perpetual good action--to trace
and get back her son?"

"I can't do it."

"That's a deliberate falsehood, sir. Your conscience tells you it's a
he. In your last conversation with me, at the Brazen Head, you as good
as promised to do something of the kind in a couple of months. That time
and more has now passed, and yet you have done nothing."

"How do you know that?"

"Don't I know that the widow has got no trace of her child? And right
well I know that you could restore him to her if you wished. However, I
leave you now to the comfort of your own hardened and wicked heart. The
day will come soon when the black catalogue of your own guilt will rise
up fearfully before you--when a death-bed, with all its horrors, will
startle the very soul within you by its fiery recollections. It is then,
my friend, that you will feel--when it is too late--what it is to have
tampered with and despised the mercy of God, and have neglected, while
you had time, to prepare yourself for His awful judgment. Oh, what would
I not do to turn your heart from the dark spirit of revenge that broods
in it, and changes you into a demon! Mark these words, Anthony. They are
spoken, God knows, with an anxious and earnest wish for your repentance,
and, if neglected, they will rise and sound the terrible sentence of
your condemnation at the last awful hour. Listen to them, then--listen
to them in time, I entreat, I beseech you--I would go on my bare knees
to you to do so." Here his tears fell fast, as he proceeded, "I would;
and, believe me, I have thought of you and prayed for you, and now
you see that I cannot but weep for you, when I know that you have the
knowledge--perhaps the guilt of this heinous crime locked up in
your heart, and will not reveal it. Have compassion, then, on the
widow--enable her friends to restore her child to her longing arms;
purge yourself of this great guilt, and you may believe me, that even
in a temporal point of view it will be the best rewarded action you ever
performed; but this is little--the darkness that is over your heart will
disappear, your conscience will become light, and all its reflections
sweet and full of heavenly comfort; your death-bed will be one of peace,
and hope, and joy. Restore, then, the widow's son, and forbear your
deadly revenge against that wretched baronet, and God will restore you
to a happiness that the world can neither give nor take away."

Corbet's cheek became pale as death itself wh