University of Virginia Library

7. CHAPTER VII.

Our hero sat in his cell, upon the side of his rude cot, with a sad but resigned
spirit. He felt that evil and misfortune had done their worst for him, and
that he could fall no lower. But his hardships of this life had led him to a
nearer contemplation of that rest in the life to come. He now experienced the
consolation of that hope which is an anchor to the soul in the hour of adversity.
He was fortified against despair by hope, and elevated above self-contempt by
the consciousness of innocence of life and uprightness and integrity of conduct.
His misfortune he felt had not been his own, but made his by the peculiar error
in which he had first been thrust upon the ills of life, by his misjudging and
ambitious parents.

While contemplating his present condition, and trying to penetrate the future,
the door of his cell was thrown open, and the jailer ushered in, by the
light of a lantern, an elderly gentleman whom, in his surprise and in the uncertain
light, he did not recognize.

`Mr. Blackford, I am come to repay, in some degree, my long standing debt
to you,' said the familiar voice of Colonel Hare. `You are free. I have not
waited for your consent, fearing your pride would make you prefer a prison to
a pecuniary obligation.'

Charles returned in silence the warm and cordial grasp of Colonel Hare's
hand. His surprise, gratitude, and the conflicting emotions that rushed through
his heart, rendered him for some seconds incapable of articulation. When he
did speak, his voice was so tremulous and broken by his feelings that Colonel
Hare stopped him in the midst, passed his arm through his, and led him to his
carriage. On the way through the streets he learned enough, by delicately
sounding our hero, to know that Grace would not love unrequited. Charles
gave him such outlines of his history as he had not heard from the communicative
jailer before entering his cell. When, at length, the carriage stopped,
Charles hesitated to get out.

`My dress—my degradation—the ladies—Oh, Sir—I—'

`Not a word! We have been seeking you out ever since we heard of your
arrest of that assassin, who would have made you swing in his stead, and we
are glad to find you, and hold on to you under any circumstances.'

Charles found resistance vain, and suffered himself to be led into the house.

We will pass over the interview between our hero and Miss Gordon and the
subsequent growth and maturity of that love which for four years had been
silently at work in each other's hearts, preparing them for an indissoluble union
in one.

Six months after the day on which Grayson Preston maliciously sent the
newspaper and note to his cousin, she was united in the bonds of wedlock with
the very prisoner he had held up to her contempt. But woman's love, he now
learned, cared little for dungeons, bolts and bars, and that persecution and misfortune
presented only higher and holier claims to her regard. Preston, finding
that the vast wealth of his cousin, with which he had hoped to repair his own
dissipated fortune, had fallen upon his hated rival, our worthy hero, went abroad
in disgust, and now lives in Paris, a bachelor and fashionable roue. Mary Hare
kept up her flirtations so long, that at length, when she would have caught
one of the numerous birds that had pecked about her smiles, and caged him for
life, she found they were too old birds to be caught when she in earnest would
have secured one. So Mary lives in a state of single blessedness, at the age of
thirty-one, but still beautiful in her fading bellehood. Hare Hall has recently
been purchased by the Honorable Charles Blackford, where he resides except
during the session of Congress, when his duties as a Representative call him,
with his accomplished lady, to the Capitol.

Wishing that all errors of education, based upon misguided ambition and a
slavish subserviency to a false system of society, might come to as happy an
issue as those of our hero, (out which we fear in real life they seldom do!) we
take leave of our readers with the wise observation of a distinguished member

of the present Cabinet, with which we prefaced our tale—recommending its
spirit to all parents who have sons to educate to play their parts on the varying
theatre of life:

`If this Republic shall escape the catastrophe that terminated the career of
every one of its predecessors in ancient and modern days, it must be by the
prevalence of more just and liberal views in regard to the distinctions assigned
to BIRTHS, MONEY and OCCUPATION. The people must be made to see and to feel
that the LAW OF REPUTATION, as now observed, has a false basis; that there can
be no such thing AS PERSONAL MERIT without virtue and usefulness—and that
no branch of industry which contributes to the general compact is intrinsically degrading.