University of Virginia Library

HEAVEN'S CHANCERY.

Fast fell the snow; keenly blew the north-east wind;
loudly rattled the hail-stones upon the frozen pavement. Wild
and wet, and fierce with tempest, the long hours came rolling
on; the black, scowling sky above, the gray, slippery
stones beneath. Not a single carriage rumbled along the
streets of the great city; still and silent it lay, like the hush
of the grave, with only the storm stirring the pulsations of its
mighty heart. It seemed to have folded round itself a pall
of night and stillness, and gone to its shrouded sleep, haunted
by ghosts of fearful dreams.

There were sumptuous halls there, where fair forms reclined
on couches of crimson velvet; where the rosy light streamed
over groups of statuary and rare paintings, in which old masters
had wrought out such dreams as man dreams but once on earth,
ere he wakes from them in heaven.

There was life, and light, and hope, within; there was black,
surging storm without. The very watchmen had cowered within
their boxes, and came not forth at the sound of a quick, firm
step along the deserted side-walk. You would have started as
you heard that foot-step, with its proud, defiant language. It

was a Wall-street broker, who had counted his gains late in
the night, and was now returning homeward.

Suddenly behind him was heard another foot-fall. This one
seemed to express a kind of dogged resolution, stung to madness.

Quickly they passed onward, those two, in the midnight and
the darkness. There was little light at the street corner where
the broker paused at last, — paused, for a strong hand was on
his arm.

“Wretch! fiend!” whispered the stranger, “have we met at
last?

“`Unhand you,' do you say? `You do not know me?'—You
do know me, and, by all the fiends, you shall know me better
before we part! I loved once. Annie Lyle was fair and bright
as the roses on a June morning. I thought she loved me, —
and God knows how fondly I would have cherished her! but you
crossed her path — you, sir — do you hear?

“You were young and handsome, but with poison on your
adder's tongue. Annie was innocent and beautiful, but very
poor, — poor people have no hearts, you know! You deluded
your victim by a mock marriage, and then told her all, and left
her to her shame.

“That girl died of a broken heart; and, with my hand on her
cold, dead face, with its upturned, glassy eyes, I vowed to guard
her child.

“You, I suppose, were happy. The arms of a beautiful
woman were round your neek; one who would have spurned my
Annie from her side. Ha! ha! — I wonder if the skeleton arms
of that dead bride of yours never choked and strangled you in
your dreams.

“That child — your child and the poor dead girl's — has grown
up now; and when she came to you for gold (I sent her, to see
if the father's heart within you might not even yet be moved),
you spurned her from your presence; — her, with her mother's
look in her face, her mother's soul gazing out of those clear eyes.
You, bold, evil man, dared to turn her child from your door, and
whispered to her of bread that shame might bring. No, no! mean,
pitiful wretch, it is no use to tremble — no use to mutter and
deny! Pray, if you will, for there is short shrift before you —
this hour you die!”

“Mercy! mercy!” pleaded the doomed man; but his cry
was uttered to a heart whence all sweet mercy-drops had been
washed out, long years ago, by bitter tears of agony.

“Mercy, ha! tell me, did you heed Annie's prayer for mercy,
when she clung to your knees, in her comfortless attic, and
begged you to kill her with your own hands, and not leave her
there to die of shame and want? Mercy! yes, there is a dagger
at your side; — use it, if you list, — use it — or — die!”

And with that word the murdered man fell heavily, while one
shriek, wild as the wail of a lost soul, rose loud and clear above
the storm, above the clear voices which rung the peal of one from
the lofty spire of Trinity!

It brought the startled watch to the spot, as if summoned
by the clang of a trumpet; and a dozen night-lamps shed their
lurid glare on the murderer's face, as he cooly drew the reeking
steel from the body of the dead.

A crowd was assembled in front of Sing-sing prison, for a
soul was to go forth from thence to meet its Maker. The

by-standers held the morning papers in their hands, and scarcely
dared even to breathe, as they lingered over the accounts of the
justice and nobleness of the deceased, and the fearful incidents
of his shocking, cold-blooded murder!

Hush! hush! All is very still now. The prisoner has been
placed upon the scaffold, and turns to address the people.

“I am going to die now, fellow-citizens; dear, good friends,
such as the world has always been to me and mine. You
have done me a great many favors, and this last one — this
consent to let me die — is the greatest one of all! I have
appealed to another Court, and I go there to await my doom.
I make no base, mocking denial, no plausible lies, to cheat the
world of its sympathy. I killed him, and, could I kill him once
more, I would indeed wish to live. He has left me no family to
disgrace, and I go to a Court where Wall-street and the cell at
Sing-sing stand on an equal footing.”

There were shouts, and jeers, and hisses, when the dead body
hung there, in its cold chains, stark and stiff; there were voices
to whisper words of cheer, and trust in Heaven, to the proud
widow of the Wall-street broker; but I thought low to myself
of the high Chancery where God will be the plaintiff, and, with
little, half-crazed Miss Flite, I whispered, “I expect a judgment,
shortly — at the day of judgment!”