dreadful and pitiable.

"It was his intention to keep Kristel's letter from the knowledge of Avicia, but she secretly obtained possession of it, and it filled her soul with an agonising fear. They decided that it was impossible to return to the village by sea.

"'It is there my brother waits for us,' said Silvain.

"So from that time they commenced a wandering life, with the one dominant desire to escape from Kristel.

"I cannot enter now into a description of the years that followed. They crept from place to place, picking up a precarious existence, and enduring great privations. One morning Silvain awoke, trembling and afraid. 'I have seen Kristel,' he said.

"She did not ask him how and under what circumstances he had seen his brother.

"'He has discovered that we are here, and is in pursuit of us,' Silvain continued. 'We must fly without delay.'

"This was an added grief to Avicia. The place in which Silvain's dream of his brother had been dreamt had afforded them shelter and security for many weeks, and she had begun to indulge in the hope that they were safe. Vain hope! They must commence their wanderings again. From that period, at various times, Silvain was visited by dreams in which he was made acquainted with Kristel's movements in so far as they affected him and Avicia and the mission of vengeance upon which Kristel was relentlessly bent. They made their way to foreign countries, and even there Kristel pursued them. And so through the days and years continued the pitiful flight and the merciless pursuit. In darkness they wandered often, the shadow of fate at their heels, in Avicia's imagination lurking in the solitudes through which they passed, amidst thickets of trees, in hollows and ravines, waiting, waiting, waiting to fall upon and destroy them! An appalling life, the full terrors of which the mind can scarcely grasp.

"At length, when worldly circumstances pressed so heavily upon them that they hardly knew where to look for the next day's food, Avicia whispered to her husband that she expected to become a mother, and that she was possessed by an inexpressible longing that her child should be born where she herself first drew breath. After the lapse of so many years it appeared to Silvain that the lighthouse would be the likeliest place of safety, and, besides, it was Avicia's earnest wish. They were on the road thither when I chanced upon them in the forest."

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