CHAPTER IX.

OUR story draws to a conclusion.

Martlet received no answer to the letter he had written to Mary; and he concluded that it had never reached her hands. His regiment was stationed at a beautiful village in the centre of England; and in the evenings he used to walk out to enjoy the beauties of nature, and brood over his misfortunes. In these walks he had frequently admired a large house, delightfully situated, surrounded by trees, gardens, and shrubberies. It was built in the Gothic style, and resembled a monastery or nunnery. He had seldom seen any of its inmates save a spare-legged elderly man, whom Martlet took to be the steward. One evening, as Martlet was passing this house, he observed two young females standing at the garden gate. In a few moments a neat figure came tripping across the garden towards her companions. "Gracious Father!" Martlet exclaimed, and

sunk to the earth. It was Mary! He recovered from a state of insensibility; but I shall not attempt to describe their transports at meeting, or rather, I ought to have said, his joy only, for he observed a degree of coldness about Mary that gave him no little anxiety. Night almost always found them together, till their meetings were discovered by the steward. He was a hard man, and a decided enemy of soldiers. He was continually aspersing the profession, and saying, that no woman who had any regard for her character would speak to soldiers. He would not allow Mary to see Martlet; they were, therefore, under the necessity of communicating with each other by letters. But Martlet was grieved to perceive, in many of Mary's letters, a change by no means gratifying. They did not, as formerly, breathe frankness, simplicity, and warmth of feeling. Her fellow-servants, too, whispered into Martlet's ear something about a rich gentleman paying his addresses to her; but he believed them not.

The regiment was ordered to Ireland. Again Martlet appointed a night to take leave of

Mary. They met at night in the garden, not, however, without difficulty, for Mary had to get through the window of the house, as the steward was on the watch. They exchanged vows of mutual fidelity, and parted. Martlet accompanied his regiment to Ireland, where he remained four months, highly delighted with the warm-hearted people of that country.

Though a soldier, yet he entered with enthusiasm into their national wrongs, and more than once fearlessly expressed his sentiments under the roof of the hospitable cottage. "Shade of the immortal Emmett!" he said, "couldst thou rise from thy hallowed grave, and witness thy country's woes! Irishmen, hear me ! Though not born on your soil, though the land of your oppressors gave me birth, yet I have few of the national prejudices of my countrymen :

'Where liberty dwells, there is my country.' I can appreciate your wrongs. I know that you are hammered on the anvil of oligarchical oppression, and I feel the weight of the stroke equally with you. To think that a country like this, the garden of the world, with a soil

the most prolific, producing every thing not only for the necessaries of life, but also for its luxuries, to think that the inhabitants of such a country should be poor and miserable, is an anomaly in society unprecedented. Look at Switzerland-mountainous Switzerland; its inhabitants are comparatively happy : equality reigns amongst them.

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Yet, think not to break your chains, nor wrest your rights from the iron grasp of your oppressors by the sword. The sacred stream of liberty is polluted when it is associated with blood; and war is, in its very nature, abhorrent to the principles of right reason. When the loud voice of nature and of reason Ishall have assumed its ultimate sway, the deeds and characters of heroes who have slaughtered mankind will be scouted; the pages of history will not then be stained with blood and the records of ineffectual struggles for freedom. No longer shall this inalienable right be won by the bayonet; but reason's voice shall blanch the cheek of the tyrant, and hurl him to destruction.

"Above all, let us instruct our children,

our sons, in their rights as men and citizens. For, only think, would we have calmly submitted thus to have slavery's chains rivetted on us, had it not been for the undue veneration with which we regarded the foolish sayings of our fathers, and which we received implicitly? Those sayings were, that we had nothing to do with government; that our duty was obedience and silence. These were the earliest lessons of our boyhood-this was the milk of slavery with which we were nurtured."

Martlet had written to Mary, but he received no answer. One morning, four months after he had parted from her in England, he received a letter with a black seal, and written in an unknown hand. He eagerly broke the seal, and read as follows:

"DEAR FRIEND,-Though unknown to you personally, yet I am not unacquainted with your misfortunes; think, therefore, how it must grieve me to add to the anguish of feelings already too lacerated-MARY IS MARRIED! Forgive this communication.-Adieu.

"P.S. Turn to that Being who is the only source of genuine consolation."