"Miss Monro says she is going to see Dixon
in——"

"Oh, Mr. Livingstone, I can't bear it!"

He let her alone, looking at her pitifully, as
she twisted and wrung her hands together in
her endeavour to regain the quiet manner she
had striven to maintain through the interview.
She looked up at him with a poor attempt at an
apologetic smile:

"It is so terrible to think of that good old
man in prison."

"You do not believe him guilty!" said Canon
Livingstone, in some surprise. "I am afraid,
from all I heard and read, there is but little doubt
that he did kill the man; I trust in some moment
of irritation, with no premeditated malice."

Ellinor shook her head.

"How soon can I get to England?" asked
she. "I must start at once."

"Mrs. Forbes sent out while you were lying
down. I am afraid there is no boat to
Marseilles till Thursday, the day after to-morrow."

"But I must go sooner!" said Ellinor, starting
up. "I must go; please help me. He
may be tried before I can get there!"

"Alas! I fear that will be the case, whatever
haste you make. The trial was to come on at
the Hellingford Assizes, and that town stands
first on the Midland Circuit list. To-day is the
27th of February; the assizes begin on the 6th
of March."

"I will start to-morrow morning early for
Civita; there may be a boat there they do not
know of here. At any rate, I shall be on my
way. If he dies, I must die too. Oh! I don't
know what I am saying, I am so utterly crushed
down! It would be such a kindness if you
would go away, and let no one come to me. I
know Mrs. Forbes is so good, she will forgive
me. I will say good-by to you all before I go
to-morrow morning; but I must think now."

For one moment he stood looking at her as
if he longed to comfort her by more words. He
thought better of it, however, and silently left
the room.

For a long time Ellinor sat still; now and
then taking up Miss Monro's letter and
re-reading the few terrible details. Then she
bethought her that possibly the canon might have
brought a copy of the Times, containing the
examination of Dixon before the magistrates,
and she opened the door and called to a passing
servant to make the inquiry. She was quite
right in her conjecture; Canon Livingstone had
had the paper in his pocket during his interview
with her; but he thought the evidence so
conclusive, that the perusal of it would only be
adding to her extreme distress by accelerating
the conviction of Dixon's guilt, which he believed
she must arrive at, sooner or later.

He had been reading the report over with
Mrs. Forbes and her daughters, after his return
from Ellinor's room, and they were all participating
in his opinion upon it, when her request for
the Times was conveyed. They had reluctantly
agreed, saying there did not appear to be a
shadow of doubt in the fact of Dixon's having
killed Mr. Dunster, only hoping there might
prove to be some extenuating circumstances,
which Ellinor had probably recollected, and
which she was desirous of producing on the
approaching trial.

ON THE RACK.

OF the many thousand persons who have
groaned their lives out on the rack, not more
than one, however, so far as is known to the
writer of this paper, has survived to put down
in writing any account of his sufferings. Men
have escaped from the gibbet to tell us that the
sensation of hanging is, on the whole, not only
endurable, but pleasant, and consists chiefly
in a flash of fire, a buzzing in the ears, and
a vague impression of green fields. Sailors half
drowned have struggled back to daylight, to
inform us that on the point of drowning the
memory brings back at a flash all the events of the
past life in an instant of time. Men doomed to
the guillotine have recorded their feelings on the
near approach of the hour of death; suicides,
killing themselves with charcoal, have had the
curious courage to note down their dying pangs;
but the tortures of the rack have only once been
fully described, and in that one case, clearly,
fully, truthfully, yet without, any revolting—
though not without many ghastly—details.

The hardy narrator is one William Lithgow,
a restless ill-educated garrulous egotistic Scottish
traveller, who, in the reign of James
the First, published his fifteen years' travels,
chiefly on foot, over twenty-five thousand seven
hundred miles, and dates his book from his
"Chamber in the Charter-house." Of the book
—written in a shambling pedantic style—the
title-page and an extract from the preface will
be sufficient samples. The title-page runs thus:

"A most delectable and true Discourse of an
admired and painful Peregrination from
Scotland to the most famous Kingdoms in Europe,
Asia, and Africa, with the particular Descriptions
(more exactly set down than have been
heretofore in English) of Italy, Sicilia, Dalmatia,
Ilyria, Epire, Peloponessus, Macedonia,
Thessalia, and the whole Continent of Greece,
Crete, Rhodes, the Iles Cyclades, with all the
Ilands in the Ionian, Ægean, and Adriatick
Seas, Thracia, and the renowned City Constantinople,
Colchis, Bythinia, and the Black Sea,
Phrygia and the chiefest Countries of Asia
Minor, from thence to Cyprus, Phœnicia, Syria,
Mesopotamia, Arabia Petrea, and Deserts,
Ægypt, the Read Sea, Grand Cayro, the whole
Provinces of Canaan, the Lake of Sodome and
Gomorha, the famous Rivers Nylus, Euphrates,
Jordan, and the sacred City Jerusalem," &c.

The preface is stuffed with barbarous
compound words, and betrays that swaggering
timidity not unusual with authors who fear
criticism. It concludes with a violent outburst
of self-assertion: "If thou" (the reader)
"be," he says, " a villane, a ruffian, a momus,
a knave, a carper, a witch, a brute, a buffon,