the rush-bottomed and broken chair, the hearth unconscious of a fire,
over which a mean bust of Milton held its tutelary sway; while the
dull rushlight streamed dimly upon the swarthy and strong countenance
of Wolfe, intent upon his work,--a countenance in which the deliberate
calmness that had succeeded the late struggle of feeling had in it a
mingled power of energy and haggardness of languor,--the one of the
desperate design, the other of the exhausted body; while in the knit
brow, and the iron lines, and even in the settled ferocity of
expression, there was yet something above the stamp of the vulgar
ruffian,--something eloquent of the motive no less than the deed, and
significant of that not ignoble perversity of mind which diminished
the guilt, yet increased the dreadness of the meditated crime, by
mocking it with the name of virtue.

As he had finished his task, and hiding the pistol on his person
waited for the hour in which his accomplice was to summon him to the
fatal deed, he perceived, close by him on the table, the letter which
the woman had spoken of, and which till then, he had, in the
excitement of his mind, utterly forgotten. He opened it mechanically;
an enclosure fell to the ground. He picked it up; it was a bank-note
of considerable amount. The lines in the letter were few, anonymous,
and written in a hand evidently disguised. They were calculated
peculiarly to touch the republican, and reconcile him to the gift. In
them the writer professed to be actuated by no other feeling than
admiration for the unbending integrity which had characterized Wolfe's
life, and the desire that sincerity in any principles, however they
might differ from his own, should not be rewarded only with indigence
and ruin.

It is impossible to tell how far, in Wolfe's mind, his own desperate