!" he exclaimed, bitterly.

The tempter was stealthily doing his work.

"Oh! what a vain struggle is this life! What a fitful fever! Would
that it were over, and I at rest!"

The tempter was leading his thoughts at will.

"How can I meet my wronged family? How can I look my friends in the
face? I shall be to the world only a thing of pity or reproach. Can
I bear this? No--no--I cannot--I cannot!"

Magnified by the tempter, the consequence looked appalling. He felt
that he had not strength to meet it--that all of manhood would be
crushed out of him.

"What then?" He spoke the words almost aloud, and held his breath,
as if for answer.

"A moment, and all will be over!"

It was the voice of the tempter.

Markland buried his face in his hands, and sat for a long time as
motionless as if sleep had obscured his senses; and all that time a
fearful debate was going on in his mind. At last he rose up, changed
in feeling as well as in aspect. His resolution was taken, and a
deep, almost leaden, calmness pervaded his spirit. He had resolved
on self-destruction!

With a strange coolness, the self-doomed man now proceeded to select
the agent of death. He procured a work on poisons, and studied the
effects of different substances, choosing, finally, that which did
the fatal work most quickly and with the slightest pain. This
substance was then procured. But he could not turn forever from
those nearest and dearest, without a parting word.

The day had run almost to a close in these fearful struggles and
fatal preparations; and the twilight was falling, when, exhausted
and in tears, the wretched man folded, with trembling hands, a
letter he had penned to his wife. This done, he threw himself, weak
as a child, upon the bed, and, ere conscious that sleep was stealing
upon him, fell off into slumber.

Sleep! It is the great restorer. For a brief season the order of
life is changed, and the involuntary powers of the mind bear rule in
place of the voluntary. The actual, with all its pains and
pleasures, is for the time annihilated. The pressure of thought and
the fever of emotion are both removed, and the over-taxed spirit is
at rest. Into his most loving guardianship the great Creator of man,
who gave him reason and volition, and the freedom to guide himself,
takes his creature, and, while the image of death is upon him,
gathers about him the Everlasting Arms. He suspends, for a time, the
diseased voluntary life, that he m