she had the consternation to know, that, for the first time since her remembrance, she was entirely helpless! Finding it useless to try to move, she called with a voice so feeble that it seemed not her own: "Aunt Amie!" But no one replied.

"O Aunt Amie !" she called again; "Aunt Amie, why do you not come to me?—I am almost dying—do come, come!" A moan, that all but made her hair stand erect, was the only answer.

"O heavens! do tell me what is the matter with you, and who you are, for I well know Aunt Amie would not treat me thus."

To this, a short silence succeeded; then, a voice like the last struggling articulations of a departing mortal, came from a corner, dark and gloomy, of the little cottage, sending a freezing sensation to the broken heart of the listener.

"I is most gone, Miss Mary-most gone!"

"Are you sick?" sympathetically asked Mary Scarborough, who now almost forgot her own personal distress.

"Oh! yes yes, child; poor old Amie is dying; but she is going home! I an't afreared to go."

Losing her voice, she was forced to stop speaking; but after awhile, she again resumed a conversation that comprised her last dying words:

"I know Massa Jones will come back; yes, I know it-but, Amie-she-be gone-away!" After this, she spoke only in broken accents, sometimes irrationally, till at last, a whisper was all that could be heard.

What an hour in the history of Mary Scarborough

-she, who had been brought up in luxury and ease, unused to want or care; she, who had been nursed in the lap of affluence, untouched by the cold finger of adversity! How sadly had a few short hours changed her fortune! Only a little while ago, and she moved in the midst of comfort, (so far, at least, as the physical sense of the word extends;) then, in a moment when she thought not of it, was she hurled from a place at the fire-side, into the jaws of an angry storm, barely escaping from which, she now finds herself suffering the most penetrating tortures that can afflict the human nerve, and in the presence of a dying woman, who, though of sable hue, held a high place in her estimation, and awoke a sympathetical feeling in her affections.

Indeed, it is more or less touching to a person of sense and good breeding, even where no direct interest calls a compassionate chord into action, to be, if not an eye, an ear-witness to the last scene of mortal existence. But that commiseration is consequently enhanced according to the interest that the dying one exercises upon the living, or that which the living bears towards the dying; and it matters not what the object may be-whether husband or wife, brother or sister, son or daughter, obedient servant or faithful animal, all or each produce the same effect upon the heart of sensibility, if the common cause, "attachment," be the same.

To old Aunt Amie, Mary bore that relation which many a Southern lady this day sustains to some old negress of the plantation, who, serving the family faithfully to an advanced age, by her honesty and

faithfulness has won the regard of her young mistress whom she has nursed long years agone. And although she had neither nursed nor served Mary, yet a peculiar childish attachment tied her to the simple African slave.

Now, she was dying. Yes, and Mary was aware of the fact from the failing voice and stifling respiration, which told her in startling accents, that soon, ah! very soon, she would be alone with the dead! Oh! what a momentous reality! There, without the power to raise herself, must she remain, hour after hour, in the silent, ghostly darkness, keeping mid-night vigils over the departed, while the slow, long hours of that awful night should wear away.

Ye who have kept "vesper hours," ye sainted nuns or unhappy novices, who have sat alone amidst the dreariness of a convent's walls, while the wind in hollow murmurs revelled about the ivy-green battlements, and the spirits of the "passed away" winged their flights through cloister and chapel, paying the last duty of love and respect to a deceased sister, ye alone know the full appreciation of the scene that I am vainly trying to depict.

Slower and slower, came the ineffectual strugglings of vanquished nature; while sadder and sadder grew the heart of the listener. Now, the wind whistled louder than usual, shaking the little habitation to its very centre, while at every crevice it poured in upon the suffering inmates, adding chillness to misery.

Above the roaring of the gust, in a tone so unearthly that it seemed to come from regions beyond, Mary thought she heard her name imperfectly pro

nounced, and when the elements had partially subsided, she listened for a repetition; but all was silent as a grave in the cottage!

The old woman was dead!

The last winter wind had cheerlessly howled above her warm head; the last of earth's killing cares, the last tear, the last pang of anguish, the last dark hour were past, and the tired soul, so long chained down to earth, now unfettered, soared away from her worn-out habitation, and spread her glad wings in eager flight for the eternal world.

CHAPTER XVII.

"ALL eager I hastened the scene to behold,

Rendered sacred and dear by the feelings of old."

"There shall he welcome thee, when thou shalt stand
On his bright morning hills, with smiles more sweet
Than when at first he took thee by the hand

Through the fair earth to lead thy tender feet.
He shall bring back, but brighter, broader still,
Life's early glory to thine eyes again;

Shall clothe thy spirit with new strength, and fill

Thy leaping heart with warmer love than then."-BRYANT.

ONCE more and only once do we quit for awhile the shores of Columbia, then bound by a despot's galling chains, that forged a thousand wrongs upon the young but hardy sons of her soil, who were only waiting for a proper moment to shake off forever the manacles of unmerited oppression.

At the time of the events spoken of in the preceding chapter, a dark cloud was gathering fast over the most enlightened portion of the western world. The insatiable love of avarice, and the unfeeling disposi tion of George III. and his ministry, had alienated the affections of the colonial people from their mother country, and already the thought of liberty was beginning to interest the minds of thousands, and to be