are bursting
around me, I shall sing with the prophet, 'Cry out, ye gates, cry out,
O city, for the terrible day of the Lord is come!'"

And the cripple trembled violently with agitation, and his withered
arm was raised to heaven.

Judith gazed at him in silence, as he still knelt, with his hands and
eyes upraised, as if inspired.

"Come with me!" she exclaimed, after a few moments' pause, raising him
from the ground.

David took up his crutches and followed her, with such joyful alacrity
that his feet scarcely seemed to touch the earth; he appeared already
to possess wings instead of crutches.

As they passed the chamber of the dead, he approached his
grandfather's coffin, and, kissing the cold face and hands, murmured,
with an expression of unwonted joy, "We shall meet soon!"

The women looked at him with surprise; they had never seen him smile
thus before, and thought that grief had estranged his mind. Judith
left the room, telling them she would soon return, and herself
conducted the cripple to the tower, while he followed with a vigour he
had hitherto never displayed;--the spirit seemed actually bearing up
the fragile body.

When they reached the top, Judith kissed the cripple's brow, and
pressed his hand in silence.

David locked the door after her, and threw the key out of the window
along with his crutches.

"I shall want them no more," he cried, as Judith passed below the
tower. "I wish to be certain that I shall not fail in the hour of
temptation."

He then placed himself at the window, and looked out towards the
mountains.

* * * * *

Judith returned to the house of mourning, and found the women still
weeping round the bier.

She motioned to them to dry their tears--her majestic form, calm
features, and commanding eye, seemed formed to be obeyed. The women
were silent, and Judith addressed them in a clear, steady voice:

"Sisters!--widows and orphans of Kezdi-Vasarhely!--Heaven has visited
us with great and severe trials; we have outlived all that was
good--all that we loved on earth; there is not a house in which some
beloved one was not expected who will never now return! However long
we may live, no happiness awaits us in this world! we may grow old and
gray in our deserted homes, but the best part of our lives lies
beneath the sod; and this is not the heaviest stroke which awaits us.
Instead of the beloved, those who have shed their heart's-blood will
co