ces penetrated the thick walls of the brewery, and
reached the chamber of the defeated candidate. Those voices--Frederick
recognized them too well--were those of the faction which acknowledged
Castero for their chief. A triumphal march, performed by twenty
instruments, in honour of his rival, succeeded in overturning the reason
of the unhappy youth. His fiddle was before him on the table--that
fiddle which had disappointed his hopes. Exasperated, out of his senses,
the brewer's son seized the instrument--a moment he held it aloft at the
corner of the chimney, and yielding to the rage that gnawed his soul, he
dashed it into a thousand pieces. Faults, like misfortunes, never come
single. "Blood calls for blood," says Machiavel--"ruin for ruin."--By
that fatal tendency of the human mind never to stop when once we have
gone wrong, but to go on from bad to worse, instead of blushing at our
folly--Frederick, after that act of vandalism, dashed like a madman out
of the brewery. The sight of his instrument in a thousand fragments had
completed the business--life was a torment to him. He hurried towards
the lake of Haarlem, determined to seek in its gloomy depths a refuge
from disgrace.--Poor Frederick!

CHAPTER III.

After a quarter of an hour's run across the fields, he arrived at last
at the side of the lake, with the sounds of his rival's triumphal march
for ever sounding in his ears. The evening breeze, the air from the sea,
"the wandering harmonies of earth and sky," were all unable to bring
rest to the perturbed spirit of the musician. He was no longer conscious
of the sinful act he was about to commit. He shut his eyes--he was just
going to throw himself into the water when he felt a hand laid upon his
left shoulder. Frederick turned quickly round. He saw at his side a tall
man wrapped up in large cloak--in spite of the hot weather--which hid
every part of him but his face. His expression was hard, almost
repulsive. His eyes shot sinister glances on the youth from beneath the
thick eyebrows that overshadowed them. The brewer's son, who had been on
the point of facing death without a tremour, grew pale and trembled. He
wished to fly, but an irresistible power nailed him to the spot. He was
fascinated by the look of the Unknown.

"Madman!" said the stranger in a hollow voice--"madman who cannot resist
the first impulse of anger and false shame!"

"Leave me," answered Frederick in his turn; "I am disgraced, and have no