due on Wednesday next, when he hopes--"

"Let us see what he hopes," cried my mother, snatching the letter from
him, "for it surely cannot be that he hopes you will pay it."

The terrific cry she uttered, as her eyes read the dreadful lines, rang
through that vast building. Shriek followed shriek in quick succession
for some seconds; and then, as if exhausted nature could no more, she
sank into a death-like trance, cold, motionless, and unconscious.

Poor MacNaghten! I have heard him more than once say that if he were to
live five hundred years, he never could forget the misery of that day,
so graven upon his memory was every frightful and harrowing incident
of it. He left Castle Carew for Dublin, and hastened to the courthouse,
where, in one of the judge's robing-rooms, the corpse of his poor friend
now lay. A hurried inquest had been held upon the body, and pronounced
that "Death had ensued from natural causes;" and now the room was
crowded with curious and idle loungers, talking over the strange event,
and commenting upon the fate of him who, but a few hours back, so many
would have envied.

Having excluded the throng, he sat down alone beside the body, and, with
the cold hand clasped between his own, wept heartily.

"I never remember to have shed tears before in my life," said he, "nor
could I have done so then, if I were not looking on that pale, cold
face, which I had seen so often lighted up with smiles; on those
compressed lips, from which came so many words of kindness and
affection; and felt within my own that hand that never till now had met
mine without the warm grasp of friendship."

Poor Dan! he was my father's chief mourner,--I had almost said his only
one. Several came and asked leave to see the body. Many were visibly
affected at the sight. There was decent sorrow on every countenance; but
of deep and true affliction MacNaghten was the solitary instance.

It was late on the following evening as MacNaghten, who had only quitted
the rooms for a few minutes, found on his return that a stranger was
standing beside the body.

"Ay," muttered he, solemnly, "the green and the healthy tree cut down,
and the old sapless, rotten trunk left to linger on in slow decay!"

"What! Curtis, is this you?" cried MacNaghten.

"Yes, sir, and not mine the fault that I have not changed places with
him who lies there. He had plenty to live for; I nothing, nor any one.
And it was not that alone, MacNaghten!" added he,