t myself doomed to wander without ties and without
sympathy. Then came the image of him who had thus desolated my path, and
at once a fixed resolve filled my mind.

When we stopped, I mechanically ate, because I feared that without
nourishment the unnatural tension of my nerves might incapacitate me
from going through with the trying ordeal which awaited me. I at length
reached the house. I dismounted at the gate, and walked up the avenue.
My feet seemed glued to the ground, and I faltered like a drunken man,
as I slowly drew near the portico, afraid to learn that I had arrived
too late.

A gentleman met me at the door, and my parched lips syllabled the name
of Alice. He read the question I would have asked, in my agonized and
distorted countenance. "She lives," he said, and led me toward her
apartment.

The doors were all wide open, for it was summer, and in a darkened room,
on a bed whose snowy drapery was scarcely whiter than her face, lay my
adored Alice in a calm slumber. I approached and leaned over her: then I
could mark the ravages which suffering had made on her sweet features;
but I read on her tranquil brow, and in the subdued expression of her
small mouth, that the angel of peace had folded his wings over her
departing spirit. I felt that her trust in a higher Power had subdued
the bitterness of approaching death, and I prayed fervently to be
enabled even then to say: "My God, not my will, but Thine be done;" but
my rebellious heart would not thus be schooled. A moment I dared to ask
why she, who loved all human beings, would turn aside from her path to
spare the meanest insect that crawls, should have this unutterable load
of suffering laid upon her? My burning tears fell over her; I knew not
that I wept, until she unclosed her eyes, and wiped from her cheek a
lucid drop which had fallen there. She gazed upon me with a radiant
smile; a bright gleam from the heaven to which she was hastening seemed
to shine over her lovely countenance, and she stretched forth her
emaciated hands to me:

"Ah, I dreamed this. I knew you would come. Heaven is kind to permit
another earthly meeting, before I go hence. My beloved Erlon, you are
just in time!"

She turned to her uncle, and requested him to leave us alone for a brief
space. The old gentleman withdrew, and I then listened to the narrative
of her sufferings.

The whirlwind, in its greatest might, is the only fitting type of the
wild thoughts and bitter purpos