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rushing girls, tore out both pistols, and rushed headlong upon Glen.
'For thy one blow, take here two deaths ! 'Tis speechless sweet to murder thee ! '
Spatterings of his own kindred blood were upon the pavement ; his own hand had extinguished his house in slaughtering the only unoutlawed human being by the name of Glendinning ;—and Pierre was seized by a hundred contending hands.
VI
That sundown, Pierre stood solitary in a low dungeon of the city prison. The cumbersome stone ceiling almost rested on his brow ; so that the long tiers of massive cell-galleries above seemed partly piled on him. His immortal, immovable, bleached cheek was dry ; but the stone cheeks of the walk were trickling. The pent twilight of the contracted yard, coming through the barred arrow-slit, fell in dim bars upon the granite floor.
' Here, then, is the untimely, timely end ;—Life's last chapter well stitched into the middle ! Nor book, nor author of the book, hath any sequel, though each hath its last lettering !—It is ambiguous still. Had I been heartless now, disowned, and spurningly portioned off the girl at Saddle Meadows, then had I been happy through a long life on earth, and perchance through a long eternity in heaven ! Now, 'tis merely hell in both worlds. Well, be it hell. I will mould a trumpet of the flames, and, with my breath of flame, breathe back my defiance ! But give me first another body ! I long and long to die, to be rid of this dishonoured cheek. Hung by the neck till thou be dead.—Not if I forestall you, though !—Oh now to live is death, and now to die is
