The labourers gently raised the body, and
placed it in Alix's arms, as she still sat on
the ground. They chafed the cold hands,
loosened the rich dress—the poor girl's only
shroud—but she gave no sign of life.

"Water, water!" cried Alix.

No fountain was near, but the rough men
gathered the dead leaves strewed around, and
sprinkled the pale face with the dew they
still held. For a second they all hoped; the
eyelids quivered slightly, and a faint pulsation
of the heart was clearly perceptible.

But that was all. They had come too late.

The curé bent over the dead and repeated
the solemn "De profundis clamavi ad te,
Domine," and then all joined in the hymn of
death, "Dies iræ, dies illa!" as they gently
bore the corpse from the place of its savage
sepulture, to holy ground. For several days,
the body was exposed in an open coffin in the
little village church of Beauregard, and every
effort was made to track the perpetrators of
the dreadful deed. But in vain; no trace
of them could be found. An innate dread
of some personal misfortune sealed Alix's
lips with respect to her recognition of the
Bailiff, and all inquiries as to the passing of
a carriage such as she had described, between
Maillot and Novelle, were made unsuccessfully.

The dress of the young lady was carefully
examined, in hopes of the discovery of her
name by means of cyphers or initials on her
linen; but there were none. The satin robe,
the jewels she had worn on her neck and
arms, and the delicate flowers twined in her
hair, gave evidence that she had been carried
away from some gay fête. From the ring on
her marriage finger they augured she was a
wife; but there all conjecture ended. After
her burial in holy ground her gold ring and
other ornaments were hung up in the church,
in the hope that some day a claimant might
arise who could unravel the strange mystery;
and close by them was suspended an ex voto
offering by Alix, in gratitude for her own
escape.

The story was never cleared up. Monsieur
Reboul was never seen again, and Alix
had so lost her boasted courage that she
never afterwards dared to take a solitary
walk, especially near the fatal green ring in
the forest. Perhaps it was this dread of being
alone, or perhaps the mysterious disappearance
of Monsieur Reboul, which tempted her
soon afterwards, to follow the advice of her
neighbours, and become the wife of François,
the stonecutter. The marriage was a happy
one, and a time came when the remembrance
of that fatal Eve of St. John was recalled
more as a strange legend to be told to
her children and grandchildren than as a
fearful drama in which she had herself taken
part.

In the revolutionary struggles which
followed, the ornaments of the murdered girl
were, with other relics of the old régime, lost
or removed from the little village church.
Yet the story lingers there still, and, like
many another strange story, it is a true one.

LAST MOMENTS OF AN ENGLISH
KING.

AN opportunity has been afforded us of
examining, at our leisure, a curious collection
of papers of the age of Charles the Second,
recently discovered at Draycot House, near
Chippenham, in Wiltshire: the seat of the
ancient family of the Longs, of Draycot, in
that county. The collection is very
miscellaneous, consisting of printed broadsides,
manuscript satires, not very decent,
and, in some cases, too well known;
newsletters, chiefly relating to matters of little
general or even local interest, and other
very miscellaneous sheets of handwriting,
now and then containing facts of importance
to the student of English manners and
customs. The Jew's-eye of the whole (as an
enthusiastic collector would call it), is a letter
adding new points of consequence to the
accounts we possess of the death-bed of Charles
the Second. It is, unfortunately, without signature
or address; but the air of truth throughout
is so great, the known facts and details are so
supported by other testimony, and the new
facts it reveals are so consistent with what
was passing around, and with the known
character of the individuals to whom they
relate, that the discovery of the letter must
be considered an accession of consequence
to the stock of materials illustrative of
English history.

It is certainly remarkable that the deathbeds
of King Charles the Second and his two
great favourites, the Duke of Buckingham
and the Earl of Rochester, are among the
best known recorded by poets, historians, or
biographers. Burnet has given us an account
of the last hours of Lord Rochester, which
a great moralist (Dr. Johnson) has
recommended to all classes and conditions of
readers. Pope has made an enduring picture
of the worst inn's worst room in which
Villiers breathed his last; and Mr. Macaulay
has devoted fourteen pages of his History
(and among the finest even in his volumes),
to the last moments of King Charles the
Second. The picture which Mr. Macaulay
has drawn with so much fidelity and skill,
has been compiled from printed and from
manuscript sources. Every incident has been
worked up, and given its proper place and
proportion. One would have thought that
no more was to be done to it. Our letter,
however, throws much supplementary light
upon the scene. Here it is, with the spelling
modernised. The writer is a lady, the wife
of a person about the Court at Whitehall,
with ample opportunities of obtaining
information from the best-informed persons:—

"Methinks I owe my dearest a particular
relation of his late Majesty's sickness and