III.

THE END OF TWO VICTIMS.

Walter Waters, or Captain Williams, as he called himself now, and in
fact He had come to England ostensibly as the commander of a trading
vessel, had determined to effect the escape of Horace Hunter. That his
own plans might not be disarranged by any violence towards the Earl, he
had on an accidental meeting in the West Indies promised Hunter a more
full revenge if he waited for three years; and feeling that his capture
had in some measure been owing to his appointment, he revolved in his
mind many plans for his rescue. His trial had taken place, and as the
evidence was conclusive, he was condemned to death. As his friends were
now permitted to see him, Walter with his daughter to whom and his
father he had made himself known in private, although he still stopped
at Mrs. Ally's when not in London, obtained permission to visit the
doomed man. Who shall attempt to portray the feelings of Mary Waters, as
in company with the parent so long mourned as dead, she set forth to
hold the last communication on earth with him to whom the treasure of
her young love had been given. Joy at once more beholding her father
mingled in painful intensity with her heart's desolation when she
contemplated the fearful position of her lover; and to her father's
assurances of rescuing him, of reclaiming him and of their union and a
happy life in America, she only replied by a mournful feature, and
pointing to her own emaciated form and hectic cheek. Her beauty had now
assumed an almost unearthly character. The lustre of her dark blue eye
and deathly paleness of her cheek told indeed her race was nearly run.
As they all stood together in the steward's house on the morning of
their visit, they formed a strange and touching group. The bowed figure
of the aged man whose life had been prolonged so far beyond the usual
term of man's existence, the strong form of the mariner, whose vigor was
unabated although near sixty, and the wasted figure and sharpened
features of his daughter, who though scarce more than past the threshold
of womanhood, was yet closer to the dread abyss of eternity than either.
The old steward looked wistfully after them as they passed out into the
wintry air.

Hunter's passion for drink, his remorse for the officer's death, his
burning thirst for vengeance, and his own sense of self-abasement--all
conspired to add to the fever of his brain; and when Walter and his
daughter were admitted to his