let every noxious thing
Trail its filth and fix its sting;
In his ears and eyeballs tingling,
With his blood their poison mingling,
Till beneath the solar fires.
Rankling all, the curse expires."

Chapter XVII.

An Unwritten Page.

The noise of life can ne'er so dull our ear,
Nor passion's waves, though in their wildest mood,
That oft above their surge we should not hear
The solemn voices of the great and good.

As oft in icicles a flower remaineth
Unwithered until spring its buds unchain,
The young heart through lifes change a good retaineth,
And will exhume its summer leaves again.

When Charles and Henry had breathed their last sigh over the snowy
mound that covered the earthly remains of the hapless Cassier, they
continued their descent down the mountain. They dared not go back
to the cloister; they fled when no one pursued, for outraged
conscience is its own avenger. Each stir in the brushwood, a loosened
stone rolling quickly by, or the fluttering and scream of startled
birds of the solitude, made them tremble.

Night was fast coming on; the sharp peaks of the Tete Noir were dimmed
with clouds, and frowned with ominous terror on the path of the
terrified fugitives. Through dangers of every kind, with bruises and
wounds all over their delicate frames, they reached in the night the
beautiful village of Chamounix. Refreshed with sleep and food, they
prepared themselves for their future course, which for a while will
be perilous, sensational, and extraordinary.

Free from the control of an intemperate and tyrannical father,
possessing immense wealth, they cast themselves into a whirlpool of
deceitful pleasure, and for a while, in yielding to the longings of
misguided youth, hushed the qualms of conscience, which can only rest
in the bosom of virtue.

Once more free, the thought naturally came of returning to the dress
that became their sex. Aloysia, whose sense of delicacy was still as
tender as the sensitive plant yielding to human touch, pleaded in
tears for a return to the simple ways of girlhood, to the life and
society more congenial to their habits and more in keeping with the
laws of God and nature. Alvira had yielded for a moment. But the love
of travel, which in those days could not be gratified in their true
condition of young and handsome girls without guardians, whilst in
their male disguise not a shadow of suspicion or impropriety