ghtning. He felt his
foothold totter on the eve of its awful rush of destruction, and
turned to flee, but started aside with a wild cry. The same voice was
in his ear, and it shrieked in exulting tones--"THE MURDERER'S DOOM!"

But where was the mother during these fearful and agonizing moments!
Had _she_ forgotten the son that once nestled on her bosom? Had _she_
forsaken the child she bore, now that the dark hour of adversity had
come? Ah! no. It is not a mother's nature to forget or to forsake!
Though crime and infamy enshroud his name; though base heartlessness
and vile ingratitude shut-to the portals of his soul; though he fling
off the hoarded wealth of her affections as the oak the clinging ivy
when the storm comes, yet the mother will love--must love--it is the
thirst of her immortal nature. No, no! Widow White had not forgotten,
neither had she forsaken her son. Villain as he was, and stained with
the blood of her foster-child, her heart warmed toward him--the mother
was the mother still! Though absent, her mind was racked with
agony--stern agony. For hours had she paced up and down her dim-lit
chamber, her hands folded across her breast, and her eyes fixed upon
the floor--thought and feeling were busy. To the casual observer her
features exhibited scarcely an evidence of internal emotion; but the
arched lip, bloodless with pressure, and the swollen veins upon her
high forehead betokened how severe was the struggle going on within.
There are some persons who can stand by the bedside of a dying
relative, and, with an almost unruffled countenance, behold him
stiffened in the cold arms of death--who can look upon the corpse for
the last time, follow it to the grave, and see it laid beneath the
heavy sod with so little apparent concern, that the beholder considers
him heartless; but draw aside the curtain which separates the inner
from the outer being, and the features of the spirit are seen to be
distorted with anguish. To this class of individuals belonged Widow
White. Oh, how she felt as she trod to and fro within that dim-lit
room! Her son--her only son, in the endearing playfulness of whose
infantile smiles she had so often exulted; upon whose boyish accents
she had so frequently hung with transport, and for whom she had
pictured out such a bright and glorious future, was a condemned felon,
and the morrow would open its great eye upon him for the last time.
The lapse of another day!--and that son, so cherished,