Long and silently had she watched his rest. So gentle was his breath, that he scarcely seemed to breathe; and often, during her sad vigils, did she stoop her cheek to feel the respiration which might still bear witness that his outraged spirit was yet fettered to earth. She tremblingly placed her hand on his heart, and still its warm beats spake comfort to hers. The soul of Wallace, as well as his beloved body, was yet clasped in her arms. “The arms of a sister enfold thee,” murmured she to herself; “they would gladly bear thee up, to lay thee on the bosom of thy martyred wife; and there, how wouldst thou smile upon and bless me! And shall we not meet so before the throne of Him whose name is Truth?”

The first rays of the dawn shone upon his peaceful face just as the door opened, and a priest appeared. He held in his hands the sacred host, and the golden dove, for performing the rites of the dying. At this sight, the harbinger of a fearful doom, the fortitude of Helen forsook her; and throwing her arms frantically over the sleeping Wallace, she exclaimed, “He is dead! his sacrament is now with the Lord of Mercy!” Her voice awakened Wallace; he started from his position; and Helen seeing, with a wild sort of disappointment that he, whose gliding to death in his sleep she had even so lately deprecated, now, indeed, lived to mount the scaffold, in unutterable horror, fell back with a heavy groan.

Wallace accosted the priest with a reverential welcome; and then turning to Helen, tenderly whispered her, “My Helen! in this moment of my last on earth, O! engrave on thy heart, that — in the sacred words of the patriarch of Israel — I remember thee, in the kindness of thy youth! in the love of thy desolate espousals to me! when thou camest after me into the wilderness, into a land thou didst not know, and comforted me! And shalt thou not, my soul’s bride, be sacred unto our Lord? the Lord of the widow and the orphan! To Him I commit thee, in steadfast faith that He will never forsake thee! Then, O, dearest part of myself, let not the completion of my fate shake your dependence on the only True and Just. Rejoice that Wallace has been deemed worthy to die for his having done his duty. And what is death, my Helen, that we should shun it, even to rebelling against the Lord of Life? Is it not the door which opens to us immortality? and in that blest moment who will regret that he passed through it in the bloom of his years? Come, then, sister of my soul, and share with thy Wallace the last supper of his Lord; the pledge of the happy eternity to which, by His grace, I now ascend!”

Helen, conscience-struck and re-awakened to holy confidence by the heavenly composure of his manner, obeyed the impulse of his hand, and they both knelt before the minister of peace. While the sacred rite proceeded, it seemed the indissoluble union of Helen’s spirit with that of Wall............