My arm-chair ready;-'tisn't in its place? For all the children's maimed and mangled pets, Somehow I lose of late my count of time :- Wherein Time keeps the count of all the Past, I wonder-after It was borne away- At hearth and board; but small abiding sense And some are changed in place :-and some I miss. Who pencilled it long since,—a simple thing, Hers, whom I lost ere these were old enough Ah me! new lords, new ways!-They're young, I know; May they long live so! Farewell! I depart! Some other way, though-not by that front door Looked through espaliered rows of plum and pear, He used to sneer, and call them alms-houses There always was enough for slug, and snail, Or-there's a gardener's face that's new to me- I wreathed upon their brows. I trimmed their locks How outwardly they bourgeoned, how they flung Of shoot, and leaf, and cluster, o'er the path No! What feeble whine was that? Turned out, uncared-for, banished, kenneled, chained! That slew the hound upon his owner's grave, And deemed that to the happier hunting-grounds Ah me! I looked to see some change, for change, * * * * "Les Revenants !"-so the Frenchman calls us ghosts:"The Comers-back,"-no more; no touch, no hint Of reverence or affection,-just a plain Prosaic recognition of a fact: The Comers-back.-Would God I had not come ! H. K. UNDER THE MASK. CHAPTER I.-THE COT OF CHRYSIPPUS. JOHN 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 monstrous 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. "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 bid; 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 I 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 cheek 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 a 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 |