day was fixed for the trial of the guilty St. Eustache before
a court martial--a mere formal preliminary to his execution, for he
had confessed his crime; but it appeared that during the preceding
night he had managed to escape.

Flying from justice, the wretched criminal reached one of the bridges
that span the Seine. Climbing to the parapet, he gazed down into the
dark and turbid flood, now black as midnight, that rolled beneath the
yawning arch. There was no star in the sky, and here and there only a
dim light twinkled, reflected in the muddy wave. Daylight was
beginning to streak the east with sickly rays. Soon the great city
would be astir. Soon hoarse voices would be clamoring for the traitor,
the assassin, the dastard, who, in the hour of victory, had raised his
hand against a brother Frenchman. Soon, if he lingered, his ears would
be doomed to hear the death penalty--soon the muskets, whose fire he
had so often commanded, would be levelled against his breast. All was
lost,--all for which he had schemed and sinned,--the applause of his
countrymen, the favor of his emperor, the love of Leonide. At least,
he would disappoint Paris of a spectacle. He would die by his own act.
A sudden spring, a heavy plunge, a few bubbles breaking on the black
surface, and the wretched criminal was no more!

Days afterwards, a couple of soldiers, lounging into La Morgue, the
dismal receptacle where bodies are exposed for identification,
recognized in a pallid and bloated corpse the remains of the late
lieutenant colonel of the ----th hussars.

Lioncourt learned his fate, but it threw no shadow over his bright and
cloudless happiness.

A KISS ON DEMAND.

It was a very peculiar sound, something like the popping of a
champagne cork, something like the report of a small pocket pistol,
but exactly like nothing but itself. It was a kiss.

A kiss implies two parties--unless it be one of those symbolical
kisses produced by one pair of lips, and wafted through the air in
token of affection or admiration. But this particular kiss was
genuine. The parties in the case were Mrs. Phebe Mayflower, the
newly-married wife of honest Tom Mayflower, gardener to Mr. Augustus
Scatterly, and that young gentleman himself. Augustus was a
good-hearted, rattle-brained spendthrift, who had employed the two or
three years which had elapsed since his majority in "making ducks and
drakes" of the pretty little fortune left him by his defunct sire.