shuddering from Tyler, with an aversion, which not even the conviction that to him he owed his life, could entirely restrain: “ Luke, thou hast murdered thy kinsman !"

"At least I have saved him from doing murder-and Sir Baldwin Hercey is alive to thank me!"

"To curse thee, to abhor thee everlastingly!" exclaimed the distracted young man. I am undone, undone ! all my prospects are darkened for ever, and by a false, fawning poltroon! oh wretch, hast thou drawled through life a paltry trail of coward vices, only to swoop at such gigantic villany at last?"

"And oh, thou of wisdom only second to thy courage! bearest thou so slender a wit, that, when the brute whose tushes have gored thee, lies rolling in his blood at thy feet, thou wouldest quarrel with the slayer because he broke through the rules of the chase? Nay then, Sir knight! e'en save thyself, when thy next adversary has thee at his mercy: though i' faith, thou mayst seek far in Arden or Feldon, ere thou stumble on such another monster as this!"

And, bursting with cowardly malice, Luke Tyler ferociously spurned the prostrate bulk of the dead Franklin, now weltering in a pool of blood!

This was too much: and Baldwin, seizing the miscreant by the throat, shook him as if he would scatter his limbs to the four winds.

"Dare to repeat that beastly outrage!" he said, "and I will brain thee against this sepulchre, whose bloody inhabitant might burst his cerements at thy unprecedented crime !"

"Hold, Hercey, hold!" exclaimed Luke, extricating himself with difficulty, "or thou wilt come off worst! thou art stronger than I, but remember, I bear a sting. And if I have done a violent deed, surely thou art not the man to avenge it; thou who but for me, wouldst have weltered in his place yonder !"

"Oh, would I had! would God I had! Remorseless man, take my life too, for thou hast cursed it this night for ever!"

"Out and alas! I little thought Luke Tyler's love for Baldwin Hercey was so slightly estimated, that thou wouldst spurn me when, transported by my zeal, I had rescued thy life, at the expense of

my kinsman's! This is hard to bear !"And Luke, turning away, pretended to be overcome with emotion. Hercey's guileless heart smote him for the harsh return he was making to one who, at any rate, had interposed between him and destruction; and approaching the bloody hypocrite, he said, with tone and manner greatly softened, " True, true, Luke, I am wrong, I am ungrateful to upbraid thee for this terrible act; surely thou didst intend my preservation, and, haply, but for thee, I had not lived to chide thee: forgive my sharp speech ;But oh, man! 'tis a deed earth will not cover-and then, Floralice-oh Luke Luke! his idolizing Floralice !"

"Need never know it!-he hath treated her like the brute he ever was she is shut up in the old Solitary Grange; and he left her with threats of a nunnery.But see! the lightning hath supplanted the pale lady moon; and this rain will help to swell away the filthy puddle yonder. Rouse! rouse thee, Baldwin Hercey, we must stow him away in the templar's tomb; were he five fathom in the sea, he would not be so secure and to-morrow we will return to arrange this matter finally."

Baldwin felt that he would rather meet again old Anthony's uplifted glaive -or, more dreadful still, his angry ghost, than touch his murdered body. But there was no remedy. Luke's arguments were as resistless as sophistry could render them. He had killed Monkshaw, at the critical moment, to save Hercey's life, and right or wrong, it was now too late to calculate: so that the unfortunate Baldwin saw himself plunged into a sea of difficulties, not only without having the sorry privilege of reproaching the author of his misfortune, but also, under the hateful conviction, that to him he was indebted for his very life.

The summer tempest, which had long been brooding in the heavens, now burst forth; and under floods of rain, lanced through and through by lightning shafts, and resounding with the dread requiem of the thunder,-that fatal wood beheld the miserable corpse inurned within another's sepulchre and there it lay, as grimly tranquil as the red effigy of the templar above, amidst an elemental uproar which lasted the live-long night.

Sir Baldwin Hercey, who, innocent as he was, felt himself enveloped in his associate's mantle of guilt, followed Luke Tyler to his lodging at Rookby; and there, this ill-matched pair concerted the best measures to be pursued in this emergence.

Loud were the exclamations, and deep the murmurs, not only in the neighbourhood, but even in King Edward's court, when day upon day, and week upon week, accumulating on the Grim Franklin's sudden and mysterious absence, without tidings of him in any quarter, darkened at length into the confirmed belief that he had met with foul play. Vigorous measures of investigation were set on foot, and only cut short by the insurrection which shook the kingdom and unthroned the king. Breaking out almost simultaneously with Anthony's strange disappearance, this public convulsion soon swallowed up all minor occurences; and, for the time, the Grim Franklin and his fate vanished from men's minds and tongues, as completely as though he had never existed.

But who shall dare to draw aside the veil from the hallowed affliction of the devoted Floralice? who shall portray what that affectionate spirit underwent, whose sorrows at this mysterious bereavement, were empoisoned by the recollection of that violent displeasure under which she had parted from her passionate but doating parent, never to behold him more?

Amidst the early desolation of her grief, Floralice awaited with some impatience, the aid and consolation of the only person who could render them availing. But Sir Baldwin Hercey had never been seen at the Grange since the night on which Monkshaw disappeared.

She expressed her astonishment to Master Luke, (who, by his officious bustle, on the occasion, had much ingratiated himself with the mourning heiress); but that discreet kinsman ventured to differ from her; and, for his part, thought it was not at all extraordinary, considering the unhappy rupture existing so openly between the late Franklin and Sir Baldwin: and Luke even added, that he considered it a great proof of Sir Baldwin's delicacy, that he forbore intruding upon the sorrows of Floralice, knowing how unhappily the late events must connect him in her mind with her father's misadventure.

There was something in this ambiguous panegyric upon his friend, that, flowing from Luke's lips, jarred strangely on the heart of Floralice.

Not that she implicated Hercey in the disappearance of her father, for a single moment: she would as soon have swathed a smiling infant in the cerements of a corpse, as have associated Baldwin Hercey's name with treachery or violence. No! she knew him better.