ed into the abyss which the great staircase
presented. He must have borne a charmed life to reach thus far--when a
mightier roar, a perfect column of fire, a thundering avalanche of
glowing timber and huge stones descended with a shock of an earthquake,
and rebounded into the sea, engulfing for ever the fair slight form
within.

By daring and magnanimous effort and main force, other arms bore back
Hector Garret from the tottering walls and shaken foundation: and the
boat rowed out and delivered the heroic Frenchman. The sinking in of the
turret roof satiated the destroyer, so that the further wing of the
house was preserved. Its master lived unharmed, to rouse himself from
his portentous slumber and face his calamity, while the lover lay
writhing and raging in the clutch of wild fever.

But the summer sun shining down on the sea, once more blue and clear as
heaven, fell on black yawning gaps and mounds of ashes; on shivered
glass and strewn relics of former luxury; on the very grass of the
promontory, brown and withered, and trodden into the earth for many a
yard; on the horrible grave of the maiden who had watched her own image
in the crystal pools, lilted her siren songs to the break of the waves,
woven at once chains for her adorers and the web of that destiny which
buried her there, unshrouded and uncoffined.

II.--THE OFFER.

The Clyde was forded by man and horse where ships now ride at anchor;
but the rush of trade, not quite so deep and rapid fifty years since as
now, yet strong and swift, the growth of centuries, was hurrying,
jostling, trampling onward in Jamaica Street and Buchanan Street and
their busy thoroughfares. Within our quarter, however, were stillness
and dimness, the cold, lofty, classic repose of the noble college to
which a professor's house was in immediate vicinity.

The room, large, low-roofed, with small, peaked windows, had not been
built in modern times. The furniture was almost in keeping: roomy
settees, broad, plain, ribbed-back chairs, with faded worked covers,
the task of fingers crumbled into dust, heavy bookcases loaded with
proportionably ponderous or curiously quaint volumes, and mirrors,
with their frames like coffins covered with black velvet and relieved
by gilding.

The only fresh and fragrant thing in the room--ay, or in the house,
where master and mistress and servants were old and withered--was a
young girl seated on a window-seat, her hands lightly crossed, watching