unhappy lover fell senseless to the
ground.

When Bernard awoke out of a long and deathlike swoon, it was night,
and all around him was still and dark. He was lying on the stone floor
outside Kranhelm's dwelling. The physicians had removed him thither;
and, being occupied with the old tower-keeper and his daughter, they
had thought no more about him. On first recovering sensation, he had
but an indistinct idea of where he was, or what had happened. By
degrees his senses returned to a certain extent--he knew that
something horrible had occurred, but without remembering exactly what
it was.

He felt about him, and touched a railing. It was the balustrade round
the open turret where hung the great bell. He was lying under the bell
itself, and, as he gazed up into its brazen throat, the recollection
of the frightful dream which had persecuted him the night before his
flight from Stralsund came vividly to his mind; he appeared to himself
to be still dreaming, and yet his visions were mixed up with the
realities of his everyday occupations.

He had just stepped out, he thought, to strike the hour on the bell,
and rising with some difficulty from the hard couch which had
stiffened his limbs, he sought about for the hammer. He made no effort
to shake off the sort of dreaming semi-consciousness which seemed to
prevent him from feeling the horror and anguish of reality.

"Thirteen strokes," thought he; "thirteen strokes, and at the
Thirteenth the tower will fall, the city crumble to dust, the world be
at an end." Such had been his dream, and the moment of its
accomplishment was come.

He found the hammer, and struck with all his force upon the bell. He
repeated the blow; twelve times he struck, and each stroke rang with
deafening violence through his brain; but at the Thirteenth, as he
raised his arms high above his head, and leaning back against the
railing, threw his whole strength and energy into the blow, the frail
balustrade gave way under his weight, and he fell headlong from the
tower. The last stroke tolled out, sad and hollow as a funereal knell,
and the sound mingled with the death-cry of the luckless Thirteenth!

REMINISCENCES OF SYRIA.[15]

[15] Reminiscences of Syria. By Colonel E. Napier.

Galloping, gossiping, flirting and fighting, feasting and starving,
but always in high spirits and the best possible humour, Colonel
Napier might answer an advertisement for "A Pleasant Companion in a
Post-