ugh!" said the Corporal.

There was a long silence. Walter walked to and fro the road before the
cottage. The chaise arrived; the luggage was put in. Walter's foot was
on the step; but before the Corporal mounted the rumbling dickey, that
invaluable domestic hemmed thrice.

"And had you time, Sir, to think of poor Jacob, and look at the cottage,
and slip in a word to your uncle about the bit tato ground?"

We pass over the space of time, short in fact, long in suffering, that
elapsed, till the prisoner and his companions reached Knaresbro'. Aram's
conduct during this time was not only calm but cheerful. The stoical
doctrines he had affected through life, he on this trying interval
called into remarkable exertion. He it was who now supported the spirits
of his mistress and his friend; and though he no longer pretended to
be sanguine of acquittal--though again and again he urged upon them
the gloomy fact--first, how improbable it was that this course had
been entered into against him without strong presumption of guilt; and
secondly, how little less improbable it was, that at that distance of
time he should be able to procure evidence, or remember circumstances,
sufficient on the instant to set aside such presumption,--he yet dwelt
partly on the hope of ultimate proof of his innocence, and still more
strongly on the firmness of his own mind to bear, without shrinking,
even the hardest fate.

"Do not," he said to Lester, "do not look on these trials of life only
with the eyes of the world. Reflect how poor and minute a segment in
the vast circle of eternity existence is at the best. Its sorrow and its
shame are but moments. Always in my brightest and youngest hours I have
wrapt my heart in the contemplation of an august futurity.

"'The soul, secure in its existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.'

"If I die even the death of the felon, it is beyond the power of fate
to separate us for long. It is but a pang, and we are united again for
ever; for ever in that far and shadowy clime, where the wicked cease
from troubling, and the weary are at rest.' Were it not for Madeline's
dear sake, I should long since have been over weary of the world. As
it is, the sooner, even by a violent and unjust fate, we leave a path
begirt with snares below and tempests above, the happier for that soul
which looks to its lot in this earth as the least part of its appointed
doom."

In discourses lik