hing more than
usually impressive in his manner and affectionate in his words. Perhaps
this was the natural result of their conversation.

The next morning, Clarence was awakened by a noise. He listened, and
heard distinctly an alarmed cry proceeding from the room in which Talbot
slept, and which was opposite to his own. He rose hastily and hurried
to the chamber. The door was open; the old servant was bending over the
bed: Clarence approached, and saw that he supported his master in his
arms.

"Good God!" he cried, "what is the matter?" The faithful old man lifted
up his face to Clarence, and the big tears rolled fast from eyes in
which the sources of such emotion were well-nigh dried up.

"He loved you well, sir!" he said, and could say no more. He dropped
the body gently, and throwing himself on the floor sobbed aloud. With
a foreboding and chilled heart, Clarence bent forward; the face of his
benefactor lay directly before him, and the hand of death was upon
it. The soul had passed to its account hours since, in the hush of
night,--passed, apparently, without a struggle or a pang, like the wind,
which animates the harp one moment, and the next is gone.

Linden seized his hand; it was heavy and cold: his eye rested upon the
miniature of the unfortunate Lady Merton, which, since the night of the
attempted robbery, Talbot had worn constantly round his neck. Strange
and powerful was the contrast of the pictured face--in which not a
colour had yet faded, and where the hues and fulness and prime of youth
dwelt, unconscious of the lapse of years--with the aged and shrunken
countenance of the deceased.

In that contrast was a sad and mighty moral: it wrought, as it were, a
contract between youth and age, and conveyed a rapid but full history of
our passions and our life.

The servant looked up once more on the countenance; he pointed towards
it, and muttered, "See, see how awfully it is changed!"

"But there is a smile upon it!" said Clarence, as he flung himself
beside the body and burst into tears.

CHAPTER XLIX.

Virtue is like precious odours, most fragrant when they are
incensed or crushed; for prosperity doth best discover vice,
but adversity doth best discover virtue.--BACON.

It is somewhat remarkable that while Talbot was bequeathing to Clarence,
as the most valuable of legacies, the doctrines of a philosophy he had
acquired, perhaps too late to practise, Glendower was carrying thos