Now he is ready; they place his cold body on the litter; a few listless prisoners stand their sickly figures along the passage, watch him slowly borne to the iron gate in the arched vault.  Death-less inexorable than creditors-has signed his release, thrown back prison bolts and bars, wrested him from the grasp of human laws, and now mocks at creditors, annuls fi fas, bids the dead debtor make his exit.  Death pays no gaol fees; it makes that bequest to creditors; but it reserves the keys of heaven for another purpose.  “One ration less,” says the warden, who, closing the grated door, casts a lingering look after the humble procession, bearing away the remains of our departed.

With Harry as the only follower, they proceed along, through suburban streets, and soon reach the house of that generous woman.  A minister of the gospel awaits his coming; the good man’s words are consoling, but he cannot remodel the past for the advantage of the dead.  Soon the body is placed in a “ready-made coffin,” and the good man offers up the last funeral rites; he can do no more than invoke the great protector to receive the departed into his bosom.

“How the troubles of this world rise up before me!  Oh! uncle! uncle! how I could part with the world and bury my troubles in the same grave!” exclaims Franconia, as, the ceremony having ended, they bear the body away to its last resting-place; and, in a paroxysm of grief, she shrieks and falls swooning to the floor.

In a neatly inclosed plat, a short distance from the Rosebrook Villa, and near the bank of a meandering rivulet, overhung with mourning willows and clustering vines, they lay him to rest.  The world gave the fallen man nothing but a prison-cell wherein to stretch his dying body; a woman gives him a sequestered grave, and nature spreads it with her loveliest offering.  It is the last resting-place of the Rosebrook family, which their negroes, partaking of that contentment so characteristic of the family, have planted with flowers they nurture with tenderest care.  There is something touching in the calm beauty of the spot; something breathing of rural contentment.  It is something to be buried in a pretty grave-to be mourned by a slave-to be loved by the untutored.  How abject the slave, and yet how true his affection! how dear his requiem over a departed friend!  “God bless master-receive his spirit!” is heard mingling with the music of the gentle breeze, as Harry, sitting at the head of the grave, looks upward to heaven, while earth covers from sight the mortal relics of a once kind master.

It has been a day of sadness at the villa-a day of mourning and tribulation.  How different the scene in the city!  There, men whisper strange regrets.  Sympathy is let loose, and is expanding itself to an unusual degree.  Who was there that did not know Marston’s generous, gushing soul!  Who was there that would not have stretched forth the helping hand, had they known his truly abject condition!