CHAPTER XXXV.

"There we sate, in the communion

Of interchanged vows, which, with a rite

Of faith most sweet and sacred, stamped our union.
Few were the living hearts which could unite
Like ours,--

With such close sympathies; for they had sprung
From linked youth, and from the gentle might

Of earliest love, delayed and cherished long,

Which common hopes and fears made, like a tempest, strong."

Shelley.

AFTER a calmer night than he had yet spent in the prison, the Pirate arose from his bed to receive a priest who had been invited by his earnest desire to hear his confession, and to impart to him religious instruction. Unfortunately the man was not suitable to his office, inheriting a fierce spirit of bigotry for every popish form, without any of the milder and holier traits of the gospel, which are found shining in all their intrinsic loveliness in some professors of his pompous faith. Hence the Pirate, whose imagination more than his judgment clung to catholicism, found little real benefit from the spiritual exercise in which he was engaged. However, he made a clean breast as far as his crimes against the laws were concerned, and acknowledged

himself to have broken all the Ten Commandments, he joined too in the prayers of the priest, and answered Amen to his formal exordium and peroration; but the root of the matter had not been planted in him, and he was still left at the mercy of his wild and wandering thoughts. These soon presented to him an awful idea replete with fascination: he recoiled from it, but it came again and again with increasing force until he grew familiar with it, and entertained the dangerous guest within the innermost sanctuary of his soul.

"Self-destruction! rather than incur the odium of the scaffold! Self-destruction! rather than that it should be ever said to my children Your father was hung!' Self-destruction! rather than that my last moments should be embittered by a vile rabble gathered together to glut a brutish curiosity!" Thus muttered the Pirate, compressing his lips firmly, and folding his arms on his breast in an attitude of calm resolution. "Brien, you shall not consummate my disgrace by bringing me under the hands of the executioner!-you shall not feast yourself by beholding me in that extremity of degradation! I will cheat your prime hope, fellow !-I will foil thee

there!"

Having thus said, he became silent, but his eye and his countenance showed the fierce workings of his spirit. Presently they too grew hushed, as it were, in their tone, and then might you see in him

"Gestures proud and cold,

And looks of firm defiance, and calm hate,

And such despair as mocks itself with smiles,

Written as on a scroll."

All this he threw off upon the entrance of his children with their intended partners for life.

"My dear Lady Hester!-Mr. Lee!-you are come I hope intending to gratify my nearest wish!" These were his first words to those whom he addressed as they greeted him with the warmth of true friendship.

"We are," replied Arthur, unequivocally. "The ceremony can be afterwards performed by my grandfather when we all return to the lodge together."

"Ah! that will be a happy day indeed!" ejaculated Jane.

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May we live to see it!" exclaimed Clinton. The Pirate responded an emphatic Amen, and then spoke with the turnkey at the door, who brought the priest back to the cell (for he had gone to take dinner), and the young lovers were soon united in the indissoluble bonds of hymen in that ill-omened place.

As the priest was in the act of pronouncing the closing words of the ritual, a sudden gloom darkened the cell, and a peal of thunder reverberated awfully through the prison. Jane trembled. The Pirate was startled. The priest crossed himself. To make the adverse influences of the hour more impressive, the turnkey's raven lighted on the stone in which the outer window bars were fixed, and saluted the nerves of the bridal company with several loud croaks from her "hollow beak." Lightning flashed vividly into the cell every minute; the thunder boomed, and burst, and rumbled, and rattled, with incessant violence; then came down the rain as it might have done in the beginning of the great deluge— not in a pattering fall, but rushing, sweeping, smoking, headlong from the heights of heaven to the pavement, and rebounding upwards from it with the violence of the contact.

"The elements are more congenial with my fortunes at present than with yours," moodily observed the Pirate to the brides and bridegrooms. "Joy is a brief prison guest. Nevertheless, may heaven bless your marriages with long years of peace and bliss!"

A bright beam of sunlight shot into the cell, and suddenly exhilirated the spirits of the newly wedded. The rain ceased almost instantaneously. The raven flew off. The turnkey's wife hung outside her parlour in the court a woodlark in a cage, which sung so rich and joyous a strain as nothing could excel. It was inexpressibly touching. Jane wept quietly as she listened. The Pirate looked toward the window with a softened eye and lip, wishing that the black idea now coiled up in his soul had never been admitted there, and longing for some wise teacher to lead him to the arms of his forsaken Maker. The Pastor occurred to him. Jane had often described his benignity, his excellence, and his skill in healing the wounds of the sorrow-stricken and the guilty. He would have him sent for. He would have his instructions though he was a Protestant. Perhaps they might bring him peace. He asked Mr. Lee to write and say that it was his earnest desire to see him. Mr. Lee replied that he had written to desire his grandfather to come, and that he had no doubt he was on the road.

Clinton harkened to the bird's touching melody with all his "rapt soul sitting in his eyes."

"This is our hymeneal anthem, Hester," said he. "Is it not an incomparable one? Where is my pencil? I must fix the feelings it creates in an impromptu verse or two."

With gay rapidity he scratched down a few lines, and, carried away with the thrilling impulse of the moment, sang them to a low, old air, as the woodlark ceased her measure:

Sing on! sing on! sweet bird,
In thy captivity;

Some who thy song have heard

Are prisoners like thee.

They weep to hear thy strain,
Wooing them back again

To woodlands fresh and free,

Where thou, sweet bird! should be.

Renew-renew thy lay!

O, bird of soaring wing!

Though thou immured must stay,

Yet do not cease to sing!

Thy voice is sunshine heard!

Flowers turned to sound! Sweet bird

Sing! Full thoughts cannot meet

Outlet, save thy warblings sweet.

"That is all I could manufacture," said the vocalist,

breaking off his mellow tones. "The lead of my pencil broke as I was using it, and I am not clever enough to compose as I sing. Ah! the woodlark begins again."

The turnkey interrupted their enjoyment of its song. "I have news for you, Marquis," said he.-" Your trial is put off for a week."

"This will enable our lawyer to prepare better for it," said Clinton, with gladness.

The lawyer was the same who had assisted the Pirate to obtain his inheritance; he was talented, as well as honest-minded, and was throwing the whole of his mental powers into the case. He had now gone to