by the faint glimmer of the small hanging lamp
which burnt before it, and which was never
allowed to go out. On the steps of the rude
altar stood the priest, attended by a single
chorister, waiting till the moment should come
when his office was to be performed. One or
two jailers and attendants were about the chapel,
but one only knew they were there by hearing
the echo of their faint whisperings, the great
shadows thrown by the pillars and by the
massive stonework of the building rendering it
impossible to see them.

In that dead silence the faintest and most
distant sounds were distinctly audible, and it was
not long before I heard the grating of bolts and
the shutting of a heavy door in a remote part of
the building. By-and-by there were more such
sounds, and then I heard the trampling of feet,
apparently very near to me but behind the wall.
In another moment a door opened close to where
I stood, and there entered, first some of the
superior officers of the prison, and then walking
between two turnkeys, and heavily manacled,
there appeared the man whom I, as a boy, had
admired so much—the man who had seemed to
me to unite all the qualities which could make
life enviable— the man whom I had last seen
caressed and made much of in the gayest saloons
in one of the most brilliant capitals of the
world.

Just Heaven! what a man this was. Had that
inconceivable heroism and strength which
belonged to him been employed in some good
cause, how glorious his career might have been,
and his life how useful to his fellow-men! He
was almost unchanged. He was, as I have said
before, always very pale, he may have been a
shade paler, and the lines of his face may have
been dug a little, a very little, deeper.
Otherwise he was unaltered, and but for the difference
in his dress, he was still the same man who had
carried all before him in the drawing-rooms of
Vienna. If I could have been seen in my dark
corner, I am pretty sure that it would have
appeared that I was infinitely more moved by
his position than he was himself.

For one moment he flinched, and did seem to
feel some part of the horror of the situation. It
was when, after he had stood there before the
altar for some short time, with the faint light of
the hanging lamp upon his terrible face, a sort of
strange rumour filled the chapel that some one
else was approaching, and presently, by a door
opening into tlie chapel, exactly on the opposite
side of the building to that by which he had
entered it, his wife, closely veiled, and attended
by two ladies, whose features were also
concealed, but one of whom I thought was Madame
Stortzer, was supported into the chapel.

It seems almost wrong to speak of agony so
terrible as this of which I was a witness.
Directly she reached the altar, the countess lifted
her veil, and it was then that that momentary
change of which I have spoken did come over
the stony features of the man beside her. As
to the countess herself, she absolutely seemed
lost, there was hardly recognition in the gaze
which she fixed on her husband, as I will call
him in anticipation, and which never, I
believe, throughout the ceremony, which
commenced immediately, was removed for a
moment from his face. It is my hope that she
was in some sort, by long suffering and the
horror of the situation, reduced to a state of
half-stupefaction. I do not know that during
the celebration of the marriage she spoke. She
may have done so, the priest must have known,
but I heard no sound of her voice, nor saw a
movement of her ashy lips. Her eyes were fixed
with a scared sidelong glance on her husband,
and I believe she took no more part in what went
on than we take in our dreams. But when all
was over, and the man stooped down to kiss her
forehead—then she awoke. Then she knew all.
Then she knew that they were to part, that he
was already surrounded by the guards who were
to take him away, that that taking away was to
death; and then the old love for him broke out,
and about his neck and his fettered hands she hung
with such cries and lamentations as made the
very walls give back the sounds of agony that
woke a keener echo yet in the hearts of those
who stood by and listened!

It was mercy to bring such misery as this to
an end. The governor of the prison whispered
the priest to ask if all was done, and then signing
to his men, those two but now united were
torn apart, and by those separate ways by which
they had come into that terrible place, the
husband went his way to death, and the wife back
to a home where happiness might never come,
but where the voices of her children should
bring her comfort in the days that were yet to
follow.

Early in March will be commenced a New Serial Work
of Fiction, entitled
VERY HARD CASH.
By CHARLES READE, D.C.L.,
Author of " IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO MEND."

Just published, in Three Volumes, post 8vo,
NO NAME.
By WILKIE COLLINS.
SAMPSON LOW, SON, and Co., 47, Ludgate-hill.
*+* The author begs to announce that he has protected his right of
property (so far as the stage is concerned) in the work of his own
invention, by causing a dramatic adaptation of " No Name" to be written,
of which be it the sole proprietor, and which has been published and
entered at Stationers' Hall as the law directs.