was the half-hour after
midnight.

The grave is now closed upon that soft and erring heart, with its
guiltiest secret unrevealed. She went to that last home with a blest
and unblighted name; for her guilt was unknown, and her virtues are yet
recorded in the memories of the Poor.

They laid her in the stately vaults of her ancient line, and her bier
was honoured with tears from hearts not less stricken, because their
sorrow, if violent, was brief. For the dead there are many mourners, but
only one monument--the bosom which loved them best. The spot where the
hearse rested, the green turf beneath, the surrounding trees, the gray
tower of the village church, and the proud halls rising beyond,--all had
witnessed the childhood, the youth, the bridal-day of the being whose
last rites and solemnities they were to witness now. The very bell which
rang for her birth had rung also for the marriage peal; it now tolled
for her death. But a little while, and she had gone forth from that home
of her young and unclouded years, amidst the acclamations and blessings
of all, a bride, with the insignia of bridal pomp--in the first bloom
of her girlish beauty--in the first innocence of her unawakened heart,
weeping, not for the future she was entering, but for the past she was
about to leave, and smiling through her tears, as if innocence had
no business with grief. On the same spot, where he had then waved
his farewell, stood the father now. On the grass which they had then
covered, flocked the peasants whose wants her childhood had relieved; by
the same priest who had blessed her bridals, bent the bridegroom who had
plighted its vow. There was not a tree, not a blade of grass withered.
The day itself was bright and glorious; such was it when it smiled
upon her nuptials. And size--she-but four little years, and all youth's
innocence darkened, and earth's beauty come to dust! Alas! not for her,
but the mourner whom she left! In death even love is forgotten; but in
life there is no bitterness so utter as to feel everything is unchanged,
except the One Being who was the soul of all--to know the world is the
same, but that its sunshine is departed.

The noon was still and sultry. Along the narrow street of the small
village of Lodar poured the wearied but yet unconquered band, which
embodied in that district of Spain the last hope and energy of freedom.
The countenances of the soldiers were haggard and dejected; they
displayed even less