a few doors off, and informed him of the fortunate discovery I had made of his apprentice's innocence, adding that I should never have forgiven myself had I not interfered to prevent the punishment which it had been proposed to inflict upon him. After having made the boy some pecuniary recompense for the injustice he had sustained, I requested he would explain what he meant by saying that he took away with him no hat but the one he had brought, although it appeared by the evidence of the mistress of the house and her servant, that he had not brought any hat. He replied, that, in fine weather, he was in the habit of attending customers, in the neighbourhood, as often without his hat as with it; and when accused, so unexpectedly, by me of having committed a theft, he was so confused that he could not remember anything about the matter." This simple tale shews very clearly how an innocent individual may become the victim of temporary unjust suspicion, which, but for the judgment and kindness of one party, might have led to more serious personal conse quences. In the village of Pont-de-Vaux, in the then Province of Bresse, now the Department of Ain, lived Jean Cape, an industrious, money-getting tile-maker. had been taken to prevent any unpleasant inquiries about the booty. But the honest anxiety of the few was not to be entirely disappointed, nor the praiseworthy curiosity of the many disobligingly baffled by an obstinate secret; for, at a short distance from the place where he was last seen, appeared evidence The ground, much trodden, as if by men engaged of his. fate, confirming the worst of conjectures. in a mortal struggle, had, in spots, assumed that fatal colour of which robbers and murderers have such legitimate dread. Near the scene of conflict was found a hedge-bill, partially covered with earth, upon the blade of which some hairs were sticking, matted with dirt. It was evident the murderer had not immediately accomplished his work, for the victim appeared to have partly staggered, partly dragged himself a few feet farther, when loss of blood, by which his progress was indicated, and the violence of the injury, had probably compelled him to lie down and die. There wanted not the agency of Solomon to resolve the disappearance of the body. The property of the hedge-bill, the only visible means of detection, and which, for once, presented no charms to the spirit of avarice, could not be established; every body either had their own hedgebill, or they never had any at all; and the affair passed over, as do all others of a similar character, where, however strong may be the presumptions of suspicion, (that commodity whereof, upon such occasions, a liberal and gratuitous supply is never lacked,) there is wanting that moral conviction, founded on proof, without which there is no payment of the penalty of crime. In the same department lived, also, M. Julien the foregoing tragedy, and its record was supSix months had elapsed since the enactment of Gaufridy, whom the King had honoured succes-posed to be registered nowhere but in the tablets sively with the offices of Notary, Commissioner, of oblivion, when, one day, the brigade of the Receiver, Procurier Fiscal, and I do not know Marshalship of De Boung drew up before the door how many besides. The lovers of abstract merit (there are not many) respected his uprightness; the loaf and fish-seekers, who opened their mouths for the fragments of office like the gaping of a dry oyster, had the utmost regard for his rank; while the poor devils, whom circumstances or propensities rendered unbelievers in the excellence of that canon which forbids men to do evil that good may come, feared his power. M. Gaufridy proposed to purchase Jean Cape's kiln; but a trifling difference of opinion presented a difficulty; the patrician offered too little, and the citizen asked too much; so the one kept his money, and the other his tiles. In the winter of 17-, John Sevos, a townsman of Pont-de-Vaux, returning from one of the manufacturing towns, entered the village in the dusk of the evening. In the morning the usual inquiries were made for him by his friends, when it was found that his family were ignorant even of his return. They became alarmed for his safety -the disordered bustle of a search began; and his mysterious disappearance furnished an excellent and prolific theme for comment, wonder, and suspicion. The last originated in the general impression that he had money; and as every little town is blessed with some people who know every thing, it was intimated, with many oracular noddings and shakings of the head, which meant more than I have leisure to explain, that the life of Jean Cape. In the next moment the house party of gens d'armes. The terrified inmates, was surrounded, and an officer entered with a except Cape, attempted to escape, but the bristling of a dozen bayonets at every door, evinced a decided objection in the officer to any such precipitate movements. "Is your name Jean Cape?" said he to his unwilling host. "What right have you to ask?" answered he of the tiles; "and what is the meaning of this intrusion ?" "Bah!" said his interrogator interrupting him, "I did not come here to answer questions, or to be tired to death with a long story: I ask you is your name Jean Cape ?" "And I," - said Cape. “Now, what the devil! who wants to be entertained with your conversation ?" continued the catechist, again cutting him short, and interrupting himself at the same moment; "can't you answer in one word, yes or no? Silence gives consent," he added, waiting but an instant for what, from the very judicious and reasonable method he adopted to arrive at his object, he seemed likely never to get. Guards, seize your prisoner!" This was soon done with a man who had not even the use of his tongue left wherewith to defend himself from violence; and the unfortunate tile-maker was instantly pinioned. Madam," continued this hater of long stories, your husband has confessed his name; you have not denied you are his wife, and these children, too, are, no doubt, yours; I am commanded to arrest the whole: gens d'armes, conduct them to the street!" In an hour, the house had been abandoned to the plunder of a riotous soldiery, and the ponderous door of the dungeons of Pontde-Vaux had closed upon Jean Cape and his family. The second day, being the 29th of August, he was brought out heavily ironed, and placed in the criminal box of the Court of Pont-de-Vaux. Antoine De Lorme, a discharged or deserted soldier from the regiment of La Sarre, lately returned from Brest, presented himself as the accuser, charging Cape with the murder of John Sevos. M. Ravet, the Judge, directed the proceedings to commence. The 19th of February, De Lorme said, he was in the kiln or over-room of Jean Cape, when the deceased stopped there as he was passing. In reply to some bantering from Cape, on the suecess of his expedition, he exposed a handful of half-crowns, boasting that his pockets were so stuffed as to incommode him, and congratulating the other upon his better fortune in being able to travel without such an incumbrance. He added something the witness heard indistinctly, but understood the purport of it to be, that the hardest way to coin money was to broil it out of a man's face. It might be, that the taunt about coining money contained some significant allusions, comprehended only by the prisoner and the deceased; or it might be that the sudden and excessive displeasure of the former was caused by the ostentatious display of wealth, and his invidious comparisons; for there was something inexplicable to the witness in the rage with which Cape instantly turned upon the deceased, and bade him carry his unseasonable jeers and unnecessary company somewhere else. He went off laughing, complimenting the prisoner upon his amiable temper and winning manners, which he protested were perfectly irresistible. Cape, after a moment, followed him, and at a corner of the road witness lost sight of them both. 66 This," he said, touching the hedge-bill, "I once borrowed of the prisoner. I know it by a particular mark," and he pointed to a small cross cut in the handle, so filled up with dirt as to be hardly perceptible. That night he enlisted in the regiment of La Sarre, and left the country early next morning. Six days since he returned, and unable, from what he had heard, to divest himself of the belief that the unhappy Sevos had been the victim of a sorry jest, he had been at some pains to unravel the mystery, of which, he said, he then held in his hand the thread. He concluded by desiring that Claude Maurice and Pierre Vaudon might be put upon the stand. The latter, the forester of M. Verambon, testified that, on the evening of the alleged murder, he observed a man approaching hastily in a direction from the street where Servos had disappeared towards Cape's house. He seemed perturbed; his dress was disordered, and his whole appearance indicated great anxiety. He had very much the manner of a man eluding pursuit, for he was looking back every instant. As they met, the prisoner (for it was him) started, and asking some confused question, without any attention to the answer, passed on abruptly. The forester thought his conduct strange, but, as some people were: very full of whims, he made it a rule never to fatigue his brains with trying to account for them. His suspicions, he acknowledged, became excited the next morning; but, wanting the importance they would have derived from being better supported, their expression would only have brought him into trouble-a thing, he observed, of which having enough at home, he always carefully eschewed. He was induced to reveal them to Antoine De Lorme, from hearing the latter express some indirect opinion about the disappearance of Sevos, and his probable fate. This was all he knew. The last witness, Claude Maurice, was called. As he stood upon the stand, he turned partly round, and fixed his eyes for a moment, with peculiar meaning, on the prisoner. The latter, as he encountered their significant expression, was observed to turn very pale, and a slight, though visible tremor, passed over his face. "For the love of mercy, if not for the fear of God," he said, in a voice quivering with such excess of emotion as to betray a conscious presage of the nature of the yet unuttered testimony, "destroy not an innocent man and his unfortunate family; let not the soul perish, that a diabolical passion may triumph!" "Silence!" said the Judge, whose notions of decorum were shocked at the impropriety of this appeal; "be you in such terror of justice, that you call upon the sympathies of your accusers?" "If I am bartering my soul as the price of vengeance, said Claude, calmly, laying a slight emphasis on the last word, "that is my business, not yours." "Go on, go on," exclaimed M. Ravet, impatiently. "Do you think I sit here to listen to your dialogues?" A little after night-fall, on the 19th of February, Maurice observed-he was in the kiln-room, where he usually worked, when his master, the prisoner, came hurriedly in. He seemed restless and disturbed, but supposing the excitement about Sevos had not yet subsided, witness was retiring, when he was struck with the unusual disorder in his master's dress. Looking at him more attentively, he saw spots of blood upon his clothes. The prisoner seemned uneasy under his scrutiny, for he asked me harshly, said Maurice, if I had never seen him before? Witness left the room immediately for that in which he slept, but the unpleasant impression produced by the singular conduct of the prisoner, together with a vague and undefinable apprehension, kept him awake. It was after midnight when he thought he heard a step in the kiln-room, and, rising softly, looked through the crack in the door, where he saw a sight that fixed him to the spot with horror. A man had laid upon the ground a dead body, for it neither stirred, nor could he hear it breathe, and then came cautiously to the door of Claude's room. The latter was hidden behind it, and his master pushed it half-way open, when, after appearing to listen attentively an instant, he retired apparently satisfied with his examination. The kiln was burning preparatory to putting in the plates. The prisoner took up the dead body, and, with some effort, thrust it into the blazing furnace, An exclamation of horror escaped me," sai Claude, "and in an instant, before I had time to fly, or even to think, the prisoner held a longbladed knife, or poinard, for in my fright I could not tell which, close to my breast. "Execrable spy!" he said, 'you have pried into the last secret, except one, you shall ever know. If you have a prayer, say it quickly, for you shall bear yonder miserable fool company, whose fate you have taken such pains to witness!"" The witness fell upon his knees, begging his life, protesting the secret should never pass his lips; and forgetting his prudence in the very desperation of his terror, he claimed a return of the favour he had done Cape, when the latter was examined after the death of Antoine Duplex, in concealing himself, that his master should not be prejudiced by his testimony. If he persisted in his purpose, he would be made accountable, for he was already suspected. Whether he relented from motives of compassion or policy, or from the compunctious horror of a double murder, witness did not know. The prisoner told him to rise, and compelling him to take the most horrid and unnatural oaths to secure his silence, left him with a menace, that if he knew how to pardon, he knew also how to avenge. "The weight of this horrible secret, my Lord," continued Claude, "became an intolerable burden. I started at my own shadow. I was wasting away with feverish anxiety, and had half resolved to make confession to a magistrate, when Antoine De Lorme came a few days since to the kiln, and by his questions relative to the unaccountable fate of Sevos, determined me in my better resolutions." He had nothing to add, save, that during the former examination of the prisoner, he heard a man say that he knew enough to hang Cape, but had conscientious scruples about volunteering his testimony. Casting another look upon Cape, which he seemed to sustain with difficulty, the witness left the stand. The prisoner was remanded to his dungeon, to be brought out in the morning to hear his sen tence. The next day the hall of justice was thronged with an indignant and enraged populace, the furious rabble loading the miserable victim with every epithet of opprobrium and execration as he passed along; and when the Judge rose to speak, so eager were the spectators, that the hall was instantly hushed into deep and unnatural silence. "Jean Cape," said he, permitting his words to fall slowly and distinctly upon the ear of the criminal, "the hours you shall remain upon earth are fast diminishing. Time would be wasted in indulging any longer a doubt of your guilt, and the forfeit of your miserable life will be a just, however poor, atonement for your revolting crime. You will die no common or easy death, and however mercy may sicken, or the compassionate weakness of human nature may shudder at its circumstances of seeming cruelty, yet the avenger of blood is on your footsteps, and there is for you no city of refuge. The forgiveness of Heaven you may supplicate, for its mercies are unlimited, but the pity of man you dare not ask, and need not hope. I ask you for the sake of form, and not because I believe there will be found virtue or help to you, in the indulgence, if you have any thing to say which may extenuate your guilt, or hold out a hope of human deliverance?" My Lord," said the prisoner, rising slowly, with a face colourless as the vestments of the grave, but speaking with the self-possession of settled despair, "I know not wherefore it is that Heaven has been pleased, in its inscrutable wisdom, to visit me with this desolating judgment. Certainly, it must have been for some deadly and unexpiated sin, of which, in its displeasure, it has caused me to lose the memory. I can say nothing, my Lord, which shall avail me any thing in this my extremity. But I trust in the righteous dispensation of a just Providence, that the plot of this fatal tragedy will one day be developedthat the blood of an innocent man shall not be shed like water, to dry up as quickly. Surely, there is a retributive justice, dilatory though it sometimes be; and when the time shall come in which the dark mystery, whereof I am this day made the unhappy sufferer, shall become a plain tale, the repentant testimony of those who have charged their souls with the murder of an unoffending man, will not be wanting, to the truth of the last words I shall ever utter. "I protest before God, to whose presence I am hastening so rapidly, the unborn child is not more guiltless than I, of the foul crime for which I am wearing these bonds. I pronounce the whole history of Claude Maurice, who has this day sworn away my life, false and wicked as the heart that forged it. In the forgetfulness of passion I struck him. He swore to be revenged, and bitterly am I discharging his vow. Save this, I knew not that I had done harm to any living creature; and wherein I could have excited the enmity of the other witnesses, they know better than I. This much I have to say, my Lord, that my honest though unambitious name might not go down to a dishonoured grave, covered with unmerited obloquy, without one effort to rescue it from mingling with those of felons. I am hampered in the toils and must submit. Help in my calamity, other than human, I am too sinful a man to implore or expect, and of that, the last faint hope that yet lingered in my bosom is now utterly extinguished." "Jean Cape," said the Judge, as he placed on his head the fatal cap, "the measure of your depravity is full. You have consummated a course of crime, already of disgusting enormity, by making the last act of your life one of impotent malice. Get yourself ready to meet your fate!" "This is a pretty good play, so far," said a harsh voice, "but it needs one more actor!" and a sullen looking man, whose face was half hid by the folds of a shawl in the form of a huge neckcloth, his forehead as low as the eyes covered by a blue hankerchief, tied round the head, with a little triangular tail sticking out behind, being a French peasant's substitute for a hat, stood out from the crowd. "My Lord," said he, my testimony is yet wanting, without which some in this presence will not receive their full measure of that justice you are here to administer impartially." M. Ravet, scandalized at this disorderly interruption of the proceedings in which the dignity of office was treated with so little ceremony; and yet unwilling, in a matter of such grave moment, to act with undue precipitation, and perhaps it would not be uncharitable to add, partially, influenced by his modicum of the inheritance from the first woman, reluctantly permitted him to proceed; intimating however, that if the importance of his disclosure did not justify his rude and indecorous interference, a place would be found him, in which he could cool his Quixotic ambition at his leisure. A slight bustle was heard in the farther end of the hall, and a man was led out whom they said was taken suddenly ill. Through scenes of adventure and peril, almost more strange than fiction can create, she found her way to Boston. She obtained employment, secured friends, and became a consistent member of the Methodist church. She became interested in a very worthy young man of her own complexion, who was a member of the same church. They were soon married. Their home, though humble, was the abode of piety and contentment. Industrious, temperate, and frugal, all their wants were supplied. Seven years passed away. They had two little boys, one six, and the other four years of age. These children, the sons of a free father, but of a mother who had been a slave, by the laws of the Southern States were doomed to their mother's fate. These Boston boys, born beneath the shadow of Faneuil Hall, the sons of a free citizen of Boston, and educated in the Boston Free Schools, were, by the compromises of the constitution, admitted to be slaves, the property of a South Carolinian planter. The Boston father had no right to his own sons. The Waiting impatiently for the last word of the permission to issue from M. Ravet's mouth, and unheeding, if he heard, the import of his friendly remark about the possibly careful attention he might experience-"There," said the stranger, pointing to De Lorme, and speaking in tones of high excitement, "stands the robber and assassin of John Sevos. I charge Claude Maurice and Pierre Vaudan with wilful perjury: and I denounce Julien Gaufridy as the suborner of the false witnesses, and the contriver of the horrible plot whose bloody enactment was on the eve of its accomplish-law, however, had long been considered a deadment. It was he, the covetous, the vindictive, letter. This was not to continue. The Fugitive the merciless oppressor, who, when John Sevos Slave Law was enacted. It revived the hopes of had fallen to the ground from exhaustion and loss the slave-owners. A young, healthy, energetic of blood, carried the body to his house, and made mother, with two fine boys, was a rich prize. She its disappearance the ground-work of his wicked would make an excellent mother. Good men contrivances. It was he who, by excessive bribes, began to say: 'We must enforce this law; it enticed Vaudan to his perdition; who added fuel is one of the compromises of the constitution.” to the rancorous hatred of Maurice, whose evil Christian ministers began to preach: The voice passions were already sufficiently inflamed against of law is the voice of God. There is no higher his master; who procured the enlistment of De rule of duty. As may be supposed the poor Lorme in the Regiment of La Sarre; and who has woman was panic-stricken. Her friends gathered stood here till now, watching, with a detestable round her, and trembled for her. Her husband malice, of which none but he could be capable, was absent from home, a seaman on board one the progress of his work of desolation. Here is of the Liverpool packets. She was afraid to go the widow of Antoine Duplex," said he, pointing out of doors, lest some one from the south should to a woman who stood a little in advance of the see her, and recognise her. One day, as she was crowd, “whose husband died of a pleurisy, and going to the grocery for some provisions, her with whose conscience Gaufridy has twice tam-quick anxious eye caught a glimpse of a man pered, to induce her to inform against Cape as his poisoner. I am John Sevos!" he added, pulling off his cumbrous neckcloth, and exposing, as he pushed off the handkerchief from his head, a deep, unhealed gash, "who am here ready to establish my identity!" On the 31st of August, Jean Cape, his losses amply indemnified from the overgrown wealth of his oppressor, was working at the tile-kiln. The first day of September saw Claude Maurice and Pierre Vaudan chained, side by side, to the oars of a galley; in the mid-day sun, lay, baking, the crushed and mangled form of Antoine de Lorme, who had expired on the wheel; and the dews of heaven, as they ascended the next morning, carried up with them the smoke of the sacrifice of Julien Gaufridy, whose blood had been drunk by the sawdust of a scaffold. * Reader! would you know how all this came about? You must ask the grandfathers of Ponte-de-Vaux, who heard the story when they were little boys. A SCENE IN BOSTON. A coloured girl, eighteen years of age, some years ago escaped from slavery in the South. prowling around, whom she immediately re- These SELECTIONS FROM OLD ENGLISH POETS. CHAUCER. [Description of a Poor Country Widow.] Of poignant sauce ne knew she never a deal ;3 No wine ne drank she neither white nor red; [The Death of Arcite.] Swelleth the breast of Arcite, and the sore Nought may the woful spirit in mine heart But I bequeaty the service of my ghost Since that my life ne may no longer dure. 1 Thrift, economy. 2 Called. 3 Not a bit. 4 Cot, cottage. 5 Temperate. 6 Prevented. 7 Injured. 8 Signed. 9 Mr Tyrwhitt supposes the word dey" to refer to the management of a dairy; and that it originally signified a hind. Manner dey" may therefore be interpreted “a species of hired, or day-labourer," 10. Medical skill. 11 Body. 12 Ventousmg (Fr.)-cupping; hence the term "breathing a vein." 13 Called. 14 Muscle. 15 Ruined. 16 He is able for. 17 Work. 'Alas the woe! alas the paines strong, That I for you have suffered, and so long! Alas the death! alas mine Emily! Alas departing of our company! Alas mine hearte's queen! alas my wife! Farewell my sweet-farewell mine Emily! 'I have here with my cousin Palamon That is to say, truth, honour, and knighthead, As in this world right now ne know I none And with that word his speeche fail began; [The Good Parson.] A true good man there was there of religion, As proven oft; to all who lack'd a friend. Wide was his cure; the houses far asunder, 1 Surely. 3 Guide. 3 Overtaken. 4 Agone. |