GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXV. December, 1849. No. 6.

Table of Contents

Fiction, Literature and Other Articles

Poetry, Music, and Fashion

[Transcriber’s Notes] can be found at the end of this eBook.

THE DEPARTURE.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXXV. PHILADELPHIA, December, 1849. No. 6.

THE CONSCRIPT;

OR THE FOUNDATION OF MORALS.

———

BY JOSEPH R. CHANDLER.

———

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

The family of the Widow Berien had risen from their evening devotions, and were preparing to hasten to bed that they might rest from the toils of the day past, and to prepare for the fatigues of that which was to come. One by one they had taken leave of the mistress of the house, and had withdrawn, and Louise advanced to give her mother the evening kiss and receive the evening benediction—when the mother pointed to a chair and requested her daughter to sit down. The movements of the girl evinced an understanding of the object of her mother, and her countenance showed that she had drawn herself up to sustain the rebuke which had been prepared for her, for when both were seated Louise turned her face to her mother to discover, if possible, by the appearance of severity there, how the storm was to commence.

“You have seen Adolph again, to-day,” said Madam Berien, in a mild tone, and with a glance which conveyed nothing like anger.

“I met him returning from the field.”

“And what did he say?”

“It is scarcely necessary for me to repeat what he said or what I replied—it was probably not much different from what others in similar circumstances say. Not greatly different from what passed between you and my father at our ages, and in our situation.”

“And that, Louise, shows me that you still persist in the resolution to marry Adolph.”

“I have changed neither my inclinations nor my wishes so far as I may resolve on such matters.”

“And my opinions are to go for nothing?”

“Can you say that, dear mother? Can you say that your opinion, your command, and your wishes go for nothing, when for two years I have postponed our union solely in deference to your wishes, and here renew my promise, that while I will marry no one but Adolph, in my present state of feeling, I will assuredly not marry him until you shall have given your consent, or at least, withdrawn your opposition.”

“My consent will not easily be obtained under existing circumstances. I do not object to the condition, appearance, or general conduct⁠—”

“On what then, dear mother, have you founded your hostility to Adolph?”

“On nothing. I have no hostility to Adolph—I wish him well—I love him as the son of my cousin, on his father’s side, and his mother was the friend and companion of my childhood, and both of them were my long continued neighbors—but⁠—”

“But what, mother? Tell me, is there any secret reason for your dislike to the connection with the family? Has he or have his parents committed crimes which would bring disgrace upon us if known? Tell me; I would not do aught that might be construed into discredit; nor would I have my happiness destroyed by vague insinuations—speak to me, mother, plainly. I can bear the truth. I have too much of your own character to shrink from what I ought to know or ought to do, and I have also too much of your firmness to relinquish a settled object on account of imaginary or only great difficulties. I can bear disappointment if it is in the way of duty, or I can meet and conquer obstacles. Let me know on what ground I stand. If Adolph has committed aught against the laws, or if there is aught against his condition which should operate with the most delicate and fastidious, I can and will relinquish all association with him. I know how necessary his presence is to my happiness, but I know also how cherished is the good name of the family.”

“Louise, you know how amid all the tumults of the revolutions with which the country has been visited; revolutions that shook the throne and altar—revolutions that in attempting to purify the political condition of the nation destroyed its religion; you know, how amid all these tumults and disorganizations, when religion had been driven by the sword from her temples, and by ridicule from our dwellings, I have sought to cherish her in our domestic circle. Morning and evening have I gathered you around our family altar, and sought to keep alive in you the faith which has been the salvation of man, and which must be the guardian of woman’s position and woman’s purity.”

“I know, dear mother,” said Louise, as she recalled all the cares and labor which had been used to keep her feet in the ways of truth. “I know, dear mother, how great has been your devotion; how constant your vigilance in our behalf, and how your service has been that of the priest at well as the mother.”

“And thus, my dear child, while the wickedness and folly of our people have done more against religion than heresy itself would attempt, while the services of the altar have been performed to such a meagre audience, that the voice of the priest has been echoed along the vacant aisles of the church, and no impressions of religion on the Sabbath have sanctified a thought on the other days of the week; nay, when as in some of the neighboring cities and villages, the priest himself has poured ridicule on his office, and made the mysteries of religion a theme for mirth and laughter, till children have done mockery to their God and his service, by mimicking in their plays the solemnities of the sanctuary, and have been encouraged and rewarded by the laughter and applause of men and women; have I not sought to save you from the contamination, and to keep alive in your heart the love of God and a conformity to the will of his Church?”

“You have, you have, dear mother, and I sometimes have thought when I have kneeled with you in morning and evening devotion, that you had gathered up the fragments of the consecrated yet broken altar, to erect a place of sacrifice in your own heart, and I have loved religion more that you have pleaded its cause, strengthened its sentiment in my bosom, and stood forward for all the duties and services which may be performed by one of our sex. And I know, dear mother, that the will for the sacraments, the pure intentions which you excite are better, more profitable to us than the sacraments themselves without such intentions. But why, dear mother, do you now with such solemnity recall these things; why, when alluding to my relations with Adolph, do you refer to your religious zeal and effective exertions? Poor as have been the fruits from your cultivation of my religious sentiments, have I ever denied or derided what you taught? has my conduct ever done injustice to the lessons of love and purity you have imparted? or have I ever said aught that intimated a doubt of, or disrelish for, the doctrine and service of our holy church? I ask not in anger; I ask not, indeed, in unsanctified confidence, but I ask in sincerity—if I have offended against God and the church, let me know my errors; nay, while sensible of my want of zeal and efforts toward perfection, I avow myself ready and willing to improve by any advice or corrective which you may impart.”

“I have not, my dear child, had reason to doubt of the exactness and purity of your faith—no observation which I have been able to make, and I have carefully watched—oh! how vigilant must a widowed mother be over the purity of faith and conduct of her orphan daughter—I have, I repeat to you, found nothing in your faith to reprove, nothing in your religion and stated exercises unworthy of a Christian. But⁠—”

“But, mother—but—what can you mean? You talk to me earnestly of my association with, and my affection for Adolph—you allude to my faith and my conduct, and say that you find nothing in my faith to censure, and nothing in my religious exercises unworthy a Christian, but you omit to approve of my conduct. You avoid reference to that, unless you were approaching it with the terrible—‘But.’ ”

“I was approaching it—and—”

“Does my mother mean that there is aught in my conduct, my conduct with Adolph, because it is evident that the remarks all tend thitherward—does my mother suspect impropriety of conduct in me—mother, mother, for Heaven’s sake, spare me that imputation. For me and my thoughts, my inmost thoughts, your chamber has been as much the seat of the confessional as the place of the altar, and not a feeling of my heart, not an impulse of passion, not a motive or a wish has been withheld from you that would have been uttered in explanation or confession to the priest. I know there is wrong, dear mother, in the world. I am human, with human passions and human weaknesses, but not a thought of impurity has ever been uttered to me by Adolph, or been suggested by our relations with each other. Blessed queen of purity! in this thing I am innocent, in word and thought. Dear mother, let me not suffer—let not Adolph suffer in your estimation upon such a suspicion, he is above such weakness and wickedness, and I should need no further monition from Heaven to avoid his society, than the discovery that his words, nay, that our meeting suggested thoughts unsanctioned by my religion, unworthy of your approval.”

Louise paused in her vehement appeal. She had gone to the very verge of propriety in her asseverations, and she saw nothing in her mother’s countenance which indicated any change of sentiment. The girl felt for a moment indignant. The language of her mother implied a charge of the most painful character, and though it might not reach to the extent which, at first, she seemed to suppose, yet she felt that maidenly propriety is scarcely less outraged by an imputation of habitual association with the dangerous and the impure, than by a charge of crime committed—and she started at the bare hint of the wrong, and was stung to the soul when her vehement disclaimer seemed to work no change in the mind of her accusing mother.

The warmth of Louise’s feelings betrayed no disrespect to her mother, and perhaps the good woman felt pleased at the sensitiveness of her daughter on such a subject. Still there was no removal of the objection which was felt against Adolph, and she replied:

“Your justification of your conduct, and your sensitiveness on the subject to which you supposed I referred, show how important you and all deem the fame of a young woman; how essential to her is not only a pure mind, but an unsuspected character; and that to which I have referred is so intimately connected with what you suspect, that I shall take your virtuous indignation at what you imagined my allusion, as almost as applicable to my meaning as to your suspicions.”

“What is it you mean, mother?”

“I mean, that with all the kindness of Adolph’s manners—with all the respect he has shown for me, and his affection to you, he is tainted with the infidelity of the times, and not merely neglects the offices of the church, but ridicules the Christian religion.”

“Never, mother, never; depend on it, some one has slandered Adolph to you.”

“Does Adolph frequent, I will not say the sacraments of his church, but the church itself?”

“I see him frequently there.”

“You see him there, my daughter, when he expects you are ready to return—but never does he assist in the services of the church?”

“I am not able to assert how often he attends the church, mother; but I think as frequently as most of the young men of this department, at least, of our village.”

“That may be, my child, but it is of the general prevalence of irreligion in which it seems that Adolph shares, that I complain—and you know, my daughter, that following your father’s advice, on his death-bed, I have said in the language of the King of Israel, ‘as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ ”

“And God forbid, my dear mother, that I should hinder the fulfillment of your pious resolution, or be an exception in your religious family.”

“And yet you will be, if you yoke yourself unequally with one who, if not a heretic, is only not that from his indifference to any religion.”

“I will not, of course, assume that yoke without your approval.”

“That is in a spirit of obedience; but, my daughter, it would be better if instead of limiting yourself not to marry any one without my approval, you would consent to advise with me as to some proper person among your acquaintance whom you would marry.”

“My dear mother, the only equality in such a yoke of convenience would be the perfect indifference with which each would regard the other.”

Louise was not a little shocked at the remarks made by her mother. She loved Adolph, and she knew well enough that he did not frequent the church, though she had never heard him ridicule religion, his respect for her and her religious habits would have prevented that outrage. But she could not shut her eyes to the fact that Adolph lived out of the influences of her church, and she knew well that her mother would never consent to her union with such a man. She mingled the subject in her prayers before she sought her bed, and gave the whole night to the anxiety which it caused.

Next day Louise opened her heart to Adolph, by expressing her fears that he had neglected the duties of his religion.

Adolph sought to evade the matter by some playful remarks, but he discovered that Louise was more than usually in earnest.

“Your mother is in this,” said he.

“She is—and she adds, that I shall never marry a man who neglects the requirements of religion.”

“Why, is she going to make a priest of me?”

“I hope not,” said Louise; “for in that case we should be further from our marriage than we now are.”

“What does she require?”

“She requires that you forbear, in the first place, any remarks against religion; and secondly, that you frequent the church, at least.”

“I will do that to please her and you, at any rate,” said he.

“You will do it from a higher motive, I hope,” said she.

The result of the conference between Louise and Adolph was the promise on his part to be constant at church on all holydays, and to forbear any remarks which could be construed into a disrespect for religion and its ministers.

Louise retired gratified at what she had gained, but not without some sense of the unworthiness of the motives of her lover, and with many doubts whether she ought to depend on such a shallow change.

Adolph loved Louise—he promised readily—but he smiled in his heart at her seeming confidence. The truth was Adolph had ridiculed religion; not so much from any doubts of its truth, or any conclusions to which he had been led by argument, as by the necessity of improper association, the power of that state of mind that builds up skepticism as a sort of retreat from the stings of conscience. The moral principal of Adolph had suffered much from his associations.

It was a source of much gratification to Louise that Adolph kept his word—and Madam Berien could not deny that he was punctual in his attendance at the church, if not exceedingly edifying in his deportment. This brought Adolph more within the influence of Madam Berien’s family, and that influence could not fail of being beneficial; he certainly was saved from much wrong if he was not influenced to do a great deal of what was right.

Such however was the force of example, that Adolph’s habit of going to church seemed to be growing into a principle. And influenced by the delicate persuasion of Louise he even commenced a preparation for the sacraments. The progress in the work of piety was most gratifying to his betrothed, and even received some applause from her mother. The good woman was at length persuaded to give her consent to the union of her daughter with him, and the marriage was to take place immediately after Easter.

We need not speak of the happiness, and the bustle which such a consent produced in the family. With Louise it was a calm joy. It was to be the fulfillment of her heart’s dearest wish. She had as she believed prepared herself for it by humble prayer and careful watching, and she had aided in fitting her lover to be her husband, by a gentle forbearance with his peculiarities, and delicate suggestions as it regarded his errors. He was a better man, more worthy of being the son-in-law of her mother.

Adolph felt that he had enough in Louise to make him forget the follies of his previous life, and though he had not the most entire confidence in himself, yet he knew that with her vigilance and her delicacy he should be in little danger of being less worthy of her than he then was.

It is due to truth to say, that while Louise put confidence in the resolution of her lover, she did not feel that he was out of danger when out of her influence—danger not yet of open vice and profligacy, but of a neglect of religious duties and a resumption of those habits which had so nearly made shipwreck of him before. But he was not to be out of her influence—he was not to be removed from beneath her watchful eye. The marriage which was to take place in a few weeks would make him an inmate of her mother’s house, where, indeed, already the sweetness of his disposition and his manly bearing had made him a favorite. So that Madam Berien, while she thanked God for the earnestness with which she had dealt with her daughter and his regard, confessed that his conduct now was irreproachable, and that even the religious sentiment seemed to be fully re-established in him.

It was near the close of a day early in April, that the family of Madam Berien was gathered around a table which seemed supplied with almost every thing but eatables. It was the finishing up of the wedding-dresses, and they had been about so long that there was no more pretence at concealing their uses, or hesitancy in referring to the ceremony and the time when they were to be used.

Madam Berien had just finished, for the twentieth time, a detail of the arrangements, when the curé arrived. He was always a welcome visiter at the house. His labors were lightened by the beautiful example of the family, and his wants in some measure supplied by their charitable piety. He was at home, for he felt that he might indulge there in any little sallies of wit and pleasantry, without the danger of having his language quoted to sustain irreverence; and he could speak of religion and its offices, with a certainty that those with whom he conversed sympathized with all his feelings.

In the midst of the appropriate merriment, in which real happiness rather than boisterous mirth seemed to predominate, a knocking at the door announced the approach of a stranger. He was ushered into the humble apartment, and presented the appearance of a veteran soldier of some consideration in the service.

“I have been directed,” said the military visiter, “by persons in the village, to call at this house for citizen Adolph Lefevre. As my business is of an important kind, madam will, I hope, excuse my intrusion upon her domestic privacy.”

Adolph rose, and announced himself as the person inquired for.

“In that case,” said the visiter, “I have reason to be gratified with my call; the nation cannot fail to derive service from so finely proportioned a soldier. I bear, sir, to you a notice that you have been honored with a call to be mustered immediately into the service—as a conscript.”

“A conscript! I am, sir, a conscript for 18—, but not of the present, nor even of the next year.”

“I am aware, citizen conscript,” said the military gentleman, growing more and more civil as he meant to be more and more imperative, “I am aware of the year of your conscription, but the necessities of the grand army have compelled the emperor to anticipate a year or two; and you, who would otherwise have been no candidate for the cross of the legion of honor for two years at least, are now presented with the opportunity, which, of course, every Frenchman desires, of serving your country, without any such delay.”

The officer presented Adolph with a paper which contained the order for his departure, fixed the day, and named the place of rendezvous; and then, with military grace, took leave of the family.

It is not possible to describe the misery which this order had brought into the family. Six months before, Adolph would have thought less of the dangers of the camp, and Madam Berien would have felt relieved by his departure; now, the thought of separation was terrible. The certainty seemed for a time to have paralyzed the family. The marriage was, of course, to be postponed.

“I could,” said Louise, to the curé, “I could have sustained the blow better, had I perfect confidence in the strength of Adolph’s power of resistance. It is not my disappointment that makes me weep; if I know my heart, dear father, it is the apprehension for Adolph’s moral safety. He must be exposed to all the debasing influences of a great army, and to all the dangers of association with men who make a mockery of all that is holy in religion, and all that is decent in morals; and he must stand the taunts and jibes of some of those from whom he has recently been attracted. He will fall, assuredly.”

“Let us pray for his endurance of the trial,” said the curé.

“Let us find some one,” said Louise, “that will assist to sustain his resolution of good, that will watch over him, and admonish him of his dangers.”

“Who shall do that,” said Father Rudolph, “but who e’er it may be, he turneth a sinner from his ways, and hideth a multitude of sins. It is a blessed office.”

“Father,” said Madam Berien, “are there now no chaplains in the army?”

“Alas, my child!” said the venerable curé, “war is not carried on now with that formality and parade which once distinguished it. The rapid movements of the troops give but little chance for religious impressions, and the morals of a camp seem to preclude the hope of any demand for clerical aid.”

“How few of our army escape death or incurable wounds!” said madam.

“Alas!” said Louise, “it is the camp more than the field that I dread; death or wounds are less injurious than the decayed morals.”

There was trouble in the family of Madam Berien, trouble in the heart of Adolph. He was too young, too much a Frenchman of the time, to express an open regret at joining the army, and so he mourned his separation from Louise, and the disappointment of his marriage hopes, secretly. He dreaded the dangers of the association. He had really improved; he had begun to love virtue as he loved Louise; and he feared the consequence of the want of her influence in the cause of his improvement.

The night before the departure of the few conscripts which were to leave the village, was spent by Adolph at Madam Berien’s; the curé was present most of the time.

In the morning the busy movement in the place denoted that all were ready.

Louise had only one word of farewell, one kiss to give, and her part was accomplished—and her heart sunk within her as she placed upon Adolph’s neck a little medal, which she carefully hid beneath his dress.

The ferry-boat that crosses the river some distance above the village, received the conscripts, and many of their friends, who would accompany them to the rendezvous beyond the river.

The neat uniform of the regiment sat well upon Adolph’s manly form; and as he stood on the boat and took his parting glass with one of the principal dignitaries of the village, he looked as if he deserved golden instead of worsted epaulets. One friend only accompanied the youth—it was his faithful dog, Ponto, who shared in

The Conscript’s Departure.

The regiment was mustered—it joined others—and in a few days was on its march to be united with an attachment of the grand army.

The army of the French, in those days to which we refer, was not of a kind to be overlooked, whereever it encamped, or whithersoever it marched; but just in proportion to the obtrusiveness of the whole was the indistinctness of its parts; and though each man in the ranks was made to feel something of personal identity, yet few out of the ranks looked upon the marshaled host as any thing less than one vast machine which a master-mind had formed, and a master-hand was directing; and to have supposed that a single soldier could have found distinction, or acquired note, unless by some excessive crime, or excessive courage, would be like identifying a drop in the ocean, or expecting some particle of matter to assert and confirm its indisputable right to distinction.

All heard of the progress and the victories of the army, but none knew exactly who were included in that little sentence, “one thousand killed and wounded;” and the heart of Louise sunk within her as occasional bulletins of battles reached the village, with statements of daring courage, of admirable conduct, and of numerous deaths. Letters were then not common from the army, at least from private soldiers.

Time passed, and Louise obtained permission of her mother to visit a relative at a distance; it was deemed a good opportunity to repair her health and spirits by a change of scenery and of company; and so she left her mother with more than usual evidence of grief at departure, for Louise, though affectionate, was not timid, and she rarely anticipated danger in any undertaking of her own; and such was her self-possession, that she never suffered from any of those incidents of travel which so often disturb the nerves of more delicate persons.

A battle had been fought, and a German city yielded to the arms of the French. The wounded were disposed of in the hospitals, churches, and hotels of the conquered city.

Adolph lay stretched out upon a well prepared bed in a small chamber, quite apart from some of his wounded brethren. A musket-ball had passed through his body, escaping the vital parts, but producing a wound which it was feared would, from the lack of regular attendants, and the warmth of the weather, prove mortal. He had suffered much, and his system was not in a condition to aid nature; still he rather improved. One morning, while he lay ruminating on the change in his affairs, he saw the surgeon of the regiment entering the room, followed by a young, slightly-built person, who seemed to have very little of the military in his movements or his dress; his face, for a moment, sent back the thoughts of Adolph to the home of his boyhood and youth; he started, as if some sudden pain had seized him, but looking again, he heard the name of the stranger announced. It was Klemm; he was the secretary to the general commanding the city.

“I have come,” said Klemm, sitting down beside the bed of Adolph, “to assist in taking care of some of our wounded.”

“Of our wounded,” said Adolph.

“Yes, our wounded; for, though my pronunciation is rather German than French, I am a native and a citizen of France, educated in Germany, and bearing in my speech pretty strong proofs of my master’s powers of instruction, and my own of imitation. I have left some of the volunteer nurses with others, and have come to do my best by you. I have some acquaintance with the art. Is this your dog?”

“Yes, this is Ponto the second; his predecessor, whom I brought from the village with me, perished in the same action in which his master received his present wound; and long used to the company of a faithful dog, I procured this, the nearest resemblance to old Ponto that I could find, and have christened him after his predecessor.”

“And transferred your affections from the old to the new companion?”

“Not entirely yet, but nearly, I think; he is likely to inherit the love as well as the name of the deceased.”

“Love is a quality easily transferred, then?” said Klemm.

“Why, yes; we soldiers, who are quartered in favorable positions, do certainly find it a convertible commodity.”

“I will dress your wound,” said Klemm.

When the office had been performed, and Adolph was settled quietly down upon his well beaten pillow, Klemm said, “It is now time for me to repair to my duties at head-quarters, and you would better compose yourself to sleep. Do you need the assistance of a chaplain as well as a nurse?”

“To confess the truth,” said Adolph, “I believe I could about as well dress my wound myself, as to go over some of those troublesome prayers with which my boyhood was unutterably bored. I think, however, that a little sleep would be about as refreshing as prayers.”

Just as Klemm was withdrawing, Adolph called to him.

“Do I understand that you are to act as assistant surgeon or nurse in this building?”

“Yes.”

“Then I think I shall recover, for I have felt no dressing like this since I was shot; and probably in a few weeks we may have a frolic together, for I perceived as they brought me hither that the place is not wholly destitute of females.”

Considerable familiarity grew up between the wounded man and his nurse. The exceeding delicacy of the attentions of Klemm, his soothing care, his skillful application of all the prescriptions of the surgeon, created in Adolph a spirit of gratitude which then found expression in words, but which he hoped would have other exponents at a future time.

“I see you wear a token,” said Klemm, as he took hold of the medal which had been placed round the neck of the soldier. “I should think that one who wore this would not fail in his daily devotions. Or is this a love token?”

“Well, rather more of love than religion, I imagine.”

“Oh, then your heart has suffered as much as your body?”

“Why that might be the token of another’s love for me, rather than of mine for her.”

“That is true, indeed; the medal itself might have been bestowed as a token of love for you; but surely, if worn by you, it was worn as a token of love for another.”

“Why, to say the truth, it has been worn without much thought any way; but if you will look at it, you will see that it has saved my life by breaking the force of a ball.”

“It has certainly suffered considerably,” said Klemm, as he gazed at the crushed medal.

“It is strange,” said Klemm, some days afterward, when dressing the wounds of Adolph, “that you should wear a religious medal on your neck, and appear to be inattentive to services for which such things are worn, and even indifferent to the motives for which this particular one was given.”

“Do you know the motive?” said Adolph.

“You told me some days since, that it was rather a token of love than religion.”

“In which I think it proper to say I was wrong.”

“You awaken in me a curiosity by your remarks which I certainly have no right to expect will be gratified.”

Adolph, whose fault of character it was to yield to immediate influences, professed himself willing to explain, desiring it to be understood, however, that the names he should use with regard to the absent, should be fictitious. “My own follies are justly visited on me, but I have no right to connect respectable names with mine in this situation.”

Adolph, changing the name of the village and that of Madam Berien’s family, related to Klemm the circumstances of his life—his love for Louise, his irreligious habits, his restoration to propriety, his call to the army, and added that the evil associations of the camp had obliterated not only the sense of respect which he had begun to feel for religion, but it had really led him back to skepticism; and his life in the army had of late been in accordance with his want of belief.

“Of course,” said Klemm, “you retain your affection for things and persons of this world, notwithstanding your loss of belief in the doctrines that relate to that which is to come?”

“Not entirely.”

“Have you ceased to love Louise—do you love another?”

“Neither; but I confess to you that as I released myself from the trammels which the religious opinions of Louise placed upon my mind and conduct, I felt less respect, and consequently less love for her.”

“Does your respect and love go together?”

“My love for her was almost entirely dependent on respect. She was my superior in education, my teacher in religion.”

“And so she put on airs, did she—played the school-mistress?”

“I should certainly do injustice to her were I to admit the force of your query. She led me back into religious observances less by any thing masculine in her character than by the evident disinterestedness of her conduct, and the conviction that however little I might respect the requirements of religion, I certainly found the results of the outward observances of the rules the best for myself.”

“Do you still love Louise?”

“Can I love her, and live as I have lived for these last six months? I ask seriously.”

“I will answer that when I can ascertain how intimately your self-respect is connected with that respect which you say was the fount of your love for Louise.”

“It is certain that for some months after I entered the army, my resolutions for good were well maintained, and I thought that my affections for Louise were augmented by absence. But I fell into the habits of those with whom I associated, and I soon found that they shared the opinions which my earlier companions professed; and I confess to you that my old skepticism returned, and though my sufferings here have certainly prevented me from the indulgence of dissipation into which I had fallen, yet I do not find that my religious belief has returned with my change of conduct.”

“Probably not, your change of conduct, as you call it, is only the necessity of your position, and you have perhaps sinned as heartily here, within sight of death, as when you were in the full flush of health.”

“And, by the way, Mr. Klemm, that is the unkindest remark you have made to me yet, and smacking the least of German accent of any sentence you have uttered. How much your voice resembles Louise’s!”

“Do I resemble her much in other respects?”

“You are not as tall, and you are darker; beside, your shock of hair resembles her splendid head about as much as your guttural German does her pure French.”

“Adolph,” said Klemm, in accents far more Germanic than those recently used, “would you seek to renew your relations with Louise if you were now permitted to return?”

“The only weakness which I ever knew in Louise was her love for me, and that, I have occasion to know, would not allow her to marry me with my present vices.”

“Could you not conform to the customs of her family without a change of opinion?”

“Would you advise me to do it?”

“Would you do it?”

“Klemm, you have seen too much of my character for me to affect to conceal much from you. I repeat it, I do not find myself disposed to any sanctimonious display of piety; I cannot and will not submit myself to the mortifying sacraments of the church. But if I could play the hypocrite, I would not deceive Louise if I could; and I suppose it is an evidence of my want of love for her now, that I will not do this to secure her as my wife. What say you?”

“I will answer you to-morrow,” said Klemm, as he hastily left the room.

“All gone! all impressions of piety erased, all holy resolutions abandoned, all faith shipwrecked, all progress given up, all religion relinquished; yet what is that last sentiment he utters, ‘I would not deceive her even to make her my wife.’ Surely while the sentiments of religion are clouded, while their effect is denied, they are lying deep in the heart, buried, but not lost—silent, unseen, but surely not dead.”

Adolph was recovering slowly, and his nurse sought to comfort him with the assurance that he would soon be allowed to return home upon a furlough.

“Why should I desire to return home,” said Adolph, “a wreck of what I have been—a wreck in mind and body, my health ruined and my faith destroyed? I take back nothing which caused my departure to be regretted.”

“You have heard, then, that Louise, apprised of your situation, has resolved to discard you?”

“No, I have not heard it, but I feel it; and, moreover, I cannot and will not impose upon her faith in me.”

“I think if you could resolve to resume your religious duties there, notwithstanding all that has passed here, though she should know it all, she would receive you. But shall I invite a priest into your room?”

“To have me laughed at by the whole regiment. I have little to confess that I have not told you—nothing, indeed, that you may not fully understand by what I have said.”

“But I have no functions to grant absolution, whatever you may confess.”

“Has any one more than you have? Is not the whole system one of priestcraft? What do priests know more than I do, and for what are they seeking to bring me under their care, unless to augment their power, and increase their comforts?”

“Perhaps you have an inclination to listen to teachers of another creed? They are in the next town.”

“Oh no, they are all alike in one thing, however they may differ in other matters, to rule others and help themselves.”

“Was Father Rudolph of that class?”

“No, apparently not—but how do you know Father Rudolph? Or how did you know that I was acquainted with him?”

Klemm bit his lip—“It is not difficult to ascertain who have been your friends, as in your delirium you were very free with their names.”

“Did I repeat her name.”

“Only as Louise. But you are apparently set against the clergy.”

“Yes.”

“Have you thought really of their influence on your life? Have you considered that much of all that you call morals is indeed the effect of their religious teaching?”

“That is religion not the priest.”

“I speak for the instrument, I confess; but a clergyman is to religion what an army is to a war—and you might as well think of conducting a national contest without officer and soldier, as a moral, religious contest without a clergy. And I doubt whether you have any idea of religion, unless it be a sort of restraint upon certain actions and passions. You mean morals when you say religion, and as you have seen morals exist where there was no profession of religion or observance of prescribed devotion, you think that such a morality is an independent system. Let me correct that idea. I agree that we find morals without religion, but I do not agree that morals would exist without it, and thousands of our young officers (I heard some of them last evening,) assert with philosophic gravity, that they are moral (they mean good) without religion. How vain—how short-sighted. They overlook the great fact that their morals are good habits founded on the religious teachings and practice of their mothers or priests, and that all the credit which they claim for their philosophy is due to Christianity, and that less settled in habits, or less reflective than they now are, they would fall with the first temptation that presented. What do you say to that Adolph?”

“I say nothing now—proceed.”

“I will proceed to make a personal application. To whom was the virtue of your childhood and youth due? Certainly to your virtuous, religious mother.”

“Did you know my mother?”

“What a question!”

“If not, how did you know that she was religious?”

“Because you said that in your childhood you were religious and had a mother. You gave me a knowledge of the cause when you stated the effect.”

“But my mother was neither a priest nor a religeuse.”

“No, but she frequented the sacrament of the church, and attended to the instruction of a priest, and thus became religious. But you admit that falling into bad company your morals became, if not depraved, at least vitiated, and that you began to despise religion when you neglected morals.”

“But when I began to reform, certainly I did not owe my change of purpose to a priest, and I only intended the reformation in my morals.”

“To whom then were you indebted for moral improvement?”

“To Louise.”

“And did not Louise owe her instruction to the same priest whom you had neglected? Nay, is it not probable that she applied to Father Rudolph for advice in the very matter of your reformation, and that he prescribed the condition on which she was to indulge her affections and encourage yours?”

“I cannot say that it was not so. But Louise was pretty independent in her manners, and would scarcely have asked the priest’s advice with regard to a lover.”

“Do you know any thing temporal of greater consequence than matrimonial engagements, or any relation more likely to have effect upon what you seem to think the priest has a legitimate right to meddle with?”

“I do not believe the priest interfered.”

“I know he did.”

“You know?”

“It is most natural that he should have done it. And now permit me to suggest still further, that while you owe the lessons which Louise gave you to the good father, you owe the reformation which you commenced to the remains of religious instruction in your heart. Undoubtedly it was your love to Louise that gave her influence over you, but it was religion that made her efforts successful.”

“You confuse me—I do not assent, but I cannot now contend.”

“I will leave you—leave you with this single remark, that not only did you owe your former reformation to religion, but there is religion now dealing with your heart, and your affection for Louise will return with the ready admission of religious instruction and the performance of religious duties.”

“I think I love her now as well as ever.”

“Then I shall hear more to-morrow of your experience.”

The night was one of nervous irritability, and poor Adolph presented to the surgeon the next morning, one of the worst cases of relapse in the hospital, and Klemm was early summoned to the room of his patient. The day was passed in painful aberration of mind, and short unrefreshing sleep.

The evening found the sufferer somewhat relieved.

“What can I do for you more?” said Klemm, as he smoothed down the pillow after assisting Adolph to acquire a comfortable position.

“That voice again!” said Adolph, “and no German.”

“I have got clear of my German accent by conversing with you.”

“Only at times,” said Adolph.

“Can I do nothing more for you?”

“Nothing, I believe.—Did you prepare for the priesthood?”

“No. I had neither inclination nor vocation.”

“I am sorry.”

“Adolph you are very sick—sick, less from the pain of your wound than from the tumult of your mind. I am unable to assist you. Let me invite in a clergyman, who is in the hospital.”

“Are there any here?”

“One. The terrible state of the wounded in some of the wards has compelled the officer to admit a priest.”

“Is there contagious disease?”

“Yes.”

“Do you not fear for yourself?”

“Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus.”

“What’s that?”

“Remember the words. I will call in the clergyman.”

And before Adolph could either consent or refuse Klemm had left the room.

In a short time a priest entered the chamber of Adolph, and proceeded to make himself acquainted with the state of his penitent’s mind, and then to attend to the duties of his sick call.

Adolph was calm and settled when Klemm returned, but not communicative.

Klemm then announced his departure a duty, and the fact that Adolph would, as soon as his strength would permit, be allowed to return home.

The parting of the friends that evening was truly affecting. Klemm was made to promise a visit to the village—“Though,” said he, “I may make an impression on Louise unfavorably to you.”

“I do not fear that,” said Adolph.

“Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus,” said Klemm. “A German quotation which I will show you in the original, or at least explain to you when we meet in your village.”

Klemm took leave of Adolph and Ponto, the faithful dog, and proceeded on his journey.

Men gather to see a regiment, a single company, or even a little squad depart for the camp—but few look out for the returning wounded—they come back singly and sorrowful. The wagon that was passing the ferry house nearly opposite the village in which resided Madam Berien, stopped for a moment, and a soldier, war-worn and wounded, stepped slowly from the vehicle, followed by his dog. He entered the house, and as he closed the door upon a small parlor, he found himself confronted by a female.

“Adolph!”

“Louise!”

“And your mother?”

“Well—all well.”

“And Ponto,” too, said Louise, as the affectionate dog, after reconnoitering round her, sprang up to receive his share of the caresses—“Ponto, too, come back.”

“Yes. But this is not Ponto that left the village with me. How comes he to be so familiar with you?”

“Your wounds are better?”

“I am well nearly. I need only rest—only your kindness, and I shall be ready for another campaign,” said he with a melancholy smile.

The boat awaited the passengers, and a few on the opposite shore were waiting for the

Conscript’s Return.

Adolph was received by the villagers on the shore with hearty welcome, and was conducted toward his former residence. As he entered the little hamlet, he turned slowly into the church, and at the foot of the humble altar poured out to Heaven the thanks which swelled up in his heart for his return. And near him one heart gushing with love and gratitude was breathing out its thanksgiving that the wanderer had first sought the house of God.

THE RETURN.

The post-office the next day supplied a letter, without post-mark, giving Adolph an officer’s commission for the gallantry that saved his colonel’s life at the imminent risk of his own, and extending his furlough for a year.

“But Louise,” said Adolph, “how your complexion has suffered since I saw you.”

“I have been absent for some weeks.”

“Yes, and these mountain relatives of yours always look of about the same color as one of their ripe grapes.”

Adolph having now some position, and a source of reliance upon his good resolution, presented himself before Madam Berien to solicit formally the hand of her daughter.

The matter had evidently occupied the worthy lady’s attention, as she consented at once, referred to an early day for the marriage, and desired that her own house might be the residence of her son-in-law and his wife.

“Surely, Providence is too good to me,” said Adolph, when he announced to Louise the result of his negotiation.

“Has it ever failed you when you really relied upon it?”

“Did it not allow me to be sent to the army, and to suffer horribly? I do believe I should have died without Klemm.”

“Has not your campaign resulted in the adoption of a sounder code of morals, a restoration to religious exercises, and the acquisition of rank, and in our almost immediate marriage? And will not Klemm be here at our wedding?”

“I hope so, but faith Klemm is such a well-made handsome little fellow, that I might wish him to tarry until after our marriage. I should not like to find him and you chatting German sentiment together in the German language.”

“And why not, Adolph?”

“I might fear that the sleek little secretary would outshine the wounded lieutenant.”

“Fear, Adolph! You would not fear.”

“Why not?” asked he, with a smile.

“Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus,” said Louise, with a strong German accent.

“Good Heaven, Louise! where did you find that quotation, and where that accent and look?”

“Why, the quotation is from the Bible, and the accent is as true German as my grape-raising relatives know how to give.”

No Klemm arrived as Adolph hoped, and so the bridal party set forward to the church where Father Rudolph was awaiting their arrival. The simple but interesting ceremony was concluded, and as the party rose from their last genuflection toward the altar, Louise whispered into her husband’s ear:

“Klemm has come!”

“Where—where is he? Oh! how I long to have him share in the happiness which I enjoy, and he will share in it, for it is of his own producing. Oh! Louise, could you but know—but I have told you all I can tell; yet I cannot express what I feel for that young man’s beautiful devotion to my good—to him alone, next to God, am I indebted for this day’s unspeakable delight.”

“I thought you owed it to me,” said Louise.

“To you—to you indeed, that you are mine—but to him that I was made worthy of your acceptance. Dear Louise, I am afraid you must share—”

“Afraid, Adolph—‘Die vollige Liebe treibet die Furcht aus.’ ”

“Louise, you confound me—whose is that tone of voice—whose that arch look? Surely you are not yourself now?”

“Not this moment, Adolph. Just now I am Klemm!”

The sacrifices of Louise had been accepted in Heaven—of course they were appreciated on earth, and “perfect love which casteth out fear,” had lured the wanderer back to religion, and had been rewarded in its good performed and the power of doing good.

TO MY STEED.

———

BY S. D. ANDERSON.

———

Come forth, my brave steed, for the dew’s on the flowers,

And we will away with the speed of the hours;

The breath of the summer-time rides on the gale,

And health is abroad on each mountain and dale.

Come forth, for the lark is alive with his song,

And the bound of my pulses is life-like and strong;

It is gladness to see the wild fire of thine eye,

And feel thy light tread as the breeze rushes by.

Come forth, my own Arab, the Sun is asleep,

And the tears of the morning thy dark mane shall steep;

Thou shalt drink from the gushes of Summer’s cool streams,

E’er the flow of the fountain is tipt with morn’s beams.

Come forth to the greenwood whilst perfume is there,

And we’ll start the wild deer from his slumbering lair;

The leap of the cascade, and dash of the spray,

Shall echo more faint as we hurry away.

Come forth, my brave steed—far truer art thou

Than the smile on the lip, or the light on the brow;

More faithful than promises lovers may breathe,

Or the garlands of fame that a nation may wreath.

Come forth—I am ready—hurrah for the hills,

Whilst the harp-string of pleasure with ecstasy thrills;

No hour like the morning—no scene like to this

In all the wide world, for a moment of bliss.

JASPER ST. AUBYN;

OR THE COURSE OF PASSION.

———

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT.

———

(Concluded from page 262.)

CHAPTER II.

The Sacrifice.

Ask any thing but that.

An hour had not quite passed, when, as she sat alone in her little gayly-decorated study, with its walls hung with water-color drawings of her own execution, its tables strewn with poetry and music of her own composition, and her favorite books, and her own lute—her little study in which the happiest hours of her life had been spent, the first hours of her married life, while Jasper was all that her fancy painted him—his step came along the corridor, but with a slow and hesitating sound, most unlike to the quick, firm, decided tread, for which he was remarkable.

She noticed the difference, it is true, at the moment, but forgot it again instantly. It was enough! It was he! and he was coming once again to seek her in her own apartment; he had a boon to ask of her—he had promised to love her—he had called her “his dear Theresa.”

And now she sprung up, with her soul beaming from her eyes, and ran to meet him. The door was opened ere he reached it, and as he entered, she fell upon his neck, and wound her snowy arms about his waist, and kissed him fifty times, and wept silent tears in the fullness of her joy.

And did not his heart respond in the least to her innocent and girlish rapture; did he not bend at all from his bad purpose; was there no melting, no relenting in that callous, selfish nature; was, indeed, all within him hard as the nether millstone?

He clasped her, he caressed her, he spoke to her fondly, lovingly, he kissed, like Judas, to betray. He suffered her to lead him to his favorite seat of old, the deep, softly-cushioned, low arm-chair, and to place her footstool by his side, and nestle herself down upon it as she used to do, with her arms folded negligently across his knee, and her beautiful rounded chin propped upon them, with her great earnest eyes looking up in his face, like unfathomable wells of tenderness.

And he returned her gaze of fondness, unabashed, unembarrassed; and yet it was sometime before he spoke; and when he did speak at length, his voice was altered and almost husky. But it was from doubt how best he might play his part, not that he shrunk from the task he had imposed upon himself, either for shame or for pity.

“Well, my Theresa,” he said, at last, “have you thought whether you will make this sacrifice?”

“No, Jasper, I have not thought about it; but if you wish me to make it, I will make it, and it will be no sacrifice.”

“But I tell you, Theresa, that it is a sacrifice, a mighty and most painful sacrifice; a sacrifice so great and so terrible, that I almost fear, almost feel that it would be selfish in me to ask it of you.”

“Ask it, then; ask it quickly, that you may see how readily it shall be granted.”

“Can you conceive no sacrifice that you would not make to please me?”

“None, that you would ask of me.”

“Theresa, no one can say what another might ask of them. Husbands, lovers, brothers, have asked strange sacrifices—fearful sacrifices, at woman’s hands; and—they have been made.”

“Ask me, then, ask me,” she repeated, smiling, although her face had grown somewhat pale as she listened to his words, and marked his strangely excited manner. “I repeat, there is no sacrifice which you would ask of me, which I will not make. Nay more, there is none which I should think a sacrifice if it is to preserve your love to me, when I feared that I had lost it forever, though how, indeed, I knew not.”

“We shall see,” he said, affecting to muse with himself, and ponder deeply. “We shall see; you are a great historian, and have read of all the celebrated women of times past and present. You have heard of the beautiful Mademoiselle Desvieux, she who⁠—”

“She who was the promised wife of the great, the immortal Bossuet; and who sacrificed her own happiness, freeing her lover from the claims she held on him, lest a wife should be a clog upon his pure yet soaring ambition, lest an earthly affection should wean him from a higher love, and weaken the cords that were drawing him toward heaven! I have—I have heard of her! Who has not—who does not revere her name—who does not love her?”

“And what think you of her sacrifice, Theresa?”

“That it was her duty. A difficult duty to perform, you will say, but still her duty. Her praise is, that she performed it gloriously. And yet I doubt not that her sacrifice bore her its own exceeding great reward. Loving as she loved, all her sorrows must have been changed into exultation, when she saw him in after days the saint he became, the saint she helped to make him.”

“And could you have made such a sacrifice, Theresa?”

“I hope so, and I think so,” she replied, with a little hesitation. “But it avails not now to think of that, seeing that I cannot make such. She was a maiden, I am a wedded wife.”

“True, dearest, true. I only named her, to judge by your opinion, of what I wish to learn, ere I will ask you. There was another sacrifice, Theresa, a very terrible sacrifice, made of late, and made to no purpose, too, as it fell out—a sacrifice of far more doubtful nature; yet there be some who have not failed to praise it.”

“What was it—do you praise it?”

“At least I pity it, Theresa.”

“What was it—tell me?”

“After the late rebellion at Sedgemoor. Have you not heard, Theresa?”

“No, I think not—go on, I want to hear it; go on, Jasper.”

“There was a young man, a cavalier, very young, very brave, very nobly born, and, it is said, very handsome. He was taken after the route of that coward, Gray of Werk’s horse—cast into prison, and, when his turn came, tried by the butcher, Kirke—you know what that means, Theresa?”

“Condemned,” she said, sadly. “Of course he was condemned—what next?”

“To be hung by the neck upon the shameful gibbet, and then cut down, while yet alive, and subjected to all the barbarous tortures which are inflicted as the penalty of high treason.”

“Horrible! horrible! and—what more, Jasper?”

“Have you not, indeed, heard the tale?”

“Indeed, no. I pray you tell me, for you have moved me very deeply.”

“It is very moving. The boy had a sister—the loveliest creature, it is said, that trod the soil of England, scarce seventeen years of age, a very paragon of grace and purity and beauty. They two were alone in the world—parents, kinsfolk, friends, they had none. They had none to love but one another, even as we, my Theresa; and they did love—how, you may judge. The girl threw herself at the butcher’s feet, and implored her brother’s pardon.”

“Go on, go on, Jasper!” cried the young wife, excited almost beyond the power of restraining her emotions by the dreadful interest of his tale, “and, for once, he granted it?”

“And, for once, as you say, he granted it. But upon one condition.”

“And that was—?”

“And that was, that the young girl should make a sacrifice—an awful sacrifice—should submit, in a word, to be a martyr for her brother’s sake.”

“To die for him—and she died! Of course, she died to save him; that were no sacrifice, none, Jasper—I say none! Why any woman would have done that!”

“It was not to die for him—it was to sacrifice herself—herself—for she was lovely, as I told you—to the butcher.”

“Ah!” sighed Theresa, with a terrible sensation at her heart, which she could not explain, even to herself; “and what—what did she?”

“She asked permission to consult her brother.”

“And he told her that he had rather die ten thousand deaths than that she should lose one hair’s breadth of her honor!” cried Theresa, enthusiastically clasping her hands together.

“And he told her that life was very sweet, and death on a gallows very shameful!”

“The catiff! the miserable, loathsome slave! the filthy dastard! I trust that Kirke drew him with wild horses! The gallows were too good for such a slave.”

“Then you would not have made such a sacrifice?”

“I—I!” she exclaimed, her soft blue eyes actually flashing fire; “I sacrifice my honor! but lo!” she interrupted herself, smiling at her own vehemence, “am not I a little fool, to fancy that you are in earnest. No, dearest Jasper, I would no more make that sacrifice, than you would suffer me to do so. Did not I make that reservation, did I not say any sacrifice, which you would ask of me?”

“Ay, dearest!” he replied gently, laying his hand on her head, “you do me no more than justice there. I would die as many deaths as I have hairs on my head, before you should so save me.” And for the first time that night Jasper St. Aubyn spoke in earnest.

“I know you would, Jasper. But go on, I pray you, with this fearful tale. I would you had not begun it; but now you have, I must hear it to the end. What did she?”

“She did, Theresa, as her brother bade her. She sacrificed herself to the butcher.”

“Poor wretch! poor wretch! and so her brother lived with the world’s scorn and curses on his head—and she—did she die, Jasper?”

“No, my Theresa. She is alive yet. It was the brother died.”

“How so? how could that be? Did Kirke then relent?”

“Kirke never relented! When the girl awoke in the butcher’s chamber, with fame and honor—all that she loved in life—lost to her for ever—he bade her look out of the window—what think you she saw there, Theresa?”

“What?”

“The thing, that an hour before was her brother, dangling in the accursed noose from the gibbet.”

“And God did not speak in thunder.”

“To the girl’s mind, He spoke—for that went astray at once, jangled and jarred, and out of tune forever! There was a sacrifice, Theresa.”

“A wicked one, and so it ended, wickedly. We’ll none of such sacrifices, Jasper. If we should ever have to die, which God avert in his mercy, any death of violence or horror, we will die tranquilly and together. Will we not, dearest?”

“As you said but now, may the good God guard us from such a fate, Theresa; and yet,” he added, looking at her fixedly, and with a strange expression, “we may be nearer to it than we think for, even now.”

“Nearer to what, Jasper? speak,” she cried, eagerly, as if she had missed the meaning of the words he last uttered.

“Nearer to the perils of the law, for high treason,” answered her husband, in a low, dejected voice. “It is of that I have been anxious to speak with you all the time.”

“Then speak at once, for God’s sake, dearest Jasper! speak at once, and fully, that we may know the worst;” and she showed more composure now, in what she naturally deemed the extremity of peril, than he had looked for, judging from the excitement she had manifested at the mere listening to the story of another’s perils. “Say on,” she added, seeing that he hesitated, “let me know the worst.”

“It must be so, though it is hard to tell, Theresa; we—myself, I mean, and a band of the first and noblest youths of England—have been engaged for these three months past in a conspiracy to banish from the throne of England this last and basest son of a weak, bigoted, unlucky race of kings—this cowardly, blood-thirsty, persecuting bigot—this Papist monarch of a Protestant land, this James the Second, as men call him; and to set in his place the brave, wise, virtuous William of Nassau, now Stadtholder of the United Provinces. It is this business which has obliged me to be absent so often of late, in London. It is the failure of this business which has rendered me morose, unkind, irritable—need I say more, you have pardoned me, Theresa.”

“The failure of this business!” she exclaimed, gazing at him with a face from which dismay had banished every hue of color—“the failure!”

“Ay, Theresa, it is even so. Had we succeeded in liberating England from the cold tyrant’s bloody yoke, we had been patriots, saviors, fathers of our country—Brutuses, for what I know, and Timoleons! We have failed—therefore, we are rebels, traitors and, I suppose, ere long shall be victims.”

“The plot, then, is discovered?”

“Even so, Theresa.”

“And how long, Jasper, have you known this dreadful termination?”

“I have foreseen it these six weeks or more. I knew it, for the first time, to-day.”

“And is it absolutely known, divulged, proclaimed? Have arrests been made?” she asked, with a degree of coolness that amazed him, while he felt that it augured ill for the success of his iniquitous scheme; but he had, in some sort, foreseen her questions, and his answers were prepared already. He answered, therefore, as unhesitatingly as if there had been one word of truth in all that he was uttering.

“It is all known to one of the leading ministers of the government; it is not divulged; and no arrests have been made yet. But the breathing space will be brief.”

“All, then, is easy! Let us fly! Let us take horse at once—this very night! By noon to-morrow, we shall be in Plymouth, and thence we can gain France, and be safe there until this tyranny shall be o’erpast.”

“Brave girl!” he replied, with the affectation of a melancholy smile. “Brave Theresa, you would bear exile, ruin, poverty with the outlawed traitor; and we might still be happy. But, alas, girl! it is too late to fly. The ports are all closed throughout England. It is too late to fly, and to fight is impossible.”

“Then it remains only that we die!” she exclaimed, casting herself into his arms, “and that is not so difficult, now that I know you love me, Jasper.” But, even as she uttered the words, his previous conversation recurred to her mind, and she started from his arms, crying out, “but you spoke of a sacrifice!—a sacrifice which I could make! Is it possible that I can save you?”

“Not me alone, Theresa, but all the band of brothers who are sworn to this emprise; nor them alone, but England, which may, by your deed, still be liberated from the tyrant.”

She turned her beautiful eyes upward, and her lips moved rapidly, although she spoke not. She was praying for aid from on high—for strength to do her duty.

He watched her with calm, expectant, unmoved eyes, and muttered to himself, “I have gained. She will yield.”

“Now,” she said, “now,” as her prayer was ended, “I am strong now to bear. Tell me, Jasper, what must I do to save you?”

“I cannot tell you, dearest. I cannot—it is too much—you could not make it; nor if you would, could I. Let it pass. We will die—all die together.”

“And England!” exclaimed the girl, with her face kindling gloriously; “and our mother England, must she perish by inches in the tyrant’s clutch, because we are cowards? No, Jasper, no. Be of more constant mind. Tell me, what is it I must do? and, though it wring my heart and rack my brain, if I can save you and your gallant friends, and our dear native land, I will save them, though it kill me.”

“Could you endure to part from me, Theresa—to part from me forever?”

“To part from you, Jasper!” No written phrase can express the agony, the anguish, the despair, which were made manifest in every sound of those few simple words. A breaking heart spoke out in every accent.

“Ay, to part from me, never to see me more—never to hear my voice; only to know that I exist, and that I love you—love you beyond my own soul! Could you do this, Theresa, in the hope of a meeting hereafter, where no tyranny should ever part us any more?”

“I know not—I know not!” she exclaimed, in a shrill, piercing tone, most unlike her usual soft, slow utterance. “Is this the sacrifice you spoke of? Would this be called for at my hands?”

“To part from me so utterly that it should not be known or suspected that we had ever met—ever been wedded?”

“Why, Jasper,” she cried, starting, and gazing at him wildly, “that were impossible; all the world knows that we have met—that we have lived together here—that I am your wife. What do you mean? Are you jesting with me? No, no! God help me! that resolute, stern, dark expression! No, no, no, no! Do not frown on me, Jasper; but keep me not in this suspense—only tell me, Jasper.”

“The whole world—that is to say, the whole world of villagers and peasants here, do know that we have met—that we have lived together; but they do not know—nay, more, they do not believe, that you are my wife, Theresa.”

“Not your wife—not your wife! What, in God’s name, then, do they believe me to be? But I am—I am—yes, before God and man, I am your wife, Jasper St. Aubyn! That shame will I never bear. The parish register will prove it.”

“Before God, dearest, most assuredly you are my wife; but before man, I grieve to say, it is not so; nor will the register, to which you appeal—as I did, when I first heard the scandal—prove any thing, but against you. It seems the rascal sexton cut out the record of our marriage from the register, so soon as the old rector died. He is gone, so that he can witness nothing. Alderly and the sexton will not speak, for to do so would implicate themselves in the guilt of having mutilated the church-register. Alderly’s mother is an idiot. We can prove nothing.”

“And when did you learn all this, Jasper?” she asked, calmly; for a light, a fearful yet most clear illumination began to dawn upon her mind.

“Last night. And I rode down this morning to the church, to inspect the register. It is as I was told; there is no trace of the record which we signed, and saw witnessed, on its pages.”

“And to what end should Verity and Alderly have done this great crime needlessly?”

“Villains themselves, they fancied that I too was a villain; and that, if not then, at some after time, I should desire to profit by their villainy, and should then be in their power.”

“Ha!” she said, still maintaining perfect self-possession. “It seems, at least, that their villainy was wise, was prophetical.”

“Theresa!” his voice was stern, and harsh, and threatening—his brow as black as midnight.

“Pardon me!” she said. “Pardon me, Jasper; but you should make allowance for some feeling in a woman. I am, then, looked upon as a lost, fallen wretch, as a disgrace to my name and my sex, a concubine, a harlot—is it not so, Jasper?”

“Alas! alas! Theresa!”

“And you would have me?—speak!”

“I would not have you do it; God knows! it goes nigh to break my heart to think of it—I only tell you what alone can save us—”

“I understand—it needs not to mince the matter; what is it, then, that can save us—save you, I should say rather, and your friends?”

“That you should leave me, Theresa, and go where you would, so it were not within a hundred miles of this place—but better to France or Italy; all that wealth could procure you, you should have; and my love would be yours above all things, even although we never meet, until we meet in heaven.”

“Heaven, sir, is for the innocent and faithful, not for the liar and the traitor! But how shall this avail any thing to save you, if I consent to do it? I must know all; I must see all clearly, before I act.”

“Are you strong enough to bear what I shall say to you, my poor Theresa?”

“Else had I not borne to hear what you have said to me.”

“It is the secretary of state, then, who has discovered our plot. He is himself half inclined to join us; but he is a weak, interested, selfish being, although of vast wealth, great influence, and birth most noble. Now, he has a daughter⁠—”

“Ah!” the wretched girl started as if an ice-bolt had shot to her very heart, “and you—you would wed her!”

“That is to say, he would have me wed her; and on that condition joins our party. And so our lives, and England’s liberties, should be preserved by your glorious sacrifice.”

“I must think, then—I must think,” she answered, burying her head in her hands, in truth, to conceal the agony of her emotions, and to gain time, not for deliberation, but to compose her mind and clear her voice for speech.

And he stood gazing on her, with the cold, cutting eye, the calm, sarcastic sneer, of a very Mephistopheles, believing that she was about to yield, and inwardly mocking the very weakness, on which he had played, to his own base and cruel purposes.

But in a moment she arose and confronted him, pale, calm, majestical, most lovely in her extremity of sorrow, but firm as a hero or a martyr.

“And so,” she said, in a clear, cold, ringing voice, “this is the sacrifice you ask of me?—to sever myself from you forever—to go forth into the great, cruel, cold world alone, with a bleeding, broken heart, a blighted reputation, and a blasted name? All this I might endure, perhaps I would—but you have asked more of me, Jasper. You have asked me to confess myself a thing infamous and vile—a polluted wretch—not a wife, but a wanton! You have asked me, your own wedded wife, to write myself down, with my own hand, a harlot, and to stand by and look on at your marriage with another—as if I were the filthy thing you would name me. Than be that thing, Jasper, I would rather die a hundred fold; than call myself that thing, being innocent of deed or thought of shame, I had rather be it! Now, sir, are you answered? What, heap the name of harlot on my mother’s ashes! What, blacken my dead father’s stainless ’scutcheon! What—lie, before my God, to brand myself, the first of an honest line, with the strumpet’s stain of blackness! Never! never! though thou and I, and all the youth of England, were to die in tortures inconceivable; never! though England were to perish unredeemed! Now, sir, I ask you, are you answered?”

“I am,” he replied, perfectly unmoved, “I am answered, Theresa, as I hoped, as I expected to be.”

“What do you mean?—did you not ask me to do this thing?”

“I did not, Theresa. I told you what sacrifice might save us all. I did not ask you to make it. Nay, did I not tell you that I would not even suffer you to make it?”

“But you told me—you told me—God help me, for I think I shall go mad! Oh! tempt me no further, Jasper; try me no further. Is—is this true, that you have told me?”

“Every word—every word of it, my own best love,” answered the arch deceiver, “save only that I would not for my life, nay, for my soul, have suffered you to make the sacrifice I spoke of. Perish myself, my friends! perish England! nay, perish the whole earth, rather!”

“Then why so tempt me? Why so sorely, so cruelly try this poor heart, Jasper?”

“To learn if you were strong enough to share in my secrets—and you shall share them. We must fly, Theresa; not from Plymouth; not from any seaport, but from the wildest gorge in the wild coast of Devon. I have hired a fishing-boat to await us. We must ride forth alone, as if for a pleasure party, across the hills, to-morrow, and so make our way to the place appointed. If we escape, all shall be well—come the worst, as you said, my own Theresa, at least we shall die together.”

“Are you in earnest, Jasper?”

“On my soul! by the God who hears me!”

“And you will take me with you; you will not cast me from you; you will uphold me ever to be your own, your wedded wife?”

“I will—I will. Not for the universe! not for my own soul! would I lose you, my own, own Theresa!”

And he clasped her to his bosom, in the fondest, closest embrace, and kissed her beautiful lips eagerly, passionately. And she, half fainting in his arms, could only murmur, in the revulsion of her feelings, “Oh, happy! happy! too, too happy!”

Then he released her from his arms, and bade her go to bed, for it was waxing late, and she would need a good night’s rest to strengthen her for the toils of to-morrow’s journey.

And she smiled on him, and prayed him not to tarry long ere he joined her; and retired, still agitated and nervous from the long continuance of the dreadful mental conflict to which he had subjected her.

But he, when she had left the room, turned almost instantly as pale as ashes—brow, cheeks, nay, his very lips were white and cold. The actor was exhausted by his own exertions. The man shrunk from the task which was before him.

“The worse for her!” he muttered, through his hard-set teeth, “the worse for her! the obstinate, vain, willful fool! I would, by heaven! I would have saved her!”

Then he clasped his burning brow with the fingers of his left hand, as if to compress its fierce, rapid beating, and strode to and fro, through the narrow room, working the muscles of his clinched right hand, as if he grasped the hilt of sword or dagger.

“There is no other way,” he said at length; “there is no other way, and I must do it—must do it with my own hand. But—can I—can I—?—” he paused a moment, and resumed his troubled walk. Then halted, and muttered in a deep voice, “By hell! there is naught that a man cannot do; and I—am I not a man, and a right resolute, and stout one? It shall be so—it is her fate! her fate! Did not her father speak of it that night, as I lay weak and wounded on the bed? did I not dream it thrice thereafter, in that same bed? though then I understood it not. It shall be there—even there—where I saw it happen; so shall it pass for accident. It is fate!—who can strive against their fate?”

Again he was silent, and during that momentary pause, a deep, low, muttering roar was heard in the far distance—a breathless hush—and again, that long, hollow, crashing roll, that tells of elemental warfare.

Jasper’s eye flashed, and his whole face glared with a fearful and half frenzied illumination.

“It is,” he cried, “it is thunder! From point to point it is true! It is her fate—her fate!”

And with the words, he rushed from the room; and within ten minutes, was folded in the rapturous embrace of the snowy arms of her, whose doom of death he had decreed already in the secrets of his guilty soul.

——

CHAPTER III.

The Deed of Blood.

It rose again, but indistinct to view,

And left the waters of a purple hue.

Byron.

Throughout that livelong night, the thunder roared and rolled incessantly, and from moment to moment the whole firmament seemed to yawn asunder, showing its inner vaults, sheeted with living and coruscant fire, while ever and anon long, arrowy, forked tongues, of incandescent brightness, darted down from the zenith, cleaving the massive storm-clouds with a crash that made the whole earth reel and shudder.

Never, within the memory of man, had such a storm been known at that season of the year. Huge branches, larger than trees of ordinary size, were rent from the gigantic oaks by the mere force of the hurricane, and whirled away like straws before its fury. The rain fell not in drops or showers, but in vast sheeted columns. The rills were swollen into rivers, the rivers covered the lowland meadows, expanded into very seas. Houses were unroofed, steeples and chimneys hurled in ruin to the earth, cattle were killed in the open fields, unscathed by lightning, by the mere weight of the storm.

Yet through that awful turmoil of the elements, which kept men waking, and bold hearts trembling from the Land’s End to Cape Wrath, Jasper St. Aubyn slept as calmly as an infant, with his head pillowed on the soft bosom of his innocent and lovely wife. And she, though the tempest roared around, and the thunder crashed above her, so that she could not close an eye in sleep; though she believed that to-morrow she was about to fly from her native land, her home, never, perhaps, to see them more; though she looked forward to a life of toil and wandering, of hardship, and of peril as an exile’s wife, perhaps to a death of horror, as a traitor’s confederate, she blessed God with a grateful heart, that he had restored to her her husband’s love, and watched that dear sleeper, dreaming a waking dream of perfect happiness.

But him no dreams, either sleeping or waking, disturbed from his heavy stupor, or diverted from his hellish purpose. So resolute, so iron-like in its unbending pertinacity was that young, boyish mind, that having once resolved upon his action, not all the terrors of heaven or of hell could have turned him from it.

There lay beneath one roof, on one marriage bed, ay, clasped in one embrace, the resolved murderer, and his unconscious victim. And he had tasted the honey of her lips, had fondled, had caressed her to the last, had sunk to sleep, lulled by the sweet, low voice of her who, if his power should mate his will, would never look upon a second morrow.

And here, let no one say such things cannot be, save in the fancy of the rhapsodist or the romancer; such things are impossible—for not only is there nothing under the sun impossible to human power, or beyond the aim of human wickedness, but such things are and have been, and will be again, so long as human passion exists uncontrolled by principle.

Such things have been among ourselves, and in our own day, as he who writes has seen, and many of those who read must needs remember—and such things were that night at Widecomb.

With the first dappling of the dawn, the rage of the elements sunk into rest, the winds sighed themselves to sleep, the pelting torrents melted into a soft, gray mist; only the roar of the distant waters, mellowed into a strange fitful murmur, was heard in the general tranquillity which followed the loud uproar.

Wearied with her involuntary watching, Theresa fell asleep also, still clasping in her fond arms the miserable, guilty thing which she had sworn so fatally, and kept her vow so faithfully, to love, honor, and obey.

When the sun rose, the wretched man awoke from his deep and dreamless deep; and as his eye fell on that innocent, sweet face, calm as an infant’s, and serene, though full of deep thoughts and pure affections, he did start, he did shudder, for one second’s space—perhaps for that fleeting point of time, he doubted. But if it were so, he nerved himself again almost without an effort, disengaged himself gently from the embrace of her entwined arms, with something that sounded like a smothered curse, and stalked away in sullen gloom, leaving her buried in her last natural slumber.

Two hours had, perhaps, gone over, and the morning had come out bright and glorious after the midnight storm, the atmosphere was clear and breezy, the skies pure as crystal, and the glad sunshine glanced and twinkled with ten thousand gay reflections in the diamond rain-drops which still gemmed every blade of grass, and glistened in every flowret’s cup, when Theresa’s light step was heard coming down the stairs, and her sweet voice inquiring where she should find Master St. Aubyn.

“I am here,” answered his deep voice, which for the moment he made an effort to inflect graciously, and with the word he made his appearance from the door of his study, booted to the mid-thigh, and spurred; with a long, heavy rapier at his side, and a stout dagger counterbalancing it in the other side of his girdle. He was dressed in a full suit of plain black velvet, without any ornament or embroidery; and whether it was that the contrast made him look paler, or that the horror of what he was about to do, though insufficient to turn his hard heart, had sufficed to blanch his cheek and lips, I know not, but, as she saw his face, Theresa started as if she had seen a ghost.

“How pale you look, Jasper,” she said earnestly; “are you ill at ease, dearest, or anxious about me? If it be the last, vex not yourself, I pray you; for I am not in the least afraid, either of the fatigue or of the voyage. For the rest,” she added, with a bright smile, intended to reassure him, “I have long wished to see la belle France, as they call it; and to me the change of scene, so long as you are with me, dearest Jasper, will be but a change of pleasure. I hope I have not kept you waiting. But I could not sleep during the night for the thunder, and about daybreak I was overpowered by a heavy slumber. I did not even hear you leave me.”

“I saw that you slept heavily, my own love,” he made answer, “and was careful not to wake you, knowing what you would have to undergo to-day, and wishing to let you get all the rest you could before starting. But come, let us go to breakfast. We have little time to lose, the horses will be at the door in half an hour.”

“Come, then,” she answered, “I am ready;” and she took his arm as she spoke, and passed, leaning on him, through the long suit of rooms, which now, for above a year had been her home in mingled happiness and sorrow. “Heigho!” she murmured, with a half sigh, “dear Widecomb! dear, dear Widecomb, many a happy hour have I spent within your walls, and it goes hard with me to leave you. I wonder, shall I ever see you more.”

“Never,” replied the deep voice of her husband, in so strange a tone, that it made her turn her head and look at him quickly. A strange, dark spasm had convulsed his face, and was not yet passed from it, when her eye met his. She thought it was the effect of natural grief at leaving his fine place—the place of his birth—as an outlaw and an exile; and half repenting that she had so spoken as to excite his feelings, she hastened to soothe them, as she thought, by a gayer and more hopeful word.

“Never heed, dearest Jasper,” she said, pressing his arm, on which she hung, “if we do love old Widecomb, there are as fair places elsewhere, on the world’s green face, and if there were not, happy minds will aye find, or make happy places. And we, why spite of time and tide, wind and weather, we will be happy, Jasper. And I doubt not a moment, that we shall yet live to spend happy days once more in Widecomb.”

“I fear, never,” replied the young man, solemnly. It was a singular feeling—he did not repent, he did not falter or shrink in the least from his murderous purpose; but, for his life, he could not give her a hope, he could not say a word to cheer her, or deceive her, further than he was compelled to do in order to carry out his end.

The morning meal passed silently and sadly; for, in spite of all her efforts to be gay, and to make him lighter-hearted, his brow was clouded, and he would not converse; and she, fearing to vex him, or to trespass on what she believed to be his deep regret at leaving home, ceased to intrude upon his sorrow.

At length he asked her, “Are you ready?” and as he spoke, arose from the table.

“Oh yes,” she answered, “I am always ready when you want me. And see, Jasper,” she added, “here are my jewels,” handing him a small ebony casket “I thought they might be of use to us, in case of our wanting money; and yet I should grieve to part with them, for they are the diamonds you gave me that night we were wedded.”

He took it with a steady hand, and thrust it into the bosom of his dress, saying, with a forced smile, “You are ever careful, Theresa. But you have said nothing, I trust, to your maidens, of our going.”

“Surely not, Jasper, they believe I am going but for a morning’s ride. Do you not see that I have got on my new habit? You have not paid me one compliment on it, sir. I think you might at least have told me that I looked pretty in it. I know the day when you would have done so, without my begging it.”

“Is that meant for a reproach, Theresa?” he said, gloomily, “because—”

“A reproach, Jasper,” she interrupted him quickly, “how little you understand poor me! I hoped, by my silly prattle, to win you from your sorrow at leaving all that you love so dearly. But I will be silent⁠—”

“Do so, I pray you, for the moment.”

And without further words, he led her down the steps of the terrace, and helped her to mount her palfrey, a beautiful, slight, high-bred thing, admirably fitted to carry a lady round the trim rides of a park, but so entirely deficient in bone, strength, and sinew, that no animal could have been conceived less capable of enduring any continuous fatigue, or even of making any one strong and sustained exertion. Then he sprung to the back of his own noble horse, a tall, powerful, thorough-bred hunter, of about sixteen hands in height, with bone and muscle to match, capable, as it would appear, of carrying a man-at-arms in full harness through a long march or a pitched battle.

Just as he was on the point of starting, he observed that one of his dogs, a favorite greyhound, was loose, and about to follow him, when he commanded him to be taken up instantly, rating the man who had held the horses very harshly, and cursing him soundly for disobeying his orders.

Then, when he saw that he was secure against the animal’s following him, he turned his horse’s head to the right hand, toward the great hills to the westward, saying aloud, so that all the bystanders could hear him,

“Well, lady fair, since we are only going for a pleasure ride, suppose we go up toward the great deer-park in the forest. By the way,” he added, turning in his saddle to the old steward, who was standing on the terrace, “I desired Haggerston, the horse-dealer, to meet me here at noon, about a hunter he wants to sell me. If I should not be back, give him some dinner, and detain him till I return. I shall not be late, for I fancy my lady will not care to ride very far.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Jasper,” she replied, with an arch smile, thinking to aid him in his project. “It is so long since I have ridden out with you, that I may wish to make a day of it. Come, let us start.”

And she gave her jennet its head, and cantered lightly away over the green, her husband following at a trot of his powerful hunter; and in a few minutes they were both hidden from the eyes of the servants, among the clumps of forest-trees and the dense thickets of the chase.

At something more than three miles’ distance from Widecomb House, to the westward, there is a pass in the hills, where a bridle-road crosses the channel of the large brook, which I have named so often, and which, at a point far lower down, was the scene of Jasper’s ill-omened introduction to Theresa Allan.

This bridle-road, leading from the sparse settlements on Dartmoor to the nearest point of the seacoast, was a rough, dangerous track, little frequented except by the smugglers and poachers of that region, and lay for the most part considerably below the level of the surrounding country, between wooded hills, or walk of dark gray rock.

The point at which it crosses the stream is singularly wild and romantic, for the road and the river both are walled by sheer precipices of gray, shattered, limestone rock, nearly two hundred feet in height, perfectly barren, bare, and treeless, except on the summits, which are covered with heather and low, stunted shrubbery.

The river itself, immediately above the ford, by which the road passes it, descends by a flight of rocky steps, or irregular shelvy rapids, above a hundred feet within three times as many yards, and then spreads out into a broad, open pool, where its waters, not ordinarily above three feet deep, glance rapidly, but still and unbroken, over a level pavement of smooth stone, almost as slippery as ice. Scarce twenty yards below this, there is an abrupt pitch of sixty feet in perpendicular height, over which the river rushes at all times in a loud foaming waterfall, but after storms among the hills, in a tremendous roaring cataract.

The ford is never a safe one, owing to the insecure foothold afforded by the slippery limestone, but when the river is in flood, no one in his senses would dream of crossing it.

Yet it was by this road that Jasper had persuaded his young wife that they could alone hope to escape with any chance of safety, and to this point he was leading her. And she, though she knew the pass, and all its perils, resolute to accompany him through life, and, if need should be, to death itself, rode onward with him, cheerful and apparently fearless.

They reached its brink, and the spectacle it afforded was, indeed, fearful. The river swollen by the rains of the past night, though, like all mountain torrents, rising and falling rapidly, it was already subsiding, came down from the moors with an arrowy rush, clear and transparent as glass, yet deep in color as the rich brown cairn-gorm. The shelvy rapids above the ford were one sheet of snow-white foam, and in the ford itself the foam-flakes wheeled round and round, as in a huge boiling caldron, while below it the roar of the cataract was louder than the loudest thunder, and the spray rolling upward from the whirlpool beneath, clung to the crags above in mist-wreaths so dense that their summits were invisible.

“Good God!” cried Theresa, turning deadly pale, as she looked on the fearful pool. “We are lost. It is impossible.”

“By heaven!” he answered, impetuously, “I must pass it, or stay and be hanged. You can do as you will, Theresa.”

“But is it possible?”

“Certainly it is. Do you think I would lead you into certain death? But see, I will ride across and return, that you may see how easy it is, to a brave heart and a cool hand.”

And, confident in the strength of his horse and in his own splendid horsemanship, he plunged in dauntlessly, and keeping up stream near to the foot of the upper rapids, struggled through it, and returned to her without much difficulty, though the water rose above the belly of his horse.

He heard, however, that a fresh storm was rattling and roaring, even now, among the hills above, and he knew by that sign that a fresh torrent was even now speeding its way down the chasm.

There was no time to be lost—it was now or never. He cast an eager glance around—a glance that read and marked every thing—as he came to land; save only Theresa, there was not a human being within sight.

“You see,” he said, with a smile, “there is no danger.”

“I see,” she answered, merrily. “Forgive me for being such a little coward. But you will lead Rosabella, wont you, Jasper?”

“Surely,” he answered. “Come.”

And catching the curb-rein of the pony with his left hand, and guiding his own horse with his right, holding his heavy loaded hunting-whip between his teeth, he led her down into the foaming waters, so that her palfrey was between himself and the cataract.

It was hard work, and a fearful struggle for that slender, light-limbed palfrey to stem that swollen river; and the long skirt of Theresa’s dress, holding the water, dragged the struggling animal down toward the waterfall. Still, despite every disadvantage, it would have battled to the other side, had fair play been given it.

But when they reached the very deepest and most turbulent part of the pool, under pretence of aiding it, Jasper lifted the jennet’s fore-legs, by dint of the strong, sharp curb, clear off the bottom. The swollen stream came down with a heavier swirl, its hind legs were swept from under it, in an instant, and with a piercing scream of agony and terror, the palfrey was whirled over the brink of the fall.

But, as it fell, unsuspicious of her husband’s horrible intent, the wretched girl freed her foot from the stirrup, and throwing herself over to the right hand, with a wild cry, “Save me! save me, my God! save me, Jasper!” caught hold of his velvet doublet with both hands, and clung to him with the tenacious grasp of the death-struggle.

Even then—even then, had he relented, one touch of the spur would have carried his noble horse clear through the peril.

But no! the instant her horse fell, he shifted his reins to the left hand, and grasped his whip firmly in the right; and now, with a face of more than fiendish horror, pale, comprest, ghastly, yet grim and resolute as death, he reared his hand on high, and poised the deadly weapon.

Then, even then, her soft blue eyes met his, full, in that moment of unutterable terror, of hope and love, even then overpowering agony. She met his eyes, glaring with wolfish fury; she saw his lifted hand, and even then would have saved his soul that guilt.

“Oh no!” she cried, “oh no! I will let go—I will drown, if you wish it; I will—I will, indeed! Oh God! do not you—do not you—kill me, Jasper.”

And even as she spoke, she relaxed her hold, and suffered herself to glide down into the torrent; but it was all too late—the furious blow was dealt—with that appalling sound, that soft, dead, crushing plash, it smote her full between those lovely eyes.

“Oh God!—my God!—forgive—Jasper! Jasper!”—and she plunged deep into the pool; but as the waters swept her over the cataract’s verge, they raised her corpse erect; and its dead face met his, with the eyes glaring on his own yet wide open, and the dread, gory spot between them, as he had seen it in his vision years before.

He stood, motionless, reigning his charger in the middle of the raging current, unmindful of his peril, gazing, horror-stricken, on the spot where he had seen her last—his brain reeled, he was sick at heart.

A wild, piercing shout, almost too shrill to be human, aroused him from his trance of terror. He looked upward almost unconsciously, and it seemed to him that the mist had been drawn up like a curtain, and that a man in dark garb stood gazing on him from the summit of the rocks.

If it were so, it was but for a second’s space. The fog closed in thicker again than before, the torrent came roaring down in fiercer, madder flood, and wheeling his horse round, and spurring him furiously, it was all that Jasper St. Aubyn could do, by dint of hand and foot, and as iron a heart as ever man possessed, to avoid following his victim to her watery grave.

Once safe, he cast one last glance to the rocks, to the river, but he saw, heard nothing. He whirled the bloody whip over the falls, plunged his spurs, rowel-deep, into the horse’s sides, and with hell in his heart, he galloped, like one pursued by the furies of the slain, back, alone, to Widecomb.

——

CHAPTER IV.

The Vengeance.

A change came o’er the spirit of my dream,

The wanderer was returned.

Byron.

It was not yet high noon, when, wet from spur to shoulder with mud and spray, bloody with spurring, spotted from head to heel with gory foam-flakes from his jaded horse’s wide-distended jaws, and quivering nostrils, bareheaded, pale as death, and hoarse with shouting, Jasper St. Aubyn galloped frantically up to the terrace-steps of Widecomb House; and springing to the ground, reeled, and would have fallen headlong had he not been caught in the arms of one of the serving men, who came running down the stone stairs to assist him.

As soon as he could collect breath to speak, “Call all!” he cried, “call all! Ring the great bell, call all—get ladders, ropes—run—ride—she is gone—she is lost—swept over the black falls at Hawkshurt! Oh God! oh God!” and he fell, as it seemed, senseless to the earth.

Acting—sheer acting, all!

They raised him and carried him up stairs, and laid him on the bed—on her bed—the bed whereon he had kissed her lips last night, and clasped her lovely form which was now haply entwined in the loathsome coils of the slimy mud-eels.

He shuddered. He could not endure it. He opened his eyes again, and feigning to recover his senses, chid the men from his presence, and again commanded, so peremptorily, that none dare disobey him, that every servant—man, woman, maid or boy—should begone to the place he had named, nor return till they brought back his lost angel’s body.

They believed that he was mad; but mad or sane, his anger was so terrible at all times, and now so fierce, so frantic and appalling, that none dared to gainsay him.

Within half an hour after his return, save himself, there was not a human being left within the walls of Widecomb Manor.

Then he arose and descended slowly, but with a firm foot and unchanged brow, into the great library of the Hall. It was a vast, gloomy, oblong chamber, nearly a hundred feet in length, wainscoted and shelved with old black-oak, and dimly lighted by a range of narrow windows, with dark-stained glass and heavily wrought stone mullions.

There was a dull wood-fire smouldering under the yawning arch of the chimney-piece, and in front of the fire stood an old oaken table, and a huge leathern arm-chair.

Into this Jasper cast himself, with his back to the door, which he had left open, in the absence of his mind. For nearly an hour he sat there without moving hand or foot, gazing gloomily at the fire. But, at the end of that time, he started, and seemed to recollect himself, opened the drawer of the writing-table, and took out of it the record of his wretched victim’s marriage.

He read it carefully, over and over again, and then crushed it in his hand, saying, “Well, all is safe now, THANK GOD!” Yes, he thanked God for the success of the murder he had done! “But here goes to make assurance doubly sure.”

And with the word he was about to cast the paper which he held into the ashes, when the hand of a man, who had entered the room and walked up to him with no very silent or stealthy step, while he was engrossed too deeply by his own guilty thoughts to mark very certainly any thing that might occur without, was laid with a grip like that of an iron vice upon his shoulder.

He started and turned round; but as he did so, the other hand of the stranger seized his right hand which held the marriage record, grasping it right across the knuckles, and crushed it together by an action so powerful and irresistible, that the fingers involuntarily opened, and the fatal document fell to the ground.

Instantly the man cast Jasper off with a violent jerk which sent him to a distance of three or four yards, stooped, gathered up the paper, thrust it into his bosom, and then folding his arms across his stalwort breast, stood quietly confronting the murderer, but with the quietude of the expectant gladiator.

Jasper stared at the swarthy, sun-burned face, the coal-black hair clipped short upon the brow, the flashing eyes, that pierced him like a sword. He knew the face—he almost shuddered at the knowledge—yet, for his life, he could not call to mind where or when he met him.

But he stared only for an instant; insulted—outraged—he, in his own house! His ready sword was in his hand forthwith—the stranger was armed likewise with a long broadsword and a two-edged dagger, and heavy pistols at his girdle; yet he moved not, nor made the slightest movement to put himself on the defensive.

“Draw, dog!” cried Jasper, furiously. “Draw and defend yourself, or I will slay you where you stand.”

“Hold!” replied the other steadily. “There is time enough—I will not baulk you. Look at me!—do you not know me?”

“Know you?—not I; by heaven! some rascal smuggler, I trow—come to rob while the house is in confusion! but you have reckoned without your host this time. You leave not this room alive.”

“That as it may be,” said the other, coolly. “I have looked death in the face too often to dread much the meeting; but ere I die, I have some work to do. So you do not know me?”

“Not a whit I, I tell you.”

“Then is the luck mine, for I know you right well, young sir!”

“And for whom do you know me?”

“For a d—d villain always!” the man answered, “two hours since, for Theresa Allan’s murderer! and now, thanks to this paper, which, please God, I shall keep, for Theresa Allan’s—husband!”

He spoke the last words in a voice of thunder, and at the same time drew and cocked, at a single motion, a pistol with each hand.

“You know too much—you know too much!” cried Jasper, furious but undaunted. “One of us two must die, ere either leaves this room.”

“It was for that end I came hither! Look at me now, and know Durzil Bras-de-fer—Theresa Allan’s cousin! your wife’s rejected lover once, and now—your wife’s avenger!”

“Away! I will not fight you!”

“Then, coward, with my own hands will I hang you on the oak tree before your own door; and on your breast I will pin this paper, and under it will write, ‘Her Murderer, taken in the fact, tried, condemned, executed by me,

“ ‘Durzil Bras-de-fer.’ ”

“Never!”

“Take up your pistols, then—they lie there on the table. We will turn, back to back, and walk each to his own end of the room, then turn and fire—if that do not the work, let the sword finish it.”

“Amen!” said St. Aubyn, “and the Lord have mercy on your soul, for I will send it to your cousin in five minutes.”

“And may the Fiend of Hell have yours—as he will, if there be either Fiend or God. Are you ready?”

“Ay.”

“Then off with you, and when you reach the wall, turn and fire.”

And as he spoke, he turned away, and walked slowly and deliberately with measured strides toward the door by which he had entered.

Before he had taken six steps, however, a bullet whistled past his ear, cutting a lock off his hair in its passage, and rebounded from the wall, flattened at his feet. Jasper had turned at once, and fired at him with deliberate aim.

“Ha! double murderer! die in your treason!” and the sailor leveled his pistol in turn, and pulled the trigger; had it gone off, Jasper St. Aubyn’s days were ended then and there; but no flash followed the sparks from the flint—and he cast the useless weapon from him.

At once they both raised their second pistol, and again Jasper’s was discharged with a quick, sharp report; and almost simultaneously with the crack, a dull sound, as of a blow, followed it; and he knew that his ball had taken effect on his enemy.

Again Durzil’s pistol failed him; and then, for the first time, Jasper observed that the seaman’s clothes were soaked with water. He had swam that rapid stream, and followed his beloved Theresa’s murderer, almost with the speed of the stout horse that bore him home.

Not a muscle of Durzil’s face moved, not a sinew of his frame quivered, yet he was shot through the body, mortally—and he knew it.

“Swords!” he cried, “swords!”

And bounding forward, he met the youth midway, and at the first collision, sparks flew from the well-tempered blades.

It was no even conflict, no trial of skill—three deadly passes of the sailor, as straight and almost as swift as lightning, with a blade so strong, and a wrist so adamantine, that no slight of Jasper’s could divert them, were sent home in tierce—one in his throat, “That for your lie!” shouted Durzil; a second in the sword arm, “That for your coward blow!” a third, which clove the very cavity of his heart asunder, “That for your life!”

Ten seconds did not pass, from the first crossing of their blades until Jasper lay dead upon the floor, flooding his own hearth-stone with his life-blood.

Durzil leaned on his avenging blade, and looked down upon the dead.

“It is done! it is done just in time! But just! for I am sped likewise. May the Great God have mercy on me, and pardon me my sins, as I did this thing not in hatred, but in justice and in honor! Ah—I am sick—sick!”

And he dropped down into the arm-chair in which Jasper was sitting as he entered; and though he could hardly hold his head up for the deadly faintness, and the reeling of his eyes and brain, by a great effort he drew out the marriage record from his breast—Jasper’s ball had pierced it, and it was dappled with his own life-blood—and smoothed it out fairly, and spread it on the board before him.

Then he fell back, and closed his eyes, and lay for a long time motionless; but the slow, sick throbbing of his heart showed that he was yet alive, though passing rapidly away.

Once he raised his dim eyes, and murmured, “They tarry—they tarry very long. I fear me, they will come too late.”

But within ten minutes after he had spoken, the sound of a multitude might be heard approaching, and a quick, strong, decided step of one man coming on before all the rest.

Within the last few minutes, Durzil had seemed to lose all consciousness and power. He was, indeed, all but dead.

But at these sounds he roused like a dying war-horse to the trumpet; and as the quick step crossed the threshold, he staggered to his feet, drew his hand across his eyes, and cried, with his old sonorous voice,—it was his last effort—

“Is that you, lieutenant?”

“Ay, ay, captain.”

“Have you found her?”

“She is here,” said the young seaman, pointing with his hand to the corpse, which they were just bearing into the room.

“And he—ha! ha! ha! ha!—he is—there!” and he pointed, with a triumphant wafture of his gory sword, toward Jasper’s carcass, and then, with the blood spouting from his mouth and nostrils, fell headlong.

His officer raised him instantly, and as the flow of blood ceased, he recovered his speech for a moment. He pointed to the gaping crowd,

“Have—have you—told them—lieu—lieutenant?”

“No, sir.”

“Tell—tell them—l-let me hear you.”

“You see that wound in her forehead—you saw it all, from the first,” he said, to the crowd, who were gazing in mute horror at the scene. “I told you, when I took you to the body, that I saw her die, and would tell you how she died, when the time should come. The time has come. He—that man, whose body lies there bleeding, and whose soul is now burning in Tophet, murdered her in cold blood—beat her brains out with his loaded hunting-whip. I—I, Hubert Manvers, saw him do it.”

There was a low, dull murmur in the crowd, not of dissent or disbelief, but of doubt.

“And who slew master?” exclaimed black Jem Alderly, coming doggedly forward; “this has got to be answered for.”

“It is answered for, Alderly,” said Durzil, in a faint but audible voice. “I did it—I slew him, as he has slain me. I am Durzil Olifaunt, whom men call Bras-de-fer. Do any of you chance to know me?”

“Ay, ay, all on us! all on us!” shouted half the room; for the frank, gallant, bold young seaman had ever been a general favorite. “Huzza! for Master Durzil!”

And in spite of the horrors of the scene, in spite of the presence of the dead, a loud cheer followed.

“Hush!” he cried, “hush! this is no time for that, and no place. I am a dying man. There is not five minutes’ life in me. Listen to me. Did any of you ever hear me tell a lie?”

“Never! never!”

“I should scarce, therefore, begin to do so now, with heaven and hell close before my eyes. Hubert Manvers spoke truly. I also saw him murder her—murder his own wife—for such she was; therefore I killed him!” He gasped for a moment, gathered his breath again, and pointing to the table, “that paper, Hubert—quick—that paper—read it—I—am going—quick!”

The young man understood his superior’s meaning in an instant, caught the paper from the table, beckoned two or three of the older men about him, among others, Geoffrey, the old steward, and read aloud the record of the unhappy girl’s marriage.

At this moment the young vicar of Widecomb entered the room, and his eyes falling on the paper, “That is my father’s hand-writing,” he cried; “this is the missing leaf of my church register!”

“Was she not—was she not—his—wife?” cried Bras-de-fer, raising himself feebly on his elbow, and gazing with his whole soul in his dying eyes at the youthful vicar, and at the horror-stricken circle.

“She was—she was assuredly, his lawful wife, and such I will uphold her,” said the young man, solemnly. “Her fame shall suffer no wrong any longer—her soul, I trust, is with her God already—for she was innocent, and good, and humble, as she was lovely and loving. Peace be with her.”

“Poor, poor lady!” cried several of the girls who were present, heart-stricken, at the thought of their own past conduct, and of her unvarying sweetness. “Poor, poor lady!”

“Hubert—Hubert—I—I have cleared her—char—her character, I have avenged her death; lay me beside her. In ten—ten minutes I shall be—God—bless—bless you, Hubert—with Theresa! A—amen!”

He was dead. He had died in his duty—which was justice—truth—vengeance!

SUMMER’S NIGHT.

———

BY SAM. C. REID, JR. AUTHOR OF “SCOUTING EXPEDITIONS OF THE TEXAS RANGERS,” ETC.

———

The busy hum of day has passed,

And countless millions with the sun

Have set, for wo or weal the cast⁠—

What’s said is said—what’s done is done.

And with the purple and the gold

There sinks many a soul to rest;

Hopes are wrecked—all fates are told⁠—

The rich made poor, the poor made blessed.

Twilight’s beauteous mantle now

The earth enwraps, near and afar⁠—

Casts her influence o’er each brow,

While peeps from heaven a single star!

That star to some is life and hope,

To others though, despair and gloom⁠—

Each twinkle reads the horoscope

Of life, from cradle to the tomb!

Night now takes Twilight by the hand

And leads her to her own blue sphere,

Then calls forth her sentinel band⁠—

At once ten thousand stars appear!

Hail, Queen Goddess! then shout the band

As, rising in her silvery car,

The Moon, with sceptre in her hand,

Bids Night her veil aside to draw!

Now blessed are they who can enjoy

An hour of such a summer’s night⁠—

Speak, ye dungeons, life’s alloy,

Ye sick, diseased, ye barred of sight!

Oh! for a crevice in the wall,

To let one ray of moonlight in,

’Twould ease their hearts, and hope recall,

While they repented of their sin.

And restless, turning on his bed

The wasted form cries out with pain,

As raising up his fevered head,

Oh, God! that I were well again.

And oh, the blind! none feel for ye,

Shut out from scenes so lovely bright,

Most painful thought—they cannot see⁠—

Their night is day—their day is night!

The streets are crowded with the gay,

The voice and laugh of girls are heard,

Mellowed by the silver ray

Of happy thought or witty word.

Speak! ye millions, who joy and gaze

Upon the silvery charms of night,

Can ye a tear of sorrow raise

For those deprived of scenes so bright?

But why ask ye? no themes like these

Your thoughts make sad—of other things

Ye think, while onward wafts the breeze

And the night bird sweetly sings.

And yet, there is many a heart

To whom the moonbeams give no light,

Those strings with wo do almost part,

Swept rudely by the cold world’s blight.

No soothing ray melts o’er their souls,

No breeze lulls sweetly o’er those chords,

That beat and sigh, like sea o’er shoals,

For sympathy’s kind, loving words.

A blue spot in a stormy sky,

From which a star gleams purely bright,

Is like the smile or tearful eye

To those whose hearts are dark with night.

Then feel for th’ pris’ner, sick and blind⁠—

E’en the forest-rose, the desert-tree,

The sprig of grass, kissed by the wind,

Receive its kindest sympathy.

Oh, Summer’s night—man’s Eden hours!

All Nature thrills with thy delight,

Th’ greenwood, rocky streams and flowers,

Th’ murm’ring sea, th’ beach, the mountain height.

Then give thy soul’s gratitude to Him

Who made the orb “to rule the night,”

And with the prayer of Cherubim

Pour forth thy heart’s inmost delight.

And learn to feel for another’s wo,

While to Heaven thou breath’st thy prayer⁠—

Foul prejudice from thy breast forego,

And let sympathy reign ever there.

THE DEATH OF THE YEAR.
Engraved expressly for Graham’s Magazine by W. E. Tucker

THE DEATH OF THE YEAR.

———

BY HENRY B. HIRST.

———

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

It was a dreary night

In the latter years of time,

When a man, with shrunken limbs

And a forehead white with rime—

With the rime of weary hours

Whose paths were not of flowers—

And a beard of snowy white,

Walked slowly through the night.

Pale Hecate, overhead,

Shone coldly on his brow;

His eye was sunken and dim,

His cheek had lost its glow,

But his step, so full of pride,—

The manhood of his stride,

Gave this antiquated thing

The appearance of a king.

The moon went sadly down

To a level with his way,

And the heavens became opprest

With vapors dark and gray

As Saturn, with his beard,

And glass, and scythe, appeared:

The old man journeyed on,

Growing weaker and more wan.

Like a shadow, on his path

With a silence, such as dwells

In the desolate dell of death

Where we hear not even our knells,

Did Saturn slowly pass

With his fatal scythe and glass:

The traveler looked not back,

But kept steadily on his track.

From the earth which lay below,

Until then so black and dumb,

Came the roar of many a gun,

With the roll of many a drum,

And the mingling strains of lute,

Clarion, cymbal, fife and flute;

And among them, like a knell,

Rose the clamor of a bell!

The wanderer heard the sound,

And with patient, suffering eyes

Gazed reproachfully on high,

Through the dark, unpitying skies;

But Saturn raised his steel

And the old man ceased to feel;

And they laid along his bier

The cadaverous Old Year.

THE COTTAGE.

———

BY J. HUNT, JR.

———

How pleasing it is, in this world of digression,

To pause, and to ponder some period fled;

The home of my infancy made an impression

Which only will perish when mem’ry is dead.

That rough, rugged farm, how dear did I love it,⁠—

The barn by the orchard, and spring by the rill;

No spot upon earth which I so much covet,

As that where our Cottage once stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The one-story Cottage, that stood on the hill.

Beside its broad hearth-stone, at evening, I’ve listened

The tale that my grandfather told of the wars;

He’d speak of his battles, while tears his eyes glistened,

And prove what he stated, by showing his scars!

’Twas then that my young heart beat high for the glory

Of aiding some measure, Fame’s parchment to fill,⁠—

By giving in song, or relating in story,

My love for that Cottage, which stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The time-honored Cottage, that stood on the hill.

That time-honored Cottage—no dream or delusion⁠—

For ’neath its old roof dwelt affection and friends;

The seat of contentment and quiet seclusion,

Where goodness found favor, and evil amends.

What would I give could I once more regain it,

And have the same feelings my bosom to fill?

Alas! it’s in ruins—love cannot retain it⁠—

Tears gush for that Cottage which stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The one-story Cottage, that stood on the hill.

Though parted by distance, those scenes of my childhood

Rise fresh in my mind, when to them I recur⁠—

I fancy I visit the vale and the wildwood,

Where flowers yield perfume, like India’s myrrh;⁠—

And then, in the warmth of the deepest emotion,

I stand as in youth on the banks of that rill,

And hear in its gurgle a song of devotion.

With mine, for the Cottage that stood on the hill.

The rudely built Cottage, the old-fashioned Cottage,

The one-story Cottage, that stood on the hill.

THREE PICTURES:

SUNRISE—NOONDAY—NIGHT.

———

BY CAROLINE C——.

———

“Like a clear fountain, his desire

Exults, and leaps toward the light,

In every drop it says ‘Aspire!’

Striving for more ideal height.”

—

“Looking within myself, I note how thin

A plank of station, chance, or prosperous fate,

Doth fence me from the clutching waves of sin;

In my own heart I find the worst man’s mate!”

J. R. Lowell.

An artist was passing slowly through the thorough-fare of a great city, where for a few days he was sojourning.

He was a young man, and the few years of his life, if they had proved heavy and sorrowful in experience, had at least left no dark impress on his forehead. His figure was strikingly elegant, and the face manly, and very beautiful; it might well have been taken to represent the Genius of Thought, so calm, elevated, and ennobled by spiritual excellence was it.

The artist was a poor man; you could guess that by the worn garments in which he was attired, for from the figure, bearing, and whole appearance of the youth, it was evident that he was not of that class of geniuses who affect shabbiness in personal appearance, in the name of eccentricity.

And he was an ambitious young man, too. A glance into his studio, where constantly and diligently he toiled in his vocation, had told you that. It would seem by the constant emendations he would make, and by the finished style he labored to impart to all he did, that nothing short of superior excellence or perfection in his art, would satisfy him.

He has come into the open air this morning, not because he is wearied with his work, for it is a source of continual delight to him—neither in search of amusement, but to ponder on a thought which has long harbored in his mind—three pictures should be his fame. From his quiet studio he would send into the world a moral lesson that should delight and instruct, and leave in the world an abiding moral influence. Not only did Martin Gray long to win for himself a proud name on the earth, but with the poets and the preachers he would fain lift up his voice and teach—he also would be a priest and a reformer, and by his works he would testify to the infinite beauty of holiness and virtue.

The artist’s heart beat joyfully as he revolved this idea in his mind—his hope was high—his hand was skillful.

“If my name only ranks with the masters’ some day—if I can do some real and substantial good in my generation! I cannot labor too hard to secure these ends,” he said to himself as he passed, unconscious of the noise and confusion about him, along the street.

Mechanically turning at the first corner, Martin moved on to quarters of the city where the strife and confusion of life were more subdued.

At once he stood silent, as though changed suddenly to marble, then a heart-cheering cry of joy and surprise burst from him, and “I have found it! I have found it!” he cried—“here is sunrise at last!”

There were children playing in the street, poor little children, boys and girls, whose only play-ground was that hot and dusty place. But in the person of one, the quick eye of the artist detected extraordinary beauty, though decked in rags almost as extraordinary.

The unconscious child was a girl, six or seven years of age, faultless in form and feature, the very embodiment of one of Martin Gray’s ideals.

It was not solely the exquisite loveliness of the child’s face, though the shape and coloring were perfect—but beside the dark rich hair, which fell in such unheeded profusion on the shoulders of its little mistress—and beside the deep, sapphire-blue of the large languid eyes, and the classic regularity of every feature, there was an expression, a soul look, which intensified her natural beauty, and stamped her as the owner of an intellect whose range was far higher than that reached by any of her playmates.

“Tell me your name, little angel,” said the artist, in the excitement of his delighted surprise.

“My name is Alice Flynn,” was the prompt answer, accompanied by a smile and frank look of inquiry, which read very plainly “what is your name—and what do you want of me?”

“Have you a mother? Where does she live? Go with me to your home—I must speak with her.”

The child answered these queries by at once leaving her playmates—the artist followed her quickly, and in a few moments they entered a narrow byway. Passing a short distance through it, little Alice paused before a shabby old frame house, which seemed every day on the point of bidding an eternal farewell to all things terrestrial.

“This is the place where we live, sir,” she said, with the sweetest voice in the world; “will you come in?”

“The little girl is yours, ma’am, I believe,” said Martin, as he stood in the presence of what seemed to him an ogress—a gigantic woman who certainly could lay but little claim to beauty, when compared with the “child-angel” who called her mother.

“Yes—she wasn’t lost was she? Or was she up to mischief in the street, just tell me that?”

“No, no—nothing of the kind,” said the artist quickly—but not in the least daunted by the washer-woman’s unamiable greeting—“I was struck with her appearance—and now that I have at last an opportunity of accomplishing an object I have long contemplated, I trust you will not object.”

“Lord, sir, what is it ye want—speak it out quick can’t ye—my work is waiting for me, don’t ye see? Do you want the child’s front teeth, or her hair? I’ve sold her hair twice to a barber, but her teeth—”

“You mistake me,” exclaimed Martin Gray, sharply, for he was disgusted with the cruel words of the old beldam. “I am an artist—I would like to take her likeness—will you permit me to do so?”

“No! what would you do with it? The girl’s about spoiled now with people’s telling her how beautiful she is. To be sure the child is well enough”—this with a sort of brutish pride—“in looks, but beauty don’t give us bread, and her good looks only spiles her—she’s getting proud and hateful since people have told her so much about it, the little fool!”

“If that is so, I fear it is not the wisest course to let her play so much in the street with other little folks,” said Martin.

This approach to advice aroused the woman’s ire. “Where’s she to be kept, I’d like to know that? A poor woman like me as arns her bread by the sweat of her face has little time to be looking about after the young ones. People like me can’t keep their children to home like other folks, who have plenty of room indoor and out. So you see, young man, your advice aint worth much any how.”

“Of course, madam, you know your own business best; but, seriously, you cannot mean to refuse my earnest request. I assure you it will be the greatest favor to me if you will suffer me to take the child’s picture. I am willing to pay you for the privilege.”

“Then it shall be done,” said the woman, brightening up. “How much will you offer?”

“Two dollars,” answered the young man, “and I will pay you more at some future day—but I also am poor.”

Poor fellow, he spoke the truth indeed, for the two dollars were just half the contents of his old faded purse at that moment.

“Well, she may go for that. Here Alice, you’re gwine to have your face painted—let me brush you up a little.”

“No—no, I pray madam, leave her to me. I will take her to my studio as she is; I would not have her appearance changed in the least—the drapery of the child does not need any alteration, I will bring her to you again in an hour.”

“Well, she’ll be safe enough, I ’spose, go on.”

“Are you going to paint my face, sir? What for? Will it hurt me?” asked Alice Flynn as she, with Martin, passed along the streets hand in hand.

“Not your face, child,” answered the artist, “I’m going to paint a face like yours—that is all.”

“What for?”

“To hang up in my room, and then perhaps to sell it some day for a great deal of money.”

“Sell me! sell my face!” and the little innocent laughed, and wondered why any body should want to buy a face like hers!

Martin, too busy with his own thoughts, made no answer to her many exclamations of astonishment and wonder. Two steps at a time, with the girl in his arms, did the delighted youth ascend the three steep and narrow flights of stairs which led to the poor little attic room he dignified with the “name, style, and title” of studio.

A barren place it seemed to little Alice Flynn, for such a nice gentleman to live in—indeed scarce a whit better than her own poor home was it.

“Are you poor, too?” she asked, with childlike confidence—and a most unchildish and unnatural sadness was in her voice as she spoke.

“Yes, I am poor—I paint pictures for a living, Alice. I shall not grow rich in a day,” said the artist, and his words were uttered with not quite the usual, light-hearted happy tone.

Probably my reader will not soon, if ever, see the original painting executed on that day which ever after remained a date so memorable in the recollections of Martin Gray. Let me, therefore, here state that the Sunrise was a portrait quite dissimilar to those we usually see of young children.

“Now lie quietly, Alice, for a moment,” said Martin. He had placed her on the ancient lounge, the only reasonable piece of furniture in the room. “Now close your eyes—ah! not so close, let them be half open, as though you were just waking up—now I will paint a picture the world shall wonder at! Yes, I also will make a Sunrise!”

Quietly and motionless, as though bereft of life, the child lay and watched the artist’s movements; in him she forgot herself, consequently had none of that intense consciousness of expression so often perceivable in the portraits of people who become immortalized, and perpetuated on—canvas!

What a sight to see! the lonely desolate places where the impoverished children of Genius, the painters, sculptors, and poets, have with patient but almost hopeless toil wrought out their wonder-works!

Oh! eyes whose range of vision was circumscribed by four contracted walls, have looked on scenes of rarer and richer beauty than travelers in many climes have seen; and voices, husky, tuneless with want and grief, have breathed, even when tortured with the death-agony, songs, that the world has hushed its mighty voice, and its tumultuous heart to hear; warriors have conquered on battle-fields, whose inspiration was the song that burst from the dying son of poverty, while pain and fever prostrated him, who kept back by force of mind the advance of death, until the strain of glory should be fully and perfectly conceived!

An hour passed, and not for one moment had the hand of the artist paused—it is enough to say that even he was satisfied with the progress he had made in those swift-winged sixty minutes.

Upon the easy couch Alice had fallen asleep, unperceived by the young painter—he awakened her with some regret, but the time he had promised to keep her with him was passed, and Martin had little inclination to brave the wrath of the mother’s tongue. Thoughtfully he led the child to her home, and when he parted with her there, it was with a heart full of sorrow, for he knew that a life of hardship, and want, and temptation, was in store for the beautiful girl.

“Poor and handsome,” thought he—“God protect her! To be sure it would be a sad sight were the innumerable host of poor people all hideously ugly—and as to the necessity of the thing, such folks would seem to require the simple pleasure of being admired, inasmuch as they are debarred from participating in all amusements and enjoyments that cost money, and beauty costs nothing. And yet Heaven have mercy on the poor family that boasts of a beauty! as surely as the sunshine, pride will creep in under the door-sill or by the window, and certainly in a covert manner. The pretty daughter must be prettily dressed, even at the expense, and by the self-denial of the more plainly gifted remainder of the family. Then come struggles, heart-bitterness and envy—God be thanked if hatred and malice do not also come! Now there’s that little Alice Flynn—if she were only my sister, or one over whom I had the shadow of control! Oh! that I were only rich! She ought to be educated! Heavens! what a smile—and what a mind she has—she thinks! God defend her!”

Indulging in such thoughts as these Martin had passed again through the crowded streets, quite unmindful of all things save that one high project he had conceived, which now, he for the first time felt convinced might be really performed. Once more we find him before his easel, and how he labored there! Six days, morning and evening, he worked on his creation, and Saturday night saw him looking upon it with such intensity of satisfaction, as betokened a very happy heart—for it was finished, and his heart and his mind had declared it “very good!”

The following week there was to be an exhibition of the paintings of native artists in New York, and to the rooms prepared for this purpose Martin conveyed his work, and it was not perhaps without a thrill of pride that he placed it among the multitudinous proofs of genius there.

The Sunrise was unframed, and having been among the last brought in, it occupied an obscure and unfavorable position. But Martin surveyed it with the eyes of a lover—he knew its superior merit, and he fancied that others would behold it in just such a light. But Martin was destined to be disappointed not a little; during the first days of the exhibition, while the rooms were filled to overflowing, but little attention was attracted toward his portrait. Sometimes it was so fortunate as to attract an exclamation of surprise, and a momentary glance of admiration—and once or twice a group of young people stopped a moment to honor it with examination, but there were works of well known artists which must be criticised and applauded—there were “first attempts” of rich and fashionable men which must be praised—and besides, it was on the whole taken for granted by universal consent, that the best pictures occupied the most prominent stations, and that those condemned to the back-ground must necessarily be only passably good or mediocre.

By degrees Martin began to take these facts into consideration—and then it was only by great effort he managed to keep his hopes alive, that some good fate was yet in store for his darling.

An early hour on the morning of the fifth day found him once more attracted to the rooms, he would endeavor to secure for his child a position more prominent, for some of the paintings had been already removed by their masters.

But two persons were there when he entered. They were a lady and gentleman in deep mourning, and they were standing before his Sunrise! Passing up the long hall slowly, with his eyes directed to the thickly covered wall, where he saw what only an artist could, the outwritten, burning hopes of a multitude of men, he contrived to keep watch of the two who remained so long motionless and speechless before the pictured child.

“Do you know the author of this work, sir; and if it is for sale?” asked the stranger as Martin drew near.

“I have an acquaintance with the artist,” answered he, “but the painting, I think, is not for sale.”

“Why should it be placed here then?” asked the gentleman quickly, and with great evident disappointment.

“Because, sir, there is something dear to the heart of the author of a work, beside the money which the sale of it would bring. I feel at liberty to answer you frankly as you have asked—the artist hoped that by this work attention might be attracted to his skill, for he is a young man necessitated to labor, and, as yet, altogether unknown in his profession.”

“I admire the genius of the young man, he will succeed in making himself known beyond all doubt. But perhaps I might offer for this picture a sum great enough to satisfy even him.”

There was a silence, and there was in the lady’s eyes such a beseeching look as she glanced from the picture toward Martin, that his determination was almost vanquished, but he looked down and said:

“The painting is my work—I cannot part with it at any price.”

“It is yours! and you will not sell it! Mr. Artist, you do not, cannot know how much you refuse us! We had a child, a darling little girl, she was an angel to us—she is lost to us, is dead, young man!—and this portrait! it is so like her, at any cost I would secure it. Name your price, high as you value your beautiful work, consider that to us it is infinitely more valuable! the hours of labor you have spent upon it have endeared it to you—it is more to us though than even that, it is life to us, for it brings her back again!”

The lady trembled as her companion pleaded with the artist so earnestly. It was not in Martin Gray to deny a plea so sad and so heartfelt. “It shall be yours,” he exclaimed, “permit me to retain the work but a few days, and it shall then be returned to you.”

A thankful glance of the tearful eyes of the bereaved mother was what Martin thought at that moment a full reward.

“God bless you, sir! you have made us happy! If five thousand dollars is any compensation, they are yours!”

That was another kind of reward! The young artist thought both invaluable; and it was with a light heart that with the picture in its case, he carried it once more to the attic studio.

——

CHAPTER II.

Martin Gray’s fortune was made, and ever after was he a firm believer in presentiments, for the Sunrise had in very truth been the making of him. In the midst of his good fortune, the generous heart did not forget the poor child whose beauty had so materially aided his genius. Previous to his departure for the old world, he placed a well-filled purse in the hands of the mother, saying, “Your child is an extraordinary girl. This money will be sufficient to secure her a good education—pray do not neglect it, for she will be an honor and a great help to you some day. Promise me that you will keep her out of the street as much as is possible, and that you will send her to school. I am going abroad, when I come home again she will be many years older than now, nearly a woman. Give me your promise she shall be sent to school.”

“Yes, she shall go, and as to keeping her out of the street, I s’pose I might as well undertake to—Well, yes, I’ll try my hand at it.”

“Be kind to her!”

Martin traveled abroad; he studied in Italy—he studied in Germany—he journeyed through nearly all Europe. Among artists, and artist-patronizers, the success of his first exhibited picture was well-known, the Sunrise was every where commented upon, and the papers liked to talk of the young artist Martin Gray, of his skillful hand, and generous heart!

But during the years of labor and study spent abroad, his one great idea remained unaccomplished. The second picture which he had designed as a continuation of the Sunrise, was untouched. The imagination was not to be suffered to do the work in this instance either—but the second work, even as the first had been, should be a portrait.

Still his hands had not been idle. In Paris his studio (it was not there an attic!) became a point of interest and fashionable attraction, and in Hamburg the American artist dwelt neither in poverty nor obscurity. The walls of his rooms were adorned with evidences of his capabilities, and beside the honors heaped upon him, in a pecuniary point of view, his labors had made his fortune.

Years passed on, and Martin was at home again; at home and among a multitude of friends, though when seven years ago he sailed from the great city he might easily have counted the voices that came to bid adieu and God-speed. But fame and fortune wonderfully enhance the feeble interest felt in the once poor son of Genius—so Martin Gray proved it. His friendship was sought for as most honorable, his words were quoted, his dress and style imitated—fair ladies trilled his songs, (for he was something of a poet, too,) and as a “lion” the young exquisite was pronounced by fathers, mothers, and daughters, as perfect, charming, and altogether unexceptionable.

“Well, what in the way of amusements, Frank?” asked the artist, as arm-in-arm with a city gallant, he strolled along Broadway a few days after his arrival in New York.

“What! not heard yet that Alice gives a musical entertainment to-night? My good fellow you ‘argue yourself unknown’ by such unseemly ignorance,” gayly said his companion, the Hon. Francis Dundas.

“Indeed, I must confess to ignorance; who is this great singer, Alice—some newly risen star, is she not?”

“Yes—but the few who have heard, say a star that bids fair to prove on closer examination of the first magnitude, and that even an artist’s eyes can detect no defect in her matchless beauty.”

“And which point of the compass does she hail from?”

“Oh! she is a native of our city. Her rare beauty some time since attracted the attention of old H——, the millionaire—he does something toward educating her; she turns out a woman, or girl of uncommon talents, and has determined to become a public singer. I am told her history is a complete romance, wanting nothing of tragedy or comedy to make it irresistibly interesting.”

“A singer—a genius—and a beauty! we will hear her by all means!” exclaimed Martin enthusiastically.

And they did hear her.

It was not a “grand entertainment.” The singer Alice was the sole performer. She had preferred that it should be so, that her merits and powers, whatever they were, might be estimated at their worth.

Small and select was the audience before which she appeared; it was composed of people of refined taste, who could fully appreciate all the excellencies of style and manner, and whose approbation a young debutante might rejoice to win. How young she was! how truly and perfectly beautiful! There was a slight flush on her cheek which was else pale as marble, that told how strongly the chords of her brave heart were struck. She sang—oh! the voice whose tones filled the high hall was like that we hear in dreams, when angels come to keep watch over us, chanting through the long hours of the night! During the whole first part of the concert there was intense silence, for there was an intense gratification felt by the audience that was deeper than could be uttered, and the smiles, and tears, and breathless interest evinced, were to the maiden tributes more acceptable than tumultuous applause had been.

“She is a wonder!” “a miracle!” “what a voice!” “what a style!” “and then to think she is only seventeen or eighteen!” Such and like exclamations escaped from every heart as “Alice” withdrew at the close of the first part from the saloon.

Frank Dundas turned to his companion—

“Well, Gray, what do you think of her? Your wits seem wandering.”

“I am lost! it is divine! I have never seen or heard her equal. Tell me, what did you say is her name; the face haunts me; I could swear I have seen it before.”

“Tut! swear not at all. It’s not likely you have ever seen her before to-night. Perhaps she corresponds with some fairy-queen or lady-love born of your own prolific fancy. Is it not so? I can well conceive such a thing possible, though I’m neither poet nor artist.”

Martin bowed to save himself from the necessity of a reply, for he was deep in thought, and through the obscurity of the distant Past his memory was striving to grope her way.

After a few moments the singer appeared again in the saloon.

“Did you say her name is Alice?” asked Martin Gray, as his eyes for the second time rested upon her. “Alice—Alice what?”

“I have never heard—she is only known by that name. She does not need so many cognomens as we less gifted individuals, and I suppose intends that the world shall know without being told further, who is meant when the singer Alice is spoken of.”

“Dundas, I have seen that face before, you may depend upon it—will you believe it? during all my residence in Europe I have sought with desperate earnestness, but in vain, for a face just such as hers.”

“Pray wherefore? Are you not the sworn foe of all lady-loves save the sweet goddess of painting?”

“Hush! love has had nothing to do with my search—pretty faces are to be found every where; and though an artist, I am free to say the man who marries a woman for her beauty is a poor fool. Did you ever see my picture called Sunrise, painted seven or eight years ago?”

“Remember it? Why, my dear fellow, to be sure I do, and what a grand lift it gave you before the ‘darling public;’ I would be stupid indeed to forget that picture or its author. A copy of it has been the best ornament of my room for years!”

“Well, perhaps you know—though of course you could not, for I never spoke of my intention to another—but ever since that picture was finished, I have determined to make it one of a series, by painting two others, one of such innocent loveliness arrived at womanly perfection, and the third was to be the image of crime, or beauty ruined; and the three I hoped to offer a moral lesson to the world. Never till to-night have I seen one worthy to take the second place in the series. I see her now, and I have an impression that amounts almost to a conviction, that this woman is that child.”

“She lives on Tenth street. If it is your wish we will visit her to-night when the concert is finished, or to-morrow—perhaps, however, you would prefer calling upon her alone?” said Frank Dundas with a hearty co-operating look of voice and manner.

“By all means accompany me—we will go in the morning, and I will lay my life on it, that singer’s name, when a child, was Alice Flynn!”

At eleven the following morning the lady was alone in her simply furnished apartment, in a boarding-house on Tenth street. The beauty which had dazzled all who beheld her on the previous night, did not owe any thing to dress or to lamp-light, it bore the inquisitive glance of the sunshine well.

Alice received her guests, the Hon. Frank Dundas, and the artist Martin Gray, with a grace and ease of manner which delighted them. She spoke with the enthusiasm of youth of the art in which she was so great a proficient, and every word she uttered revealed a mind well cultivated, refined, and innately noble.

A half hour passed speedily by, but the Honorable gave no sign of an intention to depart. The artist, who had surveyed her as he would an exquisite production of art, first rising to take his leave, said—“I have a favor to urge, madam, it is a very great one; I am painting a series of portraits, will you permit me to take yours as a representation of Noonday?”

“It would be a very poor representative of the glory and majesty of the theme you have chosen. Pardon me, I must decline an honor so unmerited.”

“Permit me to judge that,” said Martin Gray earnestly. “It is an idea I have long desired to carry out; I wished to make the picture an exact likeness, and therefore sought a beauty that was perfect, so there should be no work left for my imagination—now that the object of my long search is found, do not deny me this great privilege. If you will only accompany some of your friends to my studio, by showing to you the Sunrise, I can better explain what it is I wish; or perhaps you will suffer me either now or to-morrow to escort you thither.”

“To-morrow,” she answered, “I will come. Ere then you may, I trust, find one elsewhere to represent your ideal.”

“That is utterly impossible. To-morrow, then, before the rooms are filled with visiters, I shall look for you,” said Martin, with a decidedly grateful accent and look, and the young men walked slowly away.

——

CHAPTER III.

The Noonday was nearly finished. The city was ringing with the surpassing beauty and the matchless voice of the young singer Alice. And Martin Gray’s numerous and powerful friends every where declared that the picture on which he worked so diligently, would add the greenest leaf to his glory-wreath.

The artist loved his picture—loved he the original? No! he could have worshiped the canvas on which that matchless face was impressed, but when he looked on Alice, and listened to her beautiful words and the so musical, delicious pronunciation, though he saw and heard with the most enthusiastic admiration, it was still only that of the artist—the man’s heart was untouched.

He had never shown to her the “child-angel.” After his call upon “Alice,” so strengthened was become Martin Gray’s persuasion that it was the Alice of bygone recollections, that he feared to hazard the display of the portrait to her.

Let us see if his precaution was a wise one.

It was the last sitting. On the following day the lady was to depart with a distinguished company of singers, on a long professional tour through the Western and Southern cities. She had risen, for the hour was passed, and stood looking for the last time on the beautiful works of the artist, which adorned the room.

“Do you remember,” said Martin, approaching her, “I promised to show you the portrait which I called the Sunrise, pardon me that I have not done so before, this is the one.”

He raised his hand and turned to the light a small picture, which for the few past days had looked upon the wall.

A broken exclamation of surprise, rather than the usual tribute of warm praise, escaped the young creature.

“Did you paint this?” she asked. “Pray tell me when and how?” she added, recovering her self-possession immediately.

“I was a youth, very poor and needy, having some talent, and a great deal of taste for sketching and painting. Very unfortunately, as I thought, I was forced either to altogether resign this employment so delightful to me, or to pursue it in order to supply myself with food and clothes. To me it must not be a pastime—I could not hesitate long—it became my profession. But I had, what to you may seem an inconceivable dislike to painting faces merely as a workman paints letters on a sign. I imagined that it was just as easy to win the smiles of dame Fortune by picturing only the exceedingly beautiful, and giving them emblematic names, and I was not altogether wrong. Passing one day through the streets of this very city, I came upon a group of children playing—one of that little band struck me as being nothing short of perfection, I could think of nothing as I looked on her, but how beautiful a sunrise!—how splendid will be the day that ensues! At my request the child guided me to her home, it was a poor one, and therein bore a great resemblance to my own. The mother consented that I should take the child’s likeness, and—this is it, I never saw the little one again. Afterward, as I have told you, for many years I traveled in Europe, but though constantly on the look out, I never found a Noonday worthy to follow a Sunrise like this child’s. I thank you, madam, that I have in you, and in my own city, at last found what Europe could not show me.”

“May I ask,” said the lady, with face slightly averted from the gaze of Martin Gray, “may I ask the name of the girl?”

It was the question which of all others the artist most wished her to propose, and he watched her closely, as in a careless tone that belied his glance, he said—

“I remember it very well—it was Alice Flynn!”

“Thank you—it is indeed a lovely picture! You have amply deserved, sir, all the honors that are, or can be awarded to you.”

Martin Gray attended her to the carriage that stood in waiting, but Alice the songstress did not look upon him till she gave him her hand in parting, when he saw her face, then, the artist knew he had not been deceived; she was pale as death.

A few months afterward, came from a city far to the South, a letter to our hero, its contents were a five hundred dollar note, and these words:

“The child for whose education you so generously provided when both she and yourself were poor and unknown, would fain convince you that with increase of years, and fortune, and happiness, she has not forgotten—that she is not ungrateful. All the good that has fallen to her in this life she is glad and proud to trace directly to you, to that one act of well-timed charity. May the God of Heaven for ever bless you. The ‘Sunrise’ and the ‘Noonday’ of your life you have made unspeakably glorious, may the night be without a cloud, and complete in its magnificence!”

It required no shrewd guesser to determine for Martin Gray the author of this brief note. The cities of the South were at that very moment vieing with each other in lauding the Northern songsters, and the queen of beauty and of song, the lady “Alice”—and the artist rejoiced in her brilliant success, and waited with impatience till he should see and speak with her again.

In the years when honors thickly clustered around his brow, when Fortune had laid many of her choicest gifts at his feet, there was yet one thing wanting to complete his happiness.

There were few homes on earth so beautiful as his, and his wife and children (for Martin in course of time became an old man,) were all that the heart of man could desire. There were no lines betokening care, or a fierce strife with the world, on the artist’s handsome face. He had labored, and that constantly, it is true, but his had not been a wearying toil, rather such as had been intensely satisfying. The visions of beauty with which he mentally surrounded himself; had never been frightened away by rough and harsh experience—to him even as in his youth, “all things beautiful were what they seemed!”

Many enchanting, perfect works had gone forth from the rooms of Martin Gray into the world, but there were two original ones for which he rejected every offer, however extravagant. Copies and engravings of them had been given to the public, but the canvas on which his fingers worked while his eyes were gazing on the loveliest and most perfect specimens of beauty to his mind conceivable, were precious beyond all price to him.

The series had not been completed, for Martin Gray had never seen a human being fearfully beautiful, and irrevocably fallen, whereby to represent the “Night.” And as years passed on, his heart more earnestly and continually hoped that he never might.

The great artist is dead. The passing visions of a beautiful fancy have forever flitted away—“he sleeps the last sleep”—but his works live after him. They live to speak to us of their creator—to tell us of his goodness, of the deep unfathomed spring of human love within his heart. He sleeps, but he has left a name that is cherished by his country, and his genius is a source of national pride. How well is he remembered and loved by those who knew him! And the students in his own glorious art, with what enthusiasm and reverence do they cherish a memory of him!

During his widow’s life his studio remained as he had left it—it was a Mecca to which for years pilgrims most devout resorted. To many that artist’s rooms were sacred places; standing in them they breathed the air of inspiration, and held sweet communings with the spirit of the Beautiful.

Of the sublime lessons, and they were many, which spoke forth from those walls, there was one that made the gazer shudder and turn pale. No one gazing on the three faces which were separated from all other paintings wrought by the same hand, could have resisted the conviction that the artist had meant, ay, and that he had succeeded in conveying to the mind of the gazer, a deep and awful moral lesson, for the “Night” was with the “Sunrise” and the “Noonday!”

It was marvellous, it was dreadful to trace the great resemblance between the likeness of the angelic little child, the incomparably beautiful maiden, and the splendid, but fallen woman!

The same bright curling hair, the same deep, sapphire eyes, the fresh bloom on the fair cheek, the graceful form—they were unmistakeable. But oh! there was an expression on those features of the eldest woman, that the innocent child and the guileless maiden could not have interpreted—it was a bold, defiant look, that told it was a sorrowful and an ever-to-be-lamented day that saw her come before the world to wrestle for its honors—a very siren, but ah! how weak to strive against its sinful allurements, its awful temptations.

They are one and the same, said every heart that gazed upon them. Reader, they were! For the “Night” was also a portrait, and the last work of Martin Gray!

Alas! alas! sweet Alice! splendid and courted Alice! wretched and ruined Alice!

THE MISANTHROPE.

———

BY A NEW CONTRIBUTOR.

———

Speak no more!

Thou canst not comfort me. I’d rather hear

The serpent’s hiss than speech from a false heart.

There was a time thy voice had power to calm,

And lay the fiend within me: Let me rest

Lonely and cursed amid my wretchedness;

I have ventured all and lost—’twas Destiny!

There are dark spirits moving through the world,

Casting a saddening influence over all

Within their vortex: Such perchance is mine;

With its wild, fitful struggles, and its gleams

Now good, now evil, stronger with my strength

The eclipse of Heaven’s brightness. Who can read

The unknown language of the human heart,

Though writ in fiery characters? Where the power

To judge an erring creature, when the thoughts,

Hidden even to himself, cannot be fathomed

Save by Omniscience? In thy hollow hand

Measure the waters of the depthless sea,

Or with far-seeing vision through the expanse

Of yonder firmament of Heaven, speak

Of that which is to be, though yet unseen

In its bright pages: Easier task for man

Than judge his brother justly. To myself

I am a mystery, why not to thee?

The waters of my heart are deeper far

Than plummet ever sounded. Oh, dark Future!

Thy veil once lifted, will the power be given

To note their secret depths. Why have I trusted

But to be deceived? and not by man alone!

Why have I ever loved, if but to love

Has been to bind myself upon the wheel

Of wretchedness? The punishment of gods!

Why should I ask for sunshine on my heart,

If with it, it must wither? ask thyself.

Reading thine own heart’s secret, thou may’st learn

How much I needed sympathy. My path,

Now filled with rankest weeds, might have been pure

Under thy smile and teaching. Now, too late!

To wrestle with the world for an existence,

Bowed, but not crushed by Fate, is of itself

Enough to turn the heart to bitter gall,

And make it curse, where, in its sunnier hours,

It might have shed a blessing. Fortune’s smile,

Unto the favored, clothes the earth with flowers;

Its frown, alas! will make the brightest spot

Black as a demon’s glance—its fruit as bitter

As the Dead Sea’s—and like it naught but ashes!

The meanest thing,

Infuriated in the hunter’s toils,

Turns at the last with fierce and vengeful cry

To battle with its foe; and some there are,

Lost to all hope, in their own quiv’ring flesh