Ellen would not have left him, and even now, if he were condemned, he felt sure she would visit him in his condemned cell. Even that thought had bliss in it, he would see her again. But to die like a felon, oh! it was horrible; to be a felon was nothing, but to die one was horrible; he never would,--he would put an end to his life first, dash out his brains against the wall. Another day passed; he became moody, and lower in spirits. The dull routine,--the same prison fare twice a day, brought by the same ill-looking man; the same dreadful thoughts; the same dream-scared sleep;--it was a living death. He began to look forward to death as a release. Sunday came, that evening he would have been a week in his cell. It was Sunday a fortnight ago Ellen had been taken away; on Sunday a week ago he had perpetrated his deeds of darkness, after keeping the innocent girl a week in a still crueller prison--for she was innocent, he deserved it; and now on Sunday he was in solitary confinement: there was something of a retributive providence in it. It did not escape him. He heard the church bells ring their call to the house of God; there was a time he had loved that sound, the time when he had loved Ellen, and they went to church together; now the sound was maddening to his ear, the bells rang the knell of departed bliss; they would soon ring his knell, and in a felon's grave he would rest. To-morrow his trial came on; he would confess his guilt and soon all would be over. The day was very hot,--hot to oppressiveness, and as the evening came on he now and then heard distant peals of thunder. Criminal experience tells us that the night before the trial is far more awful to the criminal than the night before execution. This was the night before L'Estrange's trial, and he did not prove an exception to the rule. He had all the week determined to plead guilty, but now the trial was near he would not; he might be pardoned by some clever defence, and he determined to use it. He could not go to sleep that night, he paced his cell in an agony of mind. It was then certain the Captain had deserted him. Oh, how he hated the man! Darkness increased: now and then a fitful glare of faint lightning glimmered through his cell; by-and-by it got brighter, and the thunder crashes grew louder and more distinct; it was evident a heavy storm was wearing up. He heard the rain descend in torrents, and the vividity of the double-forked lightning, and the detonating peals of thunder which shook the prison, shook also his guilty mind. It seemed as if heaven spoke in wrath for the last time, and gave her final warning. It wakened something between conviction, and a desire to become better; but, alas! it was only like the breath of a dying lamp, which wakens a ray, too soon to expire again. Something muttered in his heart it was too late; it was so voice-like it made him start, it was as if some one spoke. He sat down on his comfortless bed,