e and steady, though quick, aim
at the person, who was now just within the certain destruction of his
hand, he fired the pistol. The stranger reeled and fell into the arms of
his companion.

"Hurrah!" cried the murderer, leaping from his hiding place, and
walking with rapid strides towards his victim, "hurrah! for liberty and
England!"

Scarce had he uttered those prostituted names, before the triumph of
misguided zeal faded suddenly and forever from his brow and soul.

The wounded man leaned back in the supporting arms of his chilled and
horror-stricken friend; who, kneeling on one knee to support him, fixed
his eager eyes upon the pale and changing countenance of his burden,
unconscious of the presence of the assassin.

"Speak, Mordaunt; speak! how is it with you?" he said. Recalled from his
torpor by the voice, Mordaunt opened his eyes, and muttering, "My child,
my child," sank back again; and Lord Ulswater (for it was he) felt, by
his increased weight, that death was hastening rapidly on its victim.

"Oh!" said he, bitterly, and recalling their last conversation--"oh!
where, where, when this man--the wise, the kind, the innocent, almost
the perfect--falls thus in the very prime of existence, by a sudden blow
from an obscure hand, unblest in life, inglorious in death,--oh! where,
where is this boasted triumph of Virtue, or where is its reward?"

True to his idol at the last, as these words fell upon his dizzy and
receding senses, Mordaunt raised himself by a sudden though momentary
exertion, and, fixing his eyes full upon Lord Ulswater, his moving lips
(for his voice was already gone) seemed to shape out the answer, "It is
here!"

With this last effort, and with an expression upon his aspect which
seemed at once to soften and to hallow the haughty and calm character
which in life it was wont to bear, Algernon Mordaunt fell once more back
into the arms of his companion and immediately expired.

CHAPTER LXXXVIII.

Come, Death, these are thy victims, and the axe
Waits those who claimed the chariot.--Thus we count
Our treasures in the dark, and when the light
Breaks on the cheated eye, we find the coin
Was skulls--
......
Yet the while
Fate links strange contrasts, and the scaffold's gloom
Is neighboured by the altar.--ANONYMOUS.

When Crauford's guilt and imprisonment became known; when inquiry
developed, day after day, some new maze in the mighty and intricate
machinery