CHAPTER IV.

"" HE DID LOVE HIM, THEN!"

LONG before Falkland had concluded the melancholy detail which to a less interested auditor would have been sufficiently distressing, the cousins found themselves before the humble home of Kennedy's father.

It was a second-rate sort of house; and the one domestic who waited upon the old man was yet too soundly asleep to hear their summons, for they knocked in a trembling and hesitating manner. At last they heard a slow step in the passage. One bolt was drawn away, and then another, and then the door was opened by the old man himself, who stood before them with an inquiring gaze, while he held in one hand a lighted candle, which had burned down into the socket.

Grace Dalton looked at her cousin. His lips moved his voice faltered-be could not utter an articulate sound.

'Perhaps you will allow us to come in," said Grace; 66 we have come to speak to you on very important business."

"Business?" repeated the old man, as well he might, at that hour of the morning, and with such guests. He admitted them, however; and, throwing open the door of his little sitting-room, it was easy to see that he had known no rest that night, for his table was covered with papers and accountbooks; and everything wore the appearance of solitary and anxious toil-that toil of mind, and labour of calculation, for which old age is so unfitted. Without betraying any curiosity, he motioned his guests to be seated, and resumed his own chair, waiting patiently for them to begin the conversation.

They were both silent, while the quivering fingers of Grace Dalton played amongst her hair, and her open lips were pale as ashes. At last she spoke.

"I think you are aware where your son spent last evening."

"I know little of where he spends his evenings," replied the father, "and it has

become a matter of small importance to me."

But

There was a real or assumed severity about old Kennedy which drove most people away from him, and which might, possibly, have had its influence in estranging his son from the affections and the duties of home. now this apparent coldness, while it shocked the feelings of Grace Dalton, gave her nerve to proceed, and she actually related the whole account of the fatal catastrophe, exactly as it had been told to her, only pausing occasionally to ascertain whether she ought or ought not to proceed.

"Go on," said old Kennedy, every time she stopped, in a deep-toned and sepulchral voice; but he never once looked up, nor changed his attitude, nor unclasped his hands, that were closely folded together, with his lips pressed upon them, and his elbows supported by the arms of his chair.

"Go on," he repeated, until the whole had been told. Then he simply asked"And the body?"

"I have stationed six fishermen from the village," said Falkland, "along the bay, and three beyond the crags; but they say it is impossible it should be found before the tide goes down. I shall then be on the beach myself, and see that nothing is neglected. In the meantime, if you would like my cousin, Grace Dalton, to remain with you, she will render you any assistance in her power."

"I would rather be alone," he replied; "and perhaps," he added, "the sooner I am alone, the better."

There was no forcing their presence upon him after this remark; and the two cousins arose, and left the room, with that stealthy step with which we instinctively tread in the presence of affliction.

They had not left the outer door, however, before their progress was arrested by the sound of deep groans from within. They paused; for it was not easy to leave an aged man, under such circumstances, alone. They paused; for pity, as well as horror, seemed to chain them to the spot and now they

discovered that those strange and awful sounds were the strong prayer of mortal agony-that prayer which is wrung out from the human soul by its necessity, not by its inclination or its hope.

"He did love him, then!" exclaimed Grace Dalton, clasping her hands together; "he did love him as a father ought to love a son! May blessings fall upon the head of that old man!"

As she said this, a flood of tears gushed from her eyes; they were the first she had shed; for grief that is mixed with horror seldom causes tears; while, add but to the bitter tide one drop of gratitude or joy, and tears immediately become the natural relief of the overburdened heart.

"Why, Grace," said Falkland, as he led his cousin away from the house of mourning, "how is this? You are overwhelmed with gratitude, because a stern old man is melted into common feeling by the death of his son.

For my part, I should have felt more pity for him had he received the first intelligence more like a father and a Christian man."

"We cannot all feel alike," said Grace, "nor make the same display of sorrow when we do feel it. I confess, like you, I was shocked at the seeming apathy with which our intelligence was at first received. But those fearful groans, George, they surely tell of more than common grief."

CHAPTER V.

THE BODY FOUND.

THE grey dawn of the morning had by this time given place to the full light of the day, though it was one of the darkest and the gloomiest of those which usher in the storms of winter. The stillness of the preceding night had occasionally been interrupted by a rushing wind, which now swelling into a strong gale, blew fiercely over earth and sea, sweeping across the bosom of the troubled ocean, and lashing the spray of the rising billows into one vast bed of foam. The tide was rolling out, but it retreated with

an angry roar, as if unsatisfied with the work of destruction it had already accomplished.

All the distance from the village to the beach was now scattered with groups of people, who, some from mere curiosity, and some from feelings of deeper interest, had left their homes to hear if there were any tidings of the body, or to learn if anything more remained to be told than the melancholy story which had already circulated from house to house, with the usual number of variations and additions. Amongst these groups was many a poor mother, with her children clinging to her cloak, looking anxiously towards the sea, and yet afraid to behold the object of which they were in search. There were men blessing and comforting themselves that their sons were not as this prodigal, who would never more return to his father's house. There were young women, who looked and looked again, and all the while kept close together, calling back to remembrance the kindness, the freedom, and the generous-heartedness of him who was lost; and there were old fishermen, telling of their own escapes, and wondering at, and settling, and unsettling again, the manner of the young man's death. And still the hoary deep rolled on, telling its dark secrets to none.

Falkland and his cousin approached the scene of interest from one point; his mother and sister from another. Way was respectfully made for them, and they stood together for some time without uttering a word, except to ask and tell in what manner old Kennedy had borne the intelligence of his loss. All looked towards the sea; and Grace Dalton, though she trembled violently, dashed away her hair from her eyes, and looked more intently than any of the watchers there.

ITHOUT professing to be anything approaching to a complete history of the long centuries which have passed since the time of Christ, Mr. Heath's book will still be found to be

an instructive and entertaining companion, either for those who are already tolerably familiar with history, or for others who need an introduction to such an important study. Though the chapters are comparatively brief, the general view is a very comprehensive one; and a handsome quarto like the one produced would have been a treasure worth more than gold in the days when we were storing up what in the old times was appropriately called grammar-learning.

The pictures we borrow from Mr. Heath's volume present to us three aspects of life in the twelfth century; and a part of that period was probably as wretched as any times which the people of England have known. In the summer before the new century began, i.e. on the 1st of August, 1100, William Rufus was killed in the New Forest; and Purkess, the woodman who picked up the body, and carried it in his one-horse cart to Winchester, has still, we believe, his direct descendants living in that picturesque locality. "In that village, in 1843, we saw the name of Purkess over the door of a little shop," says Charles Knight; "and Mr. Stewart Rose, who held an office in the forest, records that the charcoal-burner's descendants have always lived in this village, where they still live, the possessors of one horse and cart and no more." The death of Rufus is supposed to have been accidental; but the fatal arrow may possibly have been aimed at a ruler of whose profanity, licentiousness, and tyranny the people were tired. Henry I. succeeded to the throne by a bold act of usurpation, and being crowned at Westminster a few days afterwards, he survived until the year

1135, when the era of woe well depicted by the artist commenced, and lasted until 1154. Of that awful period Sir James Mackintosh says: "It perhaps contains the most perfect condensation of all the ills of feudality to be found in history. The whole narrative would have been rejected, as devoid of all likeness to truth, if it had been hazarded in fiction." This is a true representation. It was the unhappiness of the country to pass into the hands of a weak ruler, who also succeeded to an immense amount of treasure which the late monarch, his uncle, had accumulated.

The most vivid picture of the times is found in the Saxon Chronicle quoted by Mr. Heath; for from this, it is easy to gather that the misery of the people must in reality have been beyond all power of either pen or pencil to portray. In those turbulent times, the chiefest of national calamities was the weak rule of an unprincipled monarch.

The old Chronicle referred to tells us: "Every rich man built castles, and defended them against all, and they filled the land full of castles. They greatly oppressed the wretched people by making them work at these castles, and when the castles were finished they filled them with devils and evil men. Then they took those whom they suspected to have any goods, by night and by day, seizing both men and women, and they put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with pains unspeakable, for never were martyrs tormented as they were. . . . Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter, for there was none in the land. Wretched men starved with hunger; some lived on alms who had been erewhile rich; some fled the country; never was there more misery, and never acted heathens worse than these. At length they spared neither church nor churchyard, but they took all that was valuable therein, and then burned the church and all together." This is a dreadful picture of hu

manity at its worst, and of a country degraded by that worst form of tyranny-the oppression of one class over another when wrong-doing was not held in check by the hand of the executive.

This oppression constitutes one of the harsher features of the Middle Ages. But even the twelfth century was not a desert without oases to cheer and refresh weary wayfarers. The times were not without intellectual life and religious zeal. The next scene, depicted by the artist, of the public dispute between Bernard of Clairvaux on the one side, and Pierre Abelard is very characteristic and suggestive. St. Bernard, as the former is now called, was typical of the best side of monastic life; for he was not only grave, austere, and devoted to what he conceived to be the truth, but he mainly contributed to the organization of the Second Crusade, while his oratorical power was in a sense irresistible. The Benedictine monastery, over which he presided, had in it a large number of men gathered in from the world, many of whom had yielded to passion and to violence, but who now, tamed and pledged to poverty, professed to have no will apart from that of their Superior. "No position, except that of the Hebrew prophet, can give any idea of the place occupied by Bernard of Clairvaux in this twelfth century," says Mr. Heath. "At his rebuke a haughty ruler had fallen insensible to the ground in the sight of his subjects. The highest and the most self-willed gave up, at Bernard's command, their dearest projects. Mothers tried to prevent their sons, and wives their husbands, from listening to his sermons, lest they should follow him into a cloister. Kings and princes at his bidding left thrones and palaces, and wandered perilously in Oriental lands. Contending popes submitted to his arbitration; and the sight of this venerated monk, leading by the hand the pope of his selection, turned the recalcitrant people of Italy into a crowd of adorers."

There appears to have been much more life of an intellectual sort in those dark mediæval years than those are accustomed to think who do not get aside from the beaten paths of history. A re-awakening was visible in many directions; and although it was quite characteristic of the times when disputes touching theology and morality ran high, anything was better than the stagnation of death.

Conscientious and orthodox according to his light, St. Bernard found an opponent worthy of his powers in Pierre, or Peter, Abelard, a native of Brittany, and born in 1079. Peter studied at Paris, and his progress was such, that it became evident to all who knew him that one was rising up who would occupy a prominent position among the doctors of the period, and whose influence for good or evil would be widely felt. When, a little later, he founded a school of theology and philosophy, he attracted an extensive following; but when at the height of his popularity, he was captivated by the charms of Heloïse, a relative of a leading ecclesiastical dignitary of the city; and this led directly and indirectly to much after unhappiness on both sides, the secret marriage which took place notwithstanding. To add to his other miseries, Abelard was accused of heresy by Bernard; and such was the influence of "the last of the Fathers," that Peter's doctrines were soon condemned by both Pope and Council. On his death in 1142, Heloïse, who was abbess of an oratory in Troyes, and really the wife of Abelard, received his corpse to have her own body laid in the same tomb years afterwards. In the year 1800 the remains of both these medieval lovers were deposited in a museum in Paris, but were afterwards removed to a cemetery. Our engraving represents Abelard and Bernard conducting their wordy dispute in public. The one on the left in the pulpit is the great Benedictine; the other with outstretched arm being the free-thinking doctor, who suddenly cuts short the controversy by appealing to the Pope.

We have not space to speak at any length about the fratricidal strife which afflicted Germany in the stormy days of the twelfth century; but the scene depicted by the artist is exceptional, and represents one of the best phases of life at that time. Conrad III, Duke of Franconia, became emperor in 1138; but when his title was disputed by Henry the Proud, Duke of Saxony, the inevitable consequence was an appeal to the sword, and the wars following entailed unknown misery on the inhabitants. The rival factions were the Guelfs and the Ghibellines; but one good quality of Conrad was his love of truth and good faith. Concerning the siege of Weinsberg, Mr. Heath says: "Conrad, when he saw the city about to fall, offered to let all the women