A STRANGE STORY.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "MY NOVEL," "RIENZI," &c.

CHAPTER LXXXVII.

THE fifth hour had passed away, when Ayesha
said to me, "Lo! the circle is fading; the lamps
grow dim. Look now without fear on the space
beyond; the Eyes that appalled thee are again
lost in air, as lightnings that fleet back into
cloud."

I looked up, and the spectres had vanished.
The sky was tinged with sulphurous hues, the
red and the black intermixed. I replenished the
lamps and the ring in front, thriftily, heedfully;
but when I came to the sixth lamp, not a drop
in the vessel that fed them was left. In a vague
dismay, I now looked round the half of the wide
circle in rear of the two bended figures intent on
the caldron. All along that disc the light was
already broken, here and there flickering up,
here and there dying down; the six lamps in
that half of the circle still twinkled, but faintly
as stars shrinking fast from the dawn of day.
But it was not the fading shine in that half of
the magical ring which daunted my eye and
quickened with terror the pulse of my heart; the
Bush-land beyond was on fire. From the
background of the forest rose the flame and the
smoke; the smoke, there, still half smothering the
flame. But along the width of the grasses and
herbage, between the verge of the forest and
the bed of the water creek just below the raised
platform from which I beheld the dread
conflagration, the fire was advancing; wave upon wave,
clear and red against the columns of rock
behind; as the rush of a flood through the mists of
some Alp crowned with lightnings.

Roused from my stun at the first sight
of a danger not foreseen by the mind I had
steeled against far rarer portents of nature, I
cared no more for the lamps and the circle.
Hurrying back to Ayesha, I exclaimed, "The
phantoms have gone from the spaces in front;
but what incantation or spell can arrest the red
march of the foe, speeding on in the rear! While
we gazed on the Caldron of Life, behind us,
unheeded, behold the Destroyer!"

Ayesha looked and made no reply, but, as
by involuntary instinct, bowed her majestic
head, then rearing it erect, placed herself yet
more immediately before the wasted form of the
young magician (he, still bending over the
caldron, and hearing me not in the absorption
and hope of his watch): placed herself before
him, as the bird whose first care is her fledgling.

As we two there stood, fronting the deluge of
fire, we heard Margrave behind us, murmuring
low, "See the bubbles of light, how they sparkle
and dance—I shall live, I shall live!" And his
words scarcely died in our ears before, crash
upon crash, came the fall of the age-long trees in
the forest; and nearer, all near us, through the
blazing grasses, the hiss of the serpents, the
scream of the birds, and the bellow and tramp
of the herds plunging wild through the billowy
red of their pastures.

Ayesha now wound her arms around
Margrave, and wrenched him, reluctant and struggling,
from his watch over the seething caldron.
In rebuke of his angry exclamations, she pointed
to the march of the fire, spoke in sorrowful
tones a few words in her own language, and
then, appealing to me in English, said:

"I tell him that, here, the Spirits who oppose
us have summoned a foe that is deaf to my voice,
and——"

"And," exclaimed Margrave, no longer with
gasp and effort, but with the swell of a voice
which drowned all the discords of terror and of
agony sent forth from the Phlegethon burning
below—"and this witch, whom I trusted, is a
vile slave and impostor, more desiring my death
than my life. She thinks that in life I should
scorn and forsake her, that in death I should die
in her arms! Sorceress, avaunt! Art thou useless
and powerless now when I need thee most? Go!
Let the world be one funeral pyre! What to me
is the world if I perish? My world is my life.
Thou knowest that my last hope is here, that all
the strength left me this night will die down, like
the lamps in the circle, unless the elixir restore
it. Bold friend, spurn that sorceress away. Hours
yet ere those flames can assail us! A few
minutes more, and life to your Lilian and me!"

Thus having said, Margrave turned from us,
and cast into the caldron the last essence yet
left in his emptied coffer.

Ayesha silently drew her black veil over her
face; and turned, with the being she loved, from
the terror he scorned, to share in the hope that
he cherished.

Thus left alone, with my reason disenthralled,