uttered at the moment when the fugitive fell, apparently
dead, at the feet of the firing party, reached us even
here. I felt as if my heart must have burst, for I knew
it to be the shriek of poor Ellen Halloway,--the suffering
wife,--the broken-hearted woman who had so recently, in
all the wild abandonment of her grief, wetted my pillow,
and even my cheek, with her burning tears, while
supplicating an intercession with my father for mercy,
which I knew it would be utterly fruitless to promise.
Oh, Blessington," pursued the sensitive and affectionate
young officer, "I should vainly attempt to paint all that
passed in my mind at that dreadful moment. Nothing but
the depth of my despair gave me strength to support the
scene throughout. I saw the frantic and half-naked woman
glide like a phantom past the troops, dividing the air
with the rapidity of thought. I knew it to be Ellen; for
the discovery of her exchange of clothes with one of the
drum boys of the grenadiers was made soon after you left
the fort. I saw her leap upon the coffin, and, standing
over the body of her unhappy husband, raise her hands to
heaven in adjuration, and my heart died within me. I
recollected the words she had spoken on a previous
occasion, during the first examination of Halloway, and
I felt it to be the prophetic denunciation, then threatened,
that she was now uttering on all the race of De Haldimar.
I saw no more, Blessington. Sick, dizzy, and with every
faculty of my mind annihilated, I turned away from the
horrid scene, and was again borne to my room. I tried to
give vent to my overcharged heart in tears; but the power
was denied me, and I sank at once into that stupefaction