nconsciously given you a moment's pain--I am forgiven!"

"Forgiven!" repeated Lester, raising his daughter with weak and
trembling arms as his tears fell fast upon her cheek,--"Never did I feel
what an angel had sate beside my hearth till now!--But be comforted--be
cheered. What, if Heaven had reserved its crowning mercy till this day,
and Eugene be amongst us, free, acquitted, triumphant before the night!"

"Ha!" said Madeline, as if suddenly roused by the thought into new
life:--"Ha! let us hasten to find your words true. Yes! yes!--if it
should be so--if it should. And," added she, in a hollow voice, (the
enthusiasm checked,) "if it were not for my dreams, I might believe it
would be so:--But--come--I am ready now!"

The carriage went slowly through the crowd that the fame of the
approaching trial had gathered along the streets, but the blinds were
drawn down, and the father and daughter escaped that worst of tortures,
the curious gaze of strangers on distress. Places had been kept for them
in court, and as they left the carriage and entered the fatal spot,
the venerable figure of Lester, and the trembling and veiled forms that
clung to him, arrested all eyes. They at length gained their seats, and
it was not long before a bustle in the court drew off attention from
them. A buzz, a murmur, a movement, a dread pause! Houseman was first
arraigned on his former indictment, acquitted, and admitted evidence
against Aram, who was thereupon arraigned. The prisoner stood at the
bar! Madeline gasped for breath, and clung, with a convulsive motion,
to her sister's arm. But presently, with a long sigh she recovered her
self-possession, and sat quiet and silent, fixing her eyes upon Aram's
countenance; and the aspect of that countenance was well calculated to
sustain her courage, and to mingle a sort of exulting pride, with all
the strained and fearful acuteness of her sympathy. Something, indeed,
of what he had suffered, was visible in the prisoner's features; the
lines around the mouth in which mental anxiety generally the most deeply
writes its traces, were grown marked and furrowed; grey hairs were here
and there scattered amongst the rich and long luxuriance of the dark
brown locks, and as, before his imprisonment, he had seemed considerably
younger than he was, so now time had atoned for its past delay, and he
might have appeared to have told more years than had really gone over
his head; but the remarkable light and beau