latter still turned off his looks, with an expression of sullen, savage indifference, and smothered rage. At length the father spoke, simply pronouncing his name, very slowly.

"William Hutchinson !"

"Sir Miles Hutchinson ?" was William's answer.

"Come hither, and stand closer to me," continued Sir Miles. William stalked up to him, and-" There," he said, "I stand close to you."

"Look at me in the face, sir."

"I look." And he did indeed look, and, to the destruction of any softer or more penitent feelings which might yet have been struggling in his heart, read upon his father's brow a seemingly real confirmation of his worst fears of that father's unnatural hard-heartedness. "Have you no suit to urge, William ?”

"I have, father; I sue to you for my life; I will kneel to you for my life-any man may do that-see-I kneel."

"For life it were useless," said Sir Miles, making to him coldly a sign not to put himself into the position he was beginning to assume. "Then I do not kneel to you in any sense!" screamed William, jumping again upon his feet, like a wild beast.

"I can give no hope of life," resumed his father. "Well?"

"You are prepared to die then ?"

"Or I am reckless."

"And yet do kneel down, unhappy boy."

"And why should I?-for what purpose ?"

"Apart from any hopes of life in this world, is there not a reasonand an awful one?"

William laughed, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about.

"You will not kneel down, then, to give your father the poor satisfaction to hear you ask God's pardon before you meet this shameful death?

"Pardon !—what pardon ?-death and pardon? Am I a child to be cheated with words like these?-have they any meaning? What pardon can I expect when you have sworn to take my life?"

"Listen to me, my son have you no great accounts to close on earth, before you stand for judgment at the bar of heaven ?"

"That's a kind of cant, father-an unfeeling affectation of sensibility, which I am too plain a man to understand. I don't know what

you mean."

"Sickening!-answer me: are you not also a christian man? do you not believe there is an eternity of punishment or of pain? and if so, can you rush out of this world without an awful preparation ?” "How?"

"First, will you not repent of your sins-and hate them ?-and then, die at peace with all mankind—and with your own father?”

"Let me live in peace with my own father, and I will die in peace with my own father; but if he, being ten times over my own father, proposes to rob me of my young, laughing life, and of my almost princely fortune, yet still chimes on with only the old canting peal about christian forgiveness, and—”

"Stop, William !-I draw back from you-I stand away from you -lest the bolt of Heaven's anger, which has hissed down for a cause less than that given by your present words, overtake me in your wicked company!-but it is withheld, in mercy, or for a miracle !— Unfortunate boy!-blasphemer!-where have you learnt this?"

"Perhaps on the sea, father!"—and he again laughed loudly. "Alas!—perhaps so indeed," thought Sir Miles.

"Ay, my good father! the swinging, roaring sea, where your fatherly hands flung me, like a lump of weeds, almost in my childhood-it was the nurse they found for me--and oh, how the kind Goody rocked me and danced me!—a giant wave my cradle-clouds and hurricanes my swaddling bands-and all the dash and the howling my lullaby!"

Again his father was seemingly silent, but again his thoughts were self-accusingly employed.

"Ha! Sir Miles! do you think I have no memory, and am quite ungrateful?—it made my only study too-ay, and my tabernacle-it -and the spitting tempests arched above my head-ruin, their keystone !—and I learned good christian lessons, as I roved and ploughed to seek them, through the exemplary congregations of old mother Ocean-self-denial and charity from sharks, for instance-ah, 'twas a brave schooling! and-pshaw 1-to be preached to now?-as if I could forget!—as if I did not well know that if your poor, puling, first-born son were alive to day

"O William, William !-O viper!—and is it in this manner you speak of him who now is ashes?—of him who was your brother, and who loved you?-whose virtues were as white as even your sins are black? O son of the hardened heart!-scourge of your father!— shame of his gray hairs, and of his house and name! I doom you not to death now-I bid you die !".

"Curse me, then, own dear father, and so let me die."

"William!—but do not tempt me; I will not curse you. But prepare!-your clergyman. shall visit you."

"For a hob-nob, then," interrupted William, smiling horribly, as he revisited the wine bottles.

"Do not touch it!" cried his father; "the accursed excitement has done but too much harm already." But seeing his commands were unattended to, he went on-"Your wife too shall visit you—your wife-widow I may call her."

"Let her not enter here!"

"And would not even she move you? She whom you love-your wedded wife-your young, your lovely, and matchless wife—the sound of whose name alone ought to crowd your eyes with tears—your hardened and lonely heart with most delicious sorrow!-O, had you seen her when the reports of your first more grievous offences reached us! She was sleeping calmly in her fair feebleness-the racking throes of the young mother's sufferings had just then passed out of her frame-she was sleeping, and she smiled in her sleep."

"I could have destroyed her, as I looked upon her!"

"No, no, you would have bent down gently, and kissed and blessed

her."

"Cursed her!"

"From you that would have been superfluous; she has felt your actions as a curse already, and she is withering under it; she is a lily trampled upon her life a sweet melody rudely interrupted."

"Let us part!"

"Personally cruel I am not; nor would I stint you in anything that may help to save your everlasting soul: so she, too, shall come, I say, and carrying your sinless little one in her arms."

66

By hell, if ye so tempt me, I will-turning my head aside-snatch the poor little wretch from her arms, and, without once looking at it, dash its brains out! Tempt me not, I bid ye. I am sentenced-let me die-let me fall under your hand at once-do not cheat death of time that is his property!-leave me-begone!"

"Then we part, indeed, desperate man !—taint of the earth-horror of the earth and of your father—perish !—in obdurate and unrelenting sin perish-die in despair! Submit to the stroke, shrieking, and with your last looks fixed on heaven-blaspheme !"

When

"And you rejoice, then, excellent father!-rejoice at last in your satiated hatred-O the most monstrous hatred !—upon me—your son -your only son-your only, only child !-me, to whom you were never yet a father-in the name of nature, how could you spurn your own blood so?-ha! suppose I try to solve the black riddle? avarice once touches the heart, we know it is a sin that quickly rusts and encrusts all over that heart;-and so, Sir Miles, calling me the spendthrift, and the prodigal, and I know not what, would you cautiously take my life-spill my young blood-to save your guineas, Sir Miles."

"Merciful God !" exclaimed the father, starting back in utter horror and indignation-"O slanderer !-liar!-and ungrateful liar, too!-and monster, monster! I have promised to keep in my shriveling curse, and I will do so; but for such an insult-for such an inconceivable outrage—my very person as a father-nay, even as a man-calls on me to make some show of chastisement; and therefore-O slanderer !” -Sir Miles, passing him quickly, went through the form of inflicting a blow, and then left the room and locked the door on the outside.*

To be continued.

A TALE OF THE CONSCRIPTION.

AMONG the thousands of French subjects who had to deplore the misery brought by the conscription, to none did that relentless system cause deeper anguish or severer trials than to Louise Dubois.

On a calm and sunny evening of August, in the year 18—, the inhabitants of the sequestered village of Berny might be seen collected in groups, reviling and lamenting the arbitrary measure which on the morrow was to wrench asunder all the sweet ties of domestic life. Fathers looked on their sons just ripening into manhood, revelling in the fresh joys of their young existence, and fancy presented the vigorous form stretched mangled and powerless on the gory battle-field! To the young men themselves, about to be torn from all they had been taught to love and value, glory was an unmeaning word, and fame held out no decoy sufficiently alluring to reconcile them to the destiny decreed by tyranny. Mothers, as they strained their first-born to the bosom which had nourished him, cursed the cruelty which deprived them of the pride and support of their declining years. The maiden, late so buoyant with hope and joy, gazed on her betrothed with tearful eye and blanched cheek, while affection sadly stamped upon her heart every feature and look of him she dreaded to think she might never behold again. But though sorrow had possession of nearly every abode in the village, none presented a scene of deeper anguish than the hitherto happy cottage of Paul Dubois.

Paul and his young wife were cousins and orphans. They had no recollection of when they first began to love each other. In infancy he had watched over Louise with the care and affection of a brother, but as they grew up, his manner assumed a tenderness which does not belong to that character. How hard he toiled to lay up money enough to pay the first year's rent of a piece of land which was afterwards to support them! for, without knowing how or when, they came to a mutual understanding that they were to be man and wife. His industrious efforts were successful; they were married, and their little crops made them an ample return. A beautiful child completed their happiness; all seemed to prosper with them, and he was on the eve of concluding an arrangement with his landlord respecting an additional portion of land, which he calculated would more than double his present resources—and then came the Conscription, which, like a frightful tornado, annihilated his plans and destroyed his hopes, and the sturdy peasant looked on the home and the blessings he had so hardly earned, and wept. His unconscious infant slept peacefully in his arms—his wife sat at his feet; she shed no tear, neither uttered she a syllable, but her quivering lip and large dark eye told a tale of agony which needed not words to make it intelligible. Occasionally her gaze wandered for a moment from her husband's face around their little dwelling, and then a sigh, like one from a breaking heart, escaped her, as each familiar object recalled scenes and hours never to be renewed ! Paul again commenced his oft-repeated attempts at consolation.—

"Do not look so mournfully, dearest Louise; your sad face will haunt me, and unfit me for everything; let us endeavour to keep up our spirits by remembering how swiftly time flies; why, the two years we have been married, chère amie, do they seem more than as many months ?"

But here poor Paul was forced to cease; something seemed to choke him. Alas! in his eagerness to comfort her, he had unwittingly struck a chord which yielded only sounds of sorrow, for how strongly did those bright bygone hours to which he had alluded contrast with the dreary ones in store for them! He took her in his arms, and, as if acknowledging the futility of any attempt to reconcile her or himself to their cruel lot, he kissed and wept over her, giving unrestrained vent to the feelings of bitterness he had so long attempted to suppress.

Thirty conscripts went forth from the village of Berny to the shrill sound of the fife and wooden noise of the French drum. O what mockery did that merry music seem to the hearts of the mourners who remained! For many days after their departure, poor Louise passed the hours in the listless indolence produced by absorbing sorrow, unheeding the consolations of the neighbours who, in the midst of their own grief, were anxious to comfort, if possible, the desolate young mother, and regardless of all that concerned her own future prospects. It was not long, however, before tidings arrived that the division of the army to which the young men of Berny were attached was about to cross the Rhine. This intelligence roused Louise from her stupor. She conceived a plan which she lost no time in putting in execution.

On the Sunday following the day in which she had learned her husband's destination, so soon as the sun had risen, Louise ascended the hill which commands the village of Berny, her baby on one arm, a small bundle hanging from the other, and turning her back on the home and friends of her infancy, determined to walk to Strasburgh, a distance of two hundred miles, prepared to encounter fatigue, privation, perhaps insult, for the sole purpose-not of being with the object of her love-O no! that was happiness too great to dream of—but to be on a spot where a letter could reach her some hours earlier, and where, perhaps, she might meet an occasional straggler from the army-some one who had seen him, and could tell her how he looked and spoke, whether he was well or ill, sad or cheerful, and, in short, answer the endless questions she would have to ask.

At the period to which I refer, a very considerable augmentation of the military force had been required, and consequently the levy had not been confined to any particular province or district. During her long journey Louise scarcely entered a town, large or small, where she did not hear the voice of wailing and lamentation. But if the sights she daily beheld kept alive her own horror in all its freshness, the grief so many felt, in common with herself, procured for her and her child sympathy accompanied by kindness and hospitality, and as night approached, she was always certain of finding a seat at the board, and shelter beneath the roof of the first habitation she should

enter.