passage that led to the room,—the door opened, and the priest appeared. He advanced into the room without speaking, or being spoken to. And the contrast of strong emotion and unbroken silence,—this conflict of speech that strangled thought in the utterance, and of thought that in vain asked aid of speech,—the agony and the muteness,—formed a terrible momentary association. It was but momentary,—the priest, as he stood, uttered the words—“All is over!” Walberg clasped his hands over his forehead, and in ecstatic agony exclaimed,—“Thank God!” and wildly catching at the object nearest him, as if imagining it one of his children, he clasped and hugged it to his breast. His wife wept for a moment at the thought of her brother’s death, but roused herself for her children’s sake to hear all that was to be told. The Priest could tell no more but that Guzman was dead,—seals had been put on every chest, drawer, and coffer in the house,—not a cabinet had escaped the diligence of the persons employed,—and the will was to be read the following day.

“For the following day the family remained in that intensity of expectation that precluded all thought. The servants prepared the usual meal, but it remained untasted. The family pressed each other to partake of it; but as the importunity was not enforced by the inviter setting any example of the lesson he tried to teach, the meal remained untasted. About noon a grave person, in the habit of a notary, was announced, and summoned Walberg to be present at the opening of Guzman’s will. As Walberg prepared to obey the summons, one of his children officiously offered him his hat, another his cloke, both of which he had forgot in the trepidation of his anxiety; and these instances of reminiscence and attention in his children, contrasted with his own abstraction, completely overcame him, and he sunk down on a seat to recover himself. “You had better not go, my love,” said his wife mildly. “I believe I shall—I must take your advice,” said Walberg, relapsing on the seat from which he had half risen. The notary, with a formal bow, was retiring. “I will go!” said Walberg, swearing a German oath, whose guttural sound made the notary start,—“I will go!” and as he spoke he fell on the floor, exhausted by fatigue and want of refreshment, and emotion indescribable but to a father. The notary retired, and a few hours more were exhausted in torturing conjecture, expressed on the mother’s part only by clasped hands and smothered sighs,—on the father’s by profound silence, averted countenance, and hands that seemed to feel for those of his children, and then shrink from the touch,—and on the children’s by rapidly varying auguries of hope and of disappointment. The aged pair sat motionless 

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