hoofs; but in less than five minutes all was still. The moonlight fell on the stone of the murdered king, calm as if its silvery flood had not been broken by shadows of men agitated by bold ambition and daring design, and bound on a fearful service, whose end, to some, at least, must be death!
With feelings of mixed sorrow and mortification, Charles Aubyn stood gazing on the lonely dell. His knowledge of the conspirators' intentions had arisen from an interest, scarcely avowed even to himself, in Lucy Aylmer. Accustomed to loiter round her path—living for days on the hope of a brief "good morrow," kindly uttered as he crossed her way—he had been the unintentional witness of her last interview with Evelyn. His first impulse was to join the drooping maiden, and conduct her home with at least a brother's care; but his second bore with it the sterner call of a duty:—surely he might warn and expostulate with the thoughtless band, about to throw the chances of life and death, as if they were the dice with which they beguiled an idle evening. He had grown up in a part of the country which had suffered the most from civil war, and its horrors were deeply rooted in his imagination. Too enthusiastic for fear—and, we must add, for discre-
