conduct has been nothing but a course of continual offence against their duty as subjects."

"Ah, that word subjects," said Albert.

"Yes, I believe that is the grief that oppresses your partizans," returned Herbert, smiling, "such cannot bear the domination of any authority, though both lawful and necessary. Satan would not endure it, and see what an awful change came over him.”

"You are good casuist, Herbert," said Albert, "but what is that I hear ?"

A sharp trumpet call, broke hastily on their discourse summoning the soldiers to

arms.

"I will return, soon as I can, Herbert," and seizing his sword, Albert bade a hasty adieu to his friend.

CHAPTER II.

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come, when it will come."

Julius Cæsar.

WHEN Daubigny opened his eyes after a long period of unconsciousness, the objects which met his sight bore a vivid and painful contrast to those which he remembered to have seen last. He found himself lying on a truckle bed, in a cell about thrice the size of the pallet which he

occupied. The walls, the roof, and the floor were of stone. A grated window served, he conceived, to give light to the apartment, for the cool night air from it fanned his cheek with a grateful freshness.

From the ceiling there was a lamp suspended, the dim flame of which served, though barely, to dispel the obscurity, and hardly sufficed to show the fetters with which previous inhabitants of the dungeon had been confined. The leg rings, the armlets, and the neck collar were, however, sufficiently visible to show him, nature of the criminality of which he was supposed to be guilty.

the

Few positions could be more dispiriting, nor could any well be conceived in which the means for elevating hope could have been more difficult to attain. Trenton was conscious that he had been taken in open rebellion to the persons or the party into whose hands he had fallen; taken too in disguise, after a fruitless effort to escape, and se could not but contemplate the

fate of those who laboured under the same disadvantage as himself. His sense of duty, as a soldier, told him what his own. decision against another, taken in such a position would be, and he scarcely could look forward to any better fate. And yet to die the death of a felon to feel the spirit's slow gasping from its clay tenement, amidst the taunts, the jeers, the ribald scoff, and the insolence as well as the insults of a barbarous multitude, excited by equally barbarous rulers for their private interest, was a prospect that Trenton could not contemplate without shuddering.

Had death come even in its most appalling form on the field of battle; had all the agony of various wounds been his, even in the mortification of defeat, he felt as if he could have borne it with the firmness of a man. There is a something in the consciousness of duty fulfilled that will ever lift the spirit, even in the worst of misfortunes, when it feels that its actions bear

evidence of the loyality of its devotion to truth. But when, notwithstanding all our exertions, and all the honesty of our purpose, and the blessed assurance of our own hearts, that we have intended nothing but that which is right, we find ourselves immersed in a deep and terrible predicament by which not only does the most extreme danger surround us, but that danger appears to have been incurred through our own folly, and in such a way as to expose us to the contempt of all honourable men, one of the greatest supports under affliction has been wrenched from our grasp. The staff falls from our hands, and we feel exposed to the just obloquy as well as the hatred of our fellows.

So it was with Trenton. The bitterness -the discredit of imposture, in its most biting form, came over him, and as he remembered the garb in which he had been arrayed, when the imposture, which he now felt he had practised was exposed, he turned his eyes with a repulsive shudder