ell;
and, there being no one to deny it, many even believed that Vito Viti,
in particular, had killed the corsair with his own hand. A discreet
forbearance on the part of the podesta always kept the matter so
completely involved in mystery, that we question if any traveller who
should visit the island, even at this day, would be able to learn more
than we now tell the reader. In a word, the podesta, forever after,
passed for a hero, through one of those mysterious processes by which
men sometimes reach fame; quite as much, perhaps, to their own
astonishment as to the surprise of everybody else.

As for Ithuel, he did not appear in America for many years. When he did
return, he came back with several thousand dollars; how obtained no one
knew, nor did he choose to enter into particulars. He now married a
widow, and settled in life. In due time he "experienced religion," and
at this moment is an active abolitionist, a patron of the temperance
cause teetotally, and a general terror to evil-doers, under the
appellation of Deacon Bolt.

It was very different with the meek, pious, and single-minded Ghita;
though one was e'en a Roman Catholic, and the other a Protestant, and
that, too, of the Puritan school. Our heroine had little of this world
left to live for. She continued, however, to reside with her uncle,
until his days were numbered; and then she retired to a convent, no so
much to comply with any religious superstitions, as to be able to pass
her time, uninterrupted, in repeating prayers for the soul of Raoul. To
her latest hour, and she lived until quite recently, did this
pure-minded creature devote herself to what she believed to be the
eternal welfare of the man who had so interwoven himself with her virgin
affections as to threaten, at one time, to disturb the just ascendency
of the dread Being who had created her.

THE END

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