To his surprise, the prisoner peremptorily refused the offer.
'I am innocent,' said he; 'but I would suffer a thousand deaths rather than injure the fair fame of this confiding girl.'
'Go, Dudley—my dear Dudley,' she sobbed: 'for my sake, for the sake of your broken-hearted father and sister—'
'Do not tempt me—my dear Almira. I will not do that which would expose you to disgrace.'
'Oh, who would blame me?'
'The world—the uncharitable world—they who believe me a murderer, and have tortured the most innocent actions into proofs of deliberate villainy, will not hesitate to brand you as the victim of a cold-blooded felon. And why should I fly? to live a wretched wanderer, with the brand of Cain on my forehead, and a character stamped with infamy?'—
He would have said more—but the form, that during this brief dialogue, had sunk into his arms, was lying lifeless on his bosom. He kissed her cold lips, and passionately repeated her name—but she heard him not—her pure spirit had gently disengaged itself, and was flown forever. Her heart was broken. She had watched, and wept, and prayed, in hopeless grief, until the physical energies of a delicate frame were exhausted: and the excitement of the last scene had snapped the attenuated thread of life.
Hamilton did not survive her long. His health was already shattered by long confinement, and the chaffing of a proud spirit. Almira had died for him—and his own mother—oh! how cautiously did they whisper the sad truth, when he asked why she who loved him better than her own life, had forsaken him in the hour of affliction—she, too, had sunk under the dreadful blow. His father lived a withered, melancholy man, crushed in spirit; and as his sister hung like a guardian angel over his death-bed, and he gazed at her pale, emaciated, sorrow-stricken countenance, he saw that she, too, would soon be numbered among the victims of this melancholy persecution. When, with his last breath, he suggested that they would soon meet, she replied: 'I trust that God will spare me to see your innocence established, and then will I die contented.' And her confidence was rewarded—for God does not disappoint those who put their trust in him. About a year afterwards, a wretch, who was executed at Natchez, and who was one of the three persons named in the commencement of this narrative, confessed that he had murdered Saunders, with a pistol which he had found at the place where the two friends had slept. 'I knew it would be so,'—was the only reply of the fast declining sister—and soon after she was buried by the side of Dudley and Almira.—Reader, this is not fiction—nor are the decisions of God unjust—but his ways are above our comprehension.
EMILLION.