re it, Moyse."

Moyse gazed at him in astonishment, and then cast himself at his uncle's
feet, clinging to his knees, and crying--

"Save me! uncle, save me! You can--you will--"

"No, Moyse, I will not--I cannot," declared Toussaint, in a voice which
silenced even that most piercing of all sounds--the cry for life.

"Not one word!" continued L'Ouverture. "Keep your entreaties for Him
who alone can help you. Kneel to Him alone. Rise, Moyse, and only say,
if you can say it, that your last prayer for me shall be for pardon."

The awe of man was not destroyed in Moyse. He looked humbly upon the
ground, as he again stood before his uncle, and said--

"My destruction is my own work; and I have felt this throughout. But if
you have ever done me wrong, may it be forgotten before God, as it is by
me! I know of no such wrong."

"Thank God!" cried Toussaint, pressing him to his breast. "This is the
temper which will win mercy."

"Leave us now," said Father Laxabon, once more; and this time he was
obeyed.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

ALL EAR.

Therese was struck with awe as she stood, from time to time, beside the
bed on which lay Genifrede. The room was so darkened that nothing was
to be seen; but there she lay, breathing calmly, motionless,
unconscious, while the blessings and hopes of her young life were
falling fast into ruins around her. It seemed treacherous, cruel, thus
to beguile her of that tremendous night--to let those last hours of the
only life she prized pass away unused--to deprive her of the last
glances of those eyes which were presently to be dim in death--of the
latest tones of that voice which soon would never speak more. It seemed
an irreparable injury to rob her of these hours of intense life, and to
substitute for them a blank and barren sleep. But it was done. It was
done to save her intellect; it had probably saved her life; and she
could not now be wakened to any purpose. With sickening heart, Therese
saw the moonlight disturbed by grey light from the east. In a few
minutes, the sun would leap up from the sea, to quench not only the
gleams of moon and star, but the more sacred lamp of human life. Brief
as was always the twilight there, never had the gushing in of light
appeared so hasty, so peremptory as now. By the rousing up of the
birds, by the stir of the breezes, by the quick unfolding of the
flowers, it seemed as if Nature herself had turned against her wretched
children