University of Virginia Library

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

There was no little stir in the village of Chestatee
on the morning following that in which the
scene narrated in the preceding chapter had taken
place. It so happened that several of the worthy
villagers had determined to remove upon that
day; and Colonel Colleton and his family, consisting
of his daughter, Lucy Munro, and his future
son-in-law, having now no further reason for
delay, had also chosen it as their day of departure
for Carolina. Nor did the already named
constitute the sum total of the cavalcade setting
out for that region. Carolina was about to receive
an accession in the person of the sagacious pedler,
Bunce, who, in a previous conversation with both
Colonel Colleton and Ralph, had made arrangements
for future and large adventures in the way
of trade—having determined, with the advice and
assistance of his newly-acquired friends, to establish
one of those wonders of various combination,
called a country store, among the good people of
Sumter District. Under their direction, and hopeful
of the Colleton patronage and influence, Bunce
never troubled himself to dream of unprofitable
speculations; but immediately drawing up letters
for his brother and some other of his kinsmen engaged
in the manufacture, at Meriden and Berlin,

of one kind of notion or other, he detailed his new
designs, and furnished liberal orders for the articles
required and deemed necessary for the wants of
the free-handed backwoodsmen of the south. Lest
our readers should lack any information on the
subject and touching the nature of these wants, we
shall narrate a brief dialogue between the younger
Colleton and our worthy merchant, which took
place but a few hours before their departure.

“Well, Bunce, are you ready? We shall be off
now in a couple of hours or so, and you must not
keep us in waiting. Pack up at once, man, and
make yourself ready.”

“I guess you're in a little bit of a small hurry,
Master Colleton, 'cause, you see, you've some reason
to be so. You hain't had so easy a spell on
it, no how, and I don't wonder as how you're no
little airnest to get off. Well—you won't have to
wait for me. I've jest got through mending my
little go-cart; though, to be sure, it don't look, no
how, like the thing it was. The riglators made
awful sad work of the box and body, and what
with patching and piecing, there's no two eends
on it alike.”

“Well, you're ready, however, and we shall have
no difficulty at the last hour?”

“None to speak on. Jared Bunce aint the chap
for burning daylight; and whenever you're ready
to say `go,' he's gone. But, I say, Master Ralph
—there's one little matter I'd like you to look at.”

“What's that?—Be quick now, for I've much to
see to.”

“Only a minute. Here, you see, is a letter I've
jest writ to my brother, Ichabod Bunce, down in
Meriden. He's a 'cute chap, and quite a Yankee,
now, I tell you; and, as I knows all his ways, I've
got to keep a sharp look out to see he don't come

over me. Ah, Master Ralph, it's a hard thing to
say one's own flesh and blood aint the thing, but
the truth's the truth to be sure, and though it does
hurt in the telling, that's no reason it shouldn't be
told.”

“Certainly not!”

“Well, as I say, Ichabod Bunce is as close and
'cute in his dealings as any man in all Connetticut,
and that's no little say, I'm sartin. He's got the
trick, if anybody's got it, of knowing how to make
your pocket his, and squaring all things coming in
by double multiplication. If he puts a shilling
down, it's sure to stick to another; and if he picks
one up, it never comes by itself—there's always
sure to be two on 'em.”

“A choice faculty for a tradesman.”

“How?”

“Just the man for business, I take it.”

“Jest so—you're right there, Master Colleton—
there's no mistake about that. Well, as I tell'd you
now, though he's my own brother, I have to keep
a raal sharp look out over him in all our dealings.
If he says two and two makes four, I sets too to
calkilate, for when he says so, I'm sure something's
coming not altogether right; and though
I knows, when the thing stands by itself, that two
and two does make four; yet, somehow, whenever
he says it, I begin to think it not altogether so sartain.
Ah, he's a main hand for trade, but there's
no knowing when he'll come over you.”

“But, Bunce, without making morals a party to
this question, as you are in copartnership with
your brother, you should rather rejoice that he
possesses so happy a faculty; it certainly should
not be a matter of regret with you.”

“Why, how—you wouldn't have me to be a
mean-spirited fellow, who would live all for money,

and not care how it comes. I can't, sir—'tain't my
way, I assure you. I do feel that I wasn't born to
live nowhere except in the south, 'cause I feel rather
sort-a than not sort-a, with the people there;
and so I thought when I wrote Ichabod Bunce my
last letter. I told him every man on his own hook,
now—for, you see, I couldn't stand his close-fisted
contrivances any longer. He wanted me to work
round the ring like himself, but I was quite too up--and-down
for that, and so I squared off from
him soon as I could. We never did agree when
we were together, you see—'cause naterally, being
brothers and partners, he couldn't shave me as he
shaved other folks, and so, 'cause he couldn't by
nature and partnership come 'cute over me, he
was always grumbling, and for every yard of
prints, he'd make out to send two yards of grunt
and growls, and that was too much, you know,
even for a pedler to stand; so we cut loose, and
now as the people say on the 'Hio—every man
paddle his own canoe.”

“And you are now alone in the way of trade,
and this store which you are about to establish is
entirely on your own account?”

“Guess it is, and so, you see, I must pull with
single oar up stream, and shan't quarrel with no
friend that helps me now and then to send the boat
ahead.”

“Rely upon us, Bunce. You have done too
much in my behalf to permit any of our family to
forget your services. We shall do all that we can
towards giving you a fair start in the stream, and
it will not be often that you shall require a helping-hand
in paddling your canoe.”

“I know'd it, Master Colleton—'Taint in Carolina,
nor in Georgy, nor Virginny, no—nor down
in Alabam, that a man will look long for provisions,

and see none come. That's the people for
me. I guess I must ha' been born by nature in the
south, though I did see daylight in Connetticut.”

“Very likely, Bunce—but what paper is that in
your hand?”

“Oh, that. That's jest what I was going now
to ax you about. That's my bill of particulars,
you see, that I'm going to send on by the post, to
Ichabod Bunce. He'll trade with me, now we're
off copartnership, and be as civil as a lawyer jest
afore court time. 'Cause, you see, he'll be trying to
come over me, and will throw as much dust in my
eyes as he can. But I guess he don't catch me
with mouth a-jar. I know his tricks, and he'll find
me up to them.”

“And what is it you require of me in this
matter?”

“Oh, nothing, but jest to look over this list, and
tell me how you 'spose the things will suit your
part of the country. You see I must try and larn
how to please my customers, that is to be. Now,
you see, here's, in the first place—for they're a
great article now in the country, and turn out well
in the way of sale—here's—” and he proceeded
to unfold (dwelling with an emphatic and precise
description of each article in turn) the immense inventory
of wares and merchandises with which he
was about to establish. The assortment was
various enough. There were pen-knives, and
jack-knives, and clasp-knives, and dirk-knives,
horn and wooden combs, calicoes and clocks, and
tinware and garden seeds: everything, indeed,
without regard to fitness of association, which it
was possible to sell in the region to which he was
going.

Ralph heard him through his list with tolerable
patience; but when the pedler, having given it a

first reading, proposed a second, with passing comments
on the prospects of sale of each separate
article, by way of recapitulation, the youth could
stand it no longer. Apologizing to the tradesman,
therefore, in good set terms, he hurried away
to the completion of those preparations called for
by his approaching departure. Bunce, having
no auditor, was compelled to do the same;
and, accordingly, a few hours after, the entire party
made its appearance in the court of the village inn,
where the carriages stood in waiting, and but few
more causes of delay could now be anticipated.
About this time another party left the village,
though in a different direction. It consisted of old
Walton, his wife, and daughter Kate. In their
company rode our old friend the lawyer Pippin,
who, hopeless now of elevation in his present
whereabouts, was solicitous of a fairer field for the
exhibition of his powers of law and logic than that
which he now left had ever afforded him. He
made but a small item in the caravan. His
goods and chattels required little compression for
the purposes of carriage, and a small Jersey—a light
wagon in free use in that section, contained all his
wardrobe, books, papers, &c.—the heirlooms of a
long and carefully chronicled genealogy. We
may not particularize his fortunes after his removal
to the valley of the Mississippi. It does
not belong to the narrative; but, we may surely
say, to those in whom his appearance may have
provoked some interest, that subsequently he got
into fine practice—was notorious for his stump
speeches, and a random sheet of the “Republican
Star and Banner of Independence” which we now
have before us, published in the town of “Modern
Ilium,” under the head of the “Triumph of Liberty
and Principle,” records in the most glowing language
the elevation of Peter Pippin, Esq., to the
State Legislature, by seven votes majority over
Colonel Hannibal Hopkins, the military candidate—
Pippin 39, Hopkins 32. Such a fortunate result,
if we have rightly estimated the character of the
man, will have easily slaved over all the hurts
which, in his earlier history, his self-love may have
suffered.

But the hour of departure was at hand, and
assisting the fair Edith into the carriage, Ralph
had the satisfaction of placing her beside the
sweetly sad, the lovely, but still deeply suffering
girl, to whom he owed so much in the preservation
of his life; but who herself had fallen a victim to
the very interest which had inspired her to save
him. She was silent when he spoke, but she
looked her replies, and he felt that they were sufficiently
expressive. The old lady had been easily
persuaded to go with her niece, and we find her
seated accordingly along with Colonel Colleton in
the same carriage with the young ladies. Ralph
rode, as his humour prompted, sometimes on horse-back,
and sometimes in a light gig—a practice
adopted with little difficulty, where a sufficient
number of servants enabled him to transfer the
trust of one or the other conveyance to the
liveried outriders who attended. Then came
the compact, boxy, buggy, buttoned-up vehicle of
our friend the pedler—a thing for which the unfertile
character of our language, as yet, has failed
to provide a fitting name—but which the backwoodsman
of the west calls a go-cart; a title
which the proprietor does not always esteem as
significant of its manifold virtues and accommodations.
With a capacious stomach, it is wisely estimated
for all possible purposes; and when opened
with a mysterious but highly becoming solemnity,

before the gaping and wondering woodsman, how
“awful neat” is the arrangement—how various and
costly are its treasures, of tape and toys, cottons
and calicoes, yarn and buttons, spotted silks and
hose—knives and thimbles—scissors and needles—
wooden clocks, and coffee-mills, &c.—not to
specify a closely packed and various assortment
of tinware and japan, from the teakettle and
coffee-pot to the drinking mug for the pet boy and
the shotted rattle for the infant. A judicious distribution
of the two latter, in the way of presents
to the young, and the worthy pedler drives a fine
bargain with the parents on the strength of it.

The party was now fairly ready, but just at the
moment of departure who should appear in sight
but our simple friend, Chub Williams. He had
never been a frequent visiter to the abodes of men,
and of course all things occasioned wonder. He
seemed fallen upon some strange planet, and was
only won to attention by the travellers, on hearing
the voice of Lucy Munro calling to him from the
carriage window. He could not be made to
understand the meaning of her words when she
told him where she was going, but contented himself
with saying he would come for her, as soon as
they built up his house, to be his mother. It was
for this purpose he had come to the village, from
which, though surprised at all things he saw, he
was anxious to get away. He had been promised,
as we remember, the rebuilding of his cabin, by the
men who captured Rivers; together with sundry
other little acquisitions, which, as they were associated
with his animal wants, the memory of the
urchin did not suffer to escape him. Ralph placed
in his hands a sum of money, trifling in itself,
but larger in amount than Chub had ever seen at
any one time before; and telling him it was all his

own, rejoined the party which had already driven
off. The pedler still lingered, until a bend in the
road put his company out of sight; when, driving
up to the idiot, who stood with open mouth wondering
at his own wealth, he opened upon him the
preliminaries of trade, with a respectful address,
duly proportioned to the increased finances of the
boy.

“I say, now, Chub—seeing you have the raal
grit, if it aint axing too much, what do you think
to do with all that money? I guess you'd like to
lay out a little on't in the way of trade; and as I
aint particular where I sell, why, the sooner I
begin, I guess, the better. You aint in want of
nothing, eh? No knife to cut the saplings, and
pare the nails, nor nothing of no kind?—Now I
has every thing from—”

Bunce would have gone on narrating, as we
have already heard them, in detail, the name
of every commodity in his wagon, but, at this
stage of his speech, one of the outriders returned
under the orders of Master Ralph, to see
what delayed the worthy trafficker, and to render
assistance if any were needed. The blacky, who
was no other than our old friend Cæsar, was urgent
—for the profession of peddling wins as little respect
from the southern slave as from the southern freeman—and
did not hesitate to declaim against the
burning shame of the attempt of Mr. Bunce to
wheedle the poor boy out of the money “Mass
Ralph been gib 'em.”

The pedler was rebuked; and closing his box,
the cover of which he had temptingly thrown open
to the stupid admiration of Chub, he hastily followed
the direction of the servant, and bidding the
now moneyed, and, therefore respectable, idiot
a hearty good-bye, he drove off after his fellow

wayfarers, with a free rein for Carolina; his head
filled with all the fancies, and many a fine vision, of
trade, which, after a certain period of life, when
the sons and daughters of his young patron had
grown into patrons too, he was happy enough, on
a moderate scale, to realize.

Let us now give our attention to another person
of our narrative. Let us go to the dungeon of
Guy Rivers, and behold him in a situation so entirely
new to him. What a fine mind was here
ruined, and how melancholy the contemplation.
Well is it for mankind, that, under the distribution
of a liberal providence, when the bright stars fall
from their places, there is no dark void corresponding
in degree with the splendours which have been
taken away. Happy for humanity, that, in the
eternal progress of change, the nature which is its
aliment no less than its element, restores not less
than its destiny removes. Yet, the knowledge
that we lose not, does not materially lessen the
pang when we behold the mighty fall—when we
see the great mind, which, as a star, we have almost
worshipped, shooting with headlong precipitance
through the immense void from its
place of eminence, and defrauding the eye of all
the glorious presence and golden promise which
had become associated with its survey. The
intellect of Guy Rivers had been gigantic—the
mistake—a mistake quite too common to society
—consisted in an education limited entirely to the
mind, and entirely neglectful of the morale of the
boy. He was taught, like thousands of others;
and the standards set up for his moral government,
for his passions, for his emotions, were all false
from the first. The capacities of his mind were
good—they were great—but they had been restrained,
while the passions had all been brought

into active, and at length ungovernable exercise.
How was it possible that reason, thus taught to
be subordinate, could hold the strife long, when
passion—fierce passion—the passion of the querulous
infant, and the peevish boy, bribed to its duty
by the toy and the sugar-plum—was its uncompromising
antagonist.

But let us visit him in his dungeon—the dungeon
so lately the abode of his originally destined, but
now happily safe, victim. What philosophy is
there to support him in his reverse—what consolation
of faith, of reflection, or of a due performance
of human duties. None! Every thought—
every feeling—every dream was merged in one
word of appalling terror, and he heard muttered
for ever in his senses,—despair, despair, and die!
He heard and felt the truth of the warning. There
was no hope left—no sunlight came into his dungeon,
and the difference in his strength and that of
Ralph Colleton would have been perceptible in this
single particular. The sun-glance through the
barred lattice, suddenly stealing, like a friendly
messenger, with a sweet and mellow smile upon his
lips, was so hailed by the enthusiastic nature of
the one, without guile in his own heart—Rivers
would have regarded such a visiter as an intruder,
the smile in his eyes would have been a sneer,
and he would have turned away from it in disgust.
The mind of the strong man is the medium
through which the eyes see, and from which life
takes all its colour. The heart is the prismatic
conductor, through which the affections show, and
that which is seared, or steeled or ossified—perverted
utterly from its original make—can exhibit
no rainbows—no arches of a sweet promise, linking
the gloomy earth with the bright and the beautiful
and the eternal heavens.

The mind of Guy Rivers had been one of the
strongest make—one of large and leading tendencies.
He could not have been one of the mere
numerals of society. He must have been something,
or he must have perished. His spirit would
have fed upon his heart otherwise, and, wanting a
field and due employment, his frame must have
been worn away in the morbid repinings of its
governing principle. Unhappily, he had not been
permitted a choice. The education of his youth had
given a fatal direction to his manhood—and we
find him accordingly, not satisfied with his pursuit,
yet resolutely inflexible and undeviating in the pursuit
of error. Such are the contradictions of the
strong mind, to which, wondering as we gaze, with
unreasonable and unthinking astonishment, we daily
see it subject. Our philosophers are content with
declaiming upon effects—they will not permit themselves
or others to trace them up to their causes.
—To heal the wound, the physician may probe
and find out its depth and extent—the same privilege
is not often conceded to the physician of the
mind or of the morals, else numberless diseases, now
seemingly incurable, had been long since brought
within the healing scope of philosophical analysis.
The popular cant would have us forbear even to
look at the history of the criminal. Hang the wretch,
say they, but say nothing about him. Why trace
his progress?—what good can come out of the
knowledge of those influences and tendencies,
which have made him a criminal? Let them answer
the question for themselves!

The outlaw beheld the departing cavalcade from
the grated window. He saw the last of all
those in whose fortunes he might be supposed to
have an interest. He turned from the sight with a
bitter pang at his heart, and to his surprise, discovered

that he was not alone in the solitude of
his prison. One ministering spirit sat before him
upon the long bench, the only article of furniture
afforded to his dungeon. The reader has not forgotten
the young woman to whose relief, from fire,
Ralph Colleton so opportunely came while making
his escape from his pursuers. We remember the
resignation—the yielding weakness of her broken
spirit to the will of her destroyer. We have seen her
left desolate by the death of her only relative, and
only not utterly discarded by him, to whose fatal influence
over her heart at an earlier period we may
ascribe all her desolation. She then yielded without
a struggle to his will, and having prepared
her a new abiding-place, he had not seen her
after, until, unannounced and utterly unlooked-for
—certainly uninvited—she appeared before him in
the cell of his dungeon. Certainly, none are utterly
forgotten! There are some who remember
—some who feel with the sufferer, however lowly
in his suffering—some who cannot forget. No
one perishes without a tearful memory becoming
active when informed of his fate; and though the
world scorns and despises, some one heart keeps a
warm sympathy, that gives a sigh over the ruin,
and perhaps plants a flower upon its grave.

Rivers had not surely looked for the forsaken
and the defrauded girl, for whom he had shown so
little love. He knew not at first how to receive
her. What offices could she do for him—what influence
exercise—how lighten the burden of his
doom—how release him from his chains? Nothing
of this could she perform, and what did she there?
For sympathy, at such a moment, he cared little—
for such sympathy, at least, as he could command.
His pride and ambition, heretofore, had led him to
despise and undervalue the easy of attainment.

He was always grasping after the impossible. The
fame which he had lost for ever grew doubly attractive
to his mind's eye from the knowledge of
this fact. The society, which had expelled him from
its circle and its privileges, was an Eden in his
imagination, simply on that account. The love of
Edith Colleton grew more desirable from her
scorn;—and the defeat of hopes so daring, made
his fierce spirit writhe within him, in all the pangs
of disappointment, only neutralized by his hope of
revenge. And that hope was now gone—the dungeon
and the doom were all that met his eyes; and
what had she to do in his prison-cell and with his
prison feelings, whom Providence, even in her own
despite, was now about to avenge. No wonder he
turned away from her in the bitterness of the
thought which her appearance must necessarily
have inspired.

“Turn not away—speak to me, Guy—speak to
me if you have pity in your soul. You shall not
drive me from you—you shall not dismiss me now.
I should have obeyed you at another time, though
you had sent me to my death—but I cannot obey
you now. I am strong now, strong—very strong
since I can say so much. I am come to be with
you to the last, and, if it be possible, to die with
you; and you shall not refuse me. You shall not
—oh, you will not—you cannot—” And as she
spoke, she clung to him as one pleading herself for
life to the unrelenting executioner. He replied, in
a sarcasm, true to his general course of life.

“Yes, Ellen—your revenge for your wrongs
would not be well complete, unless your own
eyes witnessed it; and you insist upon the
privilege as if you duly estimated the luxury.
Well!—you may stay. It needed but this, if any

thing had been needed, to show me my own impotence.”

“Cruel to the last, Guy—cruel to the last. Surely
the few hours between this and that of death, are
too precious to be employed in bitterness. Were
not prayer better—if you will not pray, Guy, let
me. My prayer shall be for you; and in the forgiveness
which my heart shall truly send to my
lips for the wrongs you have done me and mine,
I shall not altogether despair, so that you join with
me, of winning a forgiveness far more important
and precious. Guy—will you join with me in
prayer?”

“My knees are stiff, Ellen. I have not been
taught to kneel.”

“But it is not too late to learn.—Bend, bow with
me, Guy—if you have ever loved the poor Ellen,
bow with her now. It is her prayer; and oh,
think, how weak is the vanity of this pride in a
situation like yours. How idle the stern and
stubborn spirit, when men can place you in bonds,
—when men can take away life and name—when
men can hoot and hiss and defile your fettered and
enfeebled person. It was for a season and a trial
like this, Guy, that humility was given us. It was
in order to such an example that the Saviour died
for us.”

“He died not for me. I have gained nothing by
his death. Men are as bad as ever, and wrong—
the wrong which deprived me of my right in society—has
been as active and prevailing a principle
of human action as before he died. It is in his
name now that they do the wrong, and in his name,
since his death, they have contrived to find a sanction
for all manner of crime. Speak no more of
this, Ellen; you know nothing about it. It is all
folly.”

“To you, Guy, it may be. To the wise all
things are folly. But to the humble heart there is a
word even in what are thought follies which brings
us the best of teachings. That is no folly which
keeps down, in the even posture of humility, the spirit
which circumstances would only bind and crush
in every effort to rise. That is no folly which
prepares us for reverses, and fortifies us against
change and vicissitude. That is no folly which
takes away the sting from affliction—which has
kept me, Guy, as once before you said, from driving
a knife into your heart, while it lay beating against
the one to which yours had brought all manner of
affliction. Oh, believe me, the faith and the feeling
and the hope, not less than the fear, which has made
me what I am now—which has taught me to rely
only on the one—which has made me independent
of all things and all loves,—ay, even of yours,
when I refer to it—is no idle folly. It is the only
medicine by which the heart may live. It is that
which I bring to you now. Hear me then, Guy—
hear the prayer of the poor Ellen, who surely has
some right to be heard by you. Kneel for me,
and with me, on this dungeon floor, and pray—only
pray.”

“And what should I pray for, and what should I
say—and whom should I curse?”

“Oh, curse none—say any thing you please, so
that it have the form of a prayer. Say, though
but a single sentence, but say it in the spirit which
is right.”

“Say what?”

“Say—the Lord's will be done—if nothing
more; but say it in the true feeling—the feeling of
humble reliance upon God.”

“And wherefore say this? His will must be
done, and will be done, whether I say it or not.

This is all idle—very idle,—and to my mind excessively
ridiculous, Ellen.”

“Not so, Guy, as your own sense will inform
you. True, his will must be done, but there is a
vast difference between desiring that it be done,
and in endeavouring to resist its doing. It is one
thing to pray that his will have its way without
stop, but quite another to have a vain wish in one's
heart to arrest its progress. But I am a poor
scholar, and have no words to prove this to your
mind if you are not willing to think upon the subject.
If the danger is not great enough in your
thought—if the happiness of that hope of immortality
be not sufficiently impressive to you—how
can I make it seem different. The great misfortune
of the learned and the wise is, that they will
not regard the necessity. If they did—if they
could be less self-confident, how much more readily
would all these lights from God shine out to them,
than to us who want the far sense so quickly to
perceive and to trace them out in the thick darkness.
But it is my prayer, Guy, that you kneel
with me in prayer; that you implore the feeling
of preparedness for all chances which can only
come from Heaven. Do this for me, Guy—Guy,
my beloved—the destroyer of my youth, of all
my hope, and of all of mine, making me the poor
destitute and outcast that you find me now—do
this one, one small service for the Ellen you have
so much wronged, and she forgives you all. I
have no other prayer than this—I have no other
wish in life.”

As she spoke she threw herself before him and
clasped his knees firmly with her hands. He
lifted her gently from the floor, and for a few moments
maintained her in silence in his arms. At
length, releasing her from his grasp, and placing

her upon the bench, on which, until that moment,
he had continued to sit, he replied:—

“The prayer is small—very small, Ellen—which
you make, and I know no good reason why I should
not grant it. I have been to you all that you describe
me. You have called me truly your destroyer,
and the forgiveness you promise in return
for this prayer is desirable even to one so callous
as myself. I will do as you require.”

“Oh, will you? then I shall be so happy—” was
her exclamation of rejoicing. He replied gravely—

“We shall see. I will, Ellen, do you as you require,
but you must turn away your eyes—go to
the window and look out. I would not be seen in
such a position, nor while uttering such a prayer.”

“Oh, be not ashamed, Guy Rivers. Give over
that false sentiment of pride which is now a weakness.
Be the man, the—”

“Be content, Ellen, with my terms. Either as
I please, or not at all. Go to the window.”

She did as he directed, and a few moments had
elapsed only when he called her to him. He had
resumed his seat upon the bench, and his features
were singularly composed and quiet.

“I have done something more than you required,
Ellen, for which you will also have to forgive
me. Give me your hand, now.”

She did so, and he placed it upon his bosom, which
was now streaming with his blood. He had taken
the momentary opportunity afforded him by her
absence at the window to stab himself to the heart
with a penknife which he had contrived to conceal
upon his person. Horror-struck, the affrighted
woman would have called out for assistance, but he
sternly stayed her speech and action.

“Not for your life, Ellen—not for your life.
It is all useless. I first carefully felt for the beatings

of my heart, and then struck where they were
strongest. The stream flows now which will soon
cease to flow, and but one thing can stop it.”

“Oh, what is that, Guy—let me—”

“Death,—which is at hand! Now, Ellen, do
you forgive me? I ask no forgiveness from others.”

“From my heart I do, believe me.”

“It is well. I am weak. Let me place my
head upon your bosom. It is some time, Ellen,
since it has been there. How wildly does it struggle.
Pray, Ellen, that it beat not long. It has a
sad office! Now—lips—give me your lips, Ellen.
You have forgiven me—all—every thing?”

“All, all!”

“It grows dark—but I care not. Yet, throw
open the window—I will not rest—I will pursue.
He shall not escape me—Edith—Edith!” He was
silent—in the last moment his mind had wandered
to the scene, in which, but a few hours before, he
had witnessed the departure of Edith with his
rival, Colleton. The jailer, alarmed by the first
fearful cry of Ellen succeeding this event, rushed
with his assistants into the cell, but too late. The
spirit had departed; and they found but the now
silent mourner, with folded arms, and a countenance
that had in it volumes of unutterable wo,
bending over the inanimate form of one, whose life
and misnamed love had been the bane of hers.