vil thought had ever been
hers;--then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where
she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness
be lightened--let me see into its heart--and know but the meaning of her
guilt--and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and
night, it has troubled and confounded me--and from blind and baffled
wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through
which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find--and nothing is left
me but to tear my hair out by handfuls--as, like a madman, I have
done--to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon
her the curse of God. O wicked--most wicked! Yet He who judges the
hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand
times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the
moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back--I know not
whether of a good or evil spirit--and bade me leave her to her fate. But
she must be dead--and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too
sternly--from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly
expressed to you but parts of my miserable being--and if I could lay it
all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn--for my
worst passions only have now found utterance--all my better feelings
will not return nor abide for words--even I myself have forgotten them;
but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the
Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on
his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man
encouraged him not to despair--it needed but a motion of his hand to
bring the child from her couch in the cover, and Lucy was folded to her
father's heart. The forgiveness was felt to be holy in that embrace.

The day had brightened up into more perfect beauty, and showers were
sporting with sunshine on the blue air of Spring. The sky showed
something like a rainbow--and the Lake, in some parts quite still, and
in some breezy, contained at once shadowy fragments of wood and rock,
and waves that would have murmured round the prow of pleasure-boat
suddenly hoisting a sail. And such a very boat appeared round a
promontory that stretched no great way into the water, and formed with a
crescent of low meadow-land a bay that was the first to feel the wind
coming down Glencoin. The boatman was rowing heedlessly al