he full stature of joy and blessing, is
rooted out of you, and thrown like something loathsome, at which the
carrion dogs of the world scent and snuffle!

They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and
she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen! And he, the
accursed miscreant----. But no, it can never be! Madge is as true as
Heaven!

Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you?

----Your children?

Ay, your children,--your little Nelly,--your noble Frank,--they are
yours,--doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a
mother no more to them forever!

Ay, close your doors; shut out the world; draw close your curtains; fold
them to your heart,--your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart! Lay your
forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;--beware, beware how you
dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears: yet you cannot help
it; they fall--great drops--a river of tears, as you gather him
convulsively to your bosom!

"Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful
sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood.

----"Why, papa?"--mimes little Nelly.

----Answer them, if you dare! Try it;--what words--blundering, weak
words--choked with agony--leading nowhere--ending in new and convulsive
clasps of your weeping, motherless children!

Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy, a great and
swelling grief indeed,--but your poor heart would have found a rest in
the quiet churchyard; and your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave,
would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught
the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,--with your
heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,--finding
no shelter and no abiding place!--alas, we do guess at infinitude only
by suffering!

----Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are you not still the same sweet,
guileless child of Heaven?

VII.

_Peace._

It is a dream,--fearful, to be sure, but only a dream! Madge _is_ true.
That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be
false; He never made the sun for darkness.

And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on
your gloom;--Madge is folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully,--not for
guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your
brow, and in your low sighs.

The mystery is all