lcon, ignored this speech entirely, and said, "Well,
Pheeb, you and Collie are wiser than I am. Take your own way, and don't
blame me if anything happens."

Soon Christopher paid the penalty of returning reason. He suffered all
the poignant agony a great heart can endure.

So this was his reward for his great act of self-denial in leaving his
beloved wife. He had lost his patient; he had lost the income from that
patient; his wife was worse off than before, and had doubtless suffered
the anguish of a loving heart bereaved. His mind, which now seemed more
vigorous than ever, after its long rest, placed her before his very
eyes, pale, and worn with grief, in her widow's cap.

At the picture, he cried like the rain. He could give her joy, by
writing; but he could not prevent her from suffering a whole year of
misery.

Turning this over in connection with their poverty, his evil genius
whispered, "By this time she has received the six thousand pounds for
your death. SHE would never think of that; but her father has: and there
is her comfort assured, in spite of the caitiffs who left her husband to
drown like a dog.

"I know my Rosa," he thought. "She has swooned--ah, my poor darling--she
has raved--she has wept," he wept himself at the thought--"she has
mourned every indiscreet act, as if it was a crime. But she HAS done
all this. Her good and loving but shallow nature is now at rest from the
agonies of bereavement, and nought remains but sad and tender regrets.
She can better endure that than poverty: cursed poverty, which has
brought her and me to this, and is the only real evil in the world, but
bodily pain."

Then came a struggle, that lasted a whole week, and knitted his brows,
and took the color from his cheek; but it ended in the triumph of love
and hate, over conscience and common sense. His Rosa should not be poor;
and he would cheat some of those contemptible creatures called men, who
had done him nothing but injustice, and at last had sacrificed his life
like a rat's.

When the struggle was over, and the fatal resolution taken, then he
became calmer, less solitary, and more sociable.

Phoebe, who was secretly watching him with a woman's eye, observed this
change in him, and, with benevolent intentions, invited him one day to
ride round the farm with her. He consented readily. She showed him the
fields devoted to maize and wheat, and then the sheepfolds. Tim's sheep
were apparently deserted; but he was d