ening in speechless attention to the increasing tumult of
the storm.

The room and its occupants were imperfectly illuminated by the flame of
a smouldering wood fire. The little earthenware lamp hung from its
usual place in the ceiling, but its oil was exhausted and its light was
extinct. An alabaster vase of fruit lay broken by the side of the
table, from which it had fallen unnoticed to the floor. No other
articles of ornament appeared in the apartment. Hermanric's downcast
eyes and melancholy, unchanging expressions betrayed the gloomy
abstraction in which he was absorbed. With one hand clasped in his,
and the other resting with her head on his shoulder, Antonina listened
attentively to the alternate rising and falling of the wind. Her
beauty had grown fresher and more woman-like during her sojourn at the
farm-house. Cheerfulness and hope seemed to have gained at length all
the share in her being assigned to them by nature at her birth. Even
at this moment of tempest and darkness there was more of wonder and awe
than of agitation and affright in her expression, as she sat
hearkening, with flushed cheek and brightened eye, to the progress of
the nocturnal storm.

Thus engrossed by their thoughts, Hermanric and Antonina remained
silent in their little retreat, until the reveries of both were
suddenly interrupted by the snapping asunder of the bar of wood which
secured the door of the room, the stress of which, as it bent under the
repeated shocks of the wind, the rotten spar was too weak to sustain
any longer. There was something inexpressibly desolate in the flood of
rain, wind, and darkness that seemed instantly to pour into the chamber
through the open door, as it flew back violently on its frail hinges.
Antonina changed colour, and shuddered involuntarily, as Hermanric
hastily rose and closed the door again, by detaching its rude latch
from the sling which held it when not wanted for use. He looked round
the room as he did so for some substitute for the broken bar, but
nothing that was fit for the purpose immediately met his eye, and he
muttered to himself as he returned impatiently to his seat: 'While we
are here to watch it the latch is enough; it is new and strong.'

He seemed on the point of again relapsing into his former gloom, when
the voice of Antonina arrested his attention, and aroused him for the
moment from his thoughts.

'Is it in the power of the tempest to make you, a warrior of a race o