d
made them the instruments for the fulfilment of eternal decrees of
redemption, withdrew from Alvira the protection that made her, whilst
she accepted the guilt, the instrument of judgment.

Rising to her feet with a sense of her desperate condition, making a
few hurried explanations how her father slipped and lost his balance,
she approached tremblingly the fatal edge. Leaning over, she saw the
corpse of her father lying in a pool of blood in the deep chasm below.
The scene of that sad moment was indelibly impressed on her memory,
and in after-hours of remorse haunted her with its horrors.

With nerve and courage, called forth by the awful circumstances of
the moment, they descended the mountain to the foot of the ravine
where the body lay in the snow.

The descent was steep and treacherous, and guilty conscience made
Charles tremble lest at any moment she would lose footing and be
precipitated down the dark and gaping chasms formed by glaciers and
rocks. After hours of toil, and with imminent peril, they found the
body of Cassier. A dark pallor had clouded his features, a ghastly
stare, closed teeth, and clenched hand bespoke the last sentiment
of human passion. Alvira trembled and stood powerless for a few
moments. Still, necessity nerved her to action. She removed the
money and valuables from the body of her father, and, in the midst
of wailings that echoed mournfully through the lonely mountain, they
made a grave in the snow. Wrapping him in his cloak, they laid him
in a bank of soft crystals through which the blood had trickled in
crimson streams.

Thrilling and sad for Aloysia and Alvira the last moments of this
funeral ceremony. Gently they placed the cold snow on the remains of
their father. The wild eagle swooped around in anger, and the wind
swept with ominous sighs through deep ravines of the rugged mountain.
The gigantic cliff over which Cassier had been hurled by his maddened
child frowned over them in awful majesty. It would be in centuries
to come the cenotaph of a dishonored tomb. The winter would come again
with fresh snow to cover this valley of death; the sun would pour its
cold rays on the frozen mound that marked the grave of Cassier. No
tear of affection would moisten the icy shroud, but, in sympathy for
the hapless child stained with his blood, whose crime was condoned in
the provocation caused, the world has cast its abhorrent curse on the
grave of the reprobate.

"There