turned from the engine, and stepping to the tender, gazed long and anxiously back. Jeffries took advan

tage of the motion, and clutched me by the arm.

"Hush!" he said, breathlessly. "What is the matter with the man?" I said.

"Hush! He is mad. I thought so these two days."

Mad! I felt the cold sweat break out at every pore. A mile a minute with a mad driver! My flesh crept, and I got sick and faint.

"We must master him between us," gasped Jeffries.

"We can," I said; "it is our only chance. Come on!"

The words were hardly uttered ere Westhorpe sprung-bounded round.

"I heard you!" he shouted; "I did! Treachery, treachery!-two to one! But, come, come, come!"

There was a moment's pause: not one of the three stirred. Then I saw Jeffries' hand gliding towards a heavy hammer which lay close to him. The maniac, for such he was, glared from one to the other of us. I could not fix his eye, but I felt that he watched my every movement. I gasped for breath. Jeffries' hand was close to the hammer, when, with a yell which rung high into the air amid the thunder of our onward pace, Westhorpe flung himself upon the stoker. He had observed his manœuvre to gain possession of the hammer.

"You would, would you?" the madman growled out between his clenched teeth," then take it!" He flung his arms around the wretched man, who clutched convulsively at any object within his grasp. "Save me!" he screamed; 66 save me, for dear God's sake!"

But I was paralysed. With one superhuman effort Westhorpe tore the wretch from his crouching position, and with limbs which appeared to work and swell with iron muscles, tossed the strong man like a child in his arms, and shouted a maniac-yelling laugh.

"Help! help!" screamed Jeffries; "oh! oh! my wife at home!"

These were his last words.

"Then go home to her!" shrieked Westhorpe, and, with another demoniac laugh, he heaved the struggling victim high into the air, and I

heard the dull, dead, plashy dint with which he was dashed to pieces on the stony ground.

Westhorpe turned suddenly round. "Mad!" he shouted, at the full pitch of his voice,--"mad!-I believe you! -I am!-I am! mad! mad! mad!" He clenched my collar, and drew me to him-I was a mere child in his arms.

"Mad!" he repeated,- "yes! - I tried long to keep it down!-ob, I fought with it! -wrestled with it! And I said to myself, No, I am not mad, when I knew I was! Mad! I believe you!-I am mad!-I feel it now!-I know the pleasure of it! God! who would be sane-ha! ha ha!-if he knew what a life a madman's is ?"

He unloosed his grasp of me, and I shrunk into a corner of the space before the boiler, almost unable to articulate. The paroxysm appeared to pass away for the moment, and he stood muttering. Then catching up the spade, he set himself to trim the fires anew. A thrill of horror again passed through me; we were going at a pace to which all others that I had ever travelled were child's play. I tried to compose myself to my fate. If the engine did not leap off the rails, it was evident that, sooner or later, we must arrive at the obstruction which would, as with one mighty blow, smite us into dust for ever.

Again he turned round to me, and, drawing me towards him, looked into my face. The madman had the mastery. Supporting himself by a side rail, he gazed at me. that lustrous, bloodshot eye!—that ghastly, working, twitching visage ! At length he spoke, slowly, nay, calmly,

"We are now going faster than ever mortal man travelled since the world was a world."

He paused, and the frightful swaying of the engine, and the lightninglike play of the rattling mechanism, fearfully attested his words.

"How fast do you think we are going?" inquired the maniac, still speaking with the greatest apparent calm.

"Not much under a hundred miles an hour," I gasped.

"Full that," he replied. "Now tell me, do you think spirits can fly as fast ?"

Never shall I forget the sepulchral tone in which the question was put. He paused, but without, however, appearing to wait for an answer, and looked wistfully at the furnace-door, its dimensions marked by four lines of red light.

I imagined that in his present mood I could soothe him down, and regain that moral mastery over him which the sane, by coolness and selfpossession, so frequently acquire over the victims of mental disease. Cheered by this gleam of hope, I looked him steadily in the face, and began to speak in mild, coaxing accents,

"Do you think we need trouble ourselves to keep the engine at such speed ?"

"I fear we must," he said, sadly; "there would be danger in a mile an hour less."

I paused, completely puzzled. What were the train of ideas passing

in the madman's brain?

"You have been ill ?" I continued, in the same coaxing, fondling tone. "No-yes, yes-oh, very, very ill;" Westhorpe spoke with apparent languor and difficulty.

Particularly within the last three days?" I resumed.

He started back, and exclaimed fiercely, "Ill-no, not ill-drunk!"

"Drunk!" I echoed, mechanically; a flash of light crossed me-the man was suffering under delirium tremens.

"Yes, drunk!" he shouted, with all his former wildness. "Drunk! yes! I've been drunk since her death; I shall be till my own! Drunk or mad- there's little difference! I tell you I must drink -it lays her-it keeps her off from me! She haunts me-she persecutes me, and I must have drink!drink!"

He darted back, struck his forehead with his clenched fists, and then suddenly producing a small, empty phial, he turned away his head, and in a half-smothered voice said, "Read the label."

I did.

"Prussic Acid-Poison."

He sprung round as though he had been shot.

"I didn't give it to her!-I didn't -she took it of her own accord! Before God she did!-but she took it because I said she should never be

my wife. I am her murderer!-ber murderer, though I didn't give the poison! I murdered the only woman I ever loved-I did! God help me! Oh, Mary-Mary Slane!-but you're revenged! You have never left me since!-you hung over my bed at night-you walked at my side in God's sunlight in the streets-you sat with your clammy hand in mine in the theatre-you looked in my face over the glass as I drank burning spirits-you rode with me on the engine! I have seen you everywhere-everywhere! Ah! ah! I see you now!-you are following us! -following us through the night!— but you shan't catch us !-you shan't! -you shan't!"

And the maniac started up, and with a howl like a wild beast urged on the levers, and, actually screaming with terror, tugged and strained at any portion of the rattling machinery he could reach, as though to increase its speed.

I shrunk down-why should I not confess it?-perfectly cowed. At that moment we flew into a tunnel. The glare of the lantern and the half-opened furnace flickered on the vaulted roof as we traversed the dismal passage, amid what appeared a squall of hot, damp air, and shewed Westhorpe, his limbs twitching and every feature convulsed with terror, clinging to and struggling on the engine.

A moment, and we were again beneath the open night.

The paroxysm appeared to have passed away for the moment, and the maniac again turned to me.

"You saw her face, eh? wasn't it ghastly? It was just so she looked out of her coffin-just!"

I said a couple of words, I know not what.

"I'll shew her something," muttered the madman, after a pause. "I think she'll like to see it."

Another pause.

"Open this," he said at length, and I received a carefully tied brownpaper parcel from his hand. Ile turned away when he had given it, as though unable to watch the opening. "Untie it," he said, with his

texture; then came wrapper after wrapper, until I thought as I undid them with a trembling hand, that the whole packet would prove a mere bundle of waste-paper. I was deceived, however. I came at length to a carefully folded envelope of silk paper. I tore it open, sheltering it from the rush of air, and, to my utter amazement, found its contents to be a half-dozen withered blades of grass! An involuntary exclamation escaped me.

"Have-you-done it ?" muttered Westhorpe, gnashing the very words between his teeth.

"Grass!" I exclaimed; "here's nothing but grass!"

Grass

Grass

He bounded round, clutched the withered herbage in his hand, and, holding it aloft in the air, shouted, "See, Mary Slane, see! from your grave, Mary! pulled by your murderer, Mary! O God! night after night have I passed upon the sod that covered you, and whenever I left it I carried the grass against my heart! Mary, Mary! mercy-pity! Oh, I loved you! indeed-indeed, Mary, I did! I would have been a good husband, Mary; indeed, indeed I would! but it was not to be- my lost, lost Mary!"

He paused; the moon at the moment burst from behind a silvery cloud, and shone gloriously down upon us, upon the dusky country side, the speeding, gleaming, roaring machine, and the distorted face and foaming lips of the engine-driver.

As he paused he appeared to listen. I watched him narrowly. The expression of his face changed, he clasped his hands, raised them; and the countenance which, a moment ago was harrowed and convulsed by mad terror, its every muscle racked and riven, gradually relaxed; a smile stole round the mouth-you could see it beneath the froth which still oozed from the lips; and then every feature became instinct and dilated with a yearning, grateful joy.

"I forgive you! Oh-oh, Mary, Mary, say those words again! God bless you, Mary! your face is like an angel's now! Do, do say them again, I forgive you!"

He listened, and, Heaven help me! I listened, too, for the spirit's voice. I heard but the roaring of our iron

race. Not so Westhorpe; his face gleamed, and his eye again sparkled.

"God's thanks, Mary! God's thanks, I am pardoned!" and then covering his face with his hands, he burst into a loud fit of weeping; and in a moment sunk down, a sobbing, quivering mass, upon the engine-mat.

Now was my time-now or never. I looked forth. Ahead of us sparkled the lights of D—. They were miles-many miles away; but minutes at our present pace would shoot us in splinters through the walls of the station. Westhorpe lay sobbing hysterically; I had enough of acquaintance with the locomotive to know the mechanical process of shutting off the steam, and, grasping the handle of the lever, I turned the tide of the fierce vapour from the mechanism.

The wheels had not spun round a single turn when Westhorpe, as if by instinct, sprung up, and, with a roar of hoarse fury, dragged me from the machinery. One of his huge hands was clutched round my throat - I writhed under the workings of its great iron muscles-while with the other he wrenched the lever, and I felt the steam set on again. I groaned faintly. He relaxed his hold of my neck, and grasping me by both shoulders, drew me to him. I made one effort one struggle. Twining my leg round his, by a sudden wrench I succeeded in flinging him backwards with a heavy crash, partly upon the engine-floor, partly upon a box destined to contain grease, tools, and other useful implements in case of accidents. The advantage was but for a moment: I felt his strength rising beneath my weight like a Titan's. With one bound he was on his feet, grasping me, a struggling mass, in his arms.

"There, go after Jeffries!" he roared.

My muscles involuntarily contracted, I seemed to shrink into a ball, as I felt by the winding up, as it were, of the muscular power of his arms, that he was almost in the act of flinging me down the high embankment we were then shooting across. All at once he screamed out,"D-! D-! there's the lights of D- - the station-lights-the green signal to stop! Stop!· ha-ha-ha!-stop! D- the

station, we'll go through it! Through through walls, houses, streets! Stop!-ha-ha-ha!"

I held my breath, I was still grasped in his arms. My head spun round and round, blue and yellow flashes appeared almost to illumine my brain; the quarter-milestones seemed tumbling past, one on the top of the other; the sway of the engine increased; it rocked, and bounded, and roared down the incline leading to the station. I saw gleaming past the lights in the baggage and engine-sheds. I heard the exulting scream of the maniac, mingled with shouts, and whistles, and the ringing of bells, which seemed to rise on every side. I saw the dusky lines of standing carriages; I saw the glitter of the brilliantly lighted station; I saw the flying groups upon the platform; I saw pillars, lamps, engines; one mass -one confused, gleaming, shooting mass! I gasped; then with a yell which seemed to transform all nature into that wild, ghastly, death-shriek, wewe dashedOn nothing!

on

"Now, then, tickets, please! Gentlemen, get your tickets ready! D station, gentlemen! Ten minutes allowed for refreshment, gentlemen!"

I started up with a stammering

cry.

"Holla! holla! what's the matter with you? You've been groaning and moaning in your sleep for the last half-hour."

"Westhorpe! Westhorpe!" I gasped.

"The man's asleep still! What the deuce do you mean by Westhorpe? Rouse up, man, and let us have some stout and sandwiches!" I sank back.

"It was a dream, then ?" I muttered.

"Ay, a railway nightmare, my boy! Did not I warn you of that beefsteak pie at Leeds? But what was it all about? You were thinking of some of your expressing work, were you not ?"

"I was. Thank God it was but a dream: as you say, a Railway Nightmare!"

DEAR MR. YORKE,-You remember the letter in which Mr. William Honeycomb urges the Spectator, to return from his rural visit to that true old English gentleman of the eighteenth century, Sir Roger de Coverley. He tells him that his speculations began to smell very strongly of woods and hay, and hints a fear lest his complexion should lose entirely all the engaging paleness of a town life. When you cast your eye to the end of this epistle, you, likewise, may apprehend the infliction of a green-field-babble, I think that compound is quite in the Homeric spirit, and not unworthy of being coupled with Cowper's "yard-long tailed," of which he was justly proud. But you will be deceived; although I know Miss Mitford, and have picked geraniums at Three Mile Cross, I have nothing to say about " village." Not that materials are wanting for pictures by Wilkie or Constable; nay, we have wood-paths

our

that Collins would love, and oaks grappled by ivy that might grow up Creswick's pencil. I have a curtain of lime-tree foliage before my window, quite equal to the one which Coleridge celebrated. At this moment the trunk is shone upon by the softest sunset imaginable, and all the leaves twinkle in twilight, that looks green one moment, and ambercoloured the next :

"Pale beneath the blaze Hangs the transparent foliage; and I watch

Some broad and sunny leaf, and love to

see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above Dappling its sunshine."

A little farther to the east, but close to my window, I have an oak, a perfect study :

"Deep radiance lies

Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps Those fronting elms, and now with black.

est mass

Makes their dark branches gleam a brighter hue Through the late twilight."

When I lay down my book, or grow weary of watching the sunbeams among the trees, a soft, heathery field-path leads me into the shadier stillness of the wood; but I do not wander far, loving rather to

"Rest on this old mossy bridge, Seeing the glimmer of the stream beneath."

At this season rural sounds are few; the musical festival of the woods has been over some time; but the robin pipes his sweet notes from the low bushes; and, most soothing and picturesque of all, as I saunter along, with scarcely light enough to cast my shadow, very much abridged, upon the hedge-row,

Every evening reminds me of the happiness of Coleridge's epithet of creaking, applied to the wing of this bird.

These are only a few of my rural amusements, so that if my communication has none of the country odour, it is not from any deficiency of subject. But I am not going to write of out-of-door scenes, but of what I have read in them. Your August number was sunned, I can tell you, under many branches, oak and chestnut, by mossy stile and in quiet churchyard, where the sheepbell made a pleasant accompaniment. Your account of Foster was especially interesting. One was not prepared to hear of so large-limbed a genius, among the dwarf-tribes of Baptists; it was like looking on the skeleton of some stern Megatherium, arranged by Owen. Where, in those dry and unwholesome pastures, did he find sufficient food for his rugged, but vigorous frame? that fierce capacity of claw was designed for a wider surface of verdure. How joyfully he must have escaped from the Dissenting paddock, to the "fresh fields and pasture new" of true literature and theology! "Repeated feeling, on traversing various rural scenes,