such distress and horror on those whom I love the best!"
"What! Walter, you yet believe—you are yet convinced that Eugene Aram is the real criminal?"
"Let to-morrow shew," answered Walter. "But poor, poor Madeline! How does she bear up against this long suspense? You know I have not seen her for months."
"Oh! Walter," said Ellinor, weeping bitterly, "you would not know her, so dreadfully is she altered. I fear—" (here sobs choaked the sister's voice, so as to leave it scarcely audible)—"that she is not many weeks for this world!"
"Great God! is it so?" exclaimed Walter, so shocked, that the tree against which he leant scarcely preserved him from falling to the ground, as the thousand remembrances of his first love rushed upon his heart. "And Providence singled me out of the whole world, to strike this blow!"
Despite her own grief, Ellinor was touched and
