luminating earth, sea, and sky. Then a brilliant
reflection, like the blaze of a conflagration, steals over the snow of
the desert, purples the summits of the mountains of ice, and imparts a
dark red hue to the black rocks of both continents.

After attaining this magnificent brilliancy, the Northern Lights fade
away gradually, and their vivid glow is lost in a luminous fog.

Just then, by a wondrous mirage an effect very common in high latitudes,
the American Coast, though separated from Siberia by a broad arm of the
sea, loomed so close that a bridge might seemingly be thrown from one
world to other.

Then human forms appeared in the transparent azure haze overspreading
both forelands.

On the Siberian Cape, a man on his knees, stretched his arms towards
America, with an expression of inconceivable despair.

On the American promontory, a young and handsome woman replied to the
man's despairing gesture by pointing to heaven.

For some seconds, these two tall figures stood out, pale and shadowy, in
the farewell gleams of the Aurora.

But the fog thickens, and all is lost in the darkness.

Whence came the two beings, who met thus amidst polar glaciers, at the
extremities of the Old and New worlds?

Who were the two creatures, brought near for a moment by a deceitful
mirage, but who seemed eternally separated?

CHAPTER I. MOROK.

The month of October, 1831, draws to its close.

Though it is still day, a brass lamp, with four burners, illumines the
cracked walls of a large loft, whose solitary window is closed against
outer light. A ladder, with its top rungs coming up through an open trap
leads to it.

Here and there at random on the floor lie iron chains, spiked collars,
saw-toothed snaffles, muzzles bristling with nails, and long iron rods
set in wooden handles. In one corner stands a portable furnace, such as
tinkers use to melt their spelter; charcoal and dry chips fill it, so
that a spark would suffice to kindle this furnace in a minute.

Not far from this collection of ugly instruments, putting one in mind
of a torturer's kit of tools, there are some articles of defence and
offence of a bygone age. A coat of mail, with links so flexible, close,
and light, that it resembles steel tissue, hangs from a box beside iron
cuishes and arm-pieces, in good condition, even to being properly fitted
with straps. A mace, and two long three-cornered-headed pikes, with ash
handles, strong, and light at the sa