for which my motherless boy should live to
bless his father's name. Stung by such thoughts as these, which
rankled the more in me the longer I cherished them, I betook myself to
brooding and to solitary strolling in quiet places, where I could
ponder on my situation undisturbed.

I was in great intellectual and spiritual stress, less for myself than
for the child; not more for him, than because of his mother. What
would Helen say?

How would she hold me to account for him? How should I meet her--if I
ever saw her face again--to own myself scarcely other than a pauper in
this spiritual kingdom; our child an untaught, unimportant little
fellow, of no more consequence in this place than the _gamins_ of the
street before her door?

In these cold and solitary experiences which many a man has known
before me, and many more will follow after me, the soul is like a
skater, separated from his fellows upon a field of ice. Every movement
that he makes seems to be bearing him farther from the society and the
sympathy of his kind. Too benumbed, perhaps, to turn, he glides on,
helpless as an ice-boat before the wind. Conscious of his mistake, of
his danger, and knowing not how to retract the one or avoid the other,
his helpless motions, seemingly guided by idleness, by madness, or by
folly, lead him to the last place whither he would have led
himself,--the weak spot in the ice.

Suddenly, he falls crashing, and sinks. Then lo! as he goes under,
crying out that he is lost because no man is with him, hands are
down-stretched, swimmers plunge, the crowd gathers, and it seems the
whole world stoops to save him. The sympathy of his kind wanted
nothing but a chance to reach him.

I cannot tell; no man can tell such things; I cannot explain how I came
to do it, or even why I came to do it. But it was on this wise with
me. Being alone one evening in a forest, at twilight, taking counsel
with myself and pondering upon the mystery from which I could not
gather light, these words came into my heart; and when I had cherished
them in my heart for a certain time, I uttered them aloud:

"Thou great God! If there be a God. Reveal Thyself unto my immortal
soul! If I have a soul immortal."

CHAPTER XV.

My little boy came flying to me one fair day; he cried out that he had
news for me, that great things were going on in the town. A visitor
was expected, whose promised arrival had set the whole place astir with
joy. T