were sunk in their sockets, and her hair lost its glossy richness.

Thrice had morning dawned, and darkness veiled the earth, since brutal rage confined her there. Bewildered with the sight of anguish, she was powerless to soothe, and, suffering under the cravings of hunger and the torture of suspense, she sat on the pavement of the loathsome vault; till the delirium, known only to the famished, came stealing over her.

The door opened, and the dog of Irenæus bounded towards her, laid its smooth head on her shoulder, and gave a sympathizing whine. Inspired with fresh courage, she caressed it, saying "Poor Brutus, hast thou found me? Where is thy master?" and her tears fell fast and unheeded on its neck.

Footsteps approached. "Irenæus, are you come to save me! oh speak-is it you," she cried.

"Once again, maiden, we have met." She recognized the well-remembered voice of her companion on the Nile, and said, "Stranger, bring you tidings from Irenæus? Oh tell me if he still lives: and if so, whether in bonds or free."

"Maiden, I know not him of whom you speak: The dog was watching at your prison door, and entered with me. How exhausted you are. Share with me this food, it will revive you.

Alas, alas, that man should delight in thus persecuting the innocent!"

"When am I to die?" asked Alethea.

"To morrow in the circus. Fear not; the agony of death is not so dreadful as we often picture it: one pang, one struggle, may be all you will suffer. I have accompanied numbers to the place of execution, and from what I witnessed, conclude the last conflict is far lighter than a captivity like yours.

"Each day, each hour, I expect to be apprehended, for my enemies are busy, and did not Heaven mysteriously shield me, I should not be with you to-night. Oft with wild enthusiasm have I courted death; so precious seemed the martyr's crown. I have plunged into the deadliest heat of slaughter, and boldly harangued the minions of Severus, when frenzied with success. God has an end in view, though I see it not, for thus preserving me."

The rushing of dense multitudes, and the noise of chariots, sounded from the street like a summons to prepare for death; and soon soldiers entered to lead Alethea to execution. The dog growled on their entrance, and, springing from her side, grasped the foremost by his throat, and he fell to the ground. But dearly was its courage repaid the dying man thrust his dagger to its heart,

and it crawled to the feet of its mistress and expired.

The other soldiers dragged her through the crowded street, towards the amphitheatre; and, dreadful as her doom appeared, one present, almost envied her fate, it was the mysterious stranger the illustrious Origen. 1 6

CHAPTER XIII.

"Once more his limbs are free as mountain wind!
But on his heart such sadness sate,

As if they there transferred that iron weight."

Byron.

IRENEUS Watched the galley bearing his beloved Alethea, till a turning in the river, hid her from his view, and the prow of the vessel was lost to sight, amid groves of citron and henna. Long afterwards, he imagined he could distinguish the voices of its crew, and hear the maiden's last farewell, as, with eyes fixed on the water, he stood in pensive reverie. A galley laiden with prisoners passed,-another, and another sailed: then Irenæus was hurried with his fellow-sufferers down the bank; and, though it was the way to death, welcome was the signal to depart, for blended with it, was the hope of rejoining Alethea.

As the vessel glided down the river, he recognized various objects, that, in brighter hours, he had beheld with admiration; and then thought winging away to the valley, near the desert, he thus meditated. "What a changing scene is life!-on that morn, when to my heart came the

knowledge of Alethea's love, and I knew, that in life and death, she was my own, how radiant shone the future to our imagination; we were entering a land of peace, and should glide down this mighty Nile, and visit the scenes on its banks; then, with my Alexandrian friends, enjoy the delights of social intercourse, and celebrate our wedding, until, with my bride, I could revisit my native Athens, and pace with her the scenes of childhood. She is lost! Her form may glad these eyes no more: a captive, she may pine long years in Alexandria; or, what is far worse, endure slavery in its most revolting form. Heaven! if such a doom awaits her, let death come to her release, and the grave be her sheltering place.

Strange and varied was the scenery along the river. In the mystic* clime of Egypt, joy and sorrow, pleasure and anguish, seemed placed as sentinels over each other: the love bower and the tomb, the desert and the garden, the smile of beauty and the groan of slavery, the pleasure yacht and ship filled with captives, were side by side, while the brilliant sunshine of the day, and the solemn grandeur of the night, heightened the whole, and cast o'er the gayest spirit a shade of melancholy.

* See Moore's Epicurean.