the glow of infernal fire. They left it on her breast, in the coffin,
and it went with that guilty woman to the tomb.

Many years afterward, when the church, that contained the monuments of
the Shrewsbury family, was desecrated by Cromwell's soldiers, they broke
open the ancestral vaults, and stole whatever was valuable from the
noble personages who reposed there. Merlin's antique ring passed into
the possession of a stout sergeant of the Ironsides, who thus became
subject to the influences of the evil spirit that still kept his abode
within the gem's enchanted depths. The sergeant was soon slain in
battle, thus transmitting the ring, though without any legal form of
testament, to a gay cavalier, who forthwith pawned it, and expended the
money in liquor, which speedily brought him to the grave. We next catch
the sparkle of the magic diamond at various epochs of the merry reign of
Charles the Second. But its sinister fortune still attended it. From
whatever hand this ring of portent came, and whatever finger it
encircled, ever it was the pledge of deceit between man and man, or man
and woman, of faithless vows, and unhallowed passion; and whether to
lords and ladies, or to village-maids,--for sometimes it found its way
so low,--still it brought nothing but sorrow and disgrace. No purifying
deed was done, to drive the fiend from his bright home in this little
star. Again, we hear of it at a later period, when Sir Robert Walpole
bestowed the ring, among far richer jewels, on the lady of a British
legislator, whose political honor he wished to undermine. Many a dismal
and unhappy tale might be wrought out of its other adventures. All this
while, its ominous tinge of dusky red had been deepening and darkening,
until, if laid upon white paper, it cast the mingled hue of night and
blood, strangely illuminated with scintillating light, in a circle round
about. But this peculiarity only made it the more valuable.