* * * * * *

Thus was the old rhyme fulfilled which Gillie Godber had so often chaunted, and in a comprehensive sense that perhaps she had not hoped. "Grief was over at Walladmor." Her own fate ratified the prophecy and sealed its truth. She also was among the killed: some merciful bullet had liberated her from the storm of guilt and sorrow which for more than twenty years had brooded over her brain, and ravaged her heart: and after so long a period of calamity, during which she had been rejected from human sympathy, she was again gathered within the fold of Christian fellowship in the pastoral churchyard of Utragan. On a grey and silent afternoon a funeral was beheld by those who stood upon the mountains above Utragan winding through the valleys to the quiet chapel at their foot. It stopped in a secluded angle of the churchyard at a spot known to all the country. The grave of the "blooming boy," whose filial prayer upon the scaffold for his mother's peace of mind had not been granted, was now opened to receive her; and the mother and the son, after their long separation, once more were reunited. This spectacle brought back forgiving thoughts: the pity, which had once been granted to her, was now restored: and the uncharitable thoughts, which had attended her when living, gave way before the affecting memorials of the open grave--suggesting the awful trial which had overthrown her reason before her conscience had finally given way.

After some weeks of illness Sir Morgan Walladmor was restored to a state of convalescence; and, by slow degrees and after many months, to his wonted firmness of mind. He was then able to bear the recital of all which had happened; and the news which had recently arrived of Captain Walladmor's death. Large funds had been sent out to him in South America by Sir Morgan's friends: with these he had raised a horse regiment: and at the head of this in the decisive engagement of Manchinilla he had found at last "the death that he was wooing!" With a miniature of Miss Walladmor pressed to his lips, he was discovered lying on the ground of the last decisive charge: and Sir M organ was satisfied to hear that his son had met the death of a soldier and in a cause which he approved.

That Bertram was twin brother to Edward Nicholas, the reader will long have suspected. By the letters of Captain Donneraile and the verbal communications of Bertram it appeared sufficiently that the wife of Captain Donneraile (at that time a mate on board the Rattle-snake) and Winifred Griffiths, being the only two women on board, had cast lots for the appropriation of the children. The happier lot had fallen upon Bertram: for, though it gave him up to the cruel spoiler that had pierced the hearts of his parents, yet had it thrown him upon a quiet life in a humble village of Germany where he was spared that spectacle of storm and guilt which had pursued the youthful steps of his unhappy twin brother. Prosperity had left to Winifred Griffiths for many years leisure for meditation upon the wrongs she had done to Sir Morgan. And when affliction visited her, it came in a shape that taught her to measure the strength of parental anguish: she lost her only child; and on her death-bed, being now left a widow, she had bequeathed to Bertram the whole sum of which she had robbed his father: upon which sum he had supported himself at the Saxon university of Halle, But the disclosure of his birth and connexions, which she had deferred until her latter moments, had been cut short by death. What she said however had been sufficient to direct the course of Bertram to his native country. The discovery, which she had left imperfect, was now completed by others: and it shed comfort upon the declining days of Sir Morgan--that, from the amiable disposition and good sense of the son who was thus restored to him, when matured by more intercourse with the world, he could venture to hope for increase of honour and generations of happier days to the ancient house of Walladmor.

FOOTNOTES TO "CHAPTER XXI.":

[[1]] It is not well to move a sleeping lion. Yet, if either hereabouts or elsewhere in the novel, any disagreeable reader should find out something or other not quite in the spirit of our manners--or rather inartificial in the conduct of the story,--let him understand that it is due to the German author. But might it not have been altered and adapted to our notions? Let him be assured that all possible experiments in that way have been used in the treatment of Walladmor. It is always satisfactory to know that the patient has had every advantage which humanity guided by skill could suggest. No attention has been omitted even in this chapter which the nature of the case allowed. But there are incidents which cannot be altered; as they would draw after them other alterations; and compel the artist, who had simply undertaken to "clean the works" of the watch, absolutely to put in a new "mainspring."--English Translator.

[[2]] A sentiment which has been expressed by Mr. Foster in his ingenious essays; and most affectingly expressed by a great poet of this age in the "Excursion."

POSTSCRIPT.

'E quovis ligno non fit Mercurius.' This Roman proverb, Courteous Reader! is adequately rendered by a homely one of our own--"You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." Certainly it is difficult to do so; and none can speak to that more feelingly than myself; but not impossible, as I would hope that my Walladmor will show when compared with the original. In saying this I disclaim all vanity; for, waiving other and more positive services to the German Walladmor, I here found my claim to the production of a "silk purse" simply on the negative merits of omission and compression. This is a point which on another account demands a word or two of explanation; as the reader will else find it difficult to understand upon what principle of translation three 'thick set' German volumes can have shrunk into two English ones of somewhat meagre proportions.

The German hoaxer was aware that no book could have a chance of passing for Sir Walter Scott's[[1]] which was not in three volumes octavo. A Scotch novel from Mr. Constable's press, and not in three volumes, would be as absurd as a novel from any man's press in folio--as ominous as 'double Thebes'---as perverse as drinking a man's health "with two times two" (which in fact would be an insult)--as fraudulent as a subscription of 99l. 19s. (where it would be clear that some man had pocketed a shilling)--and as contrary to all Natural History as that twenty-seven tailors should make either more men or fewer than the cube root of that number. What is the occult law of the Constable press, which compels it into these three-headed births, might be difficult to explain: Mr. Kant himself[[2]] with all his subtlety could never make up his mind why no man thinks of presenting a lady with a service of 23 cups and saucers, though it is evident that she is just as likely to have a party of 23 people as 24: nay, if the reader himself were to make such a present to an English grand jury, where the party never could be more than 23, he would infallibly order a service of 24: though he must be certain that the 24th cup-and-saucer was a mere Irish bull--an empty piece of impertinence--a disgusting pleonasm--and a downright logical absurdity. For a 24th grand jury man is as much a metaphysical chimæra as an "abstract Lord Mayor," or a 30th of February. Not only, therefore, without reason, but even against reason, people have a superstitious regard to certain numbers: and Mr. Constable has a right to his superstition, which possibly may rest on this consideration--that 3 is the number of the Graces. But, let the rationale of the case be what it may, we all know that it is a fact; and a Constable novel in two volumes (being a mere ens rationis ratiocinantis) would have been detected as a hoax in limine by the very printer's devils in any printing-office in Europe.