It was not long delayed, for the time soon arrived when the bell tolled for her whose sorrowful life and early death had been the penalty of a single error. Allston stood beside the coffin and saw within its deep shadow the pale and stony features of the being whom he had loved; and even while his heart smote him as the shortener of her brief and melancholy span of life, he yet nerved himself with the high, stern resolve of one who suffers in the cause of duty. With that cold brow beneath his gaze, he poured forth, from the depths of an agonized heart, a prayer whose solemn eloquence thrilled every listener like a voice from the grave. No sound escaped his lips as the clods of the valley fell rattling on the coffin-lid which shrouded the heart so sorely tried in life, but, in the deep midnight, groans and bitter cries, which rived his stern bosom, were heard issuing from the pastor’s lonely closet. Mrs. Norwood’s old servant inherited the property in Elmsdale, and one of her first duties was to place in Mr. Allston’s hands the cabinet which she said her mistress had requested might be given him after her death. It contained only Mrs. Norwood’s letter and her lover’s reply, together with a _third_, in an unknown hand, bearing a black seal. This last was dated _some months earlier_ than the others, and contained the tidings of Mr. Wallingford’s death. He had fallen a victim to his own misdeeds in Italy, and at the moment when Allston had considered himself the subject of a temptation intended to try his strength, the divorced wife was in reality free from every shadow of a tie. Why had she not disclosed these tidings to her scrupulous lover? Ask rather why she who had twice suffered from man’s wayward nature, and who had escaped from the _vices_ of one only to perish by the too rigid _virtues_ of another, should place trust in any earthly affection? Sick of life, hopeless of future peace, sinking under a fatal disease, she had taken a lesson from the inferior creation: “mute The camel labors with the heaviest load, And the wolf dies in silence.” * * * * * TOUSKY WOUSKY. BY EPES SARGENT. “O, manners! that this age should bring forth such creatures! that nature should be at leisure to make them!” Ben Jonson.