letter, which he tore open and devoured its contents. Alas! it only harrowed him by adding certainty to his fears. It was from Father Bartholomew, and ran as follows:

"MY GOOD FRIEND,

"THE letter forwarded to you by the last messenger from this place will have prepared you in some degree for the sad tidings which it is now my melancholy duty to communicate. The hand of affliction hath been laid upon us most heavily, and we are almost overwhelmed by the blow, but the Lord's will be done. Amen! Amen!

"We have lost our dear, our incomparable daughter! Agatha, the beautiful and the good, the most exemplary of women, the best, because the most charitable, of Christians; Agatha, the paragon of her sex, your friend, the friend of Edith, the friend of all the world, she is taken from us, and hath winged her flight, to join her sister saints and angels in those blissful abodes where it is our consolation to hope that we may hereafter be reunited to her. After successive

fainting fits she expired in iny arms about half an hour ago, invoking with her last breath benedictions upon yourself and her dear Edith, and praying for your happy union. The departure of the courier, who cannot be longer delayed, and my own distress of mind, forbid me to add more. My poor kinsman is almost inconsolable, nor can I wonder at his affliction; but it becomes us all to bow with resignation to these inscrutable visitations of Providence, and exclaim devoutly- The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away, beatum sit nomen Domini Amen!

"Accept the blessing of your friend,

"BARTHOLOMEW SHELTON."

Forester was a man of great fortitude, capable of enduring anything when he was supported by a sense of duty; but in the present case, where no counteracting principle opposed itself to the indulgence of his grief, he gave way to it without restraint. His heart sickened within him at the thought that so stately, glorious, and angelic a creature as Agatha should be thus

prematurely snatched away from the earth, to the utter extinction of those sweet hopes which had formed the great recent solace of his soul. Now that his patriotic vow had been accomplished by the emancipation of his country; now that Agatha was no more, life, he feared, would remain without an object, and his bosom become a desolated void; an apprehension so withering, that as he pressed the locket to his lips in a transport of tender sadness, the tears gushed from his eyes, and fell fast upon it. The cross which he remembered to have often seen suspended from her graceful neck, renewed and embittered his anguish. "And is it possible," he ejaculated with a shudder, "that the beautiful bosom on which I have seen this cross reposing is at this moment inanimate-that it heaves no more-nay, that now, even now while I speak, it is decomposing and relapsing into clay;

that the noble heart which that bosom enshrined, and which was as an overflowing fount of every generous virtue, is now crumbling into dust? So young, so angelic, and yet to be snatched away from the earth in the spring-time

and budding of her undeveloped glories! Gracious Heaven! what is life, and why should we remain in this vale of tears, if the visions that might cheer us through our weary pilgrimage are doomed to be evanescent in proportion as they are enchanting, and we are to be dazzled with the brightest hopes, only that we may be plunged into a tenfold darkness of despair ?"

Although the magnitude and the suddenness of the calamity might well excuse this momentary burst of despondency, such a feeling was not natural to Forester's temperament; he had too much manly fortitude to succumb, even beneath the heaviest afflictions, and he soon, therefore, gathered strength to bear up against this trying visitation. Nature generally prompts the afflicted mind to seek its own relief by busying itself in some active pursuit that may abstract it from the contemplation of its own misery, or by sharing and thus alleviating its sorrows with some sympathising friend. Both these resources presented themselves to Forester, who immediately began to make preparations for delivering the necklace and locket, according to the last injunc

tions of Agatha, and who already learned to bear his own loss with greater resignation, as he turned his compassionate thoughts upon Edith, in the dread that her affectionate and susceptible heart might be overcome by the shock of so sudden a bereavement. Yearning with a deep and increasing tenderness towards that unhappy girl, his feelings, as he travelled, were as much awakened by pity for her, as by grief for the loss of their mutual friend; and as any abrupt communication of the tidings he bore might derange the trembling balance of her reason, he cautiously perpended how he might best break to her the afflicting intelligence. Now, too, did he feel beforehand how peculiarly delicate would be his position with respect to her. She loved him, so Agatha had declared, with a devotedness which had been as ardent and enthusiastic as it was hopeless. What a lacerating struggle for such a gentle heart, and how magnanimous the sacrifice she had been eager to make at the certain loss of happiness, at the probable risk of reason and of life! Even to his inmost soul did he melt with ruth as he