The Weird of the Wentworths, Vol. 1

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only to the third and fourth generation, but often to a distance that can scarcely be conceived. The leprosy of Naaman cleaved to Gehazi's seed for ever, and it is said many of these unhappy sufferers still trace thei

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n Edin Towers. Every scion of that house was born a slave and bondman to this curse; two hundred and seventy years have flown since it slew its earliest victim, and its power is still as deadly, its shaft has lost none of its venom, and in all that long series of generations no son or daughter of the Wentworths has ever attained maturity, far less old age. The crown of glory, if it

ives and untimely deaths of one generation-the brightest link in a long chain of misery; and if their lives were short, they were full of romance and vigour,

ad page of the Commonwealth. It is not our intention to discuss whether th

d on his neighbour with uncertainty, each feared the other as a traitor in the camp. Cromwell himself, raised to the utmost pitch of his ambition, was on an unenviable height-his tiara was a crown of thorns-over his head hung the sword of Damocles; and, having himself been a rebel to his monarch, he now feared an assassin in every one who approached his presence, and it is said almost entirely shut

all th

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which he had once been the champion. Very different from Sir Ralph was his first cousin Augusta de Vere

and, worse than all, faithless to his religion! But Augusta's was one of those noble minds, which, while it hates the error, pities the erring, and by all the means in her power she strove to reclaim her apostate cousin. The Roman Pontiff had not only excommunicated him in this world, but condemned his forfeit soul to everlasting torments, whilst Augusta, like her Master, rather sought the wandering sheep, and ceased not night or day with tears and vigil to remember him in her

d to Augusta for his very life in days when he had fought on the side he now warred against, and was glad to avail himself of the sanctuary St. Clements afforded him. It was nothing that she was his near relative and he had sought her hand ere she had become the Bride of Heaven; she was a Catholic, "and he that loveth friend more than me," said the stern presbyterian, "is not worthy of me;" it was nothing that she was young an

ods. The scene that followed we shall not describe; suffice to say the monks were hewn down at the altar, the helpless inhabitants that lived on the hospitality of the A

] of September, the day that saw the conquest of Scotland at Dunbar, and England at Worcester, and which Cromwell thought a fortunate day, there appeared in the heavens unmistakeable signs of a coming tempest. During the afternoon, the gusts of wind, bearing with them showers of leaves, grew stronger and stronger. As night advanced, the scud blew wildly across the welkin, and some time after sunset floods of rain descended. Towards midnight the gale increased to a perfect hurricane-"the rain fell not from one lone cloud, but as if heaven had caved in," and the Wye came down in high flood, carrying rocks and trunks of trees in its turbid course, and overflowing all the lowlands far and near. Ever and anon a wild crash told the fall of some patriarch of the forest, and with every blast the towers shook to their very foundations. During this war of the elements a great soul was passing away; it was a fit ending to a turbulent life. The wind sung his dirge as the ambitious Cromwell yielded up his ghost. Unknowing of his master's death, Earl Wentworth lay on his sleepless couch, and listened with terror to t

he gazed on the apparition. Hunger and distress had not robbed her eye of its light, nor her face of its strange beauty; but there was something weird in her glance,-something ghostly in her pale brow,-something unearthly in her whole appearance. Her hair was dishevelled by the wind, and dripping with the rain; her mantle torn and soiled; her s

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ammels of Rome, I will not lightly bear again her yoke, which is neither easy nor light; nay, fair cousin, methinks I have been but too merciful: to-morrow, God help me, will

ery were, they were not entirely freed from old superstitions, and there was not one hardy enough to obey his behest; so, after censuring them for lukewarmness in a blessed cause, he himself seized a sledgehammer from a bystander, and prepared to perform the sacrilegious act. He was a tall, stout man, of about thirty-five years, in the full strength of manhood, and he whirled the heavy instrument round his head as if it had been a withe; it descended on the altar with tremendous force, and in a moment brought down in dire destruction the marble shrine and image of the Virgin. Again

's blast, have the members of that noble house succumbed to their fate. Some on the battle-field, some on the fevered couch, some in the blue lone sea, some by accidental death, some in morta

d vicissitudes of the family whose history we are about to narrate might perhaps seem overdrawn, but who