the gray-haired martyr to the love he bore
him. But his mother--the caressing, the proud, the affectionate, whose
heart, in the vivid tenderness of hope for her beloved boy, had shaped
out his path in life, as that on which she could brood with the fondness
of a loving and delighted spirit--that mother's image, and the idea
of her sorrows prostrated his whole strength, like that of a stricken
infant, to the earth.

"Mother, mother," he exclaimed, "when I think of what you reared me for,
and what I am this night, how can my heart do otherwise than break, as
well on your account as on my own, and for all that love us! Oh! what
will become of you, my blessed mother? Hard does it go with you that
you're not about your pride, as you used to call me, now that I'm in
this trouble, in this fate that is soon to cut me down from your loving
arms! The thought of you is dear to my heart, dear, dearer, dearer than
that of any--than my own Una. What will become of her, too, and the
old man? Oh, why, why is it that the death I am to suffer is to fall so
heavily on them that love me best?"

He then returned to his bed, but the cold and dreary images of death
and ruin haunted his imagination, until the night was far spent, when at
length he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

By the sympathy expressed at his trial, our readers may easily conceive
the profound sorrow which was felt for him, in the district where he
was known, from the moment the knowledge of his sentence had gone abroad
among the people. This was much strengthened by that which, whether in
man or woman, never fails to create an amiable prejudice in its favor--I
mean youth and personal beauty. His whole previous character was now
canvassed with a mournful lenity that brought out his virtues into
beautiful relief; and the fate of the affectionate son was deplored
no less than that of the youthful, but rash and inconsiderate lover.
Neither was the father without his share of compassion, for they could
not forget that, despite of all his penury and extortion, the old man's
heart had been fixed, with a strong but uncouth affection, upon his
amiable and only boy. It was, however, when they thought of his mother,
in whose heart of hearts he had been enshrined as the idol of her
whole affection, that their spirits became truly touched. Many a mother
assumed in her own person, by the force of imagination, the sinking
woman's misery, and poured forth, in unavailing tears, the