let me cherish! that I will cherish! Perish every ship on this cursed shore, that has almost made me childless, rather than he, my first-born, my last hope, shall come here saying, "Father, where is my home?" and I have but that turret with its bats to point him to for an inheritance! Life is a fight, and man a wolf to man; be it so; but not father a wolf to his son! I have been such to him, 'tis fit I make

atonement.

A dismal night with heavy rain had the effect of clearing the beach of all intruders on the dark privacy of the firewatcher, and the sorrow of the bereaved father. Pain of heart seemed to exasperate, not subdue his misanthropy, and inclined him more to the cruel expedient to redeem his fortunes. It was in the dead of night that a crash of a striking vessel roused him from a lethargic pause in agony, depressing him almost into a sleep, still occupying that piazza of rock which forms so wildly grotesque a feature of that coast. Perhaps the wretched father felt a degree of grim pleasure in the idea of others suffering a watery death that night as well as his three children, and his inquiry of the old smuggler, as he approached him and his villanous beacon, whether aught alive were on board, had perhaps a wish even beyond that prompted by self-interest. So shockingly close is every human virtue dogged at the heel by a foul fiend in its very likeness: the father-love thus owing parentage to the man-hater's cruelty; the amiability of a tender father's grief thus akin to a barbarous desire of multiplying the victims to that element which had inflicted that chastening grief!

"I know nothing about it," said the wrecker, surlily, "but I thought I heard a noise of voices and clank of lowering the longboat long ago. They're all gone down in that squall, if they did put off. The sea's calm now, and the wind's sinking, and I saw the wreck beating plain enough in the last flash of lightning; but it's all still aboard." As he spoke he was hurrying on a life-preserver, Mr. Vaughan's invention, and recent gift to him for the purpose of reaching wrecks. That suggestion of combined pity and genius, over which in better days its author had shed tears of joy, as experiments proved its value, was now to invest the worthless body of a ruffian; and for how opposite a purpose!

Now it was that the faithful Ieuan stood suddenly at his master's side, and whispered him apart to not longer ven

ture himself alone at that hour with so desperate a being, who, besides, owed him a deadly grudge; for it was in an affray with the officers of law, acting under Vaughan's magisterial warrant, that Mat. lost his hand, and the small piratical vessel he commanded became forfeited: his revenge, however smothered for interest's sake, was well known to be rancorous, and restless for opportunity against his employer. Mat. relieved the present fears of the faithful servant by daringly committing himself to the wave, on which he rode buoyant, rising after his plunge with a wild "hurrah!" by the aid of the ingenious apparatus.

Though the wind sunk, and the sea abated its roaring, this seemed but the prelude to another storm; for the darkness deepened momentarily, and the thunder growled in the invisible sky. Mr. Vaughan stood listening; and the old man knew too well the stern mood of his exasperated despair, like that of some wild creature of the forest over its dead young, to venture a word of humane expostulation more. "It's surely a lawful wreck," he muttered at last; "it lies very near, only on those rocks that are almost dry at ebb tide yet I hear nothing of life on board, and the villain's there by this time-hark! hark! hark!" Mr. Vaughan's concluding exclamations were those of intense alarm or awe, and he laid his hand in his eagerness on the old man's lips, guided to them by the sound only, as he began to reply to his remark. After a long pause, "What did you hear, sir?" asked Ieuan. "What did you hear? Tell me that first!" said Mr. Vaughan, in a hollow tone of horror. 66 Nothing, sir, but the dismal cry of the wind, for its like one crying, as it rushes through the wind-holes in the overhead cliff. But, dear sir, what is this trembling upon you? Your hand, that clutches my arm, shakes my whole feeble body. What did you hear?" "O, only what you heard; 'tis done now:-the wild singing of the wind through the rock. Didst ever hear the death-howl of some wild people for their dead, Ieuan? The wind's like it." "But what seemed you to hear? and why did you quake, and your voice grow strange?" "No matter what; perhaps it was the echo of three pretty voices I shall never hear again, that have not done crying in my ears yet, nor ever will have done in my heart, till its throb of loathed life is done: the mere memory and echo.-God! but it was not! There it is again-now, now! didn't you hear then? Now the wind's changed-it's gone! Now, what seemed that

sound to you, among all the dash and swash of the sea? It must have been a loud, long, and dreadful sound!" "I did hear like the voices of two coming from the spot of the wreck's beating; and one seemed doleful, and as in agony; but it might be only the wind's howling." "No such thing! my misery makes me mad, or I did hear his very voice, and in sounds of agony! What does that devil alone there on the lost ship so long?-Mat.! Mat.! Mat.! you murderer, what do you do? Come back-back!" Oh,

put

sir, you distract yourself, and me too!" "Why so I do,' said the father, leaning on the old servant :-" But, oh that unaccountable sound, or frightful thought of mine! it was not whispered me for nothing." "Sir, it is your grief has put some wild fancy of mourning in your mind." "True! how many hours have I been childless? yet not childless either! what could make me forget my boy over the sea, that's left to me?" "Hark!" Ieuan exclaimed, "now that was but the wind! all's still as death on the wreck.” "Yes, there are noises and echoes on this coast enough to drive a desperate man mad, if he'd listen too long! There are such dismal winding caverns, and long passages of darkness hollowed out of these rocks by the sea, fit for catacombs and enormous death-vaults; and, doubtless, they have held their blue and bloated dead, and shark-gnawed corpses of poor drowned souls, ere now-real sepulchres of unburied men!* Iron Heart! Iron Hand! why stays he, think you?" "Perhaps for the tide; 'tis fast running out, sir, and will soon almost allow his wading back :" would he might never return—a man of blood! he added inly. Mr. Vaughan groped for his servant's hand.-"Would it were but a little light," said he, "to shew your lips moving, and more noise, or less of the sea and its echo behind these cliffs, that a man's living voice may sound like what it is,-now I fancied you murmured hollowly, 'Never return!' and 'blood!' -but it is my poor brain still. Why, I've stood by these walls of the sea, and heard myself cursed, by name, to the deepest hell, over and over, for having ruined my dear son and heir, and made him a banished man; all the while I knew it was not a spirit raging at me, as it seemed, but only the ruins of my own wicked mind, that shaped the sound into syllables, as those clefts in the ruinous rocks do

This part of the coast is singular in the grotesque nature of its excavations and funnelled apertures, giving passage to winds, and ingress to the tide.

the mere air into cries of the murdered, dying, and cursings of the murderer! Do you remember how I once at midnight called you up to hear the Cwn Annwn,-the dogs of the sky, which our country people believe in, as hunting souls to make hell more populous, the moment they quit the flesh, and quite to the gates of heaven? That howling we heard, and those strange fires I thought were those which always attend them, we found, after, you know, to be but the noise of the wind-holes in these crags, and the phosphoric flashing of the waves that towered against them; so why should a man's heart fail him for any rumour of the poor fallible senses? Yet, oh Ieuan! Ieuan! you are not a father with only one child left him!"

The old man caught the infection of his master's suppressed horror, and trembled like him. "Speak, my master! what heard you, or seemed you to hear?" "Oh, it was deadly, deadly! a sound of praying, threatening, struggling, suffering, and dying; some bloody death all in one, and all in a voice. Oh Ieuan, that voice! You heard it! you saw us part! you know how tender, how woman-like it was-farewell, dear father!' No more of this! halloo back that horrid hell-hound of man's shape, or I must die, Ieuan!" Mr. Vaughan fell on his servant's neck, and vented his agony in a convulsed weeping, as of the hysteric passion.

But that moment the intrepid wrecker was heard panting through the surf almost at their feet, and, with the next, stood up before them, but only as a black and figured shadow; so deep was the combined dark of haze, and the night ceiling of sky brewing thunder. Before he had yet erected himself, Mr. Vaughan's question rung in his ear, "Was any thing alive on board?" A voice hollow, and yet gasping with the brine, replied, "There is nothing alive on board.' "Was there life on board? was my question, dog!" cried the furious father; "why, then, there was a dog on the wreck." "A dog only!" said Mr. Vaughan, with the freed breathing of a relief from agony; "and you left him to perish? it had been merciful to have brought him to shore, seeing there was no witness to his being found there, to bar our manorial claim to the cargo." "Our claims! your reverence has altered your style towards poor Mat. since he lay in the dungeon of Dunraven, since you robbed him of his hand, and worse-of his wings, of his little good ship; since you struck his sail for him that he never did himself, for ever, and left him to crawl on

another element, among you land-reptiles, like a fine seavulture brought down from these cliffs' tops, to hop and scuffle with one wing among the nasty lazy polypuses that strew this beach." “ Beware, sir," the old harper whispered, and drew his master nearer to his own side; for he knew the deadliness of the man's feelings of wrath, by a certain hollow sound, and quaver of his harsh voice. "Tis a precious cargo, I can tell you," continued he, "for I had it from the master's own mouth.' "How! only a dog, you said?" "Aye-a dog of my breed; didn't you say I was a dog? but don't despair of a wreck,-he'll never witness against our rights, unless mayhap at the great assize and grave delivery of the Doomsday." "Oh, villain! did I ever sanction murder, if I did this horrid treachery of a false light?" Vaughan broke forth. "The Lord have mercy on us, miserable sinners!" was the ejaculation of the old servant, kneeling down on the sharp beach stones. The laughter of the ruffian rose devilish and chuckling in the darkness, and he added: "I'll tell you all about it. The ship bulged when it struck; all hands but one got into the longboat, swamped it by the numbers, and the sharks are at supper on 'em now. But this one was owner, captain, merchant, and so on, and would not quit his ship; besides, he said he knew the coast; he was a native of Wales; he was making for as a near port to his birthplace.' "What was that place?" interrupted Vaughan, seeming to speak from his hollow depth of bosom as a voice of one speaking from a tomb. But the wrecker, regardless, continued: "He was enriched by the death of a merchant, his relative." "At what place? answer, as you shall answer at the dreadful day of judgment!" vociferated the tortured father: "what age?-what name? oh, for the love of God, answer!" "And so you see, he was making his way home to enjoy himself,-a good lad too; for he had a father, a wicked old gambler, who had broke a wife's heart by his ways, and beggared him--his heir; and yet he wished to live, chiefly to surprise that old felon of a father-wrecker-murderer, what not, with his good fortune! Was it fitting, sirs, in the shadow there, where stand ye? Was it fair to let such a father get a prize by his villany, and let the foolish son bestow his wealth on one for having not used him like a son ?"

"I perceive now," said Mr. Vaughan, recovering himself, "that thou art inventing a hideous fable, merely to insult