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It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good.

Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes.

The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day.

Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie's husband at last.

Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident.

So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun.

Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head.

No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger situation.

Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart.

In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men.

He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.

One year and three months.

During all that time Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband's head next day.

Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned.

Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst.

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;-the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!

If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time, had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many.

But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties.

She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.

As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had been there.

Everything had its appointed place and its appointed time.

Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home.

The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon be reunited-the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books-these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death-were almost the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.

She did not greatly alter in appearance.

V. The Wood-Sawyer

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