herself to baffle it. And in this miserable position, what chance
had the blunt, stern, honest Poland (separated from his son during the
most ductile years of infancy) against the ascendancy of a mother who
humored all the faults and gratified all the wishes of her darling?

In his despair, Roland let fall the threat that if thus thwarted, it
would become his duty to withdraw his son from the mother. This threat
instantly hardened both hearts against him. The wife represented Roland
to the boy as a tyrant, as an enemy, as one who had destroyed all the
happiness they had before enjoyed in each other, as one whose severity
showed that he hated his own child; and the boy believed her. In his
own house a firm union was formed against Roland, and protected by the
cunning which is the force of the weak against the strong.

In spite of all, Roland could never forget the tenderness with which the
young nurse had watched over the wounded man, nor the love--genuine for
the hour, though not drawn from the feelings which withstand the wear
and tear of life--that lips so beautiful had pledged him in the bygone
days. These thoughts must have come perpetually between his feelings and
his judgment, to embitter still more his position, to harass still more
his heart. And if, by the strength of that sense of duty which made the
force of his character, he could have strung himself to the fulfilment
of the threat, humanity, at all events, compelled him to delay it,--his
wife promised to be again a mother. Blanche was born. How could he take
the infant from the mother's breast, or abandon the daughter to the
fatal influences from which only, by so violent an effort, he could free
the son?

No wonder, poor Roland, that those deep furrows contracted thy bold
front, and thy hair grew gray before its time!

Fortunately, perhaps, for all parties, Roland's wife died while Blanche
was still an infant. She was taken ill of a fever; she died delirious,
clasping her boy to her breast, and praying the saints to protect him
from his cruel father. How often that death-bed haunted the son, and
justified his belief that there was no parent's love in the heart which
was now his sole shelter from the world and the "pelting of its pitiless
rain!" Again I say "poor Roland;" for I know that in that harsh,
unloving disrupture of such solemn ties thy large, generous heart forgot
its wrongs,--again didst thou see tender eyes bending over the wounded
stranger,