A skillful physician had accompanied Euston from his native land, and his unremitting attention, aided by the tender nursing of his affectionate sister, seemed as if they would eventually reap their reward in the preservation of life beyond the hour of his majority. In pain and weariness time slowly waned, but it still left him life and an unclouded mind; and the bold, bad heart, that nightly watched him, feared that the wealth he so ardently coveted, might yet elude his grasp. The evening of the twenty-fifth at last arrived. Euston reclined in his chair as we first beheld him, wrapped in a brocade dressing-gown, whose brilliant colors made his extreme pallor the more remarkable; a table was drawn close beside him, and on it, at his own desire, was placed his repeater, from which his eyes scarcely wandered. His breath came slowly and gaspingly, and at brief intervals his physician moistened his parched lips with a restorative cordial, and murmured words of encouragement in his ear. As before, Edith sat at his feet, with her guitar, ready to stifle her deep emotion, and fulfill her promise to sing to him while his parting soul was struggling for release from its earthly tenement. His mother leaned over his chair, and bathed his cold brow with her burning tears; in the back-ground sat a clergyman, gazing on the scene with absorbing interest. Each one in that hushed room felt the approach of the stern tyrant, and all prayed fervently that his dart might be stayed yet a few hours. "My sister, sing to me. Soothe me into quietness by the loved tones of your voice. It is my _only_ hope for life beyond the desired hour," murmured the dying youth. With tremulous fingers Edith touched the chords, and poured forth the solemn strains to which he loved to listen, and he sunk back and closed his eyes. At first her voice faltered, but she gradually regained her self-command, and never had those clear, rich tones uttered a sweeter strain, than that which floated around the fluttering spirit, which struggled to release itself from the attenuated form of the early doomed. Barclay stood without, watching the scene with breathless interest, and a terrible struggle was passing in his dark and stormy soul. Euston might live beyond the hour of two, and he would then be a beggar. His eye wandered toward Edith, so nobly devoted, so purely beautiful; and the tempter whispered,