of Providence, have levelled with the dust.  On one condition, and on one only, your conduct shall be concealed from the knowledge of your fellow-men.  The eye of Providence alone has hitherto tracked the tortuous course of your villany.  On one condition, I say, the past is for ever concealed from the eye of the world.”  Another pause.  My uncle groaned in the agony of his spirit.  Had his heart’s blood been at stake, he could not have evinced a greater reluctance than he now showed at the thoughts of relinquishing his ill-gotten wealth.

“What is it?”

“Destroy with your own hands that forged testimony of your guilt.  Your nephew does not wish to bring an old man’s grey hairs to an ignominious grave.”

He took the deed, and, turning aside his head, committed it to the flames.  He appeared to breathe more freely when it was consumed; but the struggle had been too severe even for his unyielding frame, iron-bound though it seemed.  As he turned trembling from the hearth, he sank into his chair, threw his hands over his face, and groaned deeply.  The next moment he fixed his eyes steadily on me.  A glassy brightness suddenly shot over them; a dimness followed like the shadows of death.  He held out his hand; his head bowed; and he bade adieu to the world and its interests for ever!

CLITHEROE CASTLE;

OR,

THE LAST OF THE LACIES.

      “By that painful way they pass
    Forth to an hill that was both steep and high;
      On top whereof a sacred chapel was,
    And eke a little hermitage thereby.”

—­SPENSER’S Fairy Queen.

Clitheroe, the hill ly the-waters, the ancient seat of the Lacies, carries back the mind to earlier periods and events—­to a rude and barbarous age—­where justice was dispensed, and tribute paid, by the feudatories to their lords, whose power, little less than arbitrary, was held directly from the crown.

The Lacies came over with the Conqueror; and, on the defection of Robert de Poictou, obtained, as their share of the spoil, sixty knights’ fees, principally in Yorkshire and Lancashire.  For the better maintainence of their dignity they built two castles, one at Pontefract, the principal residence, and another at Clitheroe.  A great fee, or great lordship, as Pontefract was a possession of the highest order; an honour, or seigniory, like Clitheroe, consisting of a number of manors, was the next in rank; and these manors were severally held by their subordinate lords in dependence on the lord paramount, the lord of the fee or honour.

[Illustration:  CLITHEROE CASTLE.

Drawn by G. Pickering.  Engraved by Edw^d Finden.]