He aimed a dreadful blow at the astonished Fisher, who instinctively
avoided the stroke. Mutually wound up to the highest pitch of anger,
they grappled each the other's throat, set their feet, and strained
for the throw, which was inevitably to bury both in the wild waves
beneath. A faint shriek was heard, and a gibbering, as of many voices,
came fluttering around them.

"Chatter on!" said the Fisher, "he joins you now!"

"Together--it will be together!" said the stranger, as with a last
desperate effort he bent his adversary backward from the betling
cliff. The voice of the Fisher sounded hoarsely in execration, as they
dashed into the sea together; but what he said was drowned in the
hoarser murmur of the uplashing surge! The body of the stranger was
found on the next morning, flung far up on the rocky shore--but that
of the murderer was gone for ever!

The superstitious peasantry of the neighbourhood still consider the
spot as haunted; and at midnight, when the waves dash fitfully against
the perilous crags, and the bleak winds sweep with long and angry moan
around them, they still hear the gibbering voices of the fiends, and
the mortal execrations of the Warlock Fisher!--but, after that fearful
night, no man ever saw THE PHANTOM HAND!--_Literary Magnet_.

* * * * *




ARCANA OF SCIENCE.