to look over the writings of this poor girl, dead
more than thirty years ago, forgotten, probably,
by all but these "two old servants?  I hardly
know; then my ardent feverish curiosity settled
the question in the negative, and, piling more
turf on the dying fire, I proceeded to the next
room, and began to try the drawers of the
writing-table. Those that yielded to my hand
were empty; all the rest were locked. Suddenly
an idea occurred to me. I knew well, by
experience, the tendency papers packed tight
into drawers have to slip down behind them.
Instantly I reopened those I had just closed in
despair, withdrew them from their grooves, and
there, sure enough, lay behind them numbers of
papers, dusty, and crushed, and discoloured,
but still, as a glance assured me, perfectly
legible. Possessing myself of the treasure, I
carried it into the next room, sat down by the
fire, and began to sort the papers, in so far as
they were sortable not a very promising task,
as many of them were merely old letters of no
interest to any one now, and various odd sheets,
some torn, and nearly all more or less crumpled
and defaced.

But my search was not to go unrewarded.
After some trouble, I found that many of the
papers constituted part of a diary which the
perusal of a few lines showed to be unmistakably
that of Mrs O'More.

Carefully smoothing, arranging, setting in
such consecutive order as their fragmentary
condition permitted, I made out the missing
links of the story, and here, from subsequent
transcription, give such extracts from the
journal as either its mutilated state permitted,
or my judgment as to the amount of light they
threw on Margaret's narrative, considered it
necessary to produce. Where omissions
curred from the former cause, I shall mark
them by breaks, abrupt as they actually existed
in the history, where from the latter by asterisks.
I must begin with a fragment.

"—forced to yield. I have long known
I had not my father's love—my dead mother's
I never knew—but I was little prepared for
such relentless tyranny. He was the only
person I ever feared, but I have a terrible
presentiment that I shall one day have cause
to fear my husband too. The resolute way in
which he has pursued me, ignoring steadily
all my discouragement, refusing to pay heed
to my acknowledgment of love for another,
satisfied to take me at my father's hands, make
me tremble for the future. Already I feel at times
that he has over my will a sort of paralysing
power; I try to withstand the influence, to
brave him; but my feebler, impulsive nature
falls like wind before a steady rain. Will B.
understand how all this miserable marriage
has come about? Will he—but how can he?
—know that I have been forced away from him,
dragged, without power of resistance, into this
dark, strong current? How can he know, how
can he believe, that in absence I was faithful to
him every hour; that my heart never, for an
instant, swerved in its allegiance to him; that
if I could I would have died rather than have
given him up, and married this man? But I
could not die. We talk of dying as if it were
such an easy resource and escape! But, in the
midst of all, youth and strength made life too
vigorous in me to be extinguished even by such
suffering.

"May 10. The spring comes, even to this place,
and the summer follows; the sea is blue, blue,
and the sky without a cloud, and even the
dark mountain takes the sun, and gives forth
its stunted herbage, and the bleating of the
sheep on its flank, and the tinkle of their bells
make music. And though I hate the place, and
dread its isolation, I feel how young and strong
I am, and that I must go forth and feel the
spring. Ah, if I had a child! No, no, God forbid!
A child of mine, with the worse than
deadly heritage I have to give it!—a child of
his, the man I hate and fear! No! better any
amount of loneliness than that!

"Madness! Yes, that is what a child of
mine may ....

".... So I wandered on, on, little knowing
or caring where I went, till I came to the
'big stone,' and under its shadow I sat down
to rest. Beneath me lay the pine-wood, and
below that spread the fair, sunny fields, and
lawns, and shrubberies of Rosstrevor House,
sloping softly to the sea, lying sparkling and
rippling in the sun. The sight calmed me, and
seemed to lay a stillness on my troubled, angry
heart, till I began to forget the scene of the
morning. And then came a heavy black cloud
across the sun, and a rushing, whistling wind
swept round the big stone, and made me shiver,
and all the peace and brightness were gone,
and in me and without me the storm began to
arise. I rose, and turned towards the other
side of the mountain, and there, as I well knew,
all was gloom and terror, peaks, and chasms,
and barrenness, and down close below, the sea,
no longer smiling but rising in wrath and torment
beneath the lashing squall. Then came the
rain. Oh, such rain! sweeping, blinding,
driving. I stopped, for it was impossible to
make head against it, or see a yard before me,
and I knew that if I attempted to advance, the
chances were that I should fall into one of the
many abysses that lay around. And for an
instant in that thought sprung up a fierce
temptation so to be rid of it all! But I was only
a woman, and a coward, as we all are at heart, the
bravest of us, I do believe, and a foolish, common-
place recollection frightened me from it.

"I remembered one of the mountain shepherds
telling me he had missed a sheep for three days,
and at the end of that time he had found it
fallen over a rock into a crevasse. With the
help of other shepherds he got it out, but the
poor thing, though still alive when they brought
it to the top, died in a few hours from starvation
and the injuries it had received. Now, if I could
be sure of ending all at once! But how could
I? and to lie, perhaps, for days and nights
in the cold hard depths of one of those
chasms seeing nothing but the sky overhead,
watching it darkening, and the cold stars
coming out, and the day breaking, and dying