Wolfe dropped his hand, as if dissuaded from his design but as he looked upon the trembling frame and chattering teeth of his terrified accomplice, a sudden, and not unnatural, idea darted across his mind that he was wilfully deceived by the fears of his companion; and that the strangers, who had now resumed their way, were indeed what his accomplice had first reported them to be. Filled with this impression, and acting upon the momentary spur which it gave, the infatuated and fated man pushed aside his comrade, with a muttered oath at his cowardice and treachery, and taking a sure and steady, though quick, aim at the person, who was now just within the certain destruction of his hand, he fired the pistol. The stranger reeled and fell into the arms of his companion. "Hurrah!" cried the murderer, leaping from his hiding place, and walking with rapid strides towards his victim, "hurrah! for liberty and England!" Scarce had he uttered those prostituted names, before the triumph of misguided zeal faded suddenly and forever from his brow and soul. The wounded man leaned back in the supporting arms of his chilled and horror-stricken friend; who, kneeling on one knee to support him, fixed his eager eyes upon the pale and changing countenance of his burden, unconscious of the presence of the assassin. "Speak, Mordaunt; speak! how is it with you?" he said. Recalled from his torpor by the voice, Mordaunt opened his eyes, and muttering, "My child, my child," sank back again; and Lord Ulswater (for it was he) felt, by his increased weight, that death was hastening rapidly on its victim. "Oh!" said he, bitterly, and recalling their last conversation--"oh! where, where, when this man--the wise, the kind, the innocent, almost the perfect--falls thus in the very prime of existence, by a sudden blow from an obscure hand, unblest in life, inglorious in death,--oh! where, where is this boasted triumph of Virtue, or where is its reward?" True to his idol at the last, as these words fell upon his dizzy and receding senses, Mordaunt raised himself by a sudden though momentary exertion, and, fixing his eyes full upon Lord Ulswater, his moving lips (for his voice was already gone) seemed to shape out the answer, "It is here!" With this last effort, and with an expression upon his aspect which seemed at once to soften and to hallow the haughty and calm character which in life it was wont to bear, Algernon Mordaunt fell once more back into the arms of his companion and immediately expired. CHAPTER LXXXVIII. Come, Death, these are thy victims, and the axe Waits those who claimed the chariot.--Thus we count Our treasures in the dark, and when the light Breaks on the cheated eye, we find the coin Was skulls-- . . . . . . Yet the while Fate links strange contrasts, and the scaffold's gloom Is neighboured by the altar.--ANONYMOUS.