What struggles must have rent that strong young breast before the life was dislodged from it! How must the spirit which had known this earth only through innocent joys and sweet affections and lovely hopes,--how must it have clung to its dear mortal dwelling-place! how mourned its dividing ties! how claimed its work, unfinished, unbegun! This grief, this yearning, this reluctance would have left their story on the cold immovable face. With these, bodily torture would have done its part to alter and impair! I followed my guide, foreboding that the dumb anguish in my heart was to be displaced by a fiercer pain. There was no pain in his presence. In death, as in life, he kept his own gift of blessing. The holy light still lay on the brow; about the lips hovered a smile, last ethereal trace of the ascended spirit. My soul lifted itself to his. I understood the peace that passeth understanding. An angry voice brought me back to the world and its discords. "Do you think you were worth it?" I looked where Brompton was looking, and saw, seated near, on an overturned barrel, a figure which could be no other than that of Orphy. He sat impassive. Brompton's cruel words had not reached him. His misery was its own shield. His utter wretchedness precluded more. But he felt my look fixed upon him. He raised his eyes to me for a moment, then closed them again to shut himself in with his woe. And now his face quivered all over; his lips parted and closed rapidly,--not as forming articulate accents, but in the helpless forlornness that has no language in which to utter plaint or appeal. And yet on these trembling cheeks, about this inane mouth, still lingered some of the soft, playful lines I remembered on the pretty, varying face of little Airy Harvey! On the way from the house I was conscious that a step followed us, stopping when we stopped, and going on again when we did; but I had not given thought to it until now, when I perceived a timid movement behind me, and felt a light touch laid on my arm. I turned, and met a pair of mournful, pleading eyes. "Jasper!" The old man stretched one trembling hand toward the dead, while the other clasped my wrist.--"It was not meant! It was not meant!" "It was not," said Brompton. "Do not bear anger! _He_ did not." "He did not," echoed Brompton. Jasper, searching my face, saw there what changed his look of entreaty into one of compassion. He stroked my sleeve soothingly with his poor shrunken fingers.--"And yet there never was anything but love between you! Oh, think there is a sorer heart than yours this day!" "Where is he?" I asked, fearing lest that most unhappy one might be near.