that she had positive hopes, by her intercession, and with the assistance of the Earl of Wilton and the Governor's lady, who were warmly interesting themselves on his behalf, of obtaining a commutation of his sentence. She had already had one interview with the Governor, who seemed now favourably disposed, and the Governor's lady gave her secretly the most encouraging expectations.

"It comes too late," muttered the dying Pirate. "My foot is on the very threshold of death. Had I heard this a few hours ago-but what can recal that which is done?"

"O father, father! how could you have acted so rashly?" expostulated Jane, almost upbraidingly, in the bitterness of her anguish.

"Do you reproach me?" exclaimed the Pirate in piercing accents, rising with a hasty effort to his feet. "It was for your sake I did it!"

"For my sake?" echoed Jane, faintly.

"Yes, for yours!" returned her father with majesty. "I have destroyed myself that you might live without disgrace. The world may say I have been a Piratethat I was condemned;-but that is all it can say. And while it stops short there you may live in quiet. But if I came upon the public scaffold-if I died by the halter the stigma on you would be deep and irremediable. Go into what retirement you would, the finger of scorn would point at you. Your parentage would be as notorious and as infamous as if the daughter of an executed felon were branded on your face. I thought to have spared you some misery by my self-destruction. This was my motive! If, therefore, events have con

spired to make me partly regret what I have done, still you should rather speak peace to me than reproach."

"I meant not to reproach you, father," said Jane, in deep distress." But oh! to lose you now when hope is-"

"Think not of Madame Barry's message," said he, earnestly. "The hope she holds out I feel persuaded is delusive. That fatal paper of your poor brother's could not by any means be set aside. It was that which condemned me, and nothing could save me while it remained in existence."

"That is my own opinion," said the Pastor, tremulously.

"And mine," said Arthur, decisively.

"You hear your grandfather,"-urged the Pirate"you hear your husband-credit them if not me. Do not add to the suffering of this hour by imagining that if I had not anticipated my sentence I might have been spared to you. I myself was inclined to think so, but my judgment now persuades me otherwise."

"But suicide is a great crime, my son," interposed

the Pastor.

"I fear it is," gravely returned the Pirate. "Heaven pardon it! But still, to my mind, the circumstances of my case partially excuse the deed. I have never shed blood except in self-defence. I have not deserved a public death. Perpetual imprisonment, exile, any punishment short of death I had deserved-but not death. I did not feel bound, therefore, to render up myself to the gallows. No law of God required me to do so. Such being my view of the case, I felt at liberty to dispose of myself in the way I have. The honourable

name I have inherited is hereby saved from some degredation, and yet I have suffered the full penalty of my misdeeds."

He had rallied so much that Jane hoped he might yet recover from the effects of the deadly potion he had taken. She expressed this hope in lively terms to a doctor who had been summoned contrary to the Pirate's wish. When the professional personage, however, heard from the prisoner what it was he had taken, a slight shake of the head warned her to expect no success from his endeavours.

Again the Pirate sank upon the ground in bodily torture, and his cries echoed through the numerous vaultings of the prison with dismal effect. The Pastor clasped his hands upward in vehement internal prayer, his silvery locks fluttering about his venerable head, and tears trickling down the furrows of his anguished face. Jane threw herself on her knees by her dying father, gazing on him with distracted looks, sharing in his pangs though unable to alleviate them, and almost wishing for the moment that would put a period to his agony. Arthur supported the Pirate, aided by the doctor, who in vain strove to pass an antidote through his close-shut teeth. Terrible retchings, shooting pains as if from redhot arrows, spasms, and suffocation, these were some of the dreadful symptoms of the operation of the baleful drug. The sufferer shortly became stupified, and lay for several hours upon the confines of this world and the next, without properly belonging to either. At last he was seen to move his lips, and his daughter, bending her head down, distinguished a few scarcely audible but haughty words:-

"No executioner shall touch me!-No, no!

the descendant of a brave and illustrious race-I will not die upon a scaffold! The poison, turnkey! Nay, I will have it! If you take it from me I will kill myself by other means! Now I have done it! All is over! I have drank it! The work is accomplished! Ha!— ha! I have saved the name I bear from the consummating disgrace!"

He continued to mutter, but now inaudibly. After a while, he threw himself from his bed, drawing up bis colossal proportions to their full height, elevating his arms, and shouting in deafening tones

"Heave-to! Down with the maintop sail! Throw out another anchor! Haverstraw, load my gun! That's it-fire away! Board her!-board her! Gallantly done, brave fellows! Hurrah!-hurrah!"

66

My dear son!" entreated the Pastor.

"Who speaks?" ejaculated the Pirate, sinking down in a sitting posture, and looking around with indescribsble eagerness. "Fanny! Is it you, Fanny ? is it you? Have you risen out of your grave to reproach me? Was it I who murdered your son, that you look at me so? What! and Nicholas too with you!" His voice took a softer cadence, most affecting-" My son! my accomplished son! my heir! my gallant son! Hah!— how changed! Can twenty-four hours of death make such havoc in a fine person! Pale-pale-and sad! Poor fellow! He little thought he would die before me."

He sat silent some minutes, then broke out again more wildly

"The Earl of Wilton in the water ?-There let him

drown! Great men forget benefits. If he was a penniless cottager I would save him. As it is I will not! Hang up that Michael and They are bad fellows, and will yon heights to let my son know Hark to that pistol shot again!

Let him drown I say! Jonas to the yard-arm! ruin us. Light a fire on whereabouts we are.

That was my son's signal! Our foes are near! Board

her!-board her! Fire, Toby!

Hallo, Gilpin, fight

They strike to the

Hurrah! hurrah!

Victory! Victory!

away there! They cry quarter!

Pirate flag!

Victory!"

Shouting thus, he waved his arm triumphantly over his head, staggered, and fell. In his last moments the delirium passed away, and he faintly said—

66

Bury Clinton in the grave of Miss Lee, as he wished. Lay me with Marie Verche my mother, and the late Marquis, in the mausoleum I built at Rougemont. Your hand, Jane-yours, father-Mr. Lee. Forgive the disgrace I have caused you-the griefs I have brought upon you. My career has been a troubled one, and it ends in darkness and shame. I had hoped for better. things. I have felt within me aspirations which led me to hope that I should be useful to my generation, and perhaps leave behind me a memory not all unworthy. Fleeting visions! Deceitful creations of fancy! Fatal -fatal delusions! I have followed meteors, and thought them beacons. Now I go down to the dust dishonoured. Posterity will hear nothing of me. I shall be as though I had never lived. When my story is ever called to mind I shall be spoken of as a plunderer of my race, instead of as a benefactor and an ornament. Well, 'regret is useless now. Time is past with me. Another exis