nor
did he fear to touch the hand, now wasted to the bone, which, at the
temptation of the Prince of the Air--who is mysteriously suffered to
enter in at the gates of every human heart that is guarded not by the
flaming sword of God's own Seraphim--was lately drenched in the blood of
the most innocent creature that ever looked on the day. Yet a sore trial
it was to his Christianity to find the criminal so obdurate. He would
make no confession. Yet said that it was fit--that it was far best he
should die--that he deserved death! But ever when the deed without a
name was alluded to, his tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an
impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen to conscience and
confess--he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear
bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease--cease to torment me, or you
will drive me to deny my God!"

No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been
missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning--(where he had been all
night never was known, though it was afterwards rumoured that one like
him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of
the murder)--wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round
and round about, like a man stricken with blindness, and vainly seeking
to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and
he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some
disjointed syllables, which he did continually, without one moment's
cessation, one unintelligible and most rueful moan! The figure of his
daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes--blind and dumb he sat
where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his
shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs--though
stone-blind at least to all real things--beneath them flashing fire. He
had borne up bravely--almost to the last--but had some tongue syllabled
his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten
him?

Such utter prostration of intellect had been expected by none; for the
old man, up to the very night before the Trial, had expressed the most
confident trust of his son's acquittal. Nothing had ever served to shake
his conviction of his innocence--though he had always forborne speaking
about the circumstances of the murder--and had communicated to nobody
any of the grounds on which he more than hoped in a case so hopeless;
and though a trouble in