dark corners. Chance household noises
sounded heavy and loud in the languid
airless stillness which the heat seemed to hold
over the earth. Down in the servants' hall,
the usual bustle of morning work was
suspended. When Rosamond looked in, on her
way to the housekeeper's room to get the
keys, the women were fanning themselves,
and the men were sitting with their coats
off. They were all talking peevishly about
the heat, and all agreeing that such a day as
that, in the month of June, they had never
known and never heard of before.

Rosamond took the keys, declined the
housekeeper's offer to accompany her, and,
leading her husband along the passages,
unlocked the door of the north hall.

"How unnaturally cool it is here!" she
said, as they entered the deserted place.

At the foot of the stairs she stopped, and
took a firmer hold of her husband's arm.

"Is anything the matter?" asked Leonard.
"Is the change to the damp coolness of this
place affecting you in any way?"

"No, no," she answered hastily. "I am
far too excited to feel either heat or damp,
as I might feel them at other times. But,
Lenny, supposing your guess about Mrs.
Jazeph is right?——"

"Yes?"

"And, supposing we discover the secret of
the Myrtle Room, might it not turn out to be
something concerning my father or my mother
which we ought not to know? I thought of
that, when Mrs. Pentreath offered to accompany
us, and it determined me to come here
alone with you."

"It is just as likely that the secret might
be something we ought to know," replied
Mr. Frankland, after a moment's thought.
"In any case, my idea about Mrs. Jazeph
is, after all, only a guess in the dark.
However, Rosamond, if you feel any hesitation——"

"No! come what may of it, Lenny, we
can't go back now. Give me your hand again.
We have traced the mystery thus far, together;
and together we will find it out."

She ascended the staircase, leading him
after her, as she spoke. On the landing, she
looked again at the Plan, and satisfied
herself that the first impression she had derived
from it, of the position of the Myrtle Room,
was correct. She counted the doors on to
the fourth, and looked out from the bunch the
key numbered "4," and put it into the lock.

Before she turned it she paused, and looked
round at her husband.

He was standing by her side, with his
patient face turned expectantly towards the
door. She put her right hand on the key,
turned it slowly in the lock, drew him closer
to her with her left hand, and paused again.
"I don't know what has come to me," she
whispered faintly. "I feel as if I was afraid
to push open the door."

"Your hand is cold, Rosamond. Wait a
little—lock the door again—put it off till
another day."

He felt his wife's fingers close tighter and
tighter on his hand, while he said those
words. Then there was an instant—one
memorable, breathless instant, never to be
forgotten afterwards—of utter silence. Then he
heard the sharp, cracking sound of the opening
door, and felt himself drawn forward
suddenly into a changed atmosphere, and
knew that Rosamond and he were in the
Myrtle Room.

WEHRWOLVES.

NOTWITHSTANDING what travellers say to
the contrary, there seems to be a certain
ground of sympathy between savage beasts
and human beings. That learned individual,
the representative schoolboy, who is
constantly appealed to as an authority in all
kinds of knowledge, knows very well that
Romulus and Remus, according to tradition,
were suckled by a wolf; and readers of
this journal, who recollect an article
entitled Wolf-Nurses,* will be aware that in the
then kingdom of Oude a similar circumstance
did in fact happen. This tendency to chop
and change intelligences, as Butler in
Hudibras says of the Rosicrucian virtuosi, is not
uncommon among animals when deprived of
their own young. Cats have been known to
suckle infantine rabbits; hens have brooded
over eggs not of their own laying, and have
been somewhat astonished by the unexpected
issue; and books of natural history will
furnish many other instances. Orson, says the
French chivalric romance which forms the
basis of the nursery tale, found an extempore
mamma in a tender-hearted female bear; and
here, again, fable has its counterpart in fact,
as appears from the ensuing story.

*See Volume Six, Number One Hundred and Fifty-
three.

Some huntsmen were following the chase,
in the year sixteen hundred and sixty-one,
in the forest of Lithuania, Poland, when they
perceived a great many bears together, and
in the midst of them two of small size, which
exhibited some affinity to the human shape.
The men followed closely, and at length
captured one of these strange creatures, though
it defended itself with its nails and teeth.
It appeared to be about nine years old, and
of course was taken before the king and
queen, as a sight worthy of the royal gaze.
The skin and hair were extremely white, the
limbs well-proportioned and strong, the visage
fair, and the eyes blue; but the creature
could not speak, and its inclinations, as we are
informed by an old account, were altogether
brutish. Yet this truly bearish child was
christened by an archbishop in the name of
Joseph Ursin; the Queen of Poland stood
godmother, the French ambassador godfather,
and attempts were made to tame him (for we
may as well by this time adopt the masculine