The solemn time slowly wore away. Gradually the twilight began to glimmer through the slats of the western window. Wentworth rose noiselessly, opened the window, put back the blinds, and withdrew the curtains; then extinguishing the light, resumed his seat again beside Emily.

The glimmering twilight slowly melted into pale dawn with a deep violet sky; and the few vague noises of reawakening life began to sound in the streets of the quiet neighborhood. Soon the violet of the sky changed into the light blue of early morning, touched by the unrisen sun, and the pure pallor of the daylight, lay within the chamber, and on its bowed and silent occupants.

Day broadened, and the first fresh beams of the sunrise reddened on the tops of the chimneys. A faint stir came to them from the inner room, and the folding-doors unclosed a little, and remained slightly ajar. They all rose, and stood in silence. Looking through the aperture, they saw that the lamps were extinguished within, and that a brighter day than theirs flushed with light the silent room. Suddenly the folding-doors swung wide open, and Muriel appeared, with a face of cloudless radiance. For a moment she stood in silence, exalted, dazzling, a presence like intoxicating music; her snowy drapery falling around her in holy bacchanal folds, her amber hair rippling goldenly and low, and her features kindled with a smile like morning.

“It is over,” she said, her voice thrilling with a rapture of tenderness. “He has gone.”

They stood in silence, gazing with awe upon her pure and lovely face, and the light of her immortal joy and peace floated in upon their cold and desolate sorrow, like heavenly rays upon a winter sea. Her sacred and auroral beauty interblended with their sense of the solemn presence of the dead, and the feelings that arose within them were like the prayers and hymns of resurrection.

Standing with bowed heads, the passing perfume of her robes told them that she moved, and they silently followed her into the room where all that was mortal of the hero lay. The curtains were drawn aside, and the light of the morning, warmed by the coming gold of the sunrise, streamed tenderly upon the white and noble features. He lay reclined, the head resting upon a cushion, the hands crossed upon the bosom, the bearded face beautiful in grand and sweet serenity, with the lips and eyelids closed. So peaceful and unchanged was his countenance, save in its marble pallor, that it might have been thought he slept. But he was dead. Nerveless now the limbs so mighty in liberty’s defence; pulseless now the strong heart whose generous currents beat for man; the busy brain that had wrought with such divine ambitions for the race, was stilled; and all the godhood that had given that body its majesty and beauty, was gone from it forever.

They gazed calmly upon the deserted form. Grief had had its hour. It would but have profaned the sanctuary of that holy and grand repose. The beauteous peace of death was there, and it made them still. Silently, for a little while, they looked with mournful and chastened spirits upon the clear and lovely features, and as they turned away, Emily bent and kissed the sacred forehead.

“Sleep sweetly, gallant and gentle heart,” she said in a voice like fervid music. “Sleep, folded in the rest of Heaven, folded in our Savior’s arms. Well for us if we had died like you.”

She rose with a rapt and pallid face, and moved away encircled by Wentworth’s arm, with her own around him.

“I love you, Richard,” she said. “I love you with my whole nature! But far above me, I saw a nobler love than mine. It was a love too great and sweet for me—a love to which I never could attain; and with that love I loved him.”

He did not reply, but clasped her closer to him, and they all went out into the other section of the room.

While they stood in silence, a loud and violent ring, like the jar of devils breaking in upon their solemn peace, came at the hall entrance. Muriel paused a moment, then shut the folding doors, and stepped into the passage. Patrick was up, and was already shuffling along the entry below to answer the summons. Presently the hall-door opened, and Muriel, leaning over the banister, heard a harsh and angry voice say:

“Where’s Mr. Harrington? I want to see him immediately.”

It was Lemuel Atkins.

“Patrick,” said Muriel, before the servant could reply, “show that person up here.”

She retired into the library, and trampling rudely up-stairs came Mr. Atkins, and strode into the library with his hat on, livid with passion.

“Where’s that ruffian husband of yours?” he brawled, fronting Muriel. “I want to see him instantly. Where is he? Where have you hidden him?”

“Mr. Atkins,” said Wentworth, stepping forward, with a stem white face, “permit me to remind you that you are speaking to a lady, and that you have your hat on in her presence. Take your hat off at once, sir.”

Mr. Atkins took his hat by the rim with both hands, pulled it down more firmly on his head, and swelling out his chest with vulgar insolence, fronted Wentworth with a blustering air.

“There, sir,” said he.

“And there, sir,” replied Wentworth, knocking the hat from his head clear across the room.

Mr. Atkins, frightened a little at this decisive action, glared at him with glassy eyes, but Wentworth, with a cold, stern face, retired a few paces, with his gaze fixed on Muriel. Bagasse, meanwhile, the hat having fallen near him, crushed it beneath his feet, and stood on it, with an eye like a red coal.

“Well, sir,” said Muriel, quietly, “you were asking after my husband. What do you want with him? What is the matter?”

“The matter is this, madam,” roared the merchant, bending his livid and brutal face down to hers, with his horse-jaws wide open. “I send a damned runaway scoundrel down the harbor for safe-keeping, and your ruffianly husband goes down there, and not only takes him away, but nearly kills the men I put in charge of him. Don’t you deny it, madam, and say it was some one else, for one of those men heard the runaway rascal call him by his name. Now, where is he? Out with him at once! Here’s one of those men just come up to me with the news; yes, and there’s another thing. He had to hail a boat that was passing to take him up to the city, for your robber of a husband upset every boat that was at the wharf. Yes, madam, upset them! And then when the men endeavored to retake their prisoner, he fell upon them with his fists and feet, and nearly killed them. There they are, seven of them, all mangled, and bruised, and battered, and—. Where is he, I say? Produce him at once!”

There was no change in Muriel’s serene face while the merchant belched all this into it, save only a close contraction of her delicate nostrils; and this was not caused by emotion but by the fetor of his breath, which was abominable.

“How many men did you say, sir?” she asked quietly, the moment he had done speaking.

“I said seven, madam; seven men all bruised and”—

He stopped, arrested and confused nearly to choking, by her still smile of scorn.

“Seven men, Lemuel Atkins,” said she, derisively. “Seven men with knives in their hands. Seven armed ruffians, and my husband, bare-handed, crushed them all! Oh, my husband, but I am proud of you! And you, Lemuel Atkins, you have the face to come here, and blazon the shame of your seven hired assassins. Well done!”

Brutal and impudent as he was, Mr. Atkins could not but be abashed at this sarcastic exposure of his inglorious complaint, and stood working his jaw in the effort to collect himself.

“And you want to see my husband?” pursued Muriel. “Good. You shall see him. Richard, throw open those doors.”

Wentworth immediately flung the folding-doors asunder, and Muriel, grasping the merchant by the wrist, drew him into the room, and up to the couch.

“There he is,” said she, “murdered! By you!”

The merchant’s visage instantly changed to a frightful and ghastly blue, his jaw dropped, his hair rose bristling, and, petrified with horror, he stood glaring at the corpse. Like many coarse natures, he had a natural vulgar dread of a dead body, but added to that was the terrific shock of being brought suddenly before the slaughtered corpse of his niece’s husband, the dreadful consciousness that he himself was morally responsible for this ruin, and the soul-sickening fear that now the law would pursue its authors, and that his own wicked and illegal act, with the blood of a murder on it, would be exposed to the public view. The simple illegal kidnapping, at a time when Boston had gone for kidnapping, was nothing; his tribe would wink at that; but with this crime upon it, he never could survive the consequences.

“See,” said Muriel, laying bare the breast, “there is the wound of the knife that slew him. You, Lemuel Atkins, through your agent, struck that blow.”

She looked at him with clear and glowing eyes, but he did not heed her, nor did the ghastly aspect of his visage change. Transfixed with horror, he stood immovable, his gaze bound by a dreadful fascination to the short purple line in an orb of red suffusion on the white breast. But at last, his glassy eyes wandered to her face.

“It’ll kill her,” he murmured in a horrible, low voice, talking to himself as though she were not present. “She’ll die of grief for him.”

Muriel smiled—a clear, still smile that made him shiver.

“You think so!” she replied, in firm and steady tones. “You think I will die of grief for my slain husband? Well you may, for I loved him with a love of whose strength and fervency a nature like yours knows, and can know, nothing. Well may you think so, for he was the light of life to me. But see—” she seized the merchant’s hand, and laid it on her wrist—“the pulse beats calm! Feel”—she placed his hand upon her heart—“there is no throb of anguish there! Look at my face—it is not the face of grief! Kill me? No, it will not kill me! Grieve me? No it can never grieve me! Sorrow nor death can come not nigh me—for he lies dead in the divinest death a man can die, and I am filled with gladness and with pride! Should I not be glad and proud? The most forsaken of mankind, the Pariah of a despised and trampled race, came from long years of misery to his charge, and when you stole that most wretched being that you might send him back to the hourly murder from which he had emerged, my spotless hero went from this house knowing that he never would return alive, and willingly laid down his life to save him. Yes—he knew that the price of that man’s liberty was his own life, and he paid it. Alone he did it—alone he took your victim from his captors—alone and naked-handed he crushed the seven assassins who dared to front him in his manhood—and with that red star of honor on his breast he came home here to die in my exulting arms. There he lies—dead in the noblest death a man can suffer—death in the service of the weak and poor. Dead—and on all his life the splendor of that heroic devotion; dead—and on his breast that red blazon of glory immortal; and I could rifle earth of its roses to deck this hour, and break up heaven for the music of my joy!”

The clear and fiery silver of her voice rang through him like a hundred swords, and staggering back a pace, he fairly crouched before the stormy effulgence of her beauty. For she flamed upon him, dilated, with a terrible enthusiasm quivering through her flushed and kindled features and an electric aureole of victory darting from her like a sense of rays. Not him alone did she overwhelm—the air of the room was deluged with the torrent magnetism of her spirit, as if it had been flooded with a rushing ether of light flame, and every heart beat as with the wings of eagles, and every cheek was pale with the draining rapture of her ardor. Not him alone, but him chiefly, and only him with dread. Had she flashed hate and scorn upon him, he could have better borne it. But this supernatural exultation over an event which he thought would have bowed her in pallid agonies of grief—this sublime and haughty glory in her husband’s fate—astounded and terrified him. It mingled with his sense of her pÆan tones and words, the patrician nobility of her figure in its snowy odor-breathing raiment, all the fiery beauty and dazzling enchantments of her presence—and it rushed into a consciousness worse than the consciousness of her hate and scorn—the consciousness of the thing he was contrasted with her. The very sight of her was the insupportable verdict of his own utter baseness, and he stood crouching and shuddering, with his glassy eyes bound to her face, as if some judgment angel, dreadful in loveliness, had burst upon him from the woman he knew.

She turned away, and his gaze slowly reverted to the corpse. At once, with tenfold vehemence, his former fear and horror rose within him.

“My God!” he gasped, “this is an awful tragedy!”

Sudden as lightning she wheeled around, and the first slanting beam of the sunrise smote her forehead, and lit her noble features with a new resplendence!

“It is not!” she cried, in a proud and ringing voice. “It is a triumph! You threw the interests of your party and your trade into the scale against a man’s liberty. He threw the rich, red blood of his heart into the other side, and weighed you down. It is a triumph! Call it no tragedy which breaks one fetterlock, even at the cost of a sweet life! Oh, brother of the despised and the rejected, well for earth’s proudest if he went to God like you, the savior of a poor spirit from the curse of bonds, and bearing up to heaven the trophy of one broken chain! Pass me, sorrow, pass, and come not nigh me—for oh, my husband, you laid down your life for a weak and lowly slave, and there is morning in my heart forever!”

Her pealing voice, proud and ringing while she spoke to him, melted into clear and noble pathos as she turned to the visioned image of her hero, and the words breathed in tones of illimitable ecstasy upon an air that seemed to beat and swim in rapture. The swiftly ascending sunlight rested upon her as she stood with clasped hands, her tresses shining in golden glory around her divinely kindled face, her soft, white drapery flowing and trembling around her, and gazing upon her from the inner room as through a veil of fire and tears, she seemed to them like some splendid seraph of the morning, dilated with holy and heroic joy.

A low groan heaved from the chest of the wretched Atkins. She looked at him. He was gazing with a face of abject horror and despair on the majestic figure of the dead.

“Come away,” she said, solemnly, taking the passive wretch by the arm, and leading him into the other room. “I pity you from the depths of my soul. You are the tragedy—you and the social order that has ruined you. Would that I could do you good! I cannot. You are made, and only death can unmake you. Well will it be for you when your sad failure of an earthly life is ended, and you can resume that you were before you were born.”

He turned toward her, dreadfully agitated, with the foul tears flowing on his convulsed and livid visage.

“Spare me,” he hoarsely faltered, clasping his hands, “spare me the exposure! For the love of God, let it be hushed up! It’ll ruin me and my family, and—Oh, I beg of you let it”—

“Listen to me,” said Muriel, interrupting him. “My mother has not yet left her chamber, and therefore does not know of what has happened. Spare her the anguish of seeing you here with the body of her beloved son lying there. I have already kept you too long. But hear this: the persons present, and one other, are the only persons who know of this transaction, and they are pledged never to divulge it. Keep it secret then yourself. It ends here.”

“Oh, thank you, thank you; I’m very grateful, indeed I am,” he hurriedly replied, showing in his agitation a mean relief at his escape from the consequences of his wickedness; “I’ll go at once.”

He looked around for his hat. Bagasse kicked it over to him, with an eye that flashed red fire. Atkins did not show the least resentment at the insult, but hastily picking up the crushed castor, hurriedly left the library straightening it out, and presently they heard the hall-door close behind him.

Muriel went to the body of Harrington, and arranged the clothes over the bosom. In a moment or two the others followed her, and as they approached, she turned toward them.

“I must go up to tell mother of this,” she said. “It is better that she should hear it in her own chamber.”

“We ought to have called her, that she might see John before he died,” said Emily.

“No,” replied Muriel; “I thought of it, but I feared to have her here for her own sake. And I fear the shock it will give her now. I must go at once.”

She moved to the entrance, but at that moment Mrs. Eastman entered the library in the section beyond the folding doors. Muriel sprang, caught her in her arms, and gazed with all her soul in her eyes, into her pale countenance. Mrs. Eastman had not caught sight of the body, but she saw Bagasse and the Captain, and knew at once that something unusual had happened, and with a startled glance at the averted faces of the group, she looked with ashen features at Muriel.

“Mother,” said Muriel, in a firm, proud voice, “look at me. Am I not happy?”

Mrs. Eastman gazed with a wan smile at the radiant countenance of her daughter.

“Yes, dear,” she wonderingly murmured; “I never saw you look more so. But why are you joyful?”

“Because this is a day of joy, mother,” replied Muriel. “It is the joy of joys to-day. Heaven touches earth with me, and I am happy. Mother, the poor man who was stolen from us is saved! John has ransomed him!”

“Why!” exclaimed Mrs. Eastman, starting, with a bright smile, in her daughter’s arms. “This is indeed good news. But what do you mean—how did John ransom him?”

“With a great price, my mother,” cried Muriel, a brilliant smile irradiating her inspired features. “A price which I am willing and proud to pay. Are you?”

“I would pay any price for such a good as this,” replied Mrs. Eastman, with some wonder visible in her joy.

“Any, mother?”

“Yes, any.”

“Ah, mother, let me try you. Suppose the price was your whole fortune. Would you give it?”

“I would give it all,” answered Mrs. Eastman, fervently. “I would give everything rather than go through life with the shame and agony of Lemuel’s sin and that poor man’s murder upon me.”

“But, mother, suppose Heaven asked of you a greater price than that. Suppose it asked, as the price of a poor man’s liberty, your daughter’s life, or the life of your son. Would you give it? Answer me yes,” she cried, with flashing eyes. “Tell me that yours is not a cheap devotion to the old New England honor—the old New England liberty—the old New England justice! Tell me that you are willing to offer up to Heaven the dearest and the proudest sacrifice a soul can offer, that I may love you with the love of love forevermore!”

To stand before that impassioned and magnetic face, to hear those burning and electric tones, and not be kindled by their enthusiasm, was not in human nature. The flame thrilled through the mother’s soul, and with a pale, proud countenance, and quivering nostrils, while a vague and awful consciousness of what had happened arose within her, she looked steadily into the flushed and exalted features of Muriel.

“I have not your spirit, Muriel,” she tremulously answered, “and such a sacrifice would be hard for me to make, but I would strive to make it—I would strive to be worthy of my daughter.”

“Mother of my heart!” cried Muriel, with passionate fervor. “Behold, the hour has come for you to strive with every mortal weakness. Lean on me now—let me fill you with my strength—let me dilate you with my joy. Rouse up your soul to fortitude—nerve it to bear as only a woman’s soul can bear—for Heaven has asked the great sacrifice of us all. Oh, my mother, Heaven has said to him we love—the price of the ransom is your own life—and with his life he has paid it.”

The mother looked at her with a pale, still countenance. She did not swoon, she did not shriek, she did not weep nor tremble. The strong sustaining spell of Muriel’s spirit was upon her; her clear magnetic eyes upheld her; and she breathed in the mighty ether of that electrifying sphere of pride and joy. Left to herself she might have dropped dead or mad; but interpenetrated with that effluent will, and moved and kindled by the grandeur of her daughter’s nobleness, she rose in courage like the courage of a spirit when it leaves the serene regions to dare the doom of dark avatars.

“I hear you,” she said, in a low, full, equal voice, sounding more like Muriel’s than her own. “I hear you, and I am filled with your life. You wish me to be calm and strong. I am calm and strong. I understand you perfectly. You tell me that he is dead.”

“Mother,” replied Muriel, with solemn fervor, “his earthly life is ended, but he lives forever. He died a hero’s death, and all who made earth noble with their living and their dying, rise up to welcome him.”

There was a moment’s pause, in which their eyes remained bound to each other. Then the low, full, equal voice spoke on.

“Tell me more, Muriel. Tell me how he died. I am calm. I can bear to hear it all.”

“I will tell you, my mother,” Muriel replied. “He heard that the man was a prisoner in a boat at an island wharf in the bay. Last night he sailed through the tempest, and captured him. Seven to one, they followed him to the beach, and fell upon him. He crushed them every one, received a death-wound in the fray, returned in victory, and died here at sunrise. That is all.”

The pale face flushed slowly.

“I drove him to this,” was the low reply. “Did I not? Have not I killed him?”

“No, mother,” answered Muriel, calmly. “It is not so. I had determined to disregard your wishes, but this plan was surer, and he and I chose it.”

The pale face lightened, and the flush died away in marble pallor.

“No, it was not I that killed him,” she said, slowly. “It was another, and him I renounce forever. Lemuel”—

“Hush, mother,” said Muriel. “Not a word of him. Let us pity and pardon him—but do not utter his name again. Let him pass in peace.”

There was a brief interval of silence before the mother spoke again.

“Where is he, Muriel? Let me see him. Do not hold me from him. Do not fear for me. I am calm and strong. I can bear to see him now, though he is dead.”

The pleading and pathetic voice touched Muriel to her heart’s core, though there was no sign of emotion on her face. Her clasp tightened around her mother, and for a moment her clear eyes dwelt upon the pallid countenance.

“Can you bear to look upon him now?” she replied. “Be calm—be strong. Look into that room. He is there.”

The mother, strongly held by Muriel’s arms, slowly turned her head, and gazed. A broad ray of sunlight rested on the couch, and the sculptured face shone in white splendor. Long and breathlessly she gazed upon it.

“Come,” murmured Muriel.

Clasped in each other’s arms, they moved slowly to the side of the couch, and stood gazing on the white and noble features, clear-cut and glorious in the dazzling stream of light which fell upon them, and relieved by the violet velvet on which the body lay. It was death, but death in the lustrous beauty of a vision. The rich magic splendor that irradiated the majestic countenance, seemed issuant from it—a blazing halo, in which it would rest forever.

“He is beautiful,” murmured Mrs. Eastman, in a hushed and mournful voice. “Beautiful as a dream. My dead son!”

Three little words, but in them what a large world of affection and sorrow found room! A thrill of emotion came to the silent group as her low, distinct voice, awful in its pathos, gave those words utterance. Noiselessly and slowly she sank from Muriel’s arms to her knees, and laid her head upon the pulseless breast; for a little while she remained there, with the strong glory lending a brighter silver to her tresses; and rising again, her calm face was wet with tears.

“It is a great grief,” she said, as Muriel again encircled her in her arms. “It is a greater grief, Muriel, than when your father died. I wonder that I can bear it as I do. And you, my poor child, widowed now like me, how can you endure your loss—how can you look so beautiful and happy, and he lying dead beside you?”

“Look, mother,” cried Muriel, “look at that sky!”

She drew her to the casement as she spoke, and flinging it open, they stood, with the blithe, fresh air of the brilliant morning around them, gazing together on the transcendent pomp of the sunrise. Far up the blue zenith, the sky was bannered with floating clouds of gold and purple and crimson, and burst on burst of splendor streamed through them from the dazzling orb which filled the broad day with haughty and majestic glory.

“Is this a day for grief?” said Muriel. “Behold, it throbs with victory—it trembles with immortality! See how its colors and its splendors deck the sky! They glow and burn in beauty and in triumph for the return of a conqueror. Dead soldier of Democracy, the beautiful and bannered sky is for you! Burst high, flash far, float wide, oh divine resplendence, and fill the vast with the gorgeous colors of victory, for to-day all Heaven holds jubilee, and welcomes back one saint and savior more!”

Her low voice trembled with fervor as it uttered the passionate words, and her sunlit face shone like an angel’s. Still holding her mother in her arms, she turned with her to the illuminated form of her lover.

“Think, mother, how he lived,” she said; “think how he died. In a city whose vice it is that its valor and compassion run to brains, he was an arm. A mind trained for the human service, and an arm. An arm swift, and loving-swift to smite the robbers of the poor; a heart that could feel tenderly and gently even for them; a life which beat, in its every artery, with the blood of his love for mankind. Oh, never can I mourn him! The question that shakes the land and age came to him—in the person of that forlorn wanderer it came, saying, shall it be slavery or liberty for such as me—and not with a word, but with a deed he answered, liberty! Ay, with his life he answered, liberty! Look on him with joy as I do, for grief is insult to the dead who die for man. Proud, proud death! Sweet, sweet to die for liberty, and sweet to look in life on him who has so died. Mourn him? Oh, never! My own dear love, my friend, my husband, angel of my heart and of my life, I do not mourn you—I think of you with joy and pride. You smile upon me still, you wait for me in the Hereafter, you see my life all festal with your memory, you see my earthly years flow forward beautiful with your presence and rich with the light of your Paradise. Oh, still be with me—let me never lose the dear consciousness that you see me—let it endure to make my solitude divine, until I meet you in the world of souls!”

Awed and thrilled by her tender and fervent ecstasy, Mrs. Eastman slowly withdrew from her arms, and sank into a chair. A deep and solemn silence tranced the rich room. Muriel glided near her dead lover, and stood with the soft summershine of June tenderly splendid on her golden hair and noble features, her soul rapt in exultant joy and peace, and her thoughts sweeping through Eternity. And as she mused, Emily, with the color in her face and her eyes like stars, went to the organ, and the deep surge of music fit for the burial of champions, rose and rolled in ravishing triumphal grandeur, and swelled in a burning dream of joy immortal, and endless glory for the brave.

Loud rolled and soared the pÆan of the music. Burst on burst, the rays of haughty splendor streamed through the bannered pomps that flamed and glowed against the dazzling sapphire of the day. Tide on tide the effulgence poured around the heavenly-hearted heroine; and kindling on the violet velvet of the couch, as on the bier of an emperor, into a softer rapture of triumphant flame, it lay in a blazing halo on the folded hands, the broad heroic breast, the martial and noble features of the dead soldier of Democracy.