He of the charmed life had fallen unharmed, and, hearing this heroic defiance, rushed to consummate his hellish vengeance. But the Duchess of Boaz anticipated his asking eye. Madly she dashed her veined temples against the jagged rock--all was black darkness. Wooden hurried forward,--slipped,--fell. Was it the ocean foam which rendered his path precarious? He scooped up some, in the hollow of his hand, to quench his burning thirst, and lend him voice for one more vow of hate! Holy nature! his slide was formed of Ketura's brain!--'twas that his lip had touched. Still, as life ebbed from her gangrenous coagulated wounds, her lacerated arms, like crushed vipers, wound their torn muscles round his felon knee. With a glare of fury he beheld the demon laughing o'er his prey, but, as the master of these forfeit souls, spurned the already putrescent masses of still conscious mortality into the turgid sable of that yawning gulf: their life-rending shriek awaked the distant bandits, who had been deaf to the phenomena of nature. What sight awaits them? Now all the gods to speed! it is the Steam Beacon of the Railroad, which begins to flare in token of their chieftain's victory: and lo! he comes, bearing in one hand two papers;--the first, a free pardon for himself and gallant band; the second, a restitution of his Italian estates, as the rightful Count Cigaro. In his other hand he leads the rescued Clotilde, followed by her venerable father Sir Gunterzwartz; and if a momentary cloud o'ershadowed their spirits at the memory of the dead, it was dissipated on the morrow at the altar of Hymen, where the Druidic high-priest, assisted by his patriarchs, conferred the blushing hand of Clotilde on the joy-o'erflowed eye of her devoted Guzman; announcing to the assembled senate this moral lesson,--that necromancy dislocates every vital tie; but that whene'er irregular valour substitutes, in favour of injured beauty, the boudoir of bliss for the dungeon of despair, there is in such exchange no robbery." To this we can only add, that Miss St. Cloud and a young gentleman we know might write a delightful book between them; and that the sooner they form a literary partnership, the better. LINES _On seeing "The Young Veteran,"_ JOHN BANNISTER, _toddling up Gower-street, after he had attained his seventieth birthday_. WRITTEN BY SIR GEORGE ROSE, AND COMMUNICATED BY J. P. HARLEY, ESQ. With seventy years upon his back, Still is my honest friend "Young Jack," Nor spirits check'd nor fancy slack, But fresh as any daisy. Though Time has knock'd his stumps about, He cannot bowl his temper out; And all the _Bannister_ is stout, Although the STEPS be crazy. [Illustration: An Irish Patient] HANDY ANDY.--No. II.