I now tried to eat my supper; but although resolved on behaving with a stout and unflinching courage throughout the whole sad event, I could not swallow a mouthful. A sense of choking stopped me at every attempt, and even the water I could only get down by gulps. The efforts I made to bear up seemed to have caused a species of hysterical excitement that actually rose to the height of intoxication, for I talked away loudly to myself, laughed, and sung. I even jested and mocked myself on this sudden termination of a career that I used to anticipate as stored with future fame and rewards. At intervals, I have no doubt that my mind wandered far beyond the control of reason, but as constantly came back again to a full consciousness of my melancholy position, and the fate that awaited me. The noise of the key in the door silenced my ravings, and I sat still and motionless as the sergeant entered with the pen, ink, and paper, which he laid down upon the bed, and then as silently withdrew. A long interval of stupor, a state of dreary half consciousness, now came over me, from which I aroused myself with great difficulty to write the few lines I destined for Colonel Mahon. I remember even now, long as has been the space of years since that event, full as it has been of stirring and strange incidents, I remember perfectly the thought which flashed across me as I sat, pen in hand, before the paper. It was the notion of a certain resemblance between our actions in this world with the characters I was about to inscribe upon that paper. Written in darkness and in doubt, thought I, how shall they appear when brought to the light! Perhaps those I have deemed the best and fairest shall seem but to be the weakest or the worst! What need of kindness to forgive the errors, and of patience to endure the ignorance! At last I began: “Mon Colonel—Forgive, I pray you, the errors of these lines, penned in the darkness of my cell, and the night before my death. They are written to thank you ere I go hence, and to tell you that the poor heart whose beating will soon be still throbbed gratefully toward you to the last! I have been sentenced to death for a breach of discipline of which I was guilty. Had I failed in the achievement of my enterprise by the bullet of an enemy, they would have named me with honor; but I have had the misfortune of success, and tomorrow am I to pay its penalty. I have the satisfaction, however, of knowing that my share in that great day can neither be denied nor evaded; it is already on record, and the time may yet come when my memory will be vindicated. I know not if these lines be legible, nor if I have crossed or recrossed them. If they are blotted they are not my tears have done it, for I have a firm heart and a good courage; and when the moment comes—”; here my hand trembled so much, and my brain grew so dizzy, that I lost the thread of my meaning, and merely jotted down at random a few words, vague,