“When the tender corn is springing,
And the merry thrush is singing;
When the swallows come and go,
On light wings flitting to and fro,

                                    Thou wilt think of me, love!

“When ’neath April’s rainbow skies
Violets ope their azure eyes;
When mossy bank and verdant mound
Sweet knots of primroses have crown’d,

                                    Thou wilt think of me, love!

“When the meadows glitter white,
Like a sheet of silver light;
When bluebells gay and cowslips bloom,
Sweet-scented briar and golden broom,

                                    Thou wilt think of me, love!

“Each bud shall be to thee a token
Of a fond heart reft and broken;
And the month of joy and gladness
Shall fill thy soul with holy sadness,

                                    And thou wilt sigh for me, love.

“When thou rov’st the woodland bowers,
Thou shalt cull spring’s sweetest flowers,
To strew with tender, silent weeping
The lonely bed where I am sleeping,

                                    And sadly mourn for me, love!”

And thus ended poor Clary’s letter.  Anthony folded it up carefully, and laid it next his heart.  The hope she had endeavored to inspire did not desert him at that moment.  He was resigned to his fate; he even wished to die.  Her simple child-like letter had done more to reconcile him to his doom than the pious lectures of the good priest, and his own deep reflections on the subject.  The madness of all human pursuits—­the vanity and frivolity of life—­now awoke in his breast sensations of pity and disgust.  But love and friendship—­those drops of honey in the cup of gall—­did not their sweetness in this hour of desolation atone for the bitter dregs, and hold him to earth?  The mighty struggle was to rend asunder these new-formed and holy ties.  For him there existed no hope of a reprieve.  Wise and good men had tried and found him guilty of a crime which, in all ages, had been held in execration by mankind.  He was not a common criminal; for him there existed no sympathy, no pity.  The voice of humanity was against him; the whole world united in his condemnation.

It was his last night upon earth; yet amidst its silent dreary watches, when these thoughts flitted through his mind, he wished it past.  A thousand times he caught himself repeating from Dr. Young that memorable line, as if to fortify himself against the coming event,

     “Man receives, not suffers, death’s tremendous blow.”

But it was not the mere death-pang—­the separation of matter and spirit—­that he shrank from.  It was the loathed gibbet; that disgusting relic of a barbarous age, the revolting exhibition, the public and disgraceful manner of his death, that made it so terrible.  And he sighed, and prayed to God to grant him patience, and fell into a deep tranquil sleep, from which he did not awake until the hour of his departure was at hand.