r see me more!--it was
my Levin, set free by me, who gave the news at Dover and beat us back."

He had partly risen as he spoke, and the exertion seemed to choke him.
The woman sat in dreadful silence, watching his veins rise upon his pale
and wilful face. He caught at his throat with his fingers, and for a
time could speak no more.

"Patty," said he, at last, between his coughing spells, "I believe
again, for I have seen my wife, true as an angel, beauteous as a child,
in prayer for me. An honest man waits my death to love her better, and
be the father of my son. _Hala o hala!_ I have had the daughter of my
murdered friend to kiss and bless me, and to love my son. My son has
given me his confidence, unknowing whom I was, and shown to me a brave,
pure heart. _Yo soy amado!_ Their prayers may knock for me at the
eternal door. But thou, the murderer of my youth, no heart will pray
for. Believe in hell, and die; _ha! hala! ho!_"

He pointed his white finger at her in an ecstasy, with a mocking smile
in his blue eyes, like fading stars at dawn, and then the rosy morning
flowed all round his mouth, as the bullet, detached in his emotion, fell
towards the lung, and wakened hemorrhage, and to the last of his
strength he pointed at her, and then fell back, in crimson linen,
smiling yet in death.

Terrified at the unwonted scene of a natural decease in that abode of
violence, the mistress only sat, the image of paralysis, till her door
slowly opened, and there entered, hand in hand, young Levin Dennis and
Hulda Van Dorn.

"Levin," the young girl said, composed as one to whom reputable life and
obsequies were familiar, "I have heard the dying sentences of this
misled, strong, disappointed man. Let us kneel down, dear friend, and
say a prayer. He was our father, Levin; not Van Dorn--_that_ is my name,
the daughter of his friend--but Captain Oden Dennis, of the _Ida_
privateer."

As they knelt, with closed eyes, the room slowly filled, and Patty
Cannon's arms were seized by two constables, and the warrant read to
her. She heard it with humility, making no answer but this:

"Once I had money an' friends a plenty; my money is gone, and so is my
friends; there's no fight now in pore ole Patty Cannon."

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON.

As Patty Cannon came out of the tavern the cross-roads were full of
people, taking their last look at the spot where she had triumphed for
nearly twenty years.

None thou