escending feet.
He stopped and listened: they turned into the half-way room. When he
reached it, he heard sounds which showed that the earl was in the
closet behind it. Things rushed together in his mind. He hurried up to
lady Arctura's room, thence descended, for the third time that
night--but no farther than the oak door, passed through it, entered the
little chamber, and hastening to the farther end of it, laid his ear
against the wall. Plainly enough he heard the sounds he had
expected--those of the dream-walking rather than sleep-walking earl,
moaning, and calling in a low voice of entreaty after some one whose
name did not grow audible to the listener.

"Ah!" thought Donal, "who would find it hard to believe in roaming and
haunting ghosts, that had once seen this poor man roaming his own
house, and haunting that chamber! How easily I could punish him now,
with a lightning blast of terror!"

It was but a thought; it did not amount to a temptation; Donal knew he
had no right. Vengeance belongs to the Lord, for he alone knows how to
use it.

I do not believe that mere punishment exists anywhere in the economy of
the highest; I think mere punishment a human idea, not a divine one.
But the consuming fire is more terrible than any punishment invented by
riotous and cruel imagination. Punishment indeed it is--not mere
punishment; a power of God for his creature. Love is God's being; love
is his creative energy; they are one: God's punishments are for the
casting out of the sin that uncreates, for the recreating of the things
his love made and sin has unmade.

He heard the lean hands of the earl go slowly sweeping, at the ends of
his long arms, over the wall: he had seen the thing, else he could
hardly have interpreted the sounds; and he heard him muttering on and
on, though much too low for his words to be distinguishable. Had they
been, Donal by this time was so convinced that he had to do with an
evil and dangerous man, that he would have had little scruple in
listening. It is only righteousness that has a right to secrecy, and
does not want it; evil has no right to secrecy, alone intensely desires
it, and rages at being foiled of it; for when its deeds come to the
light, even evil has righteousness enough left to be ashamed of them.
But he could remain no longer; his very soul felt sick within him. He
turned hastily away to leave the place. But carrying his light too much
in front, and forgetting the stool, he ca