er."

Virginia Temple had not yet retired to rest, although it was growing
late. She was sitting alone, in her little chamber, and watching the
glowing embers on the hearth, as they sparkled for a moment, and shed a
ruddy light around, and then were extinguished, throwing the whole room
into dark shadow. Sad emblem, these fleeting sparks, of the hopes that
had once been bright before her, assuming fancied shapes of future joy
and peace and love, and then dying to leave her sad heart the darker for
their former presence. In the solitude of her own thoughts she was
taking a calm review of her past life--her early childhood--when she
played in innocent mirth beneath the shade of the oaks and poplars that
still stood unchanged in the yardher first acquaintance with Hansford,
which opened a new world to her young heart, replete with joys and
treasures unknown before--all the thrilling events of the last few
months--her last meeting with her lover, and his prayer that she at
least would not censure him, when he was gone--her present despondency
and gloom--all these thoughts came in slow and solemn procession across
her mind, like dreary ghosts of the buried past.

Suddenly she was startled from her reverie by the sound of a low, sweet,
familiar voice, beneath her window, and, as she listened, the melancholy
spirit of the singer sought and found relief in the following tender
strains:

"Once more I seek thy quiet home,
My tale of love to tell,
Once more from danger's field I come,
To breathe a last farewell!
Though hopes are flown,
Though friends are gone;
Yet wheresoe'r I flee,
I still retain,
And hug the chain
Which binds my soul to thee.

"My heart, like some lone chamber left,
Must, mouldering, fall at last;
Of hope, of love, of thee bereft,
It lives but in the past.
With jealous care,
I cherish there
The web, however small,
That memory weaves,
And mercy leaves,
Upon that ruined wall.

"Though Tyranny, with bloody laws,
May dig my early grave,
Yet death, when met in Freedom's cause,
Is sweetest to the brave;
Wedded to her,
Without a fear,
I'll mount her funeral pile,
Welcome the death
Which seals my faith,
And meet it with a smile.

"While, like the tides, that softly swell
To kiss the