nd to tak awa yer ain life, which my mother,
yer beloved Agnes, on her death-bed, bade ye preserve for my sake. But
ye canna do that without takin also mine. Yer death will be my death.
I hae already seen yer bleedin body in my dreams--the image haunts me
like a spirit, and leaves me nae rest. The doctor says true--ye will
kill me before yer dreadfu purpose is fulfilled; but if, in God's
will, I should be left when ye are awa, wha is to guard me, wha is to
comfort me--without freends, without means, and without health?"

The scene now presented to me transcended anything I had ever seen
during my long intercourse with suffering humanity. The excited girl
clung with a firm grasp to the neck of her parent, and sobbed
intensely; while he, struggling to be liberated, and holding away his
face to the back of the bed, groaned and appealed for relief in
broken, guttural, half-choked aspirations to Heaven. I saw his eyes
turned to the throne of mercy, and big tears rolled down his rugged
cheeks. In my anxiety to aid this struggle, and assist him to the
return to his natural love of life and duty to his God, I was afraid
to interfere with the sacred service of a bursting heart, turned in
its agony to the only source of consolation and healing virtue; while,
if I allowed this opportunity to escape, I might not have another for
adding a mortal's means and energies (sometimes God's instruments) to
the workings of nature, and the silent but powerful voice of religion
speaking from the innermost recesses of his moral constitution.

"This is nature and truth," said I, after a pause--"powers a thousand
times stronger than the brain-sick fancies of a diseased mind. It is
the voice of God himself, sounding through the heart, and, like the
electric energy, heaving it with convulsive throes, as if to cast
forth from it the impious daring and unnatural purpose you have
cherished in it so long that no lesser power will expel it. I rejoice
in these throes; cherish them and aid them, for they are the
expulsers of poison that, having got into your blood, and reached the
heart, the seat of life, madly stimulates it to self-destruction. This
is the time--here is the vantage-ground of a return to all that is
right, true, and good, from cowardice, cruelty, irreligion, and even
rebellion against God!"

"Listen to him--listen to him!" cried the young woman, still sobbing.
"Hear thae words o' truth, for they are sent from Heaven. Receive them
into