of war. I know you are too brave a man to dread the path that so many of your illustrious comrades have trod before you. Can I do anything for you, my dear friend?" Carl was so much amazed at the sight of Moritz in such a place, and at freedom, that he could not reply for some

moments.

"Yes," said he, at length, recollecting himself; "you can tell the person, should you happen to see him, who was brought into the mill a prisoner, with Peter Schwarz, that I intend to keep my word just so long as I may consider it necessary for the purpose we talked of, and no longer." The next witness, to the still greater amazement of our adventurer, was Ishmael the Jew.

"It is the man," said he, after looking steadily at the prisoner for a moment: "behold, I am ready to lift up my voice against him in the courts of law."

"Wretched infidel," said Carl, indignantly, seeing him about to withdraw, "do you not even ask tidings of the fate of your mistress, whom you abandoned to my protection ?"

"She is safe, and under the roof of my fathers, and has sent thee health and salutation; which I did not hasten to deliver, knowing that words are but breath, and that a woman's wishes turn not aside the axe of the guillotine."

"And this is all !"

"Even so.

"No more of this mummery!" cried Carl, striding to the door. "If I am to die, let not my last moments be thus tormented by fools and villains. I confess all that you wish to prove; I am he whom you have sought so long ; and even now, at the very foot of the scaffold, I would not change places with that dastard Jew, or exchange for his the name of Schinderhannes, the Robber of the Rhine."

Spoken like a brave man," said a French officer on guard. "I pledge my honour that you shall henceforward be treated with proper distinction; although, it concerns me to say, you must in the first place submit to be searched-a ceremony omitted before, in our ignorance of the real importance of our capture. The

L

guitar you will oblige me by accepting as a small token of my personal respect; it will perhaps relieve the few tedious hours you may have still to pass before your execution. This small knife, which we reckon as an offensive weapon, must be deposited with the public authorities; and this pencil-case, with your permission, I will myself preserve in remembrance of the donor. But how now? A purse! Gold, as I live and breathe!” "The coined money is mine," interposed Ishmael eagerly, who still lingered at the door; "for it was the property of the wife of my bosom, even the Gentile woman, Magdalene.

"It is partly true," said Carl, contemptuously; "it belongs to Magdalene; who, however, is not the wife, and I trust may soon cease to be the mistress, of this reptile Jew."

"But how came the lady's purse, Ishmael, into the pocket of Monsieur le Capitaine ?”

"He robbed her of it near unto the door of Kunz Weiner."

"It is false she entrusted it to my keeping." "Monsieur le Capitaine is right; entrust' is by far the genteeler word of the two. But what is it your pleasure, sir, that we should do with the money which this wayfaring woman entrusted to the keeping of a chief of banditti? If you mean to claim the property, it must be paid into court, and the question of ownership brought to issue."

"It belongs to Magdalene; let it be paid to her in person; and take care that you do not entrust a single piece of it to the Jew, who has neither honesty nor any other quality of manliness in his composition. And now, for Heaven's sake, leave me to myself!"

"The worst company, my dear sir, you could have, under the circumstances. You are already provided with a guitar-shall I send you a priest? No? Very well: I dare say you are right, for there will hardly be time for both."

CHAPTER IX.

SHOWING HOW A JEW MAY ACT THE PART OF A
CHRISTIAN.

In the course of the day the prisoner was officially informed that he would have the whole of the morrow to prepare for his trial, which would take place before a military commission summoned for the following day.

It was also intimated that, as nothing else would be required for his condemnation than the proof, already fully prepared, of his having been taken with arms in his hand, in an act of rebellion, he ought to make up his mind to be shot the instant the trial was over.

The solemnity of his meditation, after receiving this intelligence, was greatly disturbed by the various visits described in the last chapter. There seemed to be something so mysterious in the persons and circumstance surrounding him, that he sometimes inquired with a start, whether all were not a dream? There was old Moritz, who but the night before had buried three or four servants of the government in a living grave, not only at large in the morning, but evidently trusted by the authorities. The same individual allowed himself to be made the tool of Schinderhannes, whose banditti had only been prevented from attempting to sack the mill by the intervention of the gendarmes, and whom he had intended, not a great many hours before, to punish, for what he termed ingratitude, by a violent death. As for Ishmael, he was at one and the same moment a witness for the police, and an agent of the robbers; and in both characters, had laid aside instantaneously every quality of his mind which had made Carl grieve and wonder

that he was a Jew; appearing, without even an attempt at disguise, a treacherous, ungrateful, cold-hearted villain. Could he come to any other conclusion than that Moritz the bold, the sturdy, the hospitable-was bought by the bandit's gold; that Magdalene, the beautiful and devoted, on reaching a safe harbour, had forgotten him who had saved her in the tempest; and that Ishmael, the brave, haughty, and high-minded, was at bottom nothing else than--a Jew? Whether young or old, however, fair or foul, good or bad, all were alike at the command of this strange Schinderhannes; whose influence seemed to pervade the whole country, and poison the very atmosphere.

The day passed on in these reflections; and every moment he sickened the more at the aspect presented by human nature. In vain, however, he endeavoured to raise his thoughts to a purer, higher world-his spirit clung shrieking to the earth.

"I will not die !" he exclaimed-" I cannot die yet! Let me see her once more, were it but for an instantlet me tell her, were it only in a glance, that I never ceased to love her--that in dying, I lose not my life, but her!"

The night set in--shutting upon the world like a prison door ; and Carl threw himself upon his straw mattress, less from any hope of rest, than from the mechanical operation of the mind which associates going to bed with darkness. He lay till the middle watch, plunged in the same reflections that had filled his day-light hours. Sometimes he determined to reveal himself to his judges; since the space by that time would have been quite long enough to have enabled Schinderhannes to reach his stronghold. But this idea was speedily abandoned. What purpose could the resolution serve? He had not, it is true, resisted the police by force of arms till they had fired upon him: but where were his witnesses to prove the fact? Magdalene had given up her very soul to Ishmael; and Moritz was leagued with his enemies against him.

"To struggle," concluded he, "would be vain; and being so it would compromise my dignity. The commis

sion would shoot me-however plain a story I might tell--on a much weaker chance of my being in reality the dreaded outlaw; and I, however slight may be the probability of saving Ida by my death, will consent to perish on the chance. Be it so. Hunted into the toils, and sentenced to the death of a wild beast, I will die, like the wolf, in silence!"

Still

This resolution taken, his mind was at rest; such rest as that of the black waters of the ocean when the tempest is over, with dead men sinking into their depths, and shipwrecked navies floating on their bosom. it was rest. His eyes grew heavy; the stir caused by relieving guard outside his door, which was done every half-hour, became more indistinct; and at length he fell asleep.

In his dreams he imagined that he heard the cry of "Help! help!" shrieked in his ears without intermission. Sometimes the voice was Ida's; sometimes it grumbled, thunder-like, in the accents of Peter the Black; and sometimes it arose from the depths of the vault, and from the lips of the captive gaoler. It was strange that Carl should have remembered in his sleep what he had utterly forgotten for the greater part of an entire day. The gaoler, whom it had been his intention to have immediately liberated, since neither his keys nor cord could be of any use, was still in durance. The hours of day-light that had not been taken up with visiters, had been crowded with the reflections which these gave rise to; and it seemed as if he had not had time to think of this prisoner of a prisoner till he fell asleep.

The block of stone which covered the hole was so thick, and so nicely adjusted, and heaped round with earth, that it was no wonder a human voice had not been able before to make itself heard from the deep abyss. The floor, in fact the walls, the door, and every thing connected with the apartment, were on so massive a scale, that even the noise of changing guard on the landing-place could only be recognized by one unaccustomed to the sounds.

Carl was sorry for the poor man even in his sleep, and made haste to awake that he might relieve him. The