Shadow—to fulfil that desire would have been
impossible—impossible to any one gazing on that
radiant youthful face!—I think I see him now as
I saw him then; a white doe, that even my presence
could not scare away from him, clung
lovingly to his side, looking up at him with
her soft eyes. He stood there like the incarnate
principle of mythological sensuous life. I
have before applied to him that illustration;
let the repetition be pardoned. Impossible, I
repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face,
"Art thou the master of demoniac arts and the
instigator of secret murder?" As if from
redundant happiness within himself, he was humming,
or rather cooing, a strain of music, so
sweet, so sweet, so wildly sweet, and so unlike
the music one hears from tutored lips in crowded
rooms! I passed my hand over my forehead in
bewilderment and awe.

"Are there," I said, unconsciously "are
there, indeed, such prodigies in Nature?"

"Nature!" he cried, catching up the word;
"talk to me of Nature! Talk of her, the
wondrous blissful Mother! Mother I may well
call her. I am her spoiled child, her darling—
But oh, to die, ever to die, ever to lose sight of
Nature!—to rot, senseless, whether under these
turfs or within those dead walls——"

I could not resist the answer:

"Like yon murdered man! murdered, and by
whom?"

"By whom? I thought that was clearly
proved!"

"The hand was proved; what influence moved
the hand?"

"Tush! the poor wretch spoke of a Demon!
Who can tell? Nature herself is a grand
destroyer. See that pretty bird, in its beak a
writhing worm! All Nature's children live to
take life;* none, indeed, so lavishly as man.
What hecatombs slaughtered, not to satisfy the
irresistible sting of hunger, but for the wanton
ostentation of a feast, which he may scarcely
taste, or for the mere sport that he finds in
destroying. We speak with dread of the beasts of
prey: what beast of prey is so dire a ravager as
man? So cruel and so treacherous? Look at
yon flock of sheep, bred and fattened for the
shambles; and this hind that I caress,—if I
were the park-keeper, and her time for my
bullet had come, would you think her life was the
safer because, in my own idle whim, I had tamed
her to trust to the hand raised to slay her?"
* May I be pardoned, since Allen Fenwick does
not confute, in his reply, the trite fallacy contained
in Margrave's remarks on the destroying agency of
Nature, if I earnestly commend to the general reader
the careful perusal of chapter xiii., page 129, of
Dr. Buckland's Bridgewater Treatise (Geology and
Mineralogy) on the "Aggregate of animal enjoyment
increased and that of pain diminished by the existence
of carnivorous races." Nothing to my mind
can surpass the terseness and simplicity with which
the truth of that proposition is worked out to the
vindication of the great drama of universal life.

"It is true," said I, " a grim truth. Nature,
on the surface so loving and so gentle, is full of
terror in her deeps when our thought descends
into their abyss!"

Strahan now joined us with a party of country
visitors.

"Margrave is the man to show you the beauties
of this park," said he. "Margrave knows every
bosk and dingle, twisted old thorn-tree, or opening
glade, in its intricate, undulating ground."

Margrave seemed delighted at this proposition,
and as he led us through the park, though the
way was long, though the sun was fierce, no
one seemed fatigued. For the pleasure he felt
in pointing out detached beauties which escaped
an ordinary eye was contagious. He did not
talk as talks the poet or the painter: but at some
lovely effect of light amongst the tremulous
leaves, some sudden glimpse of a sportive rivulet
below, he would halt, point it out to us in silence,
and with a kind of childlike ecstasy in his own
bright face, that seemed to reflect the life and
the bliss of the blithe summer-day itself.

Thus seen, all my doubts in his dark secret
nature faded away; all my horror, all my hate;
it was impossible to resist the charm that
breathed round him, not to feel a tender,
affectionate yearning towards him as to some
fair happy child. Well might he call himself
the Darling of Nature. Was he not the
mysterious likeness of that awful Mother, beautiful
as Apollo in one aspect, direful as Typhon in
another?

CHAPTER L.

"WHAT a strange-looking cane you have, sir,"
said a little girl, who was one of the party, and
who had entwined her arm round Margrave's.
"Let me look at it."

"Yes," said Strahan; "that cane, or rather
walking-staff, is worth looking at. Margrave
bought it in Egypt, and declares that it is very
ancient."

This staff seemed constructed from a reed;
looked at, it seemed light, in the hand it felt
heavy; it was of a pale, faded yellow, wrought
with black rings at equal distances, and graven
with half obliterated characters that seemed
hieroglyphic. I remembered to have seen
Margrave with it before, but I had never noticed it
with any attention till now, when it was passed
from hand to hand. At the head of the cane
there was a large unpolished stone of a dark
blue.

"Is this a pebble or a jewel?" asked one of
the party.

"I cannot tell you its name or nature," said
Margrave; " but it is said to cure the bite of
serpents,* and has other supposed virtues a
talisman, in short."
* The following description of a stone at Corfu,
celebrated as an antidote to the venom of the
serpent's bite, was given to me by an eminent scholar
and legal functionary in that island:
"DESCRIPTION OF THE BLUE STONE.—This stone
is of an oval shape, 1 3/10 in. long, 7/10 broad, 3/10 thick,
and having been broken formerly, is now set in
gold.
"When a person is bitten by a poisonous snake,
the bite must be opened by a cut of a lancet or razor
long ways, and the stone applied within twenty-four
hours. The stone then attaches itself firmly on the
wound, and when it has done its office falls off; the
cure is then complete. The stone must then be
thrown into milk, whereupon it vomits the poison it
has absorbed, which remains green on the top of the
milk, and the stone is then again fit for use.
"This stone has been from time immemorial in
the family of Ventura, of Corfu, a house of Italian
origin, and is notorious, so that peasants
immediately apply for its aid. Its virtue has not been
impaired by the fracture. Its nature or composition
is unknown.
"In a case where two were stung at the same
time by serpents, the stone was applied to one, who
recovered, but the other, for whom it could not be
used, died.
"It never failed but once, and then it was
applied after the twenty-four hours.
"Its colour is so dark as not to be distinguished
from black." P. M. COLQUHOUN.
"Corfu, 7th Nov., 1860."
Sir Emerson Tennent, in his popular and excellent
work on Ceylon, gives an account of "snake
stones" apparently similar to the one at Corfu,
except that they are "intensely black and highly
polished," and which are applied, in much the same
manner, to the wounds inflicted by the cobra capella.
Query—Might it not be worth while to ascertain
the chemical properties of these stones, and, if they
be efficacious in the extraction of venom conveyed by
a bite, might they not be as successful if applied to
the bite of a mad dog as to that of a cobra capella?