“My father, I have had many dreams,” answered the penitent, shaking her head at a suggestion of the priest’s, “many--many wanderings, but this was no dream. I have dreamed of the garden-land where I beheld him first--I have dreamed of the nights when he stood at my casement, and trembled in sleep at the sound of my mother’s step--and I have had holy and hopeful visions, in which celestial forms appeared to me, and promised me his conversion--but this was no dream--I saw him last night. Father, he was here the whole night--he promised--he assured me--he adjured me to accept of liberation and safety, of life and of felicity. He told me, nor could I doubt him, that, by whatever means he effected his entrance, he could also effect my escape. He offered to live with me in that Indian isle--that paradise of ocean, far from human resort or human persecution. He offered to love me alone, and for ever--and then I listened to him. Oh, my father, I am very young, and life and love sounded sweetly in my ears, when I looked at my dungeon, and thought of dying on this floor of stone! But--when he whispered the terrible condition on which the fulfilment of his promise depended--when he told me that”---- “Her voice failed with her failing strength, and she could utter no more. “Daughter,” said the priest, bending over her bed, “daughter, I adjure you, by the image represented on this cross I hold to your dying lips--by your hopes of that salvation which depends on the truth you utter to me, your priest and your friend--the conditions proposed by your tempter!” “Promise me absolution for repeating the words, for I should wish that my last breath might not be exhaled in uttering--what I must.”--“_Te absolvo_,” &c. said the priest, and bent his ear to catch the sounds. The moment they were uttered, he started as from the sting of a serpent, and, seating himself at the extremity of the cell, rocked in dumb horror. “My father, you promised me absolution,” said the penitent. “_Jam tibi dedi, moribunda_,” answered the priest, in the confusion of thoughts using the language appropriated to the service of religion. “Moribunda indeed!” said the sufferer, falling back on her pallet, “Father, let me feel a human hand in mine as I part!”--“Call upon God, daughter!” said the priest, applying the crucifix to her cold lips. “I loved his religion,” said the penitent, kissing it devoutly, “I loved it before I knew it, and God must have been my teacher, for I had no other! Oh!” she exclaimed, with that deep conviction that must thrill every dying heart, and whose echo (would God) might pierce every living one--“Oh that I had loved none but God--how profound would have been my peace--how glorious my departure--_now_--_his_ image pursues me even to the brink of the grave, into which I plunge to escape it!”