ondering
virtue--haughty because unsolicited--stamps with its loftiest
reprobation!

The cloud fell from Wolfe's brow, and his eye gazed, musingly and rapt,
upon vacancy. Steps were heard ascending; the voice of a distant clock
tolled with a distinctness which seemed like strokes palpable as well
as audible to the senses; and, as the door opened and his accomplice
entered, Wolfe muttered, "Too late! too late!"--and first crushing
the note in his hands, then tore it into atoms, with a vehemence which
astonished his companion, who, however, knew not its value.

"Come," said he, stamping his foot violently upon the floor, as if to
conquer by passion all internal relenting, "come, my friend, not another
moment is to be lost; let us hasten to our holy deed!"

"I trust," said Wolfe's companion, when they were in the open street,
"that we shall not have our trouble in vain; it is a brave night for it!
Davidson wanted us to throw grenades into the ministers' carriages, as
the best plan; and, faith, we can try that if all else fails!"

Wolfe remained silent: indeed he scarcely heard his companion; for
a sullen indifference to all things around him had wrapped his
spirit,--that singular feeling, or rather absence from feeling, common
to all men, when bound on some exciting action, upon which their minds
are already and wholly bent; which renders them utterly without thought,
when the superficial would imagine they were the most full of it, and
leads them to the threshold of that event which had before engrossed all
their most waking and fervid contemplation with a blind and mechanical
unconsciousness, resembling the influence of a dream.

They arrived at the place they had selected for their station; sometimes
walking to and fro in order to escape observation, sometimes hiding
behind the pillars of a neighbouring house, they awaited the coming of
their victims. The time passed on; the streets grew more and more empty;
and, at last, only the visitation of the watchman or the occasional
steps of some homeward wanderer disturbed the solitude of their station.

At last, just after midnight, two men were seen approaching towards
them, linked arm in arm, and walking very slowly.

"Hist! hist!" whispered Wolfe's comrade, "there they are at last; is
your pistol cocked?"

"Ay," answered Wolfe, "and yours: man, collect yourself your hand
shakes."

"It is with the cold then," said the ruffian, using, unconsciously, a
celebrated r