r
appreciation of our own praiseworthiness. Bressant took no encouragement
or pleasure from what he had done; probably, also, his realization of
the extensive and fearful consequences of the action, to others as well
as to himself, was as yet but rudimentary; so soon as the momentary glow
was passed, he fell back into a yet darker mood than before, and felt
yet more adrift and reckless. To make a sacrifice is well, but does not
hinder the need of what is given up from crippling us.

Again the young man turned to the window, and, raising the sash, he
secured it by the little button used for the purpose, and leaned out
into the snow-storm. The flakes fell and melted upon his face, and
caught in his bushy beard, and rested lightly upon his twisted hair.
They flew into his eyes, and made little drifts upon the collar of his
coat and in the folds of his sleeves. He gazed up toward the dull, gray
cloud whence they came, and presently, out of the confusion, and
carelessness, and morbid impatience of his heart, he put forth a prayer
that some awfully stirring event might come to pass; let a sword pass
through his life! let him be smitten down and trampled upon! let his
mind be continually occupied with the extreme of active, living
suffering! let there be no cessation till the end! He could accept it
and exult in it; but to live on as he was living now was to walk
open-eyed into insanity. Rather than that, he would commit some capital
crime, and subject himself to the penalty. Let God take at least so much
pity upon him, and grant him physical agony!

It is not often that our prayers are answered, nor, when they are, does
the answer come in the form our expectations shaped. Occasionally,
however--and then, perhaps, with a promptness and completeness that
force us to a realization of how extravagant and senseless our desires
are--does fulfillment come upon us.

As Bressant's strange petition went up through the storm, a sleigh came
along from the direction of the railway-station. It was nothing but a
cart on runners, and painted a dingy, grayish blue; it was loaded with a
dozen tin milk-cans much defaced by hard usage, each one stopped with an
enormous cork. The driver was clad in an overcoat which once had been
dark brown or black, but had worn to a greenish yellow, except where the
collar turned up around the throat, and showed the original color. His
head and most of his face were enveloped in a knit woolen comforter, and