VI.

That sundown, Pierre stood solitary in a low dungeon of the city prison. The cumbersome stone ceiling almost rested on his brow; so that the long tiers of massive cell-galleries above seemed partly piled on him. His immortal, immovable, bleached cheek was dry; but the stone cheeks of the walls were trickling. The pent twilight of the contracted yard, coming through the barred arrow-slit, fell in dim bars upon the granite floor.

"Here, then, is the untimely, timely end;--Life's last chapter well stitched into the middle! Nor book, nor author of the book, hath any sequel, though each hath its last lettering!--It is ambiguous still. Had I been heartless now, disowned, and spurningly portioned off the girl at Saddle Meadows, then had I been happy through a long life on earth, and perchance through a long eternity in heaven! Now, 'tis merely hell in both worlds. Well, be it hell. I will mold a trumpet of the flames, and, with my breath of flame, breathe back my defiance! But give me first another body! I long and long to die, to be rid of this dishonored cheek. _Hung by the neck till thou be dead._--Not if I forestall you, though!--Oh now to live is death, and now to die is life; now, to my soul, were a sword my midwife!--Hark!--the hangman?--who comes?"

"Thy wife and cousin--so they say;--hope they may be; they may stay till twelve;" wheezingly answered a turnkey, pushing the tottering girls into the cell, and locking the door upon them.

"Ye two pale ghosts, were this the other world, ye were not welcome. Away!--Good Angel and Bad Angel both!--For Pierre is neuter now!"

"Oh, ye stony roofs, and seven-fold stony skies!--not thou art the murderer, but thy sister hath murdered thee, my brother, oh my brother!"

At these wailed words from Isabel, Lucy shrunk up like a scroll, and noiselessly fell at the feet of Pierre.

He touched her heart.--"Dead!--Girl! wife or sister, saint or fiend!"--seizing Isabel in his grasp--"in thy breasts, life for infants lodgeth not, but death-milk for thee and me!--The drug!" and tearing her bosom loose, he seized the secret vial nesting there.