ngements of God, and nature triumphs in the maternal tie. The
spirit of Madeleine had made the sacrifice of her son, but the rude
hand of nature swept the fibres of her heart and tore them asunder.

Night has gathered around the house of Cassier. Sleep has brought the
silence of the tomb on the inmates. One alone is awake; gentle sobs
tell of a heart struggling with its own desires, but a faint ray of
moonlight shows him seeking strength on his knees before a crucifix.

Guide him, ye angels, in the sublime destiny to which Heaven calls!
Treasure up those tears of affection; they are pearls for a crown in
eternity! A long, farewell look at the old homestead, and Louis has
fled.

In the night, when all were asleep, he stole down-stairs and into the
silent street. The moon brightened the tears of his farewell; only
his guardian angel saw to register for his eternal crown, the inward
struggle in which he had trampled on every tie of affection and
pleasure. Disappearing in the narrow streets, he disappears also from
the pages of our narrative until, in the extraordinary vicissitudes
of time, he makes his appearance again in a scene both touching and
edifying.

The morning dawn revealed the broken circle, the vacant chair in the
family. Cassier was confused. Whilst others wept he moved about in
deep thought. Stoic in his feelings and hardened in sympathies, he
still felt all the tender anxieties of an affectionate parent. There
are moments in the career of even the greatest sinners when sleeping
conscience is roused to remorse. The shock the old man received in
the loss of his amiable child opened his eyes to the unhappy state of
his own soul; every act of ridicule he cast on the religious tendencies
of Louis became arrows of memory to sting him with regret.

But these were transient moments of a better light. As meteors, darting
across the sky, illumine for a few seconds the dark vault of heaven,
and in the sudden exit of their brilliant flash seem to leave greater
darkness in the night, thus the impulses of grace shot across the soul
of Cassier; he struggled in the grasp of an unseen power, but suddenly
lapsed into the awful callousness which characterizes the relapses of
confirmed guilt; he pretended to smile at his weakness, and found a
sorry relief in cursing and scoffing at everything the virtuous love.

Yet he offered immense rewards for information that would bring him in
presence of the boy whose fo