ver you have been made to feel absolutely lonely in the world, then,
and then only, will you appreciate the depth of his affliction.

But, like all affliction, it purified and sanctified. To Eric, as he
rested his aching head on a pillow wet with tears, and vainly sought for
the sleep whose blessing he had never learned to prize before, how
odious seemed all the vice which he had seen and partaken in since he
became an inmate of that little room. How his soul revolted with
infinite disgust from the language which he had heard, and the open
glorying in sin of which he had so often been a witness. The stain and
the shame of sin fell heavier than ever on his heart; it rode on his
breast like a nightmare; it haunted his fancy with visions of guilty
memory, and shapes of horrible regret. The ghosts of buried misdoings,
which he had thought long-lost in the mists of recollection, started up
menacingly from their forgotten graves, and made him shrink with a sense
of their awful reality. Behind him, like a wilderness, lay years which
the locust had eaten; the entrusted hours which had passed away, and
been reckoned to him as they passed.

And the thought of Russell mingled with all--Russell, as he fondly
imaged him now, glorified with the glory of heaven, crowned, and in
white robes, and with a palm in his hand. Yes, he had walked and talked
with one of the Holy Ones. Had Edwin's death quenched his human
affections, and altered his human heart? If not, might not he be there
even now, leaning over his friend with the beauty of his invisible
presence? The thought startled him, and seemed to give an awful lustre
to the moonbeam which fell into the room. No! he could not endure such
a presence now, with his weak conscience and corrupted heart; and Eric
hid his head under the clothes, and shut his eyes.

Once more the pang of separation entered like iron into his soul.
Should he ever meet Russell again? What if _he_ had died instead of
Edwin, where would he have been? "Oh no! no!" he murmured aloud, as the
terrible thought came over him of his own utter unfitness for death, and
the possibility that he might never never again hear the beloved
accents, or gaze on the cherished countenance of his school friend.

In this tumult of accusing thoughts he fell asleep; but that night the
dew of blessing did not fall for him on the fields of sleep. He was
frightened by unbidden dreams, in all of which his conscience obtruded
o