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painfully, even seriously wounded, and the former sprang from his horse, helped the sufferer to dismount, and, assisted by Harry, bound up the injured shoulder, placed the useless arm in a sling, and, helping him again into the saddle, the three commenced their sad, sad return. { Dalton's friend had made good his escape-the sound of his horse's hoofs had quite ceased; and Sam now learned that he was no other than the fair Nora's dashing brother. He had planned the late enterprise, and persuaded his sister's lover, against his cooler judgment, to take part in it. His safety, to Harry's unselfish heart, was matter of rejoicing.

"It would add ten-fold to my suffering now," he said, "if her brother were involved in my fate. I should have escaped with him," he added, turning to Farquhar with one of his old, boyish smiles, "if they had sent any one else to capture me; but I-I couldn't shoot you, Sam."

And Sam wished, from the bottom of his heart, that they had sent some one else.

Few words passed until they reached the camp, when a courtmartial was immediately held. The prisoner, being searched, was found possessed of papers which sufficiently attested the character of the mission in which he had been engaged; he was, therefore, convicted of being a spy, and sentenced to be hung next morning at ten o'clock.

Words cannot describe the state of mind of Sam. Farquhar during this terrible evening and night. To see his early friend in the dreadful position he now occupied was agony; but to feel that he had been accessory, in the smallest degree, to his doom was almost unendurable. And then to be obliged to control his feelings, and to comfort and sustain the unhappy youth whose hours were so few and whose love of life so strong.

Yet Harry bore up manfully under his wretched fate. Only once did he yield to emotion; when, seeming to catch a view of the last act, he clasped his hands before his eyes, exclaiming :

"Oh! to be hung!-to die like a felon! Oh! Sam, my friend, couldn't you shoot me?-shoot me now-here; and save me from that horrid ignominy?"

For answer Sam threw his arms around him, and drew him down on his knees, and bowed before their Maker; and, equally suffering, they mingled inarticulate prayers.

Side by side, the sad hours of that last night were spent in searching the Scriptures, in spiritual conversation and prayer; and sweet and

pure was the communion between those two, whose friendship had never been dimmed by a single cloud.

Gradually, as time wore on and the solemn hour approached, Harry's chastened spirit became submissive and calm. His sentence was just, he said; it was hard to die so young, and with such prospects of happiness as he enjoyed, but since he must die, he could wish to die a brave soldier's death; but he had left the brave soldier's warpath, and would not repine.

"But break it gently to mother, Sam," he said, softly, and clasping his companion's hand. "It will break her heart if she hears it suddenly, or reads it in a newspaper; but write her word of it yourself. Do me this last favor."

Sam pressed his hand, and he went on.

"My poor mother! if I had heeded her advice. But she will look over all my undutifulness, I know-give her my love-my dying love. She was a good mother, and deserved a better son.

"One thing more, Sam," he said, putting his hand into his breastpocket, and drawing thence a small case, which he opened, and disclosed the lovely face that had been his ruin. A bright tress of chestnut hair was coiled on the crystal. This he lifted fondly, letting it hang from his finger in silken rings, and fixed on it, then on the miniature, a long, long look.

After awhile he slowly replaced it, and closed the little case, saying-but his voice was lower and less steady than it had been :— with me, Sam; and I beg that no hand may

"I want this buried touch it but your own. And, when you see her, tell her that I lived and died true to her-my heart's beautiful queen."

He drew a long, deep sigh as he returned the little case to his bosom; then bowed his face on his hands and remained silent. Sam also bowed his head, and lifted his heart in prayer-a heart whose anguish nearly equaled that of him for whom he pleaded.

We cannot paint the final scene. We do not think it ever was painted, no hand was steady enough. We only learned that, of those engaged in it, the principal actor was the most composed. The chaplain, though used to painful scenes, could not control his emotion; and even those whom duty compelled to maintain a stern exterior almost shook with inward feeling. Sam. Farquhar's pale, rigid features told of the terrible struggle which was tearing his heart; but a powerful will sustained him, and he stood by his friend—to the last.

Their farewell was brief.

"God bless you, Sam," said Harry, "you have been a great com

fort to me.' And Sam clasped his arms round the lithe young form, and pressed a fervent kiss on his brow.

The colonel now approached, and, laying his hand on Sam's shoulder, attempted to lead him away; but he gently disengaged himself, folded his arms firmly, and stood still; and, in this attitude, with his eyes fixed on the ground, he remained until the chaplain whispered to him that all was over.

Tenderly and respectfully the still sleeper, so lately buoyant with life and gayety, was laid in his last bed; and the picture, and the shining tress of the treacherous beauty who had won his love to his undoing, were placed upon his bosom. He was buried under the shade of a queenly magnolia; and the group, who in silence and sadness surrounded the grave, forgot that it contained what had once been a foe.

Sam had yet another duty to perform. The request—“Break it gently to mother"-must be fulfilled; and, his brain throbbing and his hand trembling, he sat down to write. And gently-very gently was the sad tale unfolded;-so gently, and so mingled with Christian consolation that the mother read it and yet lived. We all read it; and beautiful was the record of our young friend's death, as had been that of his life. He had committed but one error; and that he had heroically expiated. And now he was safe-safe where errors and expiations were unknown. He could not return to us; but we, if we were worthy, might go to him.

"Break it gently to mother"-thoughtful precaution! Next day the newspapers contained exaggerated reports and sickening details of the sad tragedy. Every one that reached our hands we burned; and we wrote nothing but what we learned from Farquhar's letter to Mrs. Dalton, and from one written a few days later by the chaplain to the father of the former.

The object of this last was, to inform the young man's family of his dangerous illness. He had borne up under the horrors of his friend's dreadful fate while his assistance could be available and his affection soothing; but, when the dark scene was over, and the last tender duties performed, the mind had nothing to divert it from its terrible And ere the ink was dry

agony. The sustaining power was gone. in the pen with which he had written that beautiful, touching, eloquent letter to the bereaved mother, the faithful writer was prostrated under a violent and alarming fever.

For awhile we were agitated by anxiety as to the result; at last came the certainty. A letter with a black seal brought the harrowing

news. After a fierce combat with disease, his grief-stricken spirit succumbed; and, to the great sorrow of his regiment, and the loss of his country, Major Farquhar changed time for eternity.

At his own request, in the last, lucid hour, he was buried beside his boyhood's friend; and together, in untimely graves, cut off by violence and anguish, these two lie moldering, whose youth gave glorious promise of long and honorable lives.

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But three years have passed since the above sad events, and a fickle public has forgotten them; in one small circle, however, the memory of Harry Dalton and Sam. Farquhar will ever remain fresh and fragrant.

In the home of Nora and Kitty the young men's names are rarely mentioned; as the connection of the son and brother with their melancholy fate is a painfully tender point.

Nora is no longer young; yet her actual age does not make her as old a woman as she now appears. Her figure is thin and drooping, her movements slow and listless, and her dress of the darkest colors and homeliest cut. Her skin is sallow and shriveled, her features pinched, and her eyes dull and filmy; while the chestnut hair, now tightly banded, is thickly sprinkled with gray.

She never goes out, except to church, in attention to which she is wholly devoted. She seldom speaks, and never complains; though, from the tender solicitude of mother and sister, it is evident there are fears for her health.

From her present appearance it would never be supposed that she had so recently been known as "Leonora the beautiful;" and it seems quite forgotten that, but five years ago, she shone in gay circles as "la reine des tous cœur."

A DAY WITH RICHARD COBDEN.

PARIS may be the city of the senses; but I prefer London, and can readily understand why the philosopher of the Tribune, indignant at being shown the inside of Clichy because he had once the ill-fortune to be elected a director of the New York Crystal Palace, shook the dust off his feet as he left the "godless, selfish, egotistical city."

London gives one an impression of stability and of power. Paris is France, and in Paris all France seems to look down upon you, not "from the Pyramids," but from the shop windows!

Gallic civilization seems to have left a trace behind, for the “Mobilitas ac levitas" of which Cæsar speaks are still characteristic of the French.

An anecdote related by Mr. Cobden will illustrate what I mean. A Frenchman once saw in London, not far from Morley's Hotel, a shoemaker busy at his last. Twenty years later, he returned again to London, and at the same corner of the street, in the same establishment, there sat the identical cobbler still at his last. "Mon Dieu," said the French gentleman, "how can we ever think to compete with these English. They never change.”

My friend Preston and I spent two weeks at that most delightful of hotels, Morley's, fronting on Trafalgar Square, and enjoyed every thing, excepting, perhaps, the English guide, well-dressed in swallow-tail coat, white gloves and irreproachable necktie, spotless as that of James the First, of Presidential memory. Preston insisted that he should be introduced to the "American Consul," as he called the owner of the spotless necktie, and reluctantly yielded only when he heard the ancient guide accost me, before supper, saying, "Please, Sir! and would you like to see the habits of the people at seven shillings a day." We respectfully declined.

At twelve the next day, breakfasted with George Washington Wilkes, the American editor, so called, of the London Star, a morning and evening paper, which was then, as now, the organ of the Cobden-Bright Liberal party. Wilkes, for I must pause to honor, if imperfectly, the memory of one of the brightest minds, and one of the gentlest spirits living, with mind and heart and soul in perfect accord with the unwritten laws of humanity-Wilkes was, perhaps, the most youthful of the brave band of Liberals (among whom to-day we find Mill and Vincent and Hughes) who spoke for America in England in the dark days succeeding the Trent affair. He died in the summer succeeding my visit, in the midst of a brilliant speech upon the American question, and his last words were "the American Republic." In answer to Richard Cobden's message, that he ought to seek rest and relaxation, he said to me, "tell him I had rather wear out than rust out."

Of the many bright mornings I passed with Wilkes, as he traced for me the history of English liberty as we sat where Shakspeare read the "Tempest" to Queen Elizabeth, or wandered in front of St. James's down the same path where Charles II. trifled with the wealth of an Empire; of these days and starry nights, nothing is left but their

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