the end."

"I will tell her all when I am free," said poor Valerian, wondering
with a sigh when his unjust imprisonment would end. "Do you suffer
much?" he asked.

There was a brief interval. Sigismund hesitated to tell a falsehood
in his last extremity.

"It will soon be over. Do not be troubled for me," he replied. And
after that there was a long, long silence.

Poor fellow! he died hard; and I wished that those comfortable
English people could have been dragged from their warm beds and
brought into the cold dreary cell where their victim lay, fighting
for breath, suffering cruelly both in mind and body. Valerian,
listening in sad suspense, heard one more faint word rapped by the
dying man.

"Farewell!"

"God be with you!" he replied, unable to check the tears which
rained down as he thought of the life so sadly ended, and of his own
bereavement.

He heard no more. Sigismund's strength failed him, and I, to whom
the darkness made no difference, watched him through the last dread
struggle; there was no one to raise him, or hold him, no one to
comfort him. Alone in the cold and darkness of that first morning
of the year 1887, he died.