ith newly-acquired strength, he returned his daughter's
embrace, raised his hands, and cried with accents of joy: "Child,
rejoice, praise the Lord with me, for your father can now appear before
his Judge, innocent of this crime. Blessed be God forever--amen!"

He stretched out his arms and sank back; one more sigh, as if the
liberated soul were unfolding its wings to be borne on the breeze to
heaven, and he lay still and peaceful in his daughter's arms.

With heart-rending sobs, she rained kisses on his hands, his lips, his
brow; then closing his weary eyes, she whispered tenderly, amid
scalding tears, "Dear father, sleep sweetly; you have earned it well!"

Some movement in the chamber of death attracted Carmen's notice,
despite her overwhelming sorrow. She started up quickly. Who dared to
intrude upon her thus? It was Jonathan, who was trying to make his
escape from the room.

"Jonathan Fricke!" she cried, drawing herself up to her full height and
at her call he seemed as if rooted to the ground. She passed around
the bed, stepped to the table, and moved the lamp so as to throw a
brighter light over the calm, placid features of the dead, around whose
mouth a happy smile still lingered.

"Look on that face!" she said in a voice of command. Her face was all
ablaze with righteous indignation, and she stood menacingly, but
wondrously beautiful, before him, like an avenging angel ready to
plunge the criminal down into the depths of hell.

"Do you see this holy, peaceful rest? Will you be able, some day, to
lie down thus when the Lord demands an account of your life? You turn
away your eyes, but you will never succeed in banishing the image of
this face from your memory; it will haunt you wherever you go, by day
and by night; its perpetual presence will be my father's revenge here
below, and his accusation above, before the throne of judgment."

Humiliated and cowed, Jonathan stood motionless before the scathing
contempt of this noble woman.

"Do not think my father concealed his fault from me," she continued,
her voice growing deeper and more threatening, as if the indignation
surging up within her had lent it new power. "I know everything. I
know how it happened; that, in a moment of weakness and temptation, the
evil spirit drew near and enticed him. But he sinned in thought only;
the All-merciful prevented the deed. How does his sin compare with
yours, in the eyes of the One above?"

"I beseech you,"