"This is madness," said Merton, passionately, but with a tear in his
eye; "your health is already failing; you are so changed I should
scarcely know you: come, I have already had your name entered in my
passport; in another hour I shall be gone, and you, boy that you are,
will be left without a friend to the deceits of your own fancy and the
machinations of this relentless mountebank."

"Enough," said Glyndon, coldly; "you cease to be an effective counsellor
when you suffer your prejudices to be thus evident. I have already had
ample proof," added the Englishman, and his pale cheek grew more pale,
"of the power of this man,--if man he be, which I sometimes doubt; and,
come life, come death, I will not shrink from the paths that allure me.
Farewell, Merton: if we never meet again; if you hear amidst our old and
cheerful haunts that Clarence Glyndon sleeps the last sleep by the
shores of Naples, or amidst the Calabrian hills,--say to the friends of
our youth, 'He died worthily, as thousands of martyr-students have died
before him, in the pursuit of knowledge.'"

He wrung Merton's hand as he spoke, darted from his side, and
disappeared amidst the crowd.

That day Merton left Naples; the next morning Glyndon also quitted the
City of Delight, alone and on horseback. He bent his way into those
picturesque but dangerous parts of the country which at that time were
infested by banditti, and which few travellers dared to pass, even in
broad daylight, without a strong escort. A road more lonely cannot well
be conceived than that on which the hoofs of his steed, striking upon
the fragments of rock that encumbered the neglected way, woke a dull and
melancholy echo. Large tracts of waste land, varied by the rank and