“Oh, God!” cried St. Clare indignantly; “have I lived to see my country bleeding; and is there not one of her children firm by her to the last?” “We are all united, all ready to stand, and die, for our liberty,” replied her eager followers. “Lead on: the hour is at hand. At the given signal, hundreds, nay, thousands, in every part of the kingdom, shall rush at once to arms, and fight gallantly for the rights of man. The blast of the horn shall echo through the mountains, and, like the lava in torrents of fire, we will pour down upon the tyrants who oppress us. Lead on, St. Clare: hearts of iron attend you. One soul unites us—one spirit actuates our desires: from the boundaries of the north, to the last southern point of the island, all await the signal.” “Hear it kings and oppressors of the earth,” said St. Clare: “hear it, and tremble on your thrones. It is the voice of the people, the voice of children you have trampled upon, and betrayed. What enemy is so deadly as an injured friend?” Saying this, and rushing from the applause with which this meeting concluded, she turned to the topmost heights of Inis Tara, and gazed with melancholy upon the turrets of Belfont. Splendid was the setting ray of the sun upon the western wave: calm was the scene before her: and the evening breeze blew softly around. Then placing herself near her harp, she struck for the last time its chords. Niel Carter and Tyrone had followed her. Buchanan, and de Ruthven, Glenarvon’s cousin, stood by her side. “Play again on thy harp the sweet sounds that are dear to me. Sing the songs of other days,” he said. “Oh, look not sad, St. Clare: I never will abandon thee.” “My name is branded with infamy,” she cried: “dishonour and reproach assail me on every side. Black are the portals of hell—black are the fiends that await to seize my soul—but more black is the heart of iron that has betrayed me. Yet I will sing the song of the wild harper. I will sing for you the song of my own native land, of peace and joy, which never more must be mine.” “Hark! what shriek of agony is that?”—“I hear nothing.” “It was his dying groan.——What means your altered brow, that hurried look?” It was the sudden inspiration of despair. Her eye fixed itself on distant space in wild alarm—her hair streamed—as in a low and hurried tone she thus exclaimed, whilst gazing on the blue vault of heaven: “Curs’d be the fiend’s detested art, Impress’d upon this breaking heart. Visions dark and dread I see. Chill’d is the life-blood in my breast. I cannot pause—I may not rest: I gaze upon futurity. “My span of life is past, and gone: My breath is spent, my course is done. Oh! sound my lyre, one last sad strain! This hand shall wake thy chords no more. Thy sweetest notes were breath’d in vain: The spell that gave them power is o’er.”