The sight was enough to finish the work of dissolution, already advanced near to completion, and the sluggish blood rushed for the last time upon his paralyzed heart with such chilling coldness and mastering power, that it ceased to beat, and the wretch was dead!

Then a fight took place over his putrefying carcass, and the screech of the vulture, mingled with the angry growl of the wolf, as they contended for the remains of the man of crimes in their wild fury and ferocious hunger!

A few hours longer, and the flesh was all torn from his frame, and only a ghostly, grinning skeleton was left of the once proud and vicious Louis Durant; and yet fresh beasts arriving upon the scene, disappointed in their anticipated feast, howled a dismal requiem over his bones, which were left, without sepulture, to bleach in the winds and storms of heaven!

Such was the terrible end of the villain, while the victims of his hate and malice, against whom he had plotted so often and so fiendishly, were happy in the enjoyment of life’s best blessings; and thus the story points its own moral.

THE END