! the light is in the window
still!"

"But if not," said Amyas, who had no such expectation, "what is your
plan?"

"I have none."

"None?"

"I have imagined twenty different ones in the last hour; but all are
equally uncertain, impossible. I have ceased to struggle--I go where
I am called, love's willing victim. If Heaven accept the sacrifice, it
will provide the altar and the knife."

Aymas was at his wits' end. Judging of his brother by himself, he had
taken for granted that Frank had some well-concocted scheme for gaining
admittance to the Rose; and as the wiles of love were altogether out of
his province, he had followed in full faith such a sans-appel as he held
Frank to be. But now he almost doubted of his brother's sanity, though
Frank's manner was perfectly collected and his voice firm. Amyas, honest
fellow, had no understanding of that intense devotion, which so many in
those days (not content with looking on it as a lofty virtue, and yet
one to be duly kept in its place by other duties) prided themselves on
pampering into the most fantastic and self-willed excesses.

Beautiful folly! the death-song of which two great geniuses were
composing at that very moment, each according to his light. For, while
Spenser was embalming in immortal verse all that it contained of noble
and Christian elements, Cervantes sat, perhaps, in his dungeon, writing
with his left hand Don Quixote, saddest of books, in spite of all its
wit; the story of a pure and noble soul, who mistakes this actual life
for that ideal one which he fancies (and not so wrongly either) eternal
in the heavens: and finding instead of a battlefield for heroes in God's
cause, nothing but frivolity, heartlessness, and godlessness, becomes a
laughing-stock,--and dies. One of the saddest books, I say again, which
man can read.

Amyas hardly dare trust himself to speak, for fear of saying too much;
but he could not help saying--

"You are going to certain death, Frank."

"Did I not entreat," answered he, very quietly, "to go alone?"

Amyas had half a mind to compel him to return: but he feared Frank's
obstinacy; and feared, too, the shame of returning on board without
having done anything; so they went up through the wicket-gate, along a
smooth turf walk, into what seemed a pleasure-garden, formed by the hand
of man, or rather of woman. For by the light, not only of the moon, but
of the innumerable fireflies, which flitted to and fro across the swar