mes spouted into the night, bursting from the small
windows, and the roof fell in with a crash, scattering ashes and
red-hot coals. They could hear the shriek of the victim now, and he
was seen dancing among the fire-brands, for the blaze encircled him
like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to
overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked
gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered
together--the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands,
and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the
thunder of his executioners' huzzas.

Paul did not reveal himself. He left the village stealthily, and
journeyed northward. Years afterwards a name was added to the tablet
in the old church:

"Here lie also the Remains of the
REV. PAUL BATES.
'He went about doing good.'"

THE JUDGE'S LAST TUNE.

The Judge took down his fiddle,
And put his feet on the stove,
And heaved a sigh from his middle
That might have been fat, or love;
He leaned his head on the mantel,
And bent his ear to the strings,
And the tender chords awakened
The echoes of many things.

The Bar had enjoyed the measure,
The Bench and Senate had been
Amused at the simple pleasure
He drew from his violin;
But weary of power and duty,
He had laid them down with a sigh,
Exhausted of life the beauty,
And he fiddled he knew not why.

In the days when passion budded,
And she in the churchyard lain
Came over his books as he studied
With an exquisite pang of pain,
He played to his sons their mother's
Old favorites ere she wed;
Those tunes, like hundreds of others,
Were requiems of the dead.

They lay in the kirk's inclosure:
All three, in the shadows dim,
In a cenotaph's cynosure
That waited for only him,
Who sat with his fiddle tuning
On the spot where his fame was won,
On the empty world communing,
Without a wife or a son.

And he drew his bow so plaintive
And loud, like a human cry,
That the light of the shutter darkened
From somebody passing by.
A young man peeped at the pensive
Great man, so familiar known;
His features, if inoffensive,
Were like to the judge's own.

"Come in," cried the politician--
"Co