"Yes, I can freely pardon, since you confide your grief, your love to me. Take the ring Alice," he pleaded so eloquently, "Take it from Arthur Livingstone, who loves you with his whole heart; who has come to Ingleside, to your own sweet bower, to your own dear self, to proffer his life, his honor; to relight the candle upon the same altar, upon which your brave soldier boy first lighted it, when he proffered to you his life, his homage, his all. He who returns the ring to you that you gave Arthur Macrae, would take his place in your heart and guard its portal with his life, until the very stars shall pale their fires in the heavens above. God in Heaven will ratify the compact, and 'neither powers, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor life, nor death shall separate us from one another.'" A smile of unutterable joy was the only answer she gave him. "Now my darling," the judge pleaded passionately, "in the presence of the angels and of your own Arthur, let us plight our holy troth to one another." The girl sweetly looking into the radiant face lovingly answered, "And Arthur has promised to give me away at the altar, and to put the ring that I gave him with my love; this ring upon my finger." "Thank God," he exclaimed, in an ecstacy of feeling, "the cup of my joy overflows," and pressing her soft hand to his lips he kissed it over and over again, and looking only as a lover can look into her upturned face, beaming with happiness, he said, "After all to what can I compare the love of a true, beautiful woman?" "May I guess?" she asked still laughing. "Yes, oh yes," he rejoined. "To the love of a true, manly man." The scattered sun rays were coalescing and forming a nimbus of beauty around every facade and chamber, except one in Ingleside. Upon this threshold, shadows were by turns advancing and receding. The undiplomatic ambassador with his commission of power to slay, without being outlawed by any judicial tribunal, was inditing his judgment. It ran in the name of Commonwealths and States Universal. This Plenipotentiary had been into this mansion before, but he came without terrors, without equipages, without liveried slaves. He came softly and sweetly. There were no harsh commands that he uttered, no rattling of wheels over cobble stones, no exhibition of a despotic will. "My daughter," he whispered "you are wearied, come with me I will give you rest." Will he come with this fascination again? Here lies an old man broken like a wheel by the force of cataracts and torrents, that have been increasing their momentum for all these years, as they have heaved and billowed over his poor soul. Pending the treaty of love in the parlor, old Ned and Clarissa were holding a whispered conversation in the kitchen. "Ned," Clarissa asked in alarm, "did dat dar jedge ax yu ary question about Miss Alice when he cum in de do?" "No, not pintedly," Ned answered.