"A bargain! a match!" cried the youngsters of the company, with one voice, delighted, in the midst of their alarms, with the romantic turn matters were taking. "Marcella and Domenico !—a match!-look out for sugar-plums!"* Marcella blushed till the colour on her cheeks outshone the flaming ribbons of her cap; for as much of her heart as she ever was aware of, was far away in town, and the "strapping widow's son, fresh from college," had it in his keeping. He had vowed he would make a lady of her, some time or other, and the ambitious peasant-girl laughed at the pretensions of the mature casaro. Marcella was motherless. Her father, also a house-servant, was away with her mistress in town; the parson deep in his slumbers; no one present had a right to exercise any control over her. The casaro, the most important authority now present, had been won over to her cause. She rid herself of the importunate remonstrances of some of the elderly dames. She had offered to go, and go she must. She laid down her distaff, and stuck her spindle into her girdle. She drew up her Polonaise hood over her head, smoothed down her apron, and shook the ringlets off her brow. As she stood up, the old church-clock tolled heavily the hour. It was twelve o'clock-ghost-time all over the world. Marcella stood up, as if that bell had tolled a signal; she stalked up to the door; turned round, with a wicked smile, to take her farewell of the rustics, who looked at her with very long faces. She passed the threshold, and her footsteps were soon lost in the distance. Outside, the night was bright and somewhat frosty. The moon had not yet risen. All the stars twinkled in the firmament, but there was that slight wintry haziness, which, without obscuring them, seemed to remove their light and influence millions of miles away from the earth. Not a breath of wind was astir; or rather, none fanned the nut-brown cheek of the girl, as she hurried breathlessly on, but the loftiest summit of the bare poplar-trees were seen to quiver uneasily, and there was that faint moan in the air, which betokens a commotion in the elements, far away in the upper regions. The ground was white with hoar-frost; and a few crisp, dry leaves cracked underneath her feet. More than once, as the brambles from the hedges caught hold of her trailing garment, did the startled girl impatiently anathematise her town-made petticoats, and wish herself clad in the less cumbrous jupon of her simpler village friends. She walked on with admirable steadiness, nevertheless. She looked intently before her, without suffering any of the innumerable, indefinable, ineffable voices of the night to divert her attention. A smile was on her lips; but it was a dim, dismal smile; an exaggeration of self-command and composure; a putting on a bold face upon what was, unquestionably, a very hazardous game. For, be it remembered, poor Marcella's scepticism was of a very recent date. It was the result of petulant assurance rather than well-wrought conviction; the confidence of pride, not of considerate valour. All along that walk her spirit was in a flutter of conflicting emotions. "The dead never return," was the easy doctrine of her young collegian in town; and we may say, the agreeable manners of the instructor made up for the want of soundness in his arguments. But, "The dead Confetti, or sugar-plums, are used instead of bride-cake, all over Italy. live a life everlasting," had been, from her childhood upwards, thundered from the pulpit. "Souls are immortal, and God omnipotent. In His hands are the portals of the grave. And may they not yawn and give up their prey, whenever it suits His eternal designs? And may it not be His pleasure, now, to depart from the course of Nature's laws, to confound a rash girl's stubborn unbelief, and chastise her presumption?" With these harrowing thoughts to keep her company, Marcella made the best of her way to the churchyard. The church of Gainago was not more than three quarters of a mile away from the farm-house. There was a short cut across the homefields. This led to some extensive ruins, mantled over by a thin shrubbery, and still thinner plantation of poplar-trees. This meagre strip of woodland alone obstructed the view of the church. Hard by the house of worship stood the solitary parsonage; and between the two edifices lay the Campo Santo, or Sagrato, the consecrated ground where, The rude forefathers of the hamlet slept. The industry of the good pastors had long since encroached upon the last resting-place of the departed, and a good slice of the churchyard had been converted into a kitchen-garden, fenced by a stone wall. Faithful to the horror the Italians everywhere evince for the relics of mortality, the rectors of Gainago had further entrenched themselves behind several rows of cypress and yew trees, which effectually screened their windows from the melancholy view beneath, and increased thus the gloom and desolation of the "city of the dead." The church itself was a crazy old fabric. It dated from the time when the Benedictines constituted an industrious community, and took the management of their lands upon themselves. In those remote ages one of their minor cenobiums was established here; and the wide-strewn ruins on one side of the churchyard had once been their cells and cloisters. Some of their monumental stones, much damaged by time, were still discernible; and contrasted rather strangely with the rudelycarved crosses, red, white, and black, with which the poorer rustics attempted to secure the memory of their dead against oblivion. Altogether the place was as weird and lonely as heart might desire and almost close to the steeple, behind the church, in a corner by itself, was the dreaded red cross, under which the remains of the ill-fated Micco, the poacher, had been devoutly deposited. Marcella had left the home-fields behind her, she had threaded her way across the brushwood with which the ruins of the cloisters were overgrown. A broad ditch separated them from the churchyard, and a narrow plank was thrown athwart. A cold shiver ran through her veins as that frail bridge swung and quivered beneath her weight. For one instant she reeled right and left; but, by a brave effort, she recovered her balance and sprang in safety ashore. Here was the battle-field. She cast one look around. The ground was clear before her. The undulating turf, heaving with its ominous mounds, bristling with its hundred crosses, so carefully shut out on all sides from human view! Marcella paused: she was alone with the dead. The delay was involuntary. Her heart urged her onwards, but the limbs refused their office. She fell on her knees. She muttered a requiem, one of those Latin prayers which to the ignorant Catholic convey no meaning, but to which, from the very circumstance, he attaches all the importance of a magic spell. She rose with renewed energies. She pressed her hand on her heart and bade it be still. She then took the shortest walk across the "God's acre," and reached the threshold of the church. She had to walk round it, her business being in the solitary corner behind the steeple. She glanced, as if stealthily, over her shoulder. That she could not help. The vagueness of her danger was more demoralising than the actual presence of the most terrific object. She felt a vague suspicion, as if the inhabitants of the nether world would not be satisfied with the advantage their intangibility gives them over mere flesh and blood, but must needs have recourse to the ungenerous stratagem of an assault from behind. There was something like uneasy trepidation as she walked round the church-a breathless suspense till she reached the lonely recess. She came in sight at last. The ground was clear. With a convulsive grasp she drew forth her spindle. In that very emergency a loud, rattling, whizzing noise resounded throughout the church within. The crazy steeple trembled as if in labour. Marcella gasped for breath. It was only the clock about to strike the half-hour! Marcella smiled bitterly. Her recovery from that panic had something hysterically wild. It was a smile of exultation and defiance. Her brave heart had won her the victory! She stood before the solitary grave. The soil was bare around it. No rain of heaven had power to smooth, no blade of grass was suffered to mantle the turf that weighed on the malefactor's remains! Marcella walked up to that forsaken mound, and laid her hand on the cross. Anxious as she had hitherto been she could not help tarrying awhile as if to enjoy her triumph. She turned all round, and took a deliberate survey of the place. The back of the church and steeple, and a high fencing wall enclosed it on all sides. "The "The monk with two heads!" she exclaimed, with a sneer. white lady with blood-streaming locks! ha! ha! ha! Young Valentino, in town, was right, after all, and the dead never return!" With this she stooped hastily down: she drove the spindle deep into the ground, right at the foot of the red cross. As she was rising to depart her dress was caught hold of and dragged forcibly down. She uttered a piercing shriek and sunk down insensible. Her cry was heard miles off. The casaro heard it from the casement of his bed-room, where he was making ready for his night's rest, and he crossed himself with pious horror. He did not sleep at all that night, but all his love and boding apprehension could not inspire him with courage to go forth to the rescue. On the morrow, at daybreak only, he summoned some of the stoutest rustics to his side. Spirits, it is a matter of faith at Gainago, have no power against numbers, no power by daylight. In a body they hastened to the burial-ground. They found Marcella deep in her swoon, stiffened with cold, lying in a heap on the spot desecrated by her foolhardiness. She had run her spindle through the skirt of her dress, and pinned it down to the ground. THE EMIGRANT'S SONG TO HIS WIFE. BY J. E. CARPENTER, ESQ. LET us go forth from our old home for ever! Let us go forth-from hence-far, far away. Let us go forth! I know no ties are stronger It pines on some untrodden path to stand; Let us go forth-a light is round me breaking, There is the land of promise-let us go! Let us go forth-behold our children's faces On those bright forms-no smile will circle there; Let us go forth-a moment look around us, Let us go forth! 'tis but the pang of leaving Think of our friendships, lost, with scarce a grieving, God made the earth for man, his wants to cherish, * * * Let me hurry over this part of my log; voyons—in nine days we made Cape Finisterre. Sept. 2.-Off Lisbon; next day doubled Cape St. Vincent; on the 5th made Cape Trafalgar, and ran through the Gut of Gibraltar same night. On the 7th, with a westerly breeze, passed Cape de Gat (Spain), and thence stood east by south, sighting several turtle and shoals of flying fish. *** Sept. 8.-This day the mountains of Africa have been visible from the deck, and to-morrow we expect to be abreast of the city of Algiers, where the aggressive French "have had enough of it" since June, 1830. Sept. 9.-Algiers distant seven leagues. Caught a hawk in the forerigging, which we christened "Binnacle Jack." 66 66 * Algerine piracy," said Millerby, one forenoon, "is now at an end, but in my opinion it will not be equally easy to put down piracy in the Levant. In that respect Otho's subjects are as bad as Malays." "True enough," added Knighton. When Karabusa was captured in '27 by the squadron under Sir Thomas Staines, some good was, we must admit, effected; but now, without half-a-dozen men-of-war-brigs, or sloops, constantly cruising between Candia and Mytelene, we shall never succeed in keeping these rascally Greeks in order. Every man-jack of them seems born a pirate. A frigate at Athens or Smyrna does but little good; it strikes no terror into their guilty souls." "Nearly twenty years have now elapsed since Karabusa was taken," said Mac Cuming, "and scarcely a single year has gone by without its authenticated tale of plunder and murder. The Grecian Archipelago has indeed many a nest of cut-throats." 66 Then," exclaimed Webster, "we ourselves may yet fall in with an adventure before we conclude our passage into the Sea of Marmora." "Like enough," replied Millerby, "though I admit I have no stomach for such incidents. Pirates may be acceptable subjects to the novelist or the poet; they are, perhaps, well enough as food for the imagination, but in stern reality they are ugly customers to deal with. Some day I'll relate to you what befel me when a much younger man, and I had the misfortune to be carried into Napoli di Romania by a corsair. I must now go on deck to take the sun." And here Millerby, quadrant in hand, ascended the companion-ladder. "How long," asked Webster, "is it likely we shall be before sighting Candia or Cape Matapan?" "If this westerly breeze hold," replied Mac Cuming, "we may reach the Cape in about a week. Less than a week is a common passage from Malta to Cerigo." |