A LEGEND OF OLD LONDON. IT was in one of the earliest years of the reign of Henry the Eighth, and on a glorious summer's day, that two men sat in earnest conversation together in the oak-panelled parlor of a small house abutting upon St. Paul's Church-yard. The one was a soldier, the other a priest. The former was habited as an officer of 63 priest's forehead was high and massive, and his eye deep-set and bright. As he glanced at his companion, his thin, pale lip curled involuntarily, and the scorn of his smile was withering. But the soldier perceived it not, as he carelessly set aside the silver stoup from which he had been imbibing plentiful draughts of sack, and remarked "And so, Bully Friar! thou hast absolved all my sins-truly their name was legion-but that boots not now; they are rubbed away like rust from a sword blade." "Doubtless, thou art pardoned. Have I not said it?" returned the priest. And, as he spoke, his lip curled more palpably than ever. "That swaggerer, pinned by the cross-bow bolt at Thame?" said he of the yeoman of the guard, beginning anew the muster-roll of his transgressions. "Think not of it," replied the priest. "And the despoiling of the Abingdon mercer?" "And the vow broken to Sir Hildebrand Grey?" "It will not count against thee." that he may rot in a dungeon, or swing from a gallows. He is a canker in my heart." "But, wherefore art thou set against the yeoman, father?" asked Captain Wyckhamme. "He has crossed my path," said the priest, moodily. "Crossed thy path-how?" demanded the soldier. Father Francis looked wistfully at his questioner, and muttered, "In love." Captain Wyckhamme struck the table with his fist, until the wine flasks danced again, and then starting to his feet, with a coarse roar of laughter, exclaimed: “Ho, ho! hath it come to this? And so a neat ankle, and buxom cheeks, and a gimp waist, were more than match for thy sanctity! And thy cell was solitary and cold-was it not, priest? And a man, even though a monk, cannot be always praying, and so thou wouldst take to wooing for an interlude. Brave Sir Priest! Credit me, thou art a man of mettle—a bold friar—an honor to thine order. Nay, thou shalt be the founder of an order of a family, I mean; and by my halidome, there will be a rare spice of the devil in the breed. But I say, father, who is she? what is she? Do her eyes sparkle? her cheeks glow-her " "Silence, babbler," said the priest, "her name is too "And the carrying off the pretty Mistress Mar- pure a thing for thee to take within thy lips; for thee jory?" "Hath been atoned for."" "And oaths, lies, imprecations innumerable ?" rejoined the captain. "Not so much that I care about such petty matters; but when one is at confession, one may as well make a clean breast of it." "In the name of the church, I absolve thee. And now, Captain Wyckhamme, thou must perform a service for me." "It is but reasonable. Thou art my helper in matters spiritual-I am thine in earthly matters! We serve each other, Father Francis." The worthy Father Francis smiled. It is possible that he deemed the arrangement a better one for himself than for his military friend. "Therefore say the word," continued Wyckhamme; "and, lo! my bountiful forgiver of transgressions, I am thine, for good or evil." Father Francis bent his keen, black eye steadily upon his companion-gazing, as if he would peer into his soul. At length he spoke, slowly and calmly "Thou hast a yeoman in thy company of guards— one Mark Huntley." 66 Marry, yes. A fine, stalwart fellow; he draws a bow like Robin Hood; and I would ill like to abide the brunt of his partisan. What of him ?" The priest started up-his eye flashed-his nostril dilated. Catching Wyckhamme's arm with his brown, sinewy hand, and clutching it convulsively, he said, hoarsely, "Ruin him!" "Ruin him!" repeated the officer of the guards, somewhat surprised at this unexpected outburst. "Ruin him! Marry, man, bethink ye; he is the flower of my company." "I say, ruin him," cried the priest. officer, and there are a thousand ways. "Thou art his Plot-plot-so to speak of her, mere blasphemy." "Ha!" exclaimed Wyckhamme, "Priest, I say unto thee, beware." "Hush! I love her, love her with a depth of passion which things like thee cannot feel or comprehend. I have wrestled-fought with it-striven in the darkness and silence of my cell to crush it; but I cannot; she is my light-my air-my life-my God! I have said it— I have sworn it--she shall be mine, although I give body and soul to purchase the treasure!" The captain looked surprised at this outbreak. "Wilt thou remove this man?" continued the priest after a pause, and speaking in a voice of frightful calmness. "Hum-why-marry I would do much to oblige thee," began the soldier; when his companion interrupted him. "We are in each other's secrets," he said. The officer of the guard shrugged his shoulders. And, with men like us, to be in each other's secrets, is to be in each other's power." The officer of the guard shrugged his shoulders still higher. "Art thou resolved?" inquired Father Francis, quietly. "I am," was the reply; "Mark Huntley will not long live to thwart thee." "'Tis well," muttered the priest; "but the blow must be immediate." "It shall fall to-morrow," said Wyckhamme; "leave the means to me. But I say, father, how dost thou propose to get possession of the maiden, and when ?" "To-night," replied the monk, and his eye glistened, "I am her father confessor." Captain Wyckhamme smacked his lips. "A sweet duty, by my faith, to listen to the fluttering thoughts of youthful female hearts: I almost would I were supplied the rest. Here were the vast clustered pillars, a monk." the echoing aisles, the groined and arched magnificence of the roof, and over all a silence like the silence of the dead; the intruder crossed her arms upon her bosom, for the place was chill; and the next moment Mabel Lorne knelt before the shrine of the Virgin. She had hardly passed a minute in devotion when a heavy hand was laid upon her shoulder: with a fluttering heart she started to her feet, and beheld the face of Father Francis dimly seen close to hers. "Father!" she exclaimed. "Daughter," returned the priest, in a voice trembling with passionate eagerness, for he thought he had his victim in his clutch, "thou must go with me;" and at "Is my part of the job. Priest, it is a well laid the same instant, before she could make a motion scheme; I think it may prosper." "It must," answered the priest; "but the sun hath passed the meridian; is it not time thou wert on thy way homeward?" to prevent him, he slipped a kerchief prepared for the purpose over the lower part of her face, and she was unable to utter a sound. "Marry, you say true," exclaimed the other, "and low, tremulous voice, as he attempted to seize her arm I will plot my share in the matter as I ride." "Do so," said the priest," and farewell." In five minutes Captain Wyckhamme, attended by two yeomen of his troop, was spurring down Ludgate Hill, on his way westward-while Father Francis, enveloped in his cowl, paced slowly and thoughtfully back to the cathedral. The people made way for him reverently, and bowed low; the father had the reputation of being rich in the odor of sanctity, and many counted themselves happy in his "Benedicite." The hours passed away, and it became night—a fair, calm, summer's night, in which the moon and stars seemed striving to outshine each other. A deep hush was upon London. The last of the crew of 'prentices, who had been whiling away the lengthened twilight by a noisy game of football in Cheape, had been summoned within doors by his vigilant master, and the streets were left to the occasional home-returning reveller, who either paced along with tipsy gravity, or made the old houses ring with snatches of the drinking songs which still buzzed in his ears. The stately mass of old Paul's rose majestically above all humbler tenements, steeped in a flood of moonshine-its quaint carvings and sculptured pinnacles here standing out clear and palpable in the starry air, and there broken by broad masses of deep black shadow. and waist. Surprise and despair, however, gave Mabel strength; making a frantic effort, she freed herself from the rude grasp, and fled. Uttering a muttered imprecation, the priest pursued, but his flowing robes hindered his progress. With a reeling head, and almost insensible of what she did, Mabel flew over the pavement; she tried to make for the door, but her confusion was too great to enable her to discover it; she heard the footsteps of the priest close to her, and fled, unwitting whither she went. "Ha! now I have thee," panted the monk, as the fugitive appeared driven into a corner of the building, and he made a plunge forward to grasp her. He was disappointed. A low-browed door stood open in the wall leading to a spiral stone staircase, and up it she flew like the wind. As Mabel put her foot upon the first step-a loud clang rang through the cathedral-it was the first chime of twelve struck by the great clock. Up-up-up-went pursuer and pursued. Fear gave unnatural swiftness to Mabel, and she rushed upwardsround and round the spiral staircase-as though her feet felt not he stone steps. The priest was close behindwith clenched teeth and glaring eyes; maddened by passion and disappointment, he made desperate efforts to overtake his victim, and sometimes Mabel heard his loud panting close behind her. Up they went, higher It was near the hour of midnight when the light and higher; the gyrations of the stairs seemed endless, figure of a woman closely muffled in its draperies, and all the while the clock rang slowly out the iron glided cautiously and timidly along the quiet pave- chimes of midnight. The place was dark, but there ment, and tripped up the steps towards one of the side was nothing to impede one's progress; and here and entrances of the cathedral. The door of a chapelry, there bars of white moonlight, shining through loopfrom which admittance might be had into the main por- holes, checkered the gloom. Up! up! higher and tion of the building, was open. As she crossed the faster-but Mabel felt that her limbs were failing herthreshold the damp chill of the air, so different from she made one more effort-one frantic bound, and lo! the genial atmosphere without, made her pause. It she saw above her, in a space on which the moonbeams was but for a moment, and then she entered the cathe-fell, the complicated works of the great clock. She had dral. It was an awfully solemn place. No work no breath to raise an alarm which could be heard by of men's hands could be more grand; its shadowy vastness seemed not of the earth. The eye could only dimly trace its proportions by the gorgeously colored light admitted by the painted glass, and imagination those below. She listened to the rapidly mounting footsteps of the priest, and her heart sunk within her. Just then the great iron hammer which struck the hours, rang the last stroke of twelve upon the bell. A thought darted like lightning through Mabel's brain-- | walls of distant monasteries. And the smoke was beshe might make that iron tongue speak for her. Gliding ginning to rise from men's dwellings, in long spiral through the machinery, she mounted among its frame- columns into the clear morning air; and laboring peowork, and grasping the hammer with both hands, she ple were already afield, and now and then the fair strained every nerve and muscle of her white arm, and traveller caught a glimpse of the broad river, with slowly raising the ponderous weight, let it fall upon the green trees bending over its waters, and sedges upon bell, and lo! with a clang which rung through her very its banks, and swans floating upon its bosom. Everybrain—THE THIRTEENTH CHIME fell upon the sleeping city. thing looked calm, and bright, and happy. Mabel's eye Breathlessly was the priest preparing to seize her, when wandered over the grand panorama of hill, and dale, the iron peal for a moment arrested his hand. He looked | and brake, and coppice, stretching out in all their up-there stood the gentle creature amid the throbbing mechanism-her white hands convulsively clasping the iron, and her face distorted with terror and fatigue. The moonlight showed him all this, and showed him, moreover, the hammer again moving under the maiden's grasp. The danger of his position imme- She would not, however, have so much enjoyed her diately flashed across him; he knew that there were ride, if she had known who was pressing in hot haste many within the chapels and cells attached to the after her. Father Francis, very much discomfited by cathedral, sleepless watchers of the hours and he the bad success of his attempt, and not being altogefeared that the unusual number of chimes would attract ther easy about the consequences, had watched the immediate attention. Muttering a deep curse, he maiden more closely than she was aware of, and on her turned, and Mabel heard him hurrying down the setting out for Windsor--he had ascertained her desstaircase. Cautiously she followed, and on reach-tination through a groom-determined, although he ing the bottom, heard his voice communing with a hardly knew for what purpose, to follow the fugitive. brother monk. Suddenly recollecting, therefore, some ecclesiastical green loveliness before her: and as the massive towers of Windsor Castle rose over the rich expanse, her heart was so full, and yet so light, that she felt as if she could raise her voice and sing as merrily as the birds among the branches. I am certain,” said the latter, “that the clock struck business to be settled with the prior of a monastery thirteen." "So I deemed, Brother Peter," replied the low tones of the monk; "and I have come forth to inquire how it could be so." Cautiously keeping in the shadow, Mabel glided past the speakers; she saw the door opposite her, and flew towards it. As she ran, Father Francis caught a glimpse of her retreating form, and made a wild gesture of rage and disappointment. The next moment Mabel was in the open air, and was soon locked and bolted in her own little room. Sinking on the floor, she cried bitterly, and then rising, she said, “I have no friends here with the first blush of morning I will procure a good palfrey, and fare forth to Windsor. Mark must know all." A bright breezy morning had succeeded the fair calm night, and the sun was yet low in the horizon, when Mabel Lorne, mounted upon a spirited palfrey, left behind her the western outskirts of London, and pushed merrily on throngh green fields and hedges in the direction of Windsor. Sorely disquieted as she had been by the events of the past night, the jocund influence of the fresh breath of morning, and the merry sunshine, the rapid motion through a fair country, and, above all, the thought of meeting her lover, made Mabel's cheeks bloom, and her eyes sparkle. She caressed the glancing neck of the bounding animal which carried her, and the palfrey answered the touch of its mistress by a loud and joyful neigh, and pressed merrily and speedily onward; and away they went, amid leafy hedgerows sparkling with dewdrops and fields of rich rustling corn; and by clumps of gnarled old trees, and jungles of sprouting saplings; and antique, red brick-built old farmhouses; and manorial halls embosomed in ancestral trees; and the peaceful near Datchet, the priest provided himself with a pacing mule-an animal generally used by the churchmen of the period, and the better breeds of which were little inferior in powers of speed and endurance to the horse and was speedily ambling briskly along the great westert. road. He saw the fair country around, as though he saw it not, and only looking eagerly ahead at every turn of the road, expecting momently to behold the fair fugitive. But he was disappointed -Mabel's palfrey carried her well, and when she drew rein at one of the postern gates of the Castle, the priest was still a good mile behind. A yeoman of the guard was standing sentinel at the little nail-studded wicket, leaning upon his partisan, and whistling melodiously. To him she addressed herself "You have a comrade named Mark Huntley," she said; "fair sir, I would speak with him.” The soldier looked at her with some interest, stopped his whistling, and said hastily, "Are you Mabel Lorne, fair mistress?" "That is my name," said Mabel, blushingly. "Then, by St. George, I am sorry for thee," returned he of the partisan. "Mark Huntley was a good fellow, and a true—and " "Was!" shrieked Mabel-"was! He is not dead ?" "Almost as good,” replied the sentinel; "his captain hath accused him of sleeping on his watch, and that thou knowest is death-death without redemption." Mabel sunk upon the ground. The burly yeoman cursed his own bluntness in blurting out at once the bad news. "But she'll soon have another mate," he muttered, as he stooped over and endeavored to revive her; "by my sword hilt she is fair enough for the bride of a belted earl, let alone a poor yeoman." "Bring me to him-bring me to him for pity's sake," | knows it is a lie !" exclaimed Mark Huntley, with firmfaltered Mabel. "Nay, that may hardly be, pretty one," said the soldier. "He is under watch and ward; and by St. George, I think it be near the time when he will be brought before the king." "Let me at least see him," exclaimed Mabel; "perchance, soldier, there is some maiden who loves thee as I do him, and who will one day plead on her bended knees for one last look at the man for whom her heart is breaking!" "I will see what can be done," said the honest yeo man. He was as good as his word-for summoning some of his comrades, with whom Mark Huntley had been a general favorite, he spoke apart to them; and in a few minutes Mabel found herself smuggled into a lofty arched hall, with deep gothic moulded windows, and furnished with ponderous oaken settles. Her friends the yeomen, kept her in the midst of their group, enjoining upon her the necessity of preserving a perfect silence. Hardly had she looked around her, and noted a large, unoccupied chair, covered with crimson cloth, upon the dais at the upper end of the hall, when a priest, closely cowled, glided in, and took his station in a corner of the place. She saw not his face, but she felt that the priest was Father Francis. All at once, the groups of officers and knights, who were sauntering, gossiping, and laughing through the hall, became silent, and placed themselves round the unoccupied chair-there was a monent's pause and a portly inan, with a broad, stern face, decorated with a peaked beard, walked into the hall. His doublet was richly adorned, and at his belt he carried a short poniard. This was King Henry VIII. Throwing himself carelessly into the chair prepared for him, he said, in a deep, stern voice, "Bring forth the prisoner, and let his accuser likewise appear." There was a short bustle-a heavy door creaked upon its hinges, and Mabel's heart swelled within her, and her limbs trembled, as she saw Mark Huntley, bound, led before the king. But a second look partly re-assured her. His cheek was pale; but there was in the firmness of his step, and the proud glance of his eye, the mighty strength of conscious innocence. Opposite to him stood Captain Wyckhamme-his eye bloodshot, and his hand trembling; and many who carefully scanned the countenance of the two, turned to each other, and whispered that the accuser looked more guilty than the accused. ness. "How, varlet!" ejaculated the king, "wouldst thou put thy word against the oath of a gentleman, and thine officer?" "Yes," said the prisoner, "marry that would I-I say he speaks falsely, and I have proof." "Proof?" replied the king; "God's my life-we will hear proof, but it must be strong to bear down the word of an approved loyal gentleman like Captain Wyckhamme. What is this proof of thine, sirrah?" "This, so please your majesty," said Mark Huntley. "Last night I kept the middle watch on the Eastern tower. The air was still and calm, except that now and then a gentle breath came from the direction of London. As I mused, I thought I heard a low, faint, very faint clang, as of a bell. I listened, and heard it again and again-the light breeze bore it still fresher upon mine ear--it was the great bell of St. Paul's striking midnight—and, as I am a true man, the clock rung thirteen chimes !" A woman's scream, loud and thrilling, rung through the hall, and Mabel, bursting from the yeomen, by whom she was surrounded, sprung forward, and throwing herself at Henry's feet, shrieked rather than spoke "It is true-it is true-these hands did it-these hands rung the thirteenth chime. He is innocentjustice, my liege, I demand justice!" "God's life, sweetheart, this is a strange matter," replied Henry; "but rise, thou shalt have justice-thy king promises it." "It was a plot-a base plot for his death and my dishonor," exclaimed Mabel; "but God hath overthrown it. Look at his accuser, sire-look, he changes color, he trembles-he is the guilty one, not Mark." Henry arose and bent his keen eye upon Captain Wyckhamme. "But how camest thou to ring the thirteenth chime, woman?" he asked. "Captain Wyckhamme," said Henry, "this man was tionless. found asleep upon his post ?” "Throw back thy cowl," said the king. The priest moved not, but an officious yeoman twitched it aside, and discovered the features of Father Francis. "It is he!" exclaimed Mabel. "I deeply grieve to say it, my liege," answered Captain Wyckhamme, bowing low, "but such is the fact. On going my rounds last night, shortly after midnight, I surprised him in a most sound sleep, and for this I vouch, so help me God!" Henry looked from the churchman to his captain of "Prisoner, what sayest thou to the charge?" de- the guards. The face of the former was of a deadly manded Henry. pallid hue, and his lips convulsively compressed, but "That it is a foul lie, and that he who makes it he manifested no further emotion. It was different |