He entered softly; but she was not there; and from that moment she was never beheld again! Every ultimate search proved fruitless and unavailing. A veil of impenetrable mystery hung over her fate.......
A sudden thought flashed on the mind of Clermistonlee. The day dawn was breaking as he descended the staircase, after fruitlessly calling on Lilian through various apartments.
"I may, I must save him yet—unfortunate youth, a father's arms shall yet embrace him. Oh, my hapless and deeply wronged Alison! fortune may yet enable me in some sort to repair the atrocities of which I have been guilty. My horse! my horse!" and, rushing to the stable, he saddled and bridled a fleet steed, and in five minutes was galloping furiously back to the city, the walls and towers of which arose before him, red and sombre in the rays of the morning sun.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE IRON ROOM—THE DEATH SHOT.
Ay, I had planned full many a sanguine scheme
Of earthly happiness—romantic schemes,
And fraught with loveliness:—and it is hard
To feel the hand of death arrest one's steps,
Throw a chill blight o'er all one's budding prospects,
And hurl one's soul untimely to the shades,
Lost in the gaping gulph of blank oblivion.
HENRY KIRKE WHITE.
The Iron Room of the ancient Tolbooth of Edinburgh was a dreary vault of massive stone-work, and was named so in consequence of its strength and security. A low heavy arch roofed it, and the walls from which it sprung were composed of great blocks of roughly hewn stone elaborately built. Here and there a chain hung from them. The floor was paved, and the door was a complicated mass of iron bars, locks, bolts, and hinges. A single aperture, high up in the wall, admitted the cold midnight wind through its deep recess.
An iron cruise burned on a clumsy wooden table, near which sat Walter Fenton the condemned, with his face covered by his hands and his mind buried in sad and melancholy thoughts.
One bright and solitary star shone down upon him through the grated window, flashing, dilating, and shrinking; often he gazed upon it wistfully—for it was his only companion—the partner or the witness of his solitude and his sorrow. Once he turned to look upon it—but it had passed away.
He reflected that never again would he behold a star shining in the firmament.