More than half of the time allotted to the prisoner for preparation in closing up his connection with life, had already transpired since his sentence had been pronounced, and he had now but three days left him to live.  Ruez Gonzales, improving the governor-general’s pass, had visited the young officer daily, bringing with him such luxuries and necessities to the condemned as were not prohibited by the rules of the prison, and which were most grateful to him.  More so, because, though this was never intimated to him, or, indeed, appeared absolutely obvious, he thought that oftentimes Isabella had selected these gifts, if indeed she had not prepared them with her own hands.  A certain delicacy of feeling prevented him from saying as much to her brother, or of even questioning him upon any point, however trivial, as to any matter of a peculiar nature concerning Isabella.  Sometimes he longed to ask the boy about the subject, but he could not bring himself to do so; he felt that it would be indelicate and unpleasant to Isabella, and therefore he limited himself to careful inquiries concerning her health and such simple matters as he might touch upon, without risk of her displeasure.

Lorenzo Bezan took the announcement of his fate calmly.  He felt it his duty to pray for strength, and he did so, and sought in the holy silence and confidence of prayer for that abiding and inward assurance that may carry us through the darkness and the valley of death.  Ruez, poor boy, was almost distracted at the realization of the young soldier’s fate.  Boy though he was, he had yet the feelings, in many respects, of manhood, and though before Lorenzo Bezan he said nothing of his coming fate, and indeed struggled to appear cheerful, and to impart a pleasant influence to the prisoner, yet when once out of his presence, he would cry for the hour together, and Isabella even feared for the child’s reason, unless some change should take place ere long.

When his mother was taken from him, and their home made desolate by the hand of death, Ruez, in the gentleness and tenderness of his heart, had been brought so low by grief, that it was almost miraculous that he had survived.  The influence of that sorrow, as we have before observed, had never left him.  His father’s assiduous care and kindness, and Isabella’s gentle and sisterly love for him, had in part healed the wound, when now his young and susceptible heart was caused thus to bleed anew.  He loved Lorenzo Bezan with a strange intensity of feeling.  There was an affinity in their natures that seemed to draw them together, and it was strange that strength of consolation and happiness that weak and gentle boy imparted to the stern soldier!

In his association of late with Ruez, the condemned officer felt purified and carried back to childhood and his mother’s knee; the long vista of eventful years was blotted out from his heart, the stern battles he had fought in, the blood he had seen flow like water, his own deep scars and many wounds, the pride and ambition of his military career, all were forgotten, and by Ruez’s side he was perhaps more of a child at heart than the boy himself.  How strange are our natures; how susceptible to outward influence; how attunable to harshness or to plaintive notes!  We are but as the ’olian harp, and the winds of heaven play upon us what times they will!