The Countess had seen her on a public stage at Ostend--compassionated her helpless situation, and the severe treatment she received--and had employed him to purchase the poor creature from her master, and charged him with silence towards all her retinue.--"And so I do keep silence," continued the faithful confidant, "van I am in the havens of Man; but when I am on the broad seas, den my tongue is mine own, you know.

Die foolish beoples in the island, they say she is a wechsel-balg--what you call a fairy-elf changeling.

My faith, they do not never have seen ein wechsel-balg; for I saw one myself at Cologne, and it was twice as big as yonder girl, and did break the poor people, with eating them up, like de great big cuckoo in the sparrow's nest; but this Venella eat no more than other girls--it was no wechsel-balg in the world." By a different train of reasoning, Julian had arrived at the same conclusion; in which, therefore, he heartily acquiesced.

During the seaman's prosing, he was reflecting within himself, how much of the singular flexibility of her limbs and movements the unfortunate girl must have derived from the discipline and instructions of Adrian Brackel; and also how far the germs of her wilful and capricious passions might have been sown during her wandering and adventurous childhood.

Aristocratic, also, as his education had been, these anecdotes respecting Fenella's original situation and education, rather increased his pleasure of having shaken off her company; and yet he still felt desirous to know any farther particulars which the seaman could communicate on the same subject.