102 



RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



face, and looking steadfastly at liis opponent, who fell prostrate at 

 his feet, with a cry of terror which brought forth the hihabitants 

 of the hilt — Lillian and her child! She instantly recognized the 

 spectre-harper, but till he had embraced her a thousand times, and 

 recalled to her memory almost as many forgotten circumstances, 

 she did not believe or recognize her only brother, the long lost 

 adventurer who had left his father's home in his early youth. 

 Since her deep disgrace, she had lived in this solitude, fed and 

 sheltered by the idiot Idwal, whose fantastic and half-feminine at- 

 tire gained him the homage paid to witchcraft, and enabled him 

 to preserve their abode from detection. Faithful to that devout 

 affection which seemed the only unchangeable instinct of his wan- 

 dering mind, and the sole occupation of his life, he had built her 

 hut, begged her bread, and watched her steps as a doe watches 

 her young, when all else had abandoned her to famine and de- 

 spair. " My father prophecied in his anger," said Lillian, " that 

 my child should have neither gate nor hearth, and be nestled 

 among wild ravens ; but it has found bread in their nests, and 

 they are more merciful than the world to a sinner." " You shall 

 return to the world," answered the good Judge, " and find it never 

 denies respect to modest and sincere penitence. 'No part of the 

 guilt of forgery rests on your head or on IdwaPs. The harper's 

 dress was a safe disguise when I came back, unexpected, to a 

 home where I had no friends ; but I signed a name which be- 

 longed to me, and only gave you by that deed of gift what my 

 father's death, I knew, had entitled me to give. The sentence 

 shall be repealed, the avaricious heir displaced, and the world will 

 laugh to see justice administered by a Spectre Harper." 



THE SHIP OF THE DEAD. 



In the dreariest month of a dreary season, the ship Aurora 

 sailed towards America from the Baltic, with a small crew, com- 

 posed of twenty German sailors, one female passenger and a boy, 

 the wife and son of the commander, Eric Hermanwald ; a man 

 whose keen and fierce eye was almost, the only interpreter of his 



