JCHN STRONG was attentively regarding his little son, who was building a house on the floor.

"There is too much of his mother in the face," he muttered. Now, the unprejudiced observer, who had looked at Mr. Strong (and everybody looked at him once) would have probably concluded that the more the face of the late Mrs. Strong was represented in that of her child, the better for him; and yet the voice of the father, when he uttered the above comment, expressed anything but satisfaction.

"Mobile, sensitive, almost effeminate," he grumbled, with the corners of his mouth drawn down, and his eyebrows drawn stiffly upwards. "Perhaps I might do it," he continued, after a long pause: "such a skin as that must be always delicate, and the winds from every quarter are rough enough in these days, heaven knows." As he concluded the sentence, a strange twitch distorted his face for a moment. "Bah! am I a fool?" he grunted. Mr. John Strong did not enjoy an enviable reputation in the neighbourhood. The village in which he lived was out of the world, and still cherished many monstrons superstitions, of which not the least monstrous was that this worthy man had sold himself to the devil. The origin of the legend was wrapped in darkness; but there was one old dame, who remembered well that at his birth a star with fiery tail had appeared in the heavens; and that on his twenty-first birthday a swart man on a black horse had been seen in the village, who might or might not be the attorney from the neighbouring town. And though

this old lady was herself suspected of many a frolic on broomstick, yet she had long since sown her wild oats, and her testimony was credited by all.

It may be believed, therefore, that when Mr. Strong wooed, won, and wedded in a single week little Molly Davis, who was both pretty and poor, and whose father was said to owe untold sums to the ill-omened bridegroom, the villagers were much annoyed. Indeed they SO far emerged from their local lethargy as to murmur at old Davis, who went about smiling so pitiably, that a flood of tears would have been comparatively exhilarating; and the ale-house oracle, who had a remarkable mastery of a chain of reasoning, openly expressed a doubt, whether to sell your daughter to a man who had already sold himself, were not tantamount to a delivery to the ultimate purchaser. Few of his hearers were able to follow the argument; but it is recorded that more heads were shaken at The Odd Horse-Shoe on the day of the wedding, than on any previous occasion. Molly, however, who was at least as silly as pretty, accepted her fate with apparent resignation, and with the last smile of her girlhood on her lips, entered the dark house, which seemed to shrink away from the village street. When a year was ended, and her boy was born, she felt a strange return of her old gaiety one summer morning, and with the first smile of her married life on her lips quietly passed away. The boy, whom she left to his stern sire's care, was Chrysippus.

Mr. John Strong sat in his highbacked chair, staring at his son and

debating with himself, until it began to grow dark. At last he slowly and distinctly observed, "I will do it."

"Do what?" sharply inquired Mrs. Banyan, who was dusting the furniture, as indeed she was always dusting it when there was no more pressing business on hand.

"Do as you are bid," said her master without turning his head. "Put Chrysippus's cot by the side of my bed. He shall sleep in my room to-night."

Mrs. Banyan, though a woman of great experience, was genuinely surprised. Sleep in your room!" she exclaimed.

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"The part of my speech, which it were well for you to remark, was, Put Chrysippus's cot by the side

of my

bed.' Go and put it." "Thank you kindly, sir. I am very well aware that I must pay for the pleasure of serving you by doing as I am lid; but if it were not for that motherless babe, and fatherless too, or worse but there!" and with this incomplete but pregnant sentence, the good dame vanished. Neither the raised voice, the last flick of the duster, nor the slammed door, produced the slightest effect on Mr. John Strong. When his servant had gone, he took from his pocket a key of antique shape, and opened an old cabinet which stood behind his chair. From a mass of old clothes, old papers, old sticks of divers sizes, old weapons of divers shapes, he drew out a rusty hammer, and after a long search, a piece of iron beaten thin, which, battered as it was, still bore a far-off likeness to the cast of a human face. Whilst he examined the latter object with the greatest care, he wore a look which in any other man would be held to denote fear. Perhaps it was only the moonlight which made his cheek so pale; perhaps in the moon's

VOL. CXVIII.-NO. DCCXVII.

vague glimmer the powerful hands. which held that pliant metal only seemed to tremble. "It is long since it was used in this brute shape," he muttered. "Shall I use it now, and can I change it as 1 wish?" He was roused from his deliberation by a little hand which was pulling his coat-tail. His infant son, after making for a time a new plaything of the moonbeams, had suddenly been frightened by the growing darkness, and crept up from the floor to claim his father's protection. John Strong looked down, and saw a little face with high forehead, delicate check wet with tears, and trembling lip, appealing to him for pity. His hesitation was at an end. "It will save him a great deal of pain," he said; "and perhaps wear off if he ever can do without it," he added after a moment. He thrust his hand once more into the cupboard, and drew from a shelf at the back

flask of quaint workmanship, which sent a drowsy perfume through the room. Then with flask, hammer, and battered iron in his grasp, and carrying Chrysippus under his arm, he went slowly upstairs to his bedroom and locked himself in with his son.

Mrs. Banyan having vented her natural annoyance by bumping the cot of Chrysippus against every corner of the passage, and planting it with a final bang by the sombre bed of his father, donned her nightcap and prepared herself for that repose which her innocence deserved.

But her perturbed spirit. was not so easily lulled to rest as usual. She fell into a broken slumber and dreamed of her master. She saw him as a bird of ashen plumage and flaming tail, who with a long sharp bill tapped on the metal plate of a coffin. Still asleep, she was angry with herself for being troubled about so unworthy

с

a person; and in her efforts to dismiss him from her mind she awoke as the clock was striking one. When the sharp note of the old timepiece had passed from her ear, the tapping, which the weird fowl had made in dreamland, was distinctly audible to the awakened sense. "Drat the man!" said Mrs. Banyan, "why can't he sleep and let sleep, instead of hammering nails into his boots at this time of night? I'd hammer him if I had my way." This good lady was the only inhabitant of the village who did not quake before Mr. John Strong. Had all the clocks in clock-land cried one with voices of every degree of awe, she had not stirred her blanket. Nay, if her master himself had come riding into the window on a flash of lightning, she would have knocked him down with the shovel, and put him to bed in poultices. She had no belief in his supernatural alliances. She knew too much about him. If she gave him damp sheets, did he not have a cold in the nose like other people? And, indeed, the notion of a wizard calling in muffled tones on "Bephistopheles" to warm his bed is ludicrous enough. If his dinner was tepid, did he not grumble, and was not such grumbling inconsistent with the friendship of one who could heat the dish at a word? In short, whether it be true or not that no man is a hero to his lackey, it is certain that no man is a wizard to his cook. The pulse of Mrs. Banyan beat with its wonted regularity as she listened to the mysterious rapping in the next room; and when it ceased, her ample night-cap sank upon the pillow, the sigh of satisfaction became more guttural in character, and she slept. But not for long. As the clock struck two, she was wide awake and somewhat angry. Sounds as of some foreign language came from

was

the next room, and ever and anon deep pants and groans as of some one striving wearily at a task beyond his strength. "The sufferings that poor man undergoes from nightmare nobody would believe," was the comment of Mrs. Banyan. The night was very still, and the voice of John Strong was clearly heard in the darkness, but so changed that his very servant doubted if it were his. In its tones might have been detected by a more subtle" hearer a strange mixture of authority and dismay. The man talking nonsense with terrible earnestness, and the effect was disagreeable. But Mrs. Banyan was not to be disturbed by another's nightmare. She had learned from experience that to bang the wall with a poker or to shout through the keyhole gained nothing but a flood of undesirable eloquence. So, determined to treat the sounds as a lullaby, she again faid her night-cap on the swelling pillow and in a few moments slept. On that night, however, not the strongest will joined with the easiest conscience could insure repose. The cranky` clock upon the stairs struck three, as the night-cap, now sadly ruffled and cocked defiantly, parted from the pillow. In that car which was not obscured by frills was a babel of noises. Doors and windows were flying open; a fresh wind. howled in the chimney; distinct amid the hubbub rose the cry of a human voice, and dying away in the distance a sound like mocking laughter. "Drat the owl!" said Mrs. Banyan. "And drat the wind!" she added after a pause, with the manner of one who fulfils a solemn duty. But the time had come for action. Since the window in the next room was blown in, and the door blown out, it was clear that Chrysippus must be in a draught, and of draught his nurse had a horror. Hastily