tion of its consequences; his terrors predominated over his hopes and yearnings; a shudder ran through his whole frame; and, letting the paper fall upon the table, he exclaimed with a faltering voice and averted eyes, for he was afraid to look his wife in the face, "Jane, let us go no farther in this dreadful business; take away the will, and replace it-for Heaven's sake, replace it where you found it! Some devil must have tempted you: the consequences are too frightful -a horrible abyss is yawning at our feet. The gallows! the gallows! My blood runs cold at the very thought. I tremble all over." "Shadows have often made you tremble, while I have stood undaunted in the midst of real dangers. Are you not ashamed of your self?" A look of involuntary contempt passed over the features of the speaker, and she was on the point of sharply upbraiding her husband with his misgivings and irresolution, when approaching footsteps were heard; some one tried the handle of the locked door; and immediately afterwards three gentle taps were given on the panel. Had Lomax been detected in the very perpetration of the suggested crime, his countenance could scarcely have assumed an aspect of greater horror. "Chicken-hearted creature! are you afraid of your own thoughts?" whispered the wife, in an accent of scornful reproach. "Shut those staring, fear-fraught eyes, and pretend to be asleep; you are fit for nothing else." So saying, she folded up the will, which she again committed to her pocket, and with a calm look and unembarrassed manner unlocked and opened the door. CHAPTER III. Croakings of ravens, or the screech of owls, I'll love thee as well as I can." THE BROKEN HEART. THE party by whom they had been thus startled in the midst of their guilty consultation proved to be their son, a youth about fifteen years of age, whose singular beauty, irradiated by an incipient consumption, of which parents did not yet suspect the existence, almost justified the fond averment of the mother, when, in answer to her husband's occasional observation that Benjamin was more like a girl than a boy, she would rejoin—“ And more like an angel than either.” A soft and exquisitely delicate bloom, destined, ere long, to deepen and concentrate into a fixed hectic flush, heightened, by its roseate tint, the fairness of his alabaster skin, which was so transparent that every minute ramification of the blue veins was discernible beneath it. His blue eyes, mild in their expression as those of the dove, had already acquired the pearly hue and liquid lustre symptomatic of the insidious complaint lurking in his system, although they did not yet blaze with any of that preternatural and fearful brilliancy which generally characterizes its later stages. In compliance with his mother's wish, he wore his auburn hair parted on the forehead, and falling down in wavy lines on either side a peculiarity which, in conjunction with his delicate beauty and winning countenance, completed the seraphic character of his head. Nor were the qualities of Benjamin's mind, so far as they had been hitherto developed, less prepossessing than his exterior. Frank, gentle, and affectionate, he inspired in all who beheld him the love with which his own yearning heart was animated; while, for the attachment and the incessant good offices lavished upon him by his parents and his sister during a tedious indisposition, which all, however, imagined to be rather debility than disease, his gratitude was unbounded. Delicate health, and perhaps a secret presentiment that his mortal career would be a short one, had engrafted on his naturally placid and sedate temperament a touch of pensiveness, and an everpresent sentiment of religion, scarcely in accordance with his years; but these impressions manifested themselves with a sweetness so serene, a simplicity so pure and touching, that they added an ineffable charm to his character, and sanctified the attachment of his relations, whose fondness, esteem, and admiration, were blended with a reverence such as is rarely conceded to a youth of so tender an age. |