The assizes began--on the morrow the judges were expected in Carlisle--and already all that bustle commenced that bore the semblance of gayety in the rest of the town, but which was so mournful and fearful in the jail. There were several capital cases; as Elizabeth heard them discussed, her blood ran cold--she hated life, and all its adjuncts: to know of misery she could not alleviate was always saddening; but to feel the squalid, mortal misery of such a place and hour brought home to her own heart, was a wretchedness beyond all expression, poignant and hideous. The day that the judges arrived, Elizabeth presented herself in Falkner's cell--a letter in her hand--her first words announced good tidings; yet she was agitated, tearful--something strange and awful had surely betided. It was a letter from Neville that she held, and gave to Falkner to read. "I shall soon be in Carlisle, my dearest friend, but this letter will outspeed me, and bring you the first intelligence of my poor father's death. Thank God, I did my duty by him to the last--thank God, he died in peace--in peace with me and the whole world. The uneasiness of pain yielded at first to torpor, and thus we feared he would die; but before his death he recovered himself an hour or two, and though languid and feeble, his mind was clear. How little, dear Elizabeth, do we know of our fellow-creatures--each shrouded in the cloak of manner--that cloak of various dies--displays little of the naked man within. We thought my father vain, selfish, and cruel--he was all this, but he was something else that we knew not of--he was generous, humane, humble--these qualities he hid as if they had been vices--he struggled with them--pride prevented him from recognising them as the redeeming points of a faulty nature; he despised himself for feeling them, until he was on his deathbed.