“That infernal hand!  Lightnings blast it!—­but that’s impossible,” he added, in a fearful under-tone, which sounded as if some of the eternal rocks around him were adding a response to his imprecations—­“that’s impossible!  It is a part of them—­it has been so for years—­darkness could not shroud it—­distance could not separate it from my burning eye-balls!—­awake, it was there—­asleep, it flickered and blazed before me!—­it has been my rock a-head through life, and it will herald me to hell!” So saying, he pressed his sinewy hands upon his face, and buried his head between his knees, till the rock beneath him seemed to shake with his uncontrollable agony.

“Again it beckons me!” said he, starting up—­“ten thousand fires are blazing in my heart—­in my brain!—­where, where can I be worse?  Fiend, I defy thee!”

“I see nothing,” said his companion, with unalterable composure.

“You see nothing!” thundered the Fisher, with mingling sarcasm and fury—­“look there.”  He snatched his hand, and pointing steadily into the gloom, again murmured, “Look there! look there!”

At that moment the lightning blazed around with appalling brilliancy; and the stranger saw a small white hand, pointing tremulously upwards.

“I saw it there,” said he, “but it is not hers!  Infatuated, abandoned villain.” he continued, with irrepressible energy, “it is not my sister’s hand—­no! it is the incarnate fiend’s who tempted you, and who now waves you to perdition—­begone together!”

He aimed a dreadful blow at the astonished Fisher, who instinctively avoided the stroke.  Mutually wound up to the highest pitch of anger, they grappled each the other’s throat, set their feet, and strained for the throw, which was inevitably to bury both in the wild waves beneath.  A faint shriek was heard, and a gibbering, as of many voices, came fluttering around them.

“Chatter on!” said the Fisher, “he joins you now!”

“Together—­it will be together!” said the stranger, as with a last desperate effort he bent his adversary backward from the betling cliff.  The voice of the Fisher sounded hoarsely in execration, as they dashed into the sea together; but what he said was drowned in the hoarser murmur of the uplashing surge!  The body of the stranger was found on the next morning, flung far up on the rocky shore—­but that of the murderer was gone for ever!

The superstitious peasantry of the neighbourhood still consider the spot as haunted; and at midnight, when the waves dash fitfully against the perilous crags, and the bleak winds sweep with long and angry moan around them, they still hear the gibbering voices of the fiends, and the mortal execrations of the Warlock Fisher!—­but, after that fearful night, no man ever saw THE PHANTOM HAND!—­Literary Magnet.

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ARCANA OF SCIENCE.