reached us even here.  I felt as if my heart must have burst, for I knew it to be the shriek of poor Ellen Halloway,—­the suffering wife,—­the broken-hearted woman who had so recently, in all the wild abandonment of her grief, wetted my pillow, and even my cheek, with her burning tears, while supplicating an intercession with my father for mercy, which I knew it would be utterly fruitless to promise.  Oh, Blessington,” pursued the sensitive and affectionate young officer, “I should vainly attempt to paint all that passed in my mind at that dreadful moment.  Nothing but the depth of my despair gave me strength to support the scene throughout.  I saw the frantic and half-naked woman glide like a phantom past the troops, dividing the air with the rapidity of thought.  I knew it to be Ellen; for the discovery of her exchange of clothes with one of the drum boys of the grenadiers was made soon after you left the fort.  I saw her leap upon the coffin, and, standing over the body of her unhappy husband, raise her hands to heaven in adjuration, and my heart died within me.  I recollected the words she had spoken on a previous occasion, during the first examination of Halloway, and I felt it to be the prophetic denunciation, then threatened, that she was now uttering on all the race of De Haldimar.  I saw no more, Blessington.  Sick, dizzy, and with every faculty of my mind annihilated, I turned away from the horrid scene, and was again borne to my room.  I tried to give vent to my overcharged heart in tears; but the power was denied me, and I sank at once into that stupefaction which you have since remarked in me, and which has been increasing every hour.  What additional cause I have had for the indulgence of this confirmed despondency you are well acquainted with.  It is childish, it is unsoldierlike, I admit:  but, alas! that dreadful scene is eternally before my eyes, and absorbs my mind, to the exclusion of every other feeling.  I have not a thought or a care but for the fate that too certainly awaits those who are most dear to me; and if this be a weakness, it is one I shall never have the power to shake off.  In a word, Blessington, I am heart-broken.”

Captain Blessington was deeply affected; for there was a solemnity in the voice and manner of the young officer that carried conviction to the heart; and it was some moments before he could so far recover himself as to observe,—­

“That scene, Charles, was doubtless a heart-rending one to us all; for I well recollect, on turning to remark the impression made on my men when the wretched Ellen Halloway pronounced her appalling curse to have seen the large tears coursing each other over the furrowed cheeks of some of our oldest soldiers:  and if they could feel thus, how much more acute must have been the grief of those immediately interested in its application!”

“Their tears were not for the denounced race of De Haldimar,” returned the youth,—­“they were shed for their unhappy comrade—­they were wrung from their stubborn hearts by the agonising grief of the wife of Halloway.”