Upon this, in a corner at the right, and opposite a spacious fire-place, in which are two bricks supporting a small iron kettle, lies the once opulent planter,—­now with eyes glassy and discoloured, a ghastly corpse.  His house once was famous for its princely hospitality,—­the prison cot is not now his bequest:  but it is all the world has left him on which to yield up his life.  “Oh, uncle! uncle! uncle!” exclaims Franconia, who has been bathing his contorted face with her tears, “would that God had taken me too-buried our troubles in one grave!  There is no trouble in that world to which he has gone:  joy, virtue, and peace, reign triumphant there,” she speaks, sighing, as she raises her bosom from off the dead man.  Harry has touched her on the shoulder with his left hand, and is holding the dead man’s with his right:  he seems in deep contemplation.  His mind is absorbed in the melancholy scene; but, though his affection is deep, he has no tears to shed at this moment.  No; he will draw a chair for Franconia, and seat her near the head of the cot, for the fountains of her grief have overflown.  Discoloured and contorted, what a ghastly picture the dead man’s face presents!  Glassy, and with vacant glare, those eyes, strange in death, seem wildly staring upward from earth.  How unnatural those sunken cheeks—­those lips wet with the excrement of black vomit—­that throat reddened with the pestilential poison!  “Call a warden, Daddy!” says Harry; “he has died of black vomit, I think.”  And he lays the dead body square upon the cot, turns the sheets from off the shoulders, unbuttons the collar of its shirt.  “How changed!  I never would have known master; but I can see something of him left yet.”  Harry remains some minutes looking upon the face of the departed, as if tracing some long lost feature.  And then he takes his hands-it’s master’s hand, he says-and places them gently to his sides, closes his glassy eyes, wipes his mouth and nostrils, puts his ear to the dead man’s mouth, as if doubting the all-slayer’s possession of the body, and with his right hand parts the matted hair from off the cold brow.  What a step between the cares of the world and the peace of death!  Harry smooths, and smooths, and smooths his forehead with his hand; until at length his feelings get the better of his resolution; he will wipe the dewy tears from his eyes.  “Don’t weep, Miss Franconia,—­don’t weep! master is happy with Jesus,—­happier than all the plantations and slaves of the world could make him” he says, turning to her as she sits weeping, her elbow resting on the cot, and her face buried in her handkerchief.

“Bad job this here!” exclaims the warden, as he comes lumbering into the cell, his face flushed with anxiety.  “This yaller-fever beats everything:  but he hasn’t been well for some time,” he continues, advancing to the bed-side, looking on the deceased for a few minutes, and then, as if it were a part of his profession to look on dead men, says:  “How strange to die out so soon!”