dressed in deep mourning. She was, I think, the most beautiful girl I ever beheld, and there was an expression of pensiveness in her face, which heightened the interest her dark eyes immediately inspired. She bowed to me as she entered, and then cast her eyes eagerly around the apartment: "My poor Gerald!" she said, as she saw the pale countenance of him she had loved. "Poor, poor Gerald is it thus I see you ?" As she spoke, the tears burst from her black eyes, and she flung herself on his bosom, and imprinted a kiss on his white brow; at that moment I was called out of the room. When I returned, Gerald was sitting with his arm round Florence's slender waist; affection was beaming in both their eyes; pale as he was, I never saw him looking more handsome than in that bright but fleeting moment; and Florence seemed so happy in her love, that, old as I was, I almost envied the warm-hearted girl. Poor things! alas! alas! it was perhaps the last moment of happiness they were to enjoy; like the sun, which, long struggling through stormy clouds, shines brightly for an instant in the glowing west, and then sinks for the night into the dark depths of the ocean.

As I drew near them, I heard Florence reminding Gerald that this very day was to have been their marriage-day. For a time he was silent, and then he slowly said, as if to himself, "Poor Ellen, and this day too I was to have been wedded to thee." A deep cloud instantly passed over Florence's countenance, and her cheerfulness vanished!"Poor Ellen!" she mournfully said, "poor Ellen!" Do you hear that dull bell, Gerald, which so heavily sounds through the trees? that bell tolls for poor Ellen's funeral: at this very moment they

will be bearing her coffin to the grave." The murder was out; the unguarded sorrow of Florence had revealed the sad tidings of Ellen's death, which, fearful of the consequences, I had anxiously concealed from Gerald. I was greatly relieved, however, for at first he did not seem to betray much emotion, but gradually his eyes became fixed, and a blueness overspread his temples. "Is Ellen indeed dead ?" said he, in a hollow voice; "then the dark whispers of fate, which have long sounded in my ears, are indeed come to pass; one more scene, and the play is at an end." He paused, and we stood beside him for some minutes in silence. All at once the bell ceased tolling; Gerald started up, and looking wildly around, he exclaimed-" Haste, haste, the bell has rung outthe bride is waiting in the damp churchyard, and you would not keep the bridegroom here. Come near me, come near me, sweet bird, and say Goodbye; for the road is very cold, and no one must go with me." As he thus raved, poor Florence looked at him with a sorrowful look and tearful eye, "Gerald," she tenderly said, "Gerald." The soft sound of her voice seemed to recall his wandering senses. The wildness of his face was turned to gentleness. He took hold of her little hand, and with his other he grasped mine—“ Farewell, my kind aunt-farewell, my last-loved Florence." His eye dimmed, his grasp relaxed to feebleness, his head drooped, and as he fell back he mournfully sighed, Bury me near Ellen." It was all over-Gerald Aymer was no more.

A Desperate Act.

THE person who is to form the object of our heroworship for a quarter of an hour-not for his virtues or his achievements, but rather for the interest he draws to himself from one remarkable act of his life, around which almost all his thoughts and feelings afterwards revolved-was William Wilson, the only son of a butcher, resident in the Canongate of Edinburgh. The father was reputed rich; and certainly discharged his duty to the boy, in so far as a father could, by sending him to a good school and treating him kindly-yet using a stern severity when the youth contravened, as he often did, his advice and example. And he frequently did; we should rather say that scarcely a day passed over the head of the young scamp that he was out of a fight, or a row, or mischief of some sort. Yet those who associated with him, say that he was a most inconsistent little wretch, for, while he would delight in getting one of the butchers to allow him to kill a calf, or in hunting cats to the death, terrierising rats, engaging in double standup fights, or crucifying street eccentricities, he had a kind of weak tenderness about him, which he would display in very soft-looking offices of friend

ship, or in whimpering at a sentimental story, with much less of the old rugged woodcut pathos in it than in the popular stories of the time"Gregor's Ghost," "Captain Glen," "Billy Taylor," or "William and Sally"-which then exercised such dominion over young sympathies, and which have given place to the novel of our day.

It is almost needless to say that one day this promising youth got into a scrape, for we could not have told when he was out of one, but this peculiar affair-no less than almost beating the life out of one of the sons of a gentleman, who lived in Lothian Hut, and who was one of his father's best customers-was so obnoxious to the old man, that he threatened him with condign punishment. He had not gone home to dinner, nor would he. The horror of the expected punishment haunted him; it made his hair stand on end, till, as he said afterwards, his bonnet almost moved; it thrilled through him, it made his eye roll wildly like the orbit-swirl of epilepsy. To go home was simply an impossibility, and that ended the question-but where was he to go? If to a friend's, he would be sent home, and he had no money to flee with. He prowled through the streets till nine o'clock, when a companion, of the name of Kemp, got him advised to go down to the house of an old woman, called Jenny Morison, in Bell's Close. Kemp had the command, through the kindness of an aunt, of the sum of threepence, and that would leave four farthings of a remainder, after satisfying the demands of the lodging-keeper. Kemp saw him also housed, and giving him, somewhat grandly, the loan, left him to his night's rest.

He was not known to the woman, nor the

woman to him, yet she felt for him; and, having given him a plate of porridge, sent him to his cell. It was a miserable place-damp walls, ratholes, intolerable smells-a small bed in a cornera chair. He cast off his clothes, with no more light than a moonbeam, and jumped in-scarcely amongst clothes, only under a coarse coverlit. He had wandered all day, and was exhausted; his fancy and flesh were at war-his eyelids drooped, and yet his brain burned-shame, vexation, fear, anxiety, fought against sleep; and sleep in the flesh would conquer all his emotions. And it did; he was beyond the reach of the rod, even in dreams.

But his relief was not to last. He awoke about two in the morning, and soon ascertained that it was a noise had scared sleep. He listened-the noise was overhead, and he rose and knocked on the boards, which served for the floor above, and which were easily within his reach as he stood on the truckle bed. In doing this, he looked up, and saw, at one or two parts, openings in the planks, through which slight glimmerings of light came. He lay down again, and was soon asleep, when he was once more roused by a noise resembling wrestling and bumping on the floor, with occasional moans or groans. The thought occurred to him that there was some terrible struggle going on between fiercely contending parties, and he was confirmed in this by some broken words, which, when he put them together-a work in which the fancy had probably some share-he thought he could distinguish a cry to "tie his feet." The near proximity of a fight, even in the form of a variety from what, in his contentious and excited life, he loved so well, had now no charms for him, unless he could have got into the midst of it; but,