'Faint not, poor suffering daughter!' entreated the good father, tenderly sustaining her with his right arm, while with his left he held her bridle rein with his own. 'O, Mathilde, would this journey had never been undertaken, and would the prison tower of Trifels had never held that Richard of England!'

'O, chide me not, good father!' said Mathilde, for it was indeed she; and her face turned with a heart-sick expression to the shoulder of the venerable monk.

'I do not, I will not chide. If, in surrendering thyself to the charm which drew thee to his prison, thou wert but a weak and yielding woman, in thy resistance at last to the entreaties of thine own heart and his too seductive voice, and in thy gentle resignation, thou hast been wellnigh holy as the suffering mother of Jesus. But, see! yonder is a group of persons by the wayside, who may, perhaps, direct us by a shorter path.'

They approached the designated group, which, as they drew nearer, they perceived to consist of soldiers. They were bending over one who, stretched upon the ground in their midst, lay with his head upon the breast of another who knelt at

his side.

Holy mother of Jesus!' exclaimed the monk, 'what murderous fray hath been here! Yonder, beyond the group, lies a dead man, and, in their

midst, methinks I see one whose race is nearly run. Let us hasten, that I may shrive the dying man ere his spirit departs!"

They quickened their speed, and were soon within a few paces of the group. There the monk dismounted, and lifting Mathilde, as if she had been an infant, from her saddle, led her to the foot of a spreading tree.

Rest here, my daughter,' said he, while I administer the holy rites of our religion to yon poor dying wretch.'

Mathilde sunk down sick and faint, and filled with a strange and dreadful presentiment; for something in those rude forms and faces recalled a long past and fatal hour, which lingered forever in her mind. Father Jeronymo approached the group, within which his priestly garb instantly procured him admittance. He had not been deceived in his surmises, for there a wounded man lay dying. He was of noble and grand proportions; his finely formed head, from which the morion had been removed, was bright with its heavy masses of rich brown curls; and his countenance, though distorted by the agonies of dissolution, beautiful and commanding. His right hand was clasped convulsively in that of the weeping companion on whose breast he reclined; and in broken sentences he was uttering his last sad wishes.

6

Tell her,' he painfully faltered, 'I have never forgotten her. In pleasure and in pain, her face and form have ever been before me. Here is the lock of hair I severed from her head at that painful moment when we parted. I have worn it ever on my heart, and here let it be buried. O, Blondel, bid her remember me.'

A low, piercing cry suddenly arrested the speech of the dying man. He turned his head, and his fast failing sight fell upon a pale and lovely girl bending over him, her large dark eyes seeming almost starting from their sockets. The current of life which had been slowly freezing at its fountain, like a rushing torrent flowed back again through his veins.

'Mathilde,' he faltered, and a smile of rapture crossed his features; my comforting angel, art thou come to receive my parting spirit?'

'O, Richard,' and she wrung her hands in the bitterness of her agony; was it thus we were to meet again?'

The dying king replied not, but with a mighty effort he stretched out his arms as if to embrace her. One moment of hesitation, and then, yielding at once to her love and her despair, she sunk upon his breast, and clasping her arms passionately around him, all her true, her loving, her long-tried heart gave way, and Richard! Richard! Richard!' in

fainter and fainter tones of love and agony, thrice thrilled to the deepest heart of every listener, and then all was silent.

The weeping father, alarmed at the sudden and protracted stillness, kneeling down, tenderly withdrew his foster child from the arms of the dying king, and laid her on his own breast. A sunbeam, slanting through a pale green olive tree, fell upon the face of the warrior king and the peasant maiden, showing their features radiant with a holy smile, but set in that fearful hue whose ghastliness can never be mistaken. Both had ceased to live.

The sepulchral halls of England's monarchs were once more opened, for they were about to receive an accession to their silent company. Amidst the wailings of a nation, two coffins were slowly borne into their dim and solemn recesses. One, decorated with all the costly magnificence of royalty, held the sleeping remains of Richard Coeur-deLion. The other, simply adorned with a white garland, was the last narrow couch of Mathilde.

THE VIGIL.

BY MRS. L. J. B. CASE.

[According to an old English superstition, those who watch in the churchyard on a certain night, have power to see the apparitions of all who will die in the parish during the coming year, as they pass in midnight procession.]

MINE Own! the wreath thy fingers wove
Upon our happy marriage day,
Still breathes thy pure and earnest love,
Though scent and bloom have passed away.

I twined those flowers among my hair,
And sat beneath the Churchyard Tree,
While round me flowed the summer air,
As soft and sweet as thoughts of thee.

Dim in the moonbeam pale I saw

Pillar and cross with moss o'ergrown, And gazed, until my heart in awe, Grew cold as each sepulchral stone.

Then rang the chimes from that old tower,
And throbbed my heart, but not with fear;

A nameless spell of dread and power
Told that the spectral throng was near.