“Who thundering comes on blackest steed.”—Byron.

While Major Lindsay was galloping from Blakeley Hall, Captain Preston, by the same road, was advancing toward it. He had been out on a scouting expedition, and hearing that Kate was still with her aunt, determined, in a moment of relenting, to visit her. He had not yet heard of her father’s capture—of course he was ignorant of her own peril; and Kate determined that he should still remain so.

The rapidity of Major Lindsay’s pace was in unison with the tumult of his thoughts. Now that all was settled, conscience was stilled; and he felt only the wild exultation of success. Exposure was the only thing he had to dread; but of that he felt no alarm, the unsettled state of the country affording secrecy as well as impunity.

He had no doubt Kate would soon love him. With other women he had generally been successful; he attributed his failure in her case to her remembrance of Preston as her old playmate. But once finding herself the husband of another, duty would soon teach her to forget the past. Occupied with these reflections, Major Lindsay’s spirits rose. Triumphant guilt is rarely given to remorse.

“But one thing only is wanting,” he said. “If I could meet this Preston—this braggadocia—I would at once have my revenge, and get rid of all possibility of future rivalry.”

As if in answer to this half expressed wish, there was at that moment seen, on the crest of a slight elevation in front, a single horseman, who, even at that distance, was recognized as wearing the uniform of Marion’s brigade.

“Wheel to the right,” said Major Lindsay sharply and suddenly to his dragoons, “into this old wood-road. Halt! We will lie in ambush here until we know something of the strength of the enemy. They do not yet see us.”

His orders were immediately executed. The troopers dashed into the pine barren, where they were easily concealed behind some high brush. Major Lindsay alighted and stealthily advanced to reconnoitre.

First he saw a trooper idly descending the hill; then another immediately cut the clear acclivity with his figure; and soon a third, fourth, and fifth appeared in rapid succession. The last comer was at a gallop, and dashed by the others until he reached their head. Even at that distance Major Lindsay thought there was something familiar in this person. He could not believe, however, that he had seen the whole of the enemy’s force, until the five horsemen had nearly descended the hill, when he concluded that they were merely a scouting party of the foe. He beckoned to him his orderly.

“Do you know those fellows?” he said.

The approaching horsemen were still at a considerable distance, so the man, shading his eyes with one hand, while with the other he held back the brushwood to get an opening for his face, peered long and eagerly. Then he drew back, nodding his head.

“I know ’em,” he said, “least ways one o’ ’em, who is that Capt. Preston that used to plague us so, up at the hall, yonder,” and he jerked his finger over his shoulder in the direction of Mrs. Blakeley’s, which they had left about an hour before.

“Are you sure?” said Major Lindsay, eagerly. “I would rather lose a dozen guineas than that you should be mistaken.”

“Then you’ll keep your guineas, sir,” said the orderly, “that’s Capt. Preston, and nobody else.”

“Is that fellow, Macdonald, with him? He is worth two men, and it would be a lucky hit to get both.”

“No, sir, I know his cut well—but he’s not along. And that’s odd too, for he and Capt. Preston always go together like dogs hunting in couples.”

“Then we have him!” said Major Lindsay, exultingly. “He cannot escape us.”

“Shall we blow trumpet and charge at once then?” said the orderly. “Our men will go at ’em like hungry wolves. They’ve a long score to settle.”

“Not yet,” said Major Lindsay, “we will wait till those fellows come up; then, boot and saddle, and upon them. I would not have them escape us for my life.”

The dragoons, informed who the enemy was, chafed impatiently to begin the attack—for they had a hundred insults to avenge on the bold partisan before them. Meanwhile, our hero, for the orderly had been right in saying Capt. Preston led the troop, approached on a trot, completely unconscious of the presence of his hidden enemy. He was engaged in a scouting expedition of some extent, and had no idea an armed royalist was within twenty miles. Suddenly, however, he drew in his rein, for he thought he heard a horse stamping in the forest; but it was too late; Major Lindsay saw they were discovered, and immediately gave the long wished for word.

“Charge!” he said, plunging his rowels into the sides of his horse, and clearing at one bound the space between him and the road.

With a loud huzza, the dragoons shouting, “no quarter,” followed his example, horse and man suddenly filling the road like apparitions. Preston saw he was surrounded. Their cries told him, moreover, that it was to be a life and death struggle. Five against fifteen was fearful odds, yet he cried,

“Marion for ever!” and drawing his sabre, he dashed at Lindsay, whom he recognized. “Ha! have we met!” he cried.

“Yes! and I have you,” was the reply hissed between his adversary’s teeth.

As Major Lindsay thus spoke, he raised himself in his stirrups, and throwing all his strength into one gigantic blow, he brought his heavy sabre down, right on the almost unprotected head of Preston. For a moment it seemed as if the trenchant blade would cut through cap and skull, even to the shoulder—and had it struck fair it would; but with a dexterous movement, our hero evaded the stroke, and in return dealt a side cut that, if Major Lindsay’s horse had not fortunately swerved, would have ended his life at once.

But though foiled in this first attempt, each was eager to return to the charge, and wheeling their horses, they rushed again upon each other. It was Preston’s turn now to deal the first blow. He rode with very short stirrups, of which he took advantage to throw himself backward, and then, projecting himself forward, and casting all his strength into the blow, he brought his sabre down on the helmet of Major Lindsay with a force that was irresistible. Cutting clean though the crest as if it had been a smoke wreath, the well-proved blade descended with full violence on the steel cap, through which it crashed like an egg-shell; but here it stopped, broken into fragments by the tremendous stroke and the resistance of the iron casque combined. Nothing but that well-tempered steel head-piece could have saved Major Lindsay’s life. As it was, stunned and bewildered, he reeled in his saddle.

“Hew him down!—Use the cold lead!—Have at him there, one and all!”

Such were the exclamations that met our hero’s ear, as he recovered himself from that blow, and found only the hilt and a fragment of his broken blade left in his hand. He looked around hastily. His four followers had already been put hors de combat, and the dragoons were now, like dogs around a wild boar, waiting a chance to rush in on him, encouraging each other by shouts; for such was the terror of Preston’s name, and so terrific was the blow they had just seen dealt their leader, that each man hung back an instant, preferring that his neighbor should go in first. Preston saw this advantage, and hastened to avail himself of it, for, as pistols were already drawn, he knew his chance would last scarcely a moment.

“Ho, Thunderer!” he said, addressing his steed—a powerful animal, jet black all over—and turning his head toward that part of the circle of his foes which seemed the thinnest, he added, “stand by me now, and we escape them yet.”

As he spoke, he dashed his spurs into the animal’s sides till the blood spurted beneath the sharp steel, and with a pistol in his right hand, sprang fiercely forward. Right and left the dragoons, panic-struck, gave way, as when a flock of sheep fly before the onset of an angry wolf—only one man attempting to stop his progress. But, without so much as being wounded, the trooper went down headlong, overthrown by the shock of Preston’s powerful charger; and our hero, yielding to an uncontrollable impulse, as he saw the way thus cleared before him, rose in his stirrups, and waving his arm on high, looked back, and gave utterance to a shout that long after he had vanished, like a bolt shot from some huge catapult, echoed and re-echoed in the startled woods.

“He is off, by God,” said the orderly. “Saw you ever the like?”

For a second the dragoons stood stupidly looking at each other; then, all at once, a dozen pistols were snapped at the fugitive, and a dozen steeds put to the pursuit. Moreover, Major Lindsay, though his head still swam from that tremendous blow, had recovered sufficiently to understand what was passing, and he now lent his voice to encourage the chase, and himself pressed forward among the first.

All this had occupied less time than it has taken us to relate it. The attack, the fight, the escape succeeded each other like flashes of summer lightning; and when Preston, adroitly turning his horse into the narrow and winding road where his foes had lain in ambush, passed momently out of sight, unharmed by the shots that whistled past, it seemed to him almost as if he were in a dream. But the shouts of pursuers, and the rapid tread of hoofs, speedily convinced him of the reality, and plying voice and spur, he went onward at a slashing pace, now and then looking behind to see if the dragoons gained on him.

There is something inexpressibly still and refreshing in an old, deserted road, winding through a cool pine-forest. The tall trees lapping overhead, the thick carpet of splintering leaves below, and the delicious fragrance all around, have always had a charm for us; and Preston felt it so, especially after the fierce excitement of that life and death struggle; so that when he came to a little dark stream, gliding softly across the road, he longed to stop and bathe his throbbing temples, and take one long, sweet draught, as he had often done upon a hot day in the forest when a boy. But the red foe was behind him, and he shot on like an arrow.

Presently he came to an old clearing, which had been long abandoned. Here, for about a quarter of a mile, was an open space, where ploughed fields had once been, but the furrows of which now were overgrown with a dry, stunted grass. He would have preferred the winding forest road, but there was no alternative, and on he dashed. He had nearly regained the shelter of the forest on the other side, when he heard a wild burst of cheering, and looking back, he saw the dragoons, with Major Lindsay and one other in advance, entering on the open space. They had caught sight of him for the first time since he entered the old road, and their shouts betokened renewed hope and determination on their part.

Breathlessly Preston kept on, but with less assurance than before, for his horse was already hard worked, and he soon saw with dismay that blood was flowing from his fore-shoulder freely from a wound. A half mile further on the poor animal began to flag sensibly; yet, cruel as it seemed, and much as it pained his own generous nature, Preston was forced to urge on the dying steed. He knew that at the distance of a mile and a half ahead was a swamp, into the recesses of which, if he could once plunge, he would be safe. But now he heard behind him a rapid hoof. It came nearer and nearer, though still out of sight. One, if not more, of his pursuers was gaining upon him. Again he spurred his steed, and encouraged him with words. The noble animal answered with a feeble cry, and staggered on. Scarcely half a mile now remained to gain the swamp. If he could only reach it, Preston knew all danger would be past. But this was impossible.

That rapid gallop came nearer and nearer, like the clock that ticks the hour of the criminal’s fate. He heard a shout behind him, and looking over his shoulder saw the trooper, whom he had last noticed side by side with Major Lindsay, come thundering on. He cheered his dying steed to a last effort—but it was in vain; the dragoon made two strides to his one. A few paces only now separated them; the swamp lay thrice the distance before. Already the trooper had risen in his stirrups, broadsword in hand. Preston had no such weapon. Suddenly he recollected the pistol in his other holster, and drawing it with the velocity of thought, he turned half around in his saddle and fired. With unerring aim the ball entered the brain of the dragoon, who fell dead to the earth.

It was the work of a moment to leap to the ground and catch the fallen soldier’s horse, on which Preston sprang. Poor Thunderer was already dead; he had sunk to the earth as his master fired the last shot.

Thus fate interposed to prevent an interview between Preston and our heroine, at a time when it would have been of incalculable advantage to both, and have circumvented a plot as base and cruel as it was now certain of success. At the very hour when Preston, after having ridden over thirty miles from the spot where he was attacked, threw himself wearied from his horse, in one of the most secret recesses of the forest, Kate and her aunt were setting forth for Georgetown, where they arrived on the succeeding day.

Never was human creature in a more isolated and mournful situation than Kate now found herself. Indulging in what she thought a hopeless passion, every motive of delicacy forbade her revealing it to those who alone could befriend her. She well knew that if her father became aware how much her marriage with Major Lindsay was against her inclinations, he would interpose even at the very altar, and ascend the scaffold to save her. Neither would it do to let her aunt guess her abhorrence at this union. Both her father and Mrs. Blakeley had, indeed, at one time hoped that a matrimonial connection would be formed between her and Preston, but the mutual coldness of the parties had long since dissipated this expectation. It was no time now to reveal her secret preference; such a confession would only have sealed her father’s fate without rendering her happy. Kate was forced therefore to wear a smiling face, when her heart was lacerated.

As Major Lindsay was compelled to be at Camden in six days, his leave of absence closing at that period, the marriage was fixed for the evening before his departure. This was an earlier day than Kate had looked for, but she could not object without exposing her secret. She submitted therefore in silence.

But who can tell the agony of her spirit, when in company with her aunt and parent she was forced to wear a smiling aspect! yet when alone she gave free vent to her sorrow. The image of Preston often intruded on those bitter moments. Alas! that one so young should be so miserable. She could have prayed for death but that it would have been impious.

Oh, the heart, the heart! what a mystery it is. There are blows worse than those on the wheel; it is when a gay heart is broken with anguish.

[Conclusion in our next.

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WHAT THE OLD WOMAN SAID TO THE SCHOOL-GIRL.

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BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ.

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BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

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Theseus set sail for Athens in the same mournful ship in which he came to Crete, but forgot to change his sails, according to the instructions of his father; so that when his father beheld from a watch-tower the ship returning with black sails, he imagined that his son was dead, and cast himself headlong into the sea, which was afterward called Ægean sea, from his name and destiny.—Andrew Tooke.

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BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

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Those who, day by day, glance carelessly over a newspaper, as they puff a cigar, or give relish to a lazy breakfast, by running the eye over the brief sketches of crime which appear in the morning journals, with so much regularity, and in such equal proportions, that we are almost led to conjecture that each day receives by lot its due share of such matter, seldom, if ever, think of the actual romance of the events which come to them in such a barren shape. How many broken hearts and peculiar agonies are involved in the intimate details of that arrest, the narrative of which appears among twenty others, and is so told, that, perhaps, the only impression which it makes upon the mind is one of wonder at the feats of the police. What a fearful stage in the history of some human spirit is following the publication of that hasty but remorseless paragraph, which may scarcely arrest the attention as we trace the columns down for more stimulating news, and yet, first, perhaps, publicly connects an honorable name with low vice, and removes the last motive to reform with the last hope of concealment. It is well for those of gentle sensibilities that fancy is not more discursive at such moments, and that, by a kind law of our natures, the door of sympathy seldom opens but to intrusive griefs.

In spite, however, of the callousness which the monotony of crime induces, and which ranges, increasingly, down from those who read of it with indifference to those who commit with composure, it is sometimes brought so near to us in all its bleak reality of depravity and affliction, that we cannot well avoid communion with its voices. There are those who consider emotional culture a duty of self-education, and who would have us, upon systematic principle, subject ourselves to frequent contact with guilt and its results. This doctrine may be carried to excess; and yet but few can say that experience has not proved that the impressions of an occasional intimacy with life’s deep tragedies around us are salutary and instructive.

I had stopped for the night, on a journey westward, at the little town of ——. I was to leave it again in half an hour, and in this short interval that remained before the coach would arrive which was to carry me on my way, I was comfortably seated by a table in my own private apartment, alternately sipping from a cup of coffee and searching for some item of interest in the columns of a dull weekly, still damp from the village press. My eye passed hastily over the stereotype remarks of the country editor, the absurd extravagance of its political articles, and the unmeaning gossip of the neighborhood, and rested, at last, with somewhat more interest, upon a paragraph which, under conspicuous capitals and innumerable marks of exclamation, had been thrust into the paper at the last moment. It contained the announcement of a robbery of the United States mail, from the confusion and empty verbiage of which I extracted these brief facts. The mail had been attacked, just before dawn, by two ill-looking men, who deliberately dragged the driver from his seat, tied him to a tree, and then, without further violence to his person, proceeded to rifle the bags. This done, they had fled, leaving the open letters scattered in the road, and the driver still bound. There was nothing, to be sure, very extraordinary in all this, except that it had occurred but a few hours before, and within two or three miles of where I sat. But when, soon after, the servant came in, and, eager to convey such unusual news, informed me that the men had been hotly pursued and taken, and were then in close custody in one of the rooms of that very house, on their way to the county prison, my curiosity, I confess, was fairly roused.

Intensity of character is always interesting, whatever may be its tendency. Profound intellectuality and abandoned villainy are, perhaps, equally attractive, when viewed in the light of mere food for speculation. Our deepest feelings discover themselves in our intercourse with the eccentric traits of those of our own species. It is seldom the fear of the elements, or of wild beasts, with which we frighten children and distress ourselves. It is the terror of strong men, of mad men, or of dead men, that is, at all times, most natural and most urgent. There is subject for deep reason and earnest philosophy in these leadings of a wayward nature.

Some, it is true, are so conversant with such scenes that they lose the fresh effect which this occurrence had upon me. It was a new thing to have crime at my very door. It was no ordinary event for me to mingle my breath with that of outlaw men; of my own shape, indeed, but of wild passions and strange excitements, who gambled with such desperate stakes. I dropped the paper, pushed myself back from the table, and bade the servant go for the landlord.

He soon appeared, and I requested that he would get me a sight of the prisoners. My curiosity was certainly not unusual, or unnatural, and I flattered myself that my appearance gave weight to the wish. He disappeared, but soon returned with a favorable answer. With some caution, adopted to satisfy my host, lest I should be observed by those who might wish to indulge a similar desire, and might lead him to regret his effort in my behalf, I approached the room in which they were confined, and at a signal agreed upon was admitted.

It was a small apartment. The men were standing at separate windows, looking out upon that open world from whose highways and endless fields they had been taken so suddenly. They were heavily manacled at wrist and ankle. Deep suffering is not sensitive, or easily startled, or perhaps their apathy in this instance arose from sullenness, but neither of them turned or moved as I entered. I nodded to an officer watching at the door, thanked him in low words for his courtesy in indulging my curiosity, and then leaned back against the wall by his side, and silently scrutinized the prisoners.

They stood, as I have mentioned, unmoved as statues. Though their faces were concealed from my view as they looked out, and their backs only were presented, I could see that in age and general appearance they were very different. They were both dressed with tolerable decency, except that their clothes were soiled and torn in the hurry of their flight, and the struggle of their capture. One of them was evidently very young, probably not more than twenty, and the long, neglected hair which fell upon his coat was light and soft. His feet were small, his hands white and delicate, his person slender and somewhat emaciated. They showed gentle training.

His companion was older, and his figure shorter and more sturdy. He had an awkward stoop, and his whole appearance was slouching and ungainly. A profusion of coarse black hair fell straight over his shoulders, without curl or gloss, and a thick beard seemed to cover his face. He bore marks of great strength in his short, thick neck and heavy limbs. This was all that I could see, and I waited patiently for a change in their positions.

“They’re both of ’em,” whispered the officer, “strangers in the neighborhood. I guess it’s a new trade with ’em, for they’re not very keen. They got nothing for their risk and then didn’t know how to take themselves off. They’re bad looking chaps though, and I wouldn’t wonder if they’d seen the inside of a jail before to-day.”

“One of them is very young,” said I, “and looks like a gentleman’s son. Do you see his hands and feet?”

“You wouldn’t think that of him,” said he, “if you were to see his face once. It’s the worst face that I ever saw in a young man. They’re both game, too, and fought like the devil before we got the irons on ’em. That black, Spanish-looking rascal is as strong as a wild beast. He came mighty near getting off.”

“Where did you catch them?” said I, “you seem to have been prompt.”

“We found ’em by accident, in the end,” said the officer. “And it was their own foolishness, too, that brought it about. We had given ’em up, and were coming home, when we came across this letter. The fellows had dropped it two or three hundred yards from the house where we nabbed ’m. They thought they were safe, and were just trying to get something to eat. We wouldn’t have touched ’em, it’s likely, seeing ’em in a decent house, but they started, like fools, and looked scared, and all that, and we knew what to do.”

I took the letter from him as he spoke. The seal had been broken when it was found. The address immediately arrested my attention. It was really a very singular coincidence, and I could hardly believe my eyes when I opened it. The letter was from my most intimate college friend to his father. I had not seen him for full two years, but in that interval I had corresponded with him freely, and I knew his present situation and something of his family history. His father resided in the far west. The son was at the east. He had remained at college when we parted, where he was still preparing himself for the bar, and the post-mark showed that it had been written at that place.

My first impulse, on seeing the signature, was one of honorable delicacy, and I had half folded the letter to return it to the officer, when it occurred to me that it had, no doubt, been already read and re-read; that it would necessarily form part of the chain of the testimony against the accused; that it would be exposed to inspection by bench, bar, and jury, and might at length find its way even to the public papers.

These thoughts decided me, and I opened it and read it. It surprised me somewhat; and though it may be made a question whether I was right or wrong in my mode of settling the point of delicacy, there is nothing which should prevent me now from placing it before the reader as accurately as my memory will allow after so long a lapse of time. It will not interest him as it did me, but its contents bear upon other parts of my story.

It was as follows:

I have said that I was somewhat surprised. My friend had occasionally mentioned the name of George Ellis, his father’s ward, and had more than once spoken of his own sister Mary. But though I had deemed our intimacy sufficient for almost any confidence, he had never touched upon circumstances bearing in the remotest degree upon those which had thus accidentally met my eye. Indeed I recollected, or thought I recollected, that there had always been a certain reserve in his conversation about Ellis, which had at times excited a casual curiosity. Now the mystery was in a measure explained. From the letter in my hand I could gather at a glance the main features of this family trouble. I afterwards learned that its most important events had happened after I parted with my friend.

“What names have they given?” said I to the officer, handing back the letter.

“None at all,” he replied. “The short one can’t or won’t talk English, and the other is stubborn and says nothing. They’ve jabbered together a little in some foreign gibberish, but we can’t get any thing out of ’em, do our best. If they knew what they were about they’d just give in their names at once as John Smith, or John Jones, and have done with it. That’s the way the knowing ones do.”

At this instant some one tapped at the door, opened it slightly, and informed me that the coach was waiting for me. Attracted by the sound the younger of the prisoners turned fully round. I had been looking for such a movement, and whispering to the servant that I would be there presently, and that in the meantime he could take down my trunk, I stood for a moment longer by the side of the officer, and with as little that was offensive in my glance as possible, returned steadily the gaze of the culprit.

The officer was right. In so young a man I had never seen so bad a face. Marks of brutal passion and dissipation mingled with an expression of sullen fear upon a countenance which might once have been handsome, but was now far otherwise. His eyes were heavy and bloodshot, and his skin red and bloated. But he could not bear my scrutiny, and cut it short by turning again to the window. I had already delayed longer than I should have done, and bidding the officer a hasty good-bye, I left the room.

In ten minutes more I was driving rapidly away. On my return, I again passed through the town, and found upon inquiry the result of the arrest. The elder of the prisoners had been convicted upon the testimony of the younger; the former was in prison, the latter at large.

In the pressure of business, however, and of life’s pursuits, the connected impressions of that scene soon went from me. Matters of deeper interest occupied my mind and enlisted my attention. My correspondence with Eagleton, in which of course I never hinted at my singular adventure, became less and less frequent, and at last ceased entirely; and before the time over which I now pass so hastily had gone by, I had well nigh forgotten my early friendship.

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It was some five years after the occurrence of the scene which I have described, that on a visit to the city in whose college I had received a part of my education, I had occasion to employ counsel to advise me in the conduct of perplexed and unpleasant business. Seven years’ absence from the place had nearly obliterated my slight knowledge of its society, and I was obliged to make some inquiry in reference to the character and comparative ability of different members of the bar. Among other names mentioned to me with commendation was that of Henry Eagleton, my chum and classmate.

I sought no further, but determined without loss of time to see him, revive our acquaintance, and obtain his services. With the name, too, came back my recollection of the scene at ——, and I felt a deep desire to discover, if I could do so with delicacy, the sequel to the brief narrative of that stolen letter. I obtained his address, and soon stood at the door of his office. I knocked, and in obedience to a call from within, entered.

By a large table on which lay open books and scattered papers, in the confusion and disorder of hasty use, sat my friend writing. He rose as I entered, and though time had made some change in my appearance and much more in his, we knew each other at once.

He was thinner and paler than when I had last seen him, and all the buoyancy of his disposition had gone. Then he was the soul of fun and innocent mirth, now he was grave, reserved, and business-like, and his features wore a deep tinge of melancholy. He was chatty and companionable, however, to me; and as passing from one lively topic to another we talked of old times and college freaks, his reserve wore away, and his face lighted up with smiles which probably had not played upon it for years before, and which made him look much more like my old friend Harry Eagleton. Maturity and old age are marvelously indulgent to the faults and follies of their youth, and while we recalled one scene after another of high frolic or absurd amusement, we almost felt ready for their mischief again.

As we warmed in a conversation of such a character, old sympathies revived, and our remarks became closer and more personal. I freely went over the general course of my life since we had parted, and with apparently equal openness he spoke of his own career. He had partly prepared himself for the bar in the proper department of the institution in which he had been graduated, had completed his training in a private office in the same city, had determined to settle there permanently in his profession, had come to the bar under favorable auspices, and with a delay much less than he had feared, and was now in the full tide of successful practice, reaping the fruits of an honorable and a lucrative business.

I asked him, after some time, after his father and sister. In a moment all sprightliness passed from his countenance, and he answered me with the deepest gravity.

His father had been dead for several years; his sister was living with him, a confirmed and hopeless invalid.

I did not mention Ellis’s name, or push my inquiries further, but after a short and awkward silence touched abruptly on my own matters, and produced the papers which bore upon the business that had led me to his office. It was soon arranged. His clear comprehension of facts which I deemed complicated, and his better information as to their bearing and effect soon simplified a case of much importance, put it in a light more favorable to my own interest than I had anticipated, and directed my future course toward those concerned with me in the result.

This over, our social chat re-commenced; and though I feared to intrude upon his time, he pressed me to remain seated, with an urgency which I could not resist. We were soon wandering away again with the memories which had already proved so pleasant, and which seemed to freshen and increase as we went on. After a prudent hesitation as to the propriety of doing so, which perhaps yielded in the end rather to inclination than to judgment, I availed myself of some accidental turn in our conversation, and related the adventure of my journey to the west.

I began the story without hinting to him that his name was involved. As I went on step by step, his eye became fixed on mine with increasing interest. I mentioned the letter and its address, and was about to tell its contents, when Eagleton rose suddenly, took me by the hand and led me into an inner room. As I left the office I saw what I had not noticed until then. In the shadow of a large, high case, in a remote part of the apartment, with his hands folded listlessly before him, and his head drooping heavily over his lap, sat a young man apparently about twenty-five years of age. In all our lively and even noisy conversation, not a breath or motion had apprised me of his presence. Without seeming to observe him, however, I followed my friend. I felt satisfied that I was now about to be gratified by some disclosure connected with a history in regard to which all my former curiosity had returned.

He closed the door between the rooms, handed me a chair, drew another opposite to it, and as we sat down facing each other, he begged me to resume my narrative. He eyed me steadily as I proceeded, and at times expressions passed over his features whose meaning, with all my skill, I could not fathom—expressions of changing but controlled emotion.

I told the story to its end. With an accuracy of memory which surprised me, and seemed strangely supplied for the call of the occasion, I repeated this letter as I have given it already. When I mentioned the arrival of the servant to hurry me away, a shade of disappointment was evidently perceptible. When I spoke of the sudden movement of the younger of the prisoners, the hasty opportunity I had obtained, by his change of position, of examining his face, and then described his forbidding and depraved appearance, all his eager interest returned, and he bent forward as he sat, intent upon every word that passed my lips.

I paused at length, for my narrative was at an end; yet though I had ceased, so absorbed was he in that rapid description, that he still leaned toward me as though he hoped that I would give one touch more to the picture. Then he fell back in his chair absorbed in deep thought, which overlooks all apology for its silence, and peremptorily forbids interruption—sat thus for some minutes—rose and paced the room with rapid and unequal strides, and stood in the end abruptly before me.

“Did you pass through —— on your return?” said he with the tone and manner of one who rather thought the question aloud than uttered it.

I replied that I had, and mentioned in a few words what I had heard in reference to the prisoners, and the result of the proceedings against them.

Again Eagleton paced the room. I watched him with earnest curiosity, but did not by motion or remark interfere with his mood. It was one which must shortly explain itself. His step became gradually calmer and more steady, and at length he quietly sank into his chair. His countenance was grave, but without any manifest traces of agitation or excitement, and he looked steadily at me as he spoke.

“You saw, no doubt,” said he, “in the room we just left, a young man seated by a case. I am about to call him in for a moment. Will you be kind enough to observe him narrowly, and tell me when he is gone whether you have ever seen him before?”

He rose once more, and with an appearance of composure, which was evidently assumed, opened the door through which we had just passed, called to the person who was sitting there, and then quietly resumed his seat. I heard a slow, shuffling step across the floor within, and presently the person called, whoever he was, appeared. I looked at him eagerly.

He was an idiot. I could see that clearly and at a glance. His vacant face gave undoubted evidence of the visitation of that peculiar judgment under whose influence the light within goes out; yet his features were not bad, and if one particle of intelligence had shown in his sunken eye, he might, perhaps, have passed without notice or remark in spite of his wan and unhealthy complexion, his unmeaning expression, and his listless gait and carriage. It was that dull, preternatural stare that made him so melancholy a spectacle.

I recollected well the face of the younger prisoner. It had made a fast and painful impression on my mind. Many a time it had been present with me; seldom as part of the scene in which it first appeared, but coming suddenly and unattended, looking at me as I mused. In my fancies my character had assumed it wholly or in fragments. If I slept I had fitted it to the creatures of my dream. A face alone—nothing else; but a face clearly chiseled, and with every point and line distinct.

If the man before me and he were the same, a fearful change had passed over him. But Eagleton had evidently connected the idiot with my story, and after the eagerness of his manner as I told the result of that last accidental scrutiny of the features of the man at ——, and his subsequent singular request, I should have been dull indeed if I had not seen the drift of his thoughts, though I was in utter ignorance of the precise course they had pursued, and of the remote reasons of his conduct. The robber had an eye full of meaning and evil purpose—the face before me wore no shade of depravity; and yet as I looked resemblances occurred, became gradually more striking and more convincing, fastened themselves upon me with a tenacity that I could not shake off, and at last blended the two faces into one. I became satisfied of their identity as fully as if the awkward figure before me, guarded and manacled, were gazing yet from the window at which years before it had met my eye. It was not mere fancy, or an opinion forced upon me by the circumstances.

And yet I feared that it was, and to dispel any cloud that might rest upon my mental vision, or any nervous delusion which interfered with the correctness of the result at which I aimed, I rose and looked out for a few moments upon some climbing vines and clustered roses that grew by an open door, and then resumed my seat.

My friend, rather to aid my observation than to give a reason for his call, had been speaking slowly to the object of my attention, until becoming satisfied from my manner that I was prepared to answer his question, he quietly dismissed him, and turned toward me again with the same affected composure in his movements, but with an eye full of eager inquiry.

“Eagleton,” said I, “if I am right, a greater change has passed over that face in five years than death itself could have produced. But you have made a request, and I comply with it. I believe, before God, that the person I have just seen is the same to whose description you have just been listening. That description does not now apply, and yet it is a true one. I have doubted my conclusion, and distrusted memory, but I cannot relieve myself of the conviction I have expressed.”

He was evidently prepared for the answer, and did not seem shocked or surprised, though the shade of gloom increased upon his countenance. He rose again, and paced the floor so long that I became impatient.

“I need not tell you,” said he, at last resuming his seat once more, “that what you have seen, and what you are about to hear, are in the deepest confidence. I do not ask your pledge to keep it, but I leave it to your honor till I am dead. You have not only become acquainted, by accident, with family troubles which I hoped until to-day would die with those connected with them, but by that same accident have been enabled to tell me that of which I did not know before, but which, now that I have heard it, solves many doubts, and explains facts before inexplicable. I am composed, but the answer to my question, for the candor of which I thank you, has pained me excessively; and yet, when you have listened to what I have to say, you will doubtless wonder at my sensibility upon such a subject as much as you now wonder at my indifference to your announcement.

“The young man you have just seen is George Ellis. My sister is his wife. Until your visit to-day, however much I may have suspected, no words brought to my ear had ever certainly fastened crime upon, or tainted his name with any thing but vice and dissipation, in which I know he has been deeply steeped. To-day you have added that stain to his character. But why should I fret over what cannot be recalled. I have one real consolation. My sister has never known this new degradation, and will die in ignorance of your disclosures. As to Ellis, he is past feeling. You have seen his situation. But I must proceed with my narrative.”

I do not tell the tale in Eagleton’s words. In spite of all his efforts to control his feelings, they occasionally broke out in exclamations of deep pathos and bitter invective, and led him wandering off from the direct thread of his story. Besides, I subsequently learned many facts which neither of us knew at that time, but which were closely interwoven with the scenes through which I am about to carry the reader.

The father of George Ellis and the father of my friend were once partners in mercantile business, in a thriving town of the West. The firm was Ellis & Eagleton. It did a large business, was widely known and much respected. Mr. Ellis was a man of information and integrity, but a free liver and a man of the world. He never married. He had, however, this son, whom he seemed to love more warmly because there was a stigma upon his birth, or, perhaps, because its history was connected with associations that were painful. But whatever was the reason for his father’s blind attachment, George was humored and indulged, until, even while a child, he became the pest and terror of the neighborhood.

It is said that the offspring of illicit passion are generally marked by insanity of character. Be that as it may, it matters not here. There was enough to account for the worst traits of his disposition, in the unbridled license of his early training, and the foolish devotion of a worldly father. If ever there was an evil spirit in human shape, that spirit was George Ellis. From the very cradle the fiend showed itself. Boys of his own age fled from him as if he had been a wild beast. Eagleton, though older, was afraid of him. No one could govern him, least of all his own parent; and his reputation for mad freaks and reckless mischief soon spread far and wide, and rapidly increased as he became older. And yet with all this, with that dark, bad eye and bold air, he was as handsome a fellow as ever grew to be a man.

His father died when he was about eighteen. He died utterly bankrupt. With scrupulous honor, however, even in the excesses which had led to such a result, he had not involved his firm. On his deathbed he sent for Mr. Eagleton, told him that he died without a dollar to leave behind him, and with an earnestness which, perhaps, at such a moment, could not have been refused, committed his son to his partner’s care.

It was a terrible legacy from a ruined man. My friend’s father might have known that Mr. Ellis’s wish could not be complied with, and that it would be absolutely impossible for him to assume such a trust. It would have been happy for him if he could have felt so. It would have saved him much affliction, and have given to his life happy years that sorrow soon cut off. But the destiny was otherwise.

I never saw Mary Eagleton. I know, however, that, at the time of which I speak, she was the belle of her village, the pet and pride of her father and brother. At the date of my interview with Henry in a distant city, she was a mere shadow of what she had once been—a wreck in mind and body—oppressed with pain and increasing infirmities. These were all portions of that same fearful legacy.

Before the death of Mr. Ellis she had often seen his son. She was about his age, and had been attracted by his appearance. This was all. He was deemed a dangerous acquaintance, and a close and watchful care prevented intimacy. Now, by the last prayer of a dying parent, the profligate was brought to her very door, and sat at her very table and fireside. Her father might have prevented this, and yet have fulfilled his duty to the dead. He was blind.

They soon understood each other. But their conduct was cautious and baffled a watchfulness that was keenly awake. I need not clog my narrative with details. Her brother was away; her father could not be always near her. George was depraved and heartless, she was young and foolish. A private marriage terminated their intercourse, for the heart broken father cast the bridegroom off, at once, sternly, and forever. His wife never saw him again until, years after, in a distant city, he was brought to her bedside—an idiot. The bequest was not yet exhausted. But it might have been worse.

Ellis soon after went to sea in a merchant vessel bound for a foreign port. He was too abandoned even for such a society. On the first arrival of the ship at her destination he was set on shore. Without money, or character, yet with enough shrewdness to keep him from starving, he plunged desperately into all the temptations of a depraved city. Vice and poverty soon led to crime. It was not many months before he concealed himself, a fugitive from justice, on board of a vessel bound for his own country, and with a companion in his guilt, a Spaniard, arrived in the United States but a few days before the meeting mentioned in my friend’s letter.

A few hours after that meeting he and his companion were on their way westward. Ellis hoped to be received again. The Spaniard had nothing to lose, and some adventure in a new country might turn to his advantage. But hard want pressed them sorely. Begging was a slow and servile support. Labor was not so much as thought of. To such minds an answer to the fearful questionings of hunger was not doubtful, or long delayed. Their first adventure was the crime at ——. As Ellis turned over the letters which they had scattered in the road his eye was attracted by the address of one of them. He opened it, read it, and quietly put it in his pocket. It proved, as we have seen, the means of their arrest.

The Spaniard’s name was Antonio. I never heard any other. He was more mature than Ellis in years and in depravity. But the most striking trait of his character was one that will appear hereafter. From the moment of their arrest the prisoners preserved a dogged silence. Antonio could not speak a word of English. Ellis had his own reason for the course he pursued. The driver of the mail, whose person they had treated so unceremoniously, and who, upon their first capture, had been loud in his confidence of their identity with those who had bound him, a few days after declared that his first impressions were hasty, and declined backing his assertion by an oath. The mail which they had robbed had afforded them nothing worth having, and, at the time of their seizure, they had about them no evidence of guilt. The only grounds of suspicion against them were the fact that they were strangers; the letter found near them; their seeming alarm upon seeing the officers; their dogged and persevering silence, and their reckless and abandoned appearance.

The prisoners were confined in separate cells. The officers, who have always motives for industry appealing to them in such cases, saw, at a glance, which was the oldest and most hardened offender, and from which of them they were most likely to gain their object. Ellis was wary and knew their game, but he was without honor, and intensely selfish. His sullenness at last relaxed. He gave them, cautiously, to understand that he would convict Antonio to secure his own escape, and it was determined to use him as a witness against his accomplice.

I need not give the details of the trial. Ellis appeared in the box and gave evidence, coolly, against the accused. The Spaniard was too much a stranger to the form of the proceeding to understand the scheme at once. But light at last broke in upon him and revealed the treachery. From that moment one burning dream, overcoming all fear of punishment, and strangely composing the bitterness of solitude rested upon him. It was a delirious prayer for revenge, in a heart as malignant as was ever shut from human eye. The witness would have trembled if he could have looked within it.

The evidence was effectual. Antonio was convicted, and received the severest sentence that the law allowed—ten years imprisonment. He was taken to his cell. Ellis went at large.

A copy of Eagleton’s letter to his father had been re-mailed, several weeks after the arrest, by some person to whose hand it had come, more considerate than those who had first held it. At the foot a brief explanation was given of the circumstances which rendered it necessary to retain the original, and an apology for the delay in communicating its contents. When it reached its destination Mr. Eagleton was laboring under a second and more serious attack of the same illness which the letter mentioned. It had been brought about by mental suffering, and, so alarming were the symptoms, that his daughter had just despatched a letter to hasten her brother home.

It was at this juncture that the copy was received. As she had frequently done before since her father’s sickness, Mary opened the letter to read it aloud. It surprised her. It began as only her brother’s letters began, and yet the handwriting was not his. As she read she grew pale, her lips trembled, and at length bursting into tears, she left the room. The invalid took it from the bed, on which she had dropped it, sat up, and, much moved, read it through. The news was such as he did not wish to believe. The whole matter was singular, and with a flushed face and increased fever he dropped again upon his pillow. If it were really from his son, all reserve or secrecy toward his daughter was at an end, and all that could be done was to await her husband’s arrival.

The excitement was injurious, Mr. Eagleton became so much feebler from day to day that Mary’s greatest fear now was that her brother might not come until too late. It was as she had apprehended. Death came rapidly on, and she was alone at its crisis. In a few days she sat beside the dead body of her father, and in a few more, the only mourner, followed him to his grave.

And yet her brother did not come. Again and again she wrote to him, with an urgency which showed how lonely and unprotected she felt. There was a trial which she anticipated, and which she feared to meet without his aid. She felt assured that her first letter had not reached him, and the journey was one of many days.

A traveler arrived at last, but it was not Henry. In the hall of the mansion from which he had been thrust out with bitter curses, tattered and wretched and bleached with prison gloom, stood the outcast, the fugitive, the robber, the dishonored witness—George Ellis. His wife had pledged her word to her dying father that she would not see him again, and here he stood in her very house, her rightful husband. Her heart throbbed fearfully between returning love and religious duty. But she kept her word to the dead, refused to see him, and shutting herself in her own room, awaited the coming of her brother.

Mr. Eagleton had left a will, but it bore date before the marriage, and did not provide for the state of things which that event produced. Ellis was aware that as her husband he had legal rights, and that her father’s death had given them effect; but he was ignorant of their actual nature, and caution taught him to refrain from violence. He did not intrude upon his wife’s privacy, but, with all the coolness of villainy, he made himself at home in the house from which the dead had just been borne, and trusted to her woman’s weakness, and a love, the strength of which he knew too well, to cure her of her solitary mood.

But my friend appeared, and the face of affairs soon changed. He met Ellis on his arrival, and, surprised at his presence, soon gathered from the servants a history of what had occurred. His first impulse was to eject him forcibly, but better suggestions made him change his purpose. Without allowing them to inform his sister of his arrival, he hastened to the office of his father’s attorney and apprised himself of the precise nature of the intruder’s rights. He knew his want of money, and with a paper carefully drawn, releasing all claim to the estate of Mr. Eagleton, he returned home. He soon had an interview with Ellis, and offered him a certain sum, to be paid upon the spot, if he would sign the instrument. He refused at first, peremptorily, then asked an advance in the offer, and, at last, finding that he could do no better, put his name to the paper, coolly pocketed the money and left the house.

The estate was soon settled. Their native place was connected with associations so painful that they were glad to leave it, and in a few weeks they were quietly domiciled in the city where I found them.

It was a year, at least, after the death of Mr. Eagleton, when early one morning on the high-road leading to the village in which he had lived, the dead body of a wealthy farmer was found by some one passing by. It bore marks of violence which none could doubt. A murder had been committed.

Excitement burned in the town and in the neighborhood. Within the memory of the oldest inhabitant no similar act of violence had been committed. Suspicion first ran riot, then settled, as if by common agreement, upon George Ellis. It was not strange that conjecture should have taken that course.

Ellis did not leave the town when he last turned from the door which had twice cast him off. He remained, for the simple reason that he knew not where else to go. He lurked about its vilest places and made low friends by his ill-gotten money. But he soon lost both, and yet he stayed. No one knew how he lived. He crossed the paths of citizens in strange places and unusual hours. He went in and came out like no one else. His worst companions had shaken him off. He was the very one upon whom any crime would have been first cast.

He felt the suspicion and tried to live it down. His efforts gave it a new stimulus. He braved public opinion, sought public places, became noisy and obtrusive. Many thought this sudden change of manner justified his arrest, and so strong became at last the feeling against him that the suggestion was followed. He was seized without oath, examined without effect, and committed in the end to await his trial upon evidence that would have convicted half of the community. Public opinion is hard law.

New facts came out. The prisoner had been seen abroad much later than usual on the night before the murder. He had mentioned it to some one early on the morning after it had been committed. His manner, it was said, had been more hurried and excited for a day or two before it occurred. What a silly thing suspicion is. How easy to feed it. And yet these and a dozen other like stories were passed about by grave men in eager gossip. The net was cast and brought in of every kind.

An indictment was found; who dare have said nay. The trial drew near—it came too slowly. Yet all this while nothing serious or substantial had come to light in any way connecting Ellis with the deed.

He protested his innocence firmly and without contradiction. His counsel encouraged him. Public opinion was not to try him. The flimsy rumors that had ruled the market-house and the tavern door would be winnowed and sifted. No conviction could be had upon such testimony.

The day came, and in a court-room thronged as it had never been before, a jury was sworn with much difficulty—for few had not formed or expressed an opinion. This done, the trial proceeded.

The testimony began after a short opening. First in order, in grave detail of examination and cross-examination, came that which bore upon the finding of the body—its appearance—the wounds it showed—the opinion of medical men that such wounds caused the death, and the nature of the weapon used. It was in evidence that a small and peculiar pistol had been found not far off from the place where the murdered man lay. It had no doubt been fired close to his head, for the upper part of it was entirely blown away. The pockets had been rifled, and all that was valuable about his person had been removed.

Then followed the proof connecting the prisoner with the crime. It consisted entirely of such facts as those we have given, and even these presented with doubt and contradiction. The last witness had retired from the box, and the counsel for the state was about to close his case, when a bustle was heard in the crowd, and a pedlar with his pack upon his back, forced on by the crowd, made his way toward the bar. A bailiff stopped him, when a citizen well known in the town, and who had from the first been earnest in his voice against the accused, stepped forward and spoke to the officer. The pack was removed, and the pedlar was admitted within the enclosure in which the prosecuting attorney sat. An earnest conversation followed. Ellis and his counsel were anxious, but not more so than their professional opponent, who was a gentleman of high principle, and a humanity unusual in such a station. The latter now rose and asked permission to be absent for a short time, and taking the pistol from the table, he beckoned the new comer to follow him, and left the court-room. They were absent some twenty minutes, and when they returned the stranger was put at once into the witness box.

His story was simple, and no severity of cross-examination could baffle its force or procure a contradiction. He had sold that very pistol to the prisoner, whom he had met in the public road two days before the murder. Ellis he could not mistake—the weapon he could swear to on his deathbed. He was in the village now by accident, had come to the trial from curiosity, had made an unguarded explanation when he first saw the accused, and in spite of his unwillingness to give testimony in a case of life and death, he had been forced up by those around. This was simple, but direct and damning.

The witness had one of those heavy faces which are the most difficult to decipher. Ellis scrutinized him closely. He was confident he had never seen him before. Sick at heart, and bewildered by what he deemed a gratuitous and wanton effort to swear away his life, yet powerless in the grasp of villainy, he turned from him, and as he did so his eye fell on another face, whose glance drove the blood throbbing to his heart. It was the face of Antonio. With a fevered brow and a dry tongue he leaned toward his counsel, and hastily whispered his fears. It was too late now to ferret out a conspiracy, and when he turned again the Spaniard was gone, and that impenetrable witness stood coolly in the box awaiting his dismissal. God of compassion! he was taken in the snare.

An agony to be loose when no hand was on him; a frenzy to be free when no bars were round him. Was he going mad? Then a film came over his mind thicker—thicker. He buried his face in his hands, and the veins upon his forehead were swollen and knotted. Memories went over him like the rushing of a host.

The evidence on the part of the state now closed. None was offered on behalf of the prisoner. The counsel summed up the evidence;—the charge of the court followed;—the jury retired, soon returned, and their foreman gave in a verdict. Guilty!

Ellis had undermined his constitution by excesses. But from the instant when that word fell upon his ear a decay, far less gradual, began in mind and body. He did not faint or weep; he did not reason, resist, or complain. The withering blight of years came upon him in a few short days, but no eye saw the change.

It was some weeks after the trial that as Eagleton glanced over one of the morning papers, a paragraph met his eye which riveted his attention. It was an announcement of the execution of George Ellis, to take place in a month from that time.

He was deeply shocked. Feelings struggled in his breast that were never there before. He asked himself questions until then never suggested. Might not this result have been averted? Had his conscience no one weak point in all the history of his course toward one over whom a parent had thrown the sacred protection of a dying trust? Had they done the outcast a justice that could bear the light of humanity as well as of reason? Was there no shadow of selfishness in the motives that had twice cast him upon the world?

One duty, however, was clear. He could not let the wretched man die alone. He must see him if it were only to stand by him on the scaffold. That over, a dying parent’s prayer would no longer appeal to him, except perhaps to bury the dead out of sight.

He plead business to his sister, and started on his way. Night and day he traveled, those solemn questions still communing with his spirit. He was a deep-hearted man, and sorrow had made his sensibilities sore. Night and day—night and day. If he dreamed, George Ellis was there, straight and handsome, his dark eye softened into sympathy, and Mary on his arm—a lovely bride; and suddenly the scene changed, and a creature bloated and miserable stood upon a scaffold, with a sea of heads heaving before it, and its bloodshot gaze upon him, not in anger, but in mournful rebuke;—and again it was George Ellis.

He reached the town, and was admitted to his cell. The prisoner was pale and emaciated, and a sluggish apathy was in his air, which seemed indifference to life. He recognized Eagleton, but greeted him coldly, and declined all his proffered visits. And yet there was no resentment in his manner. The misery of life had burnt away the wished for rest and quiet sleep. Before Henry left him, however,—abruptly, and without question, but with an energy that appeared to wake up for the purpose, and a call upon God to attest his truth—he swore that he was innocent of the crime he was to expiate.

Eagleton left him in deep emotion. He busied himself at once in collecting information as to the murder, the trial, and the ground of conviction. He made diligent search for the strange witness, and strove for a pardon or reprieve. It was in vain. A sentence was a sterner thing then than now, and the verdict of twelve men more inviolable.

The day fixed for the execution arrived. It was near noon when a gloomy procession left the prison gate and wound through the opening crowd to the foot of the gallows. The scaffold bore at last the prisoner, the sheriff, a deputy, found at the last moment to relieve him from the hateful duty of taking life, a clergyman, and Eagleton. The first was still, stupid, and indifferent. No sound escaped him as his irons were removed, and his hands bound; no voice passed his lips as time was given him to bid those around farewell. The man of God knelt in prayer, then rose and fell back. The executioner approached.

My friend watched him with intense interest. He was masked. His manner was singular, and a deep excitement pervaded his movements. A strange and unaccountable suspicion of the man crept over Eagleton, he knew not why.

He raised the cap which was to shut out the world forever from the wretched being by his side. But before it rested on the head for which it was intended, he who held it seemed to have a purpose to fulfil. He leaned quickly forward, whispered in that passive ear, and for a single instant raised his mask. Eyes of fire glared from under it. It was Antonio once more. What he said no mortal knows; but if ages of burning malignity and pent passion can be distilled into one word, that word, no doubt, was in the prisoner’s ear. He started and looked up, and a shudder passed over his frame. Then, in one instant, all his apathy was gone, and he struggled like a madman to free his hands. The Spaniard saw his error, and strove to retrieve it. But the frantic exertions of the prisoner foiled him.

Eagleton himself could be passive no longer. He had seen it all, and felt that the sudden change that had passed upon Ellis was not the mere change of fear grown riotous at the last. He seized the stranger, tore off his mask, and called for aid. Quicker than thought the executioner drew a pistol from his breast and fired it. The prisoner fell upon the scaffold. He then quietly surrendered himself. As the sheriff, until now transfixed by the scene, approached and drew from the hand of his strange deputy the weapon just used, he started at its resemblance to the one which had been produced at the trial, the peculiar marks of which were strongly impressed upon his memory.

The intervention of those who could act with authority was procured. There was clearly a plot against the prisoner’s life, in which the strange witness was the first actor, and the executioner the second. Humanity rode down the sharp points of legal form. The scaffold was soon cleared. The multitude retired. The gallows fell beneath axe and hammer; and the only evidence of that stirring scene was the grass trampled by the eager crowd.

My friend next day visited Antonio in his cell. He asked after his victim, and being told that the wound was mortal, and that he was dying, made a full confession. He had escaped from his prison;—he had been the murderer;—the witness was his tool;—he had gone upon the scaffold to finish his revenge, and to glut his passion with the agonies of a frightful death. It was singular, but for some reason best known to himself, he left Eagleton in ignorance of the cause of his malice, and of the crime at ——.

Ellis did not die. His wound was thought to be mortal—it was only severe. He recovered, but his mind was dead, and Eagleton took him to his own home, harmless and passive as a new-born child.

They are all gone now—the brother, the sister, and her idiot husband. The green sod has grown for years over their graves, and I tell their story in the full conviction that no heart will be wounded, and no delicacy hurt by a recital of facts which to me are full of interest.

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BY MRS. E. J. EAMES.

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A TALE.

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BY MRS. JANE L. SWIFT.

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Among the vast number of individuals continually visiting the regions of the old world, how few are prepared by an enlightened education and a cultivated taste, to appreciate its strong claims upon the admiration of the traveler. A love of the beautiful in nature, and a veneration for the ancient in art, may combine to give a glowing interest to each step that is taken upon the soil of older climes; but to minds that feel how much we owe to the early annals of those climes—how the accumulated treasures of historic lore have pointed out the quicksands of legislation—how experience has sounded its alarm from the rocks upon which nation after nation has struck and gone down; to minds that feel how time has traced upon the chart of the world’s destiny a warning record for those that come after—the government and institutions, the splendor and the decay, the rise and the downfall of the countries over which they wander, cannot fail to awaken the deepest interest, and to imbue with the holiness of truth the associations that must continually arise. It is one thing to have read the history of a country—to have a knowledge of its successive kings, emperors, or rulers; to know the results of its convulsions and its battles; to be able to date the events that have crowned with glory or branded with ignominy its name—and it is another thing to have digested the information thus obtained; to have acquired a succinct view of the bearing of social and political institutions upon the genius of the people existing under them; and to have become acquainted with the predominant influences which conducted that country to its ascent, or hastened it to its decline. A noble structure is left for us to gaze upon; a relic of by-gone ages, full of rents and fissures, and bearing upon its time-worn towers the ivy of decay. It speaks to us of the course of empire, of the march of intellect, of the sway of mind, of the abuse of power, of the horrors of war, of the extinction of nations. It stands as a beacon to enlighten the world’s rulers; to teach them that what has been shall be; and to display its warning torch for the Future in the history of the Past.

History is to the mental what Revelation is to the spiritual vision. The former clears away the darkness which rests upon our perceptions with regard to the well-being and destiny of nations; the latter dispels the cloud which hangs over the unevangelized world with regard to the well-being and destiny of man. It does not require a moment’s thought to be convinced, that he who visits classic ground with a mind conversant with and delighting in the glowing pages of ancient lore, will experience an enjoyment tenfold to that of him who finds all things new, and who, content with the attraction of novelty, neither knows nor cares to know of the mighty deeds that have cursed or consecrated its soil. True, there are sunny landscapes smiling for him, and works of art beautiful in their decay around him; but they cannot be to him as familiar things, for he had perchance never heard of their existence until he gazed upon them. The charm of association can beautify and hallow the most barren spot. What may it not do, then, when its golden hue is cast upon the monuments of former greatness—monuments crumbling to their fall, but speaking of a people, and of a grandeur, which centuries ago had passed away.

Thoughts like these were floating through the mind of a young traveler, as he gazed out of the window of the post chaise that was rapidly approaching the place of his destination. He was the eldest son of a wealthy English commoner, who, having traced in the early years of his child the bright promise of a noble intellect, had assiduously applied himself to its cultivation and improvement. A man of no inconsiderable literary attainment himself he could fully appreciate the advantages of a highly finished education, and as the mind of his son daily developed its natural endowments, it became his delight and pride to direct that young mind in its pursuit of knowledge. As Arthur Melburn advanced toward manhood, the energies of his nature seemed concentrated upon the all-absorbing love of study; and in the classic writers of Greece and Rome, he found a never failing source of interest and of pleasure. A sojourn in those regions of former splendor had been from boyhood the brightest day-dream of his young spirit; and often had that spirit taken its airy flight among the scenes described by the matchless pens of Grecian and Roman historians. In the noble, heart-stirring legends of ancient Rome, he learned to feel a veneration for the clime and for the people which had been marked out for such exalted destinies; while in the shade of the academic grove he bent with profound admiration before the master-minds of philosophers and sages. Upon his return from the University of Cambridge, at the age of three-and-twenty, he set out upon his long anticipated tour, well prepared to enjoy and to appreciate the beautiful in nature, the wonderful in art, and the mighty in mind.

Unlike the generality of earth’s gifted ones, Arthur Melburn possessed a well balanced, well regulated judgment, with a discretion beyond his years. Yet, as every character must have its own tinge of imperfection, he possessed that chilling reserve of disposition which characterizes his nation, and was too prone to seek his enjoyment in himself, without due regard to the claims of those around him. This feeling, so apt to degenerate into confirmed selfishness, had frequently been the subject of earnest expostulation between the father and son; but not until Arthur Melburn had visited the gay salons of Paris, and the still gayer coteries of Vienna, was he aware how unpopular and repulsive such an abord must be. The conviction thus forced upon him, soon wrought a change in the young Englishman’s address; and although the “so far shalt thou come and no further” of old England still clung to him, yet he was in every respect the accomplished scholar, the courteous and polished man.

It was a bright and lovely day in October, such an one as gives elasticity to the frame, and tinges the cheek with a ruddier glow. The sun was declining in the heavens, and streaks of golden light fell upon the landscape, which met the traveler’s eye as he reached the heights near Boccano, and looked for the first time upon the domes and towers of Rome. It is not easy to describe the varied associations that poured their tide of hallowed memories into his mind. He was not an enthusiast. He was one who felt deeply, although he felt calmly; yet an attentive observer might have marked a faint flush pass over his brow, while the veins of his temples swelled, and his eye dilated as he gazed.

A young Italian had been his companion on the route from Florence, and our traveler had become singularly interested in his new acquaintance. He was a native of Rome, possessing all the fire and passionate ardor of that clime, combined with a melancholy that seemed ill-suited to his years. He was slight, and of small stature, but with a countenance of intellectual beauty that could not be surpassed. The rich, glossy curls fell upon a brow as white as ivory; and the dark eye gleamed from beneath that brow as if it would pierce into your soul. But his cheek was very, very pale, and the chiselled lips had lost their ruby hue. He was evidently in declining health, and Arthur Melburn felt his heart warm toward the unknown but interesting companion of his journey.

“The air is chilly, too chilly I fear for you,” said Melburn kindly; “let me draw up the window, or else change seats with me.”

“Thank you,” replied the young Italian, “the air does me good—it strengthens me; and see,” he added, “we are nearly at our journey’s end.”

“I trust,” returned Melburn with a smile, “that the acquaintance so agreeably commenced between us may not be discontinued upon our arrival in Rome. I anticipate making a stay of many weeks there, and it will give me unfeigned satisfaction to renew our intercourse.”

A crimson flush passed over the pallid cheek of the Italian as he warmly grasped Melburn’s hand and said, “Yes, yes, I have felt my spirit yearn toward you with an unaccountable sympathy. I have loved but few, and fewer still have cared for me. Yours is a brighter and a happier destiny than mine. What have you to gain by knowing me? Yet I would gladly look upon you as a friend—indeed, indeed I would.”

Melburn cordially pressed the feverish hand within his own; and giving his address to the Italian, asked for his in return.

“My name is Giovanni Rosa, and?—”

The Englishman uttered an exclamation of surprise, and said, “You are not, then, entirely unknown to me. I have heard of you as the most promising of the young painters of Italy.”

“Ah!” sighed the Italian, “to win immortality for the name of Giovanni Rosa would reconcile me to life, barren and blasted as it is.”

“You are too young to speak thus despondingly of life, Signor Rosa; believe me, all have their peculiar trials, and with an honorable career before you, these trials should be met and overcome. We will talk of this hereafter.”

The carriage stopped; Melburn alighted at the door of his hotel, and, after arranging an interview for the morrow, the two newly made friends separated.

It was a great disappointment to our young traveler to find, upon his arrival at Rome, that his uncle’s family, which he had expected to meet there, had left but a week or two before. He was to have joined their party; but, owing to the miscarriage of his letters, they had proceeded on their journey, leaving information for him that they should soon retrace their steps, and probably pass the winter in Rome. After some deliberation, Melburn concluded that it was as well for him to remain and wait their return, although his heart beat more quickly as he thought of his long anticipated meeting with his beautiful cousin, Alice Templeton, whom he had not seen for more than a year. He had cherished a preference for her from early boyhood; but as they had met rarely, and then at long intervals, that preference had not yet acquired the strength of love. Yet there were pure, sweet memories connected with her; for in childhood he had often smoothed her golden curls as her little head lay upon his bosom, and in later years he had seen the mantling blush overspread her countenance, as he pressed the kiss of meeting or of parting upon her brow. But he was in Rome—this reconciled him to the delay; and as his mind wandered back again to its treasured lore, he felt that he trod the courts of a temple consecrated to dead empires, and that the very dust beneath his feet was hallowed.

Accompanied by the enthusiastic Italian, with what exquisite satisfaction did he visit the ruined monuments of the ancient mistress of the world, the queen of nations! How time flew by, as from spot to spot he traced the steps of desolation and decay; and when memory reverted to the three hundred triumphs that had been celebrated within the walls of the seven-hilled city, he felt how hollow and frail a thing was the pageantry of earth. The empty sepulchres, the ruined temples, the mouldering arches, the tottering piles—these were but the scattered fragments of Rome’s glory; the broken and tarnished jewels of her matchless crown.

It was on a mild, beautiful afternoon, about a month after his arrival, that Arthur Melburn sat alone in the studio of the young painter. They had made an engagement to visit the Coliseum together by moonlight; and Melburn, not finding him at home, concluded to wait for his return. As he looked upon the pictures which the glowing pencil of Rosa had traced upon the canvas, he saw how each bore the stamp of the wild beauty that characterized the mind of the painter. In his designs there was a dreamy mystery and gloom that seemed to cast a shadow upon the sunny tints; and made you feel as if storm and calm, hope and despair, were struggling for the mastery. One picture, a mere sketch, soon attracted the attention of Melburn. There was a wild torrent rushing over dark and pointed rocks. Upon one side of the stream was a towering oak whose leaves were still green and luxuriant, although it had been riven to its very centre by the thunderbolt; while its scorched and blackened trunk stood in strong contrast with the fresh verdure that surrounded it. Upon the stream, where all was calm, there floated a little bark, moored safely in its glassy haven, with a female figure reclining listlessly at its prow; while, driving on among the rocks and whirlpools, and hurrying to destruction, was another boat, in which knelt the figure of a man. His face was turned toward the serene and quiet haven, but he was not aware of the perils that surrounded him; for his gaze was riveted upon that vision of beauty, and the oar, fallen from his hand, had already been carried over the edge of the fearful torrent. Melburn was so intent contemplating the powerful effect produced by the lights and shades of the painter’s pencil, that he did not notice his entrance until he stood with folded arms beside him.

“It is thus with life, is it not, Melburn?” murmured the soft, low tones of Giovanni. “A few sunny hours upon the glassy bosom of its stream, and then the threatening waves and foaming surges bear us wildly on. In the distance is some bright vision—the Egeria of our hearts—embodying all that youth, and hope, and love can sigh for. Alas! the unattained; how it woos and mocks, but to woo and mock again. We are but the sport of destiny; and as that destiny grows dim and dark, fate looks on with a smile, and we are hurried into the still waters of oblivion.”

Melburn turned his calm eye upon the excited countenance of the speaker. “Giovanni, life is indeed a troubled stream, and man is launched in a frail bark upon its waves; but the means to stem those waves, and to guide that bark, are given him, and if those means be cast aside, why call it destiny that hurries him to destruction? Your matchless picture has called up stern and solemn thoughts. Look at it, Giovanni; the oars are fallen overboard, the rudder is useless at the helm, the compass vibrates, but meets not the eye it was given to guide. Is the recklessness that suffers the vessel with its priceless freight to near the torrent’s brink—is that recklessness destiny?”

“Are we not what we are, Melburn, by an inevitable necessity? Can I change the course of events, which in themselves are fixed and unalterable? As soon may you gather up the burning fluid of the thunderbolt in your hand, as arrest or turn aside the decrees of fate.”

“Look, Giovanni; since you have entered, the heavens are darkened by an approaching tempest. Yonder spire out-tops the surrounding buildings, and presents a mark for the lightning’s unerring aim. But see! upon its point there is an iron rod, and that rod can preserve the magnificent structure from desolation. Would it be well to leave it unprotected, and call it destiny that would at some future day make it a heap of smouldering ruins?”

“No,” replied the Italian despondingly; “but man, man is ever fulfilling his unalterable destiny.”

“You are only a superficial disciple of the fatalists,” answered Melburn, smiling; “for you have failed to cultivate the equanimity and indifference to fate which they teach. Believe me, dear Giovanni, man is not a puppet in the hands of fate. He is a rational, accountable being, destined for immortality; dependent, I admit, upon a wise over-ruling Providence for the allotment of good or evil in this life; but he may of his own free will abuse the good to his destruction, or make the evil profitable to his improvement. As the warm breeze of the south enervates the frame it blows upon, so would a life without trial rob manhood of the discipline that braces and nerves the soul to godlike strength. As each difficulty or disappointment comes upon us, we should strive to hear the voice that spoke to Constantine in his memorable vision, ‘In this, overcome.’”

The Italian grasped the hand of Melburn; “Speak on,” he murmured, “for your words fall in gentle tones upon my heart, and the slumbering memories of other years, when a mother’s voice lulled me to repose, are crowding upon my soul. Speak on, for holier thoughts come at your bidding—thoughts of a being who was not always shrouded in blackness and tempest—thoughts long buried in the ashes of a consuming ambition and a hopeless love. Yet there are moments, Melburn, when a ‘still small voice’ is heard above the storm of earthly passions, and the weary spirit yearns to catch the blessed accents as they fall; but the blast sweeps on, and the voice is drowned in the contending din.”

“It is your misfortune, Giovanni, to possess the keen sensibilities, and the finely strung nerves of genius. You worship the beautiful, and you feel the slightest discord in the harmony of your emotions with an intensity unknown to mankind in general. You perceive quickly, you appreciate vividly, you love passionately. But the pearls of existence are strung upon a slender thread, and the anxious grasp that would secure, too often scatters them in the dust. You are a child of impulse, and the same fire that kindles the flame of ambition within your soul, is searing your spirit with its fervid glow. If the dew of heaven water the parched flower, it will bloom again; and the dew of a better, purer hope will revive the blossom of happiness in your heart, Giovanni.”

“Never! never! the wilted flower may revive, but when the worm has been busy at the root, what then?”

“The broken spirit may lean upon Omnipotence, Giovanni. He who holds in his hands the destinies of worlds, and whose infinite mind originated the eternal mysteries of the universe, he supports the sparrow on the wing, and it falls not to the ground without his knowledge. Shall man, the most glorious of his works, the image of himself, the denizen of immortality, shall man pine under the weight of his earthly fetters, and find no ark of refuge? Forbid it, Heaven!”

A silence of some minutes ensued, and a burning drop fell upon Melburn’s hand, which was clasped in that of the Italian.

The rain, which had been falling in torrents, ceased, the clouds cleared away, and the last rays of the setting sun streamed in bright effulgence as it sank to its repose. Slowly faded the gorgeous tints that had robed the sky in glory, and as the drapery of heaven darkened in its hue, here and there a faint star peeped out, and then the full-orbed moon shed her pure and mystic light upon the scene. At this moment, beneath the window where they sat, appeared a young Italian girl, who, after gazing for an instant upon the face of Giovanni, struck with a master-touch the guitar which she held, and poured forth, in a voice of exquisite melody, the following wild strain:?—

The next moment she had disappeared, and Melburn turned to look at Giovanni. His head was bowed upon his hand, and he breathed quickly, as if overpowered by suppressed emotion. There was a long and heavy pause. “Melburn,” said he at last, “have you ever loved?”

A stern, cold expression passed over the countenance of the young Englishman, which did not escape the quick eye of Rosa, and he resumed; “A portion of the veil has been lifted which hides from you the secret of my unhappiness. Despise me not, Melburn, when I tell you that I have ceased to love her. Why, why was I born to bring blight upon others as well as upon myself? Left an orphan at an early age, penniless and friendless, I have struggled thus far through life, just earning the bread that supports me. Burning with an ambition to excel in the godlike art I worship, I have drained but one or two scanty drops of fame for years of intense study. I have seen influence and patronage draw out of obscurity talent less deserving than mine, while I have been left to grovel in the dust of neglect and poverty. With bitterness of spirit I have tasted the injustice of the world, and its bought smiles have withered almost to the root the hopes that I dared to cherish. In the midst of my loneliness and sorrow there beamed a vision of comfort upon my soul; and the impassioned being, whose song just met your ear, wreathed a charm around my heart which I mistook for love. You of a colder clime know not the fearful fire that gives intensity to every emotion, and makes the life-blood rush with the impetuosity of a torrent. Conventional prejudices would make you judge harshly of the love that overpowers reason, propriety, and prudence; but Bianca was a child of nature, and in loving me, she cast all her heart’s treasure into my arms. We were both poor—we could not marry; but she was to have been my wife. Fate threw in my way another from your own cold clime. Ah, the beautiful! how I worshiped it in her. We met at the Vatican, where she was copying a sketch by Rubens. A celebrated painter introduced me to her. She visited my pictures, and the meed of approval that fell from her lips sank into my soul. She was gentle, with all the winning gentleness of woman; but the chaste snow was not more cold. I gazed upon her beauty as we gaze upon a pure and distant star; and as each speaking lineament told of elevated desires, and proud aspirations, I bent in adoration at her shrine, and laid my offering there. We had met frequently; and although I feared that my love was hopeless, still I could not tear myself from the fascination of her presence. She saw, with a woman’s quick perception, that I loved her deeply; and she strove to destroy by coldness the illusion that might be fatal to my peace. I could not bear it; it was better to know the worst. We were left alone one evening, and with trembling lips and incoherent words, I strove to tell her of my love. She did not suffer me to proceed, but kindly took my hand in hers and said, ‘Signor Rosa, from childhood my heart has been another’s.’ Darkness came over me, and the sable pall will never be drawn aside.”

He paused for a moment, and then continued; “I would not, could not see Bianca. The romance of life was at an end. I shut myself up among the creations of my pencil, but they failed to awaken my spirit from its lethargy; and I find the energies of my soul withering daily, and my frame consuming with the fire that will not be quenched.”

Tears glistened in the eyes of the sensitive Italian, and he hurried on. “I love you, Melburn; you would save me from myself, and you have made me feel that there is disinterested kindness in humanity. There have been times, my friend, when a whispering demon seemed urging me to rid myself of the load that oppressed me—‘it is but a drop of opiate—it is but the keen point of the dark blue steel—it is but the flash of a moment, and all will be over.’ Then there came thoughts of the dread loneliness and degradation of the grave—perhaps the judgment! and?—”

“Giovanni,” said Melburn solemnly, interrupting him, “brave not the Most High. Life is a precious deposit, and it is not for man to interfere with the will of Omnipotence. Suicide is the crime of a coward, perpetrated in moral darkness; it is a crime which leaves not a moment for repentance or for pardon, but ushers the blood-stained soul unshriven into the presence of its God.”

A shudder passed over the frame of the Italian as he drew from his bosom a small poignard of exquisite workmanship; “Take it—take it, Melburn,” he exclaimed, “you have saved me.”

A lingering pressure of the hand was Melburn’s only answer.

It was now too late for them to think of visiting the Coliseum—besides, their minds were not in a state to do so; and after making an appointment for the morrow, they separated.

When Melburn reached his room at the hotel, he was delighted to find letters from his relatives, who had just arrived in Naples from Sicily, announcing their intention of remaining there for some weeks, and begging him to join their party immediately. Nothing could have happened more opportunely; for, for some days past, he had been thinking seriously of setting out to overtake them wherever they might be. And then the image of Alice—how often did it mingle in his dreams, and haunt his waking hours.

The next day he spent with Giovanni Rosa in wandering among the ruins of Rome; and it was with sincere regret that the enthusiastic Italian heard of the contemplated journey to Naples. “You will forget me, Melburn,” he said sorrowfully; “the remembrance of me will be but as a passing shadow, while you will live within my heart. But you will return, will you not?”

“Yes, Giovanni—perhaps soon. At all events, I shall spend some time again in Rome before I bid adieu to beautiful Italy forever.”

“I hope so,” exclaimed Rosa, as he grasped Melburn’s hand at parting; “I will remember your counsel—I will strive ‘in this to overcome.’”

“Ay, Rosa, for my sake, and for your future fame, struggle on, it will not be in vain.”

The Italian gazed at the receding form of the young Englishman until it disappeared; and then hurrying home, he rushed to his room and burst into tears.

It was on the evening of the second day after his departure from Rome that Arthur Melburn arrived in Naples. Travel-worn and covered with dust as he was, he sought instantly the salon where he expected to meet his relatives. No one was there but Alice; and as she rose hastily to meet him, he could scarcely believe that the beautiful being before him was the gay, romping cousin of earlier days. What the countenance had lost of ruddiness and glow, it had gained in the intellectual, I may almost say the spiritual expression that now characterized it. Eloquent thought had stamped a serene loveliness upon her brow, and feeling had robbed the cheek of its roses to impart a softer lustre to her eye. Arthur clasped her hands in his, gazed at her, hesitated, and then raised one fair hand to his lips. “Dear Alice,” he said, and as those tones fell upon her ear, a crimson blush passed over her face, and then left it paler than before. And what were the feelings of Melburn? Ah, at such moments how memories throng upon the overpowered heart, concentrating in one glowing point the beautiful rays that have illumined life, and fastening as with a diamond rivet the slender links of love’s frail chain. Frail? Ay, frail; unless the hallowed influences of years have given to it enduring strength, and then it must be a power almost super-human that can sever it.

How much there was to hear, how much to tell; and as each member of the family welcomed the new comer, how pleasant it was to feel almost at home again, though in a land of strangers. In the society of Alice, whose mind was capable of appreciating his superior attainments, Melburn visited all the places worthy of notice in and around Naples; and each day, as it verged to its decline, added some memorial of happiness to be garnered in their hearts. Theirs was not a love blinded by passion, exaggerated in its impulses, and consuming to ashes while it burned; but it was the genial ray lent by Heaven to gladden with its pure light the darker pathways of this world. It was love such as an angel might have looked upon, without feeling that the spirit had been tinged by aught of earthly stain.

Week after week rolled on with a rapidity almost incredible, for time to the happy is winged with swifter pinions, and the winter had nearly passed away before they returned to Rome.

Melburn’s first visit was to the studio of the young painter. His cheek was paler, and his frame more attenuated, but the expression of his countenance was less wild and haggard. In the endearing epithets of his sweet language he welcomed the traveler, and gazed upon him with a melancholy tenderness.

“Ah, Melburn,” he said, after their first congratulations had been exchanged, “ah, Melburn, I began to fear that I should never look upon your face again. It would have grieved me to descend into the cold, dark grave without having once more heard the tones of sympathy and kindness. I have struggled to smother the contending passions within my breast; I have suffered; but I have been calm.”

“You apply yourself too closely to your art, Giovanni; why not abandon it for a time, and seek renovated health in change of air, and change of scene?”

“I shall carry the same heart with me, Melburn; it is too late. I feel that I am dying—the withering blight of years has struck home. But let us not dwell upon that now. It does me good to see you once more; and to feel that I have one friend in the wide world.”

“Yes, Giovanni,” answered the young Englishman, “the bond of friendship has become strong between us, although but a few months ago we met as strangers. I know not what mysterious sympathy attracted us to each other, but I felt from the moment I saw you, as if there was a connecting link in our destinies. An impulse which I cannot define induced me to offer you the seat in my traveling carriage, as I was leaving Florence; and when we reached Rome, I could not think of parting from you as a stranger. I see with pain that your health is failing; dear Rosa, let me persuade you to accompany me next month to England. Circumscribed means need be no obstacle, for I have wealth enough to spare; nay, interrupt me not—he is not my friend who would refuse to receive so small an obligation at my hands. The journey might restore your waning strength, and after a residence of a few months there, you might return to your country with a renovated frame and a happier mind. Since I left you, Giovanni, I have become affianced to one whom I have long loved; and she will unite with me, I am sure, in striving to make you happy.”

“I wish you joy, Melburn,” exclaimed the Italian with much feeling; “God grant that she may be worthy of you. But, my friend, I cannot accept your kind offer. I would die here—here in the beautiful land that gave me birth; surrounded by the objects I have worshiped, and on the spot where I first met her. Here must be my grave; and perhaps at some future day she may revisit this sunny clime, and remember the heart that beat and broke for her.”

Melburn saw that it was useless to contend for the present against the morbid melancholy which seemed to have settled upon the spirit of the painter, and he began to converse upon lighter themes. All proved powerless to win him from his gloomy abstraction; at length rousing himself as if from a dreamy reverie, he said, “Happiness is attained by some; you are happy, Melburn.”

“Yes, Giovanni, I am happy; but I do not look for an unchequered path in this world. I know that cares, anxieties, and afflictions fall sooner or later to the lot of all; and I would be prepared to lose the blessings I enjoy by not loving them too well. A just balance in which to weigh the objects of fluctuating desire is necessary to our forming just views of their value; and will prevent our giving undue preponderance to those which are secondary or trivial in themselves. We are so apt to surround some wished for boon, while unattained, with vague anticipations of delight, which the possession too often fails to realize.”

“That is true, Melburn; but many a heart lives on hope that never enjoys fruition.”

Melburn smiled as he answered, “In gazing upon the forbidden garden that crowns some lofty hill inaccessible to us, we may forget the fruits and flowers that are lying in profusion at our feet, untasted, unappreciated. Is it not so, Giovanni?”

“I mean the hopes that stand out in bold relief wearing the hues of immortality; I mean the undying yearnings of the loving heart, the glorious aspirations of the godlike mind. Nothing short of fruition in these can satisfy a nature such as mine.”

“Then, Giovanni, your hope must cast its anchor in the ‘deep profound’ of another world—it must seek its fruition in the Eternal. You may as well search for coral in the bowels of the earth, or for gold in the bosom of the sea, as to seek a resting-place for the immortal spirit in the regions of mortality. I am not a religionist—I am not the bigoted follower of any creed; but in the exalted aspirations of our nature, I recognize the immaterial principle that will hereafter assimilate us to God. It instills a perception of the beautiful, a yearning for the good, an appreciation of the true, that cannot be realized in this imperfect state of existence. Looking abroad upon the stupendous universe, I see every thing fulfilling its destined end. Surely, these heaven-born aspirations will not be quenched in the forgetfulness of the grave, but, disencumbered of their material elements, will find their completeness and felicity in the source from which they sprung. Would to God, my friend, that you could feel as deeply as I do, how infinitely the interests of our future destiny transcend those of our present state of being.”

“I have reflected, Melburn, upon our frequent conversations, and I feel, that had my mind been trained as yours has been, I should not be the creature of wayward impulse that I am. My temperament is an unhappy one—a temperament that might induce insanity, should my life be spared. But that life is fast ebbing to its close, and I am content to die. I have prayed that God may be merciful.”

He paused, and threw back from his brow the rich, dark locks that had fallen over it; and assuming a tone of cheerfulness, he said, “Tell me of your bride, Melburn; you had not spoken to me of her.”

Melburn smiled as he answered, “She is not an angel, Giovanni, but I think that there are few who can be compared to my sweet Alice.”

“Alice! did you say?”

“Yes, Alice Templeton.”

A change, a fearful change came over the face of the Italian. The crimson blood rushed to his brow, while his eyes glared with the furious passion of a demon. Rage, hate, despair, were all concentrated in the wild glance which he threw upon Melburn, as he advanced toward him; then the blood retreated to his heart, and left his cheek as white as marble. His breath came short and heavy; and he stood rooted to the spot like a thing of stone.

“For God’s sake, Giovanni,” exclaimed Melburn, “what is the matter? You appal—you terrify me.”

The painter grasped his hand, and dragging him to an adjoining apartment, tore aside the snow-white veil that hung over a picture. Melburn looked upon the face of Alice—his Alice—the idolized love of the Italian. But it was Alice as an angel—for her beauty was so spiritualized, that the earthly seemed lost in the heavenly. Melburn hid his face in his hands for a moment; then stretching out his arms, the stricken child of destiny rushed into them, and sank insensible upon his bosom.

Hour after hour passed on, and still consciousness did not revive in that feeble frame. There was a glimmering of life, nothing more; and as Melburn watched beside his couch, tears, more burning than any he had ever shed, fell upon the inanimate form on which he gazed. “Poor Rosa,” he murmured, “thou hast indeed been the sport of adverse circumstances. This, then, is the link of the mysterious chain that bound me to thee; our hearts drank at the same fountain, and became united in the same stream. Peace, peace to thy parting spirit. God receive thy weary soul.”

The light of life never gleamed again. He lingered through another day. As the veil of night descended upon the world, the spirit of the unfortunate Italian took its flight to the shadowy far-off land.

It was midnight. Tapers were burning upon the coffin in which lay all that remained of Giovanni Rosa. Melburn, with two friends of the deceased, kept a sorrowful vigil beside the clay-cold form; and as the tedious hours crept on, the death-like silence became almost insupportable. At length a soft step was heard, and a female form in white glided noiselessly to the coffin’s side. She lifted the crape that shrouded the face beneath, and gazed fearlessly upon the lineaments so beautiful in their repose; then kissing the cold brow, she replaced the snowy covering, and silently departed as she came.

The next morning they heard that Bianca was dead. She had taken poison.

In the Chiesa di Santa Maria is a costly monument of marble, erected over the remains of the young painter by his English friend. Before they returned to England, Melburn and his betrothed visited the spot together, fulfilling the wish of the departed, “that she might stand beside his grave, and remember the heart that beat and broke for her.”

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ON RECEIVING A CROWN OF IVY FROM JOHN KEATS—BY LEIGH HUNT.

II.