ing, sinking into a
gulf, deep and darker even than the inner darkness of a sin-desolated
heart; sinking, helplessly, hopelessly, everlastingly; while far away,
like a star, stood the loved figure in light infinitely above him, and
with pleading hands implored his deliverance, but could not prevail; and
Eric was still sinking, sinking, infinitely, when the agony awoke him
with a violent start and stifled scream.

He could sleep no longer. Whenever he closed his eyes he saw the pale,
dead, holy features of Edwin, and at last he fancied that he was praying
beside his corpse, praying to be more like _him_, who lay there so white
and calm; sorrowing beside it, sorrowing that he had so often rejected
his kind warnings, and pained his affectionate heart. So Eric began
again to make good resolutions about all his future life. Ah! how often
he had done so before, and how often they had failed. He had not yet
learned the lesson which David learned by sad experience; "Then I said,
it is mine own infirmity, _but I will remember the years of the right
hand of the Most High_."

That, too, was an eventful night for Montagu. He had grown of late far
more thoughtful than before; under Edwin's influence he had been laying
aside, one by one, the careless sins of school life, and his tone was
nobler and manlier than it had ever been. Montagu had never known or
heard much about godliness; his father, a gentleman, a scholar, and a
man of the world, had trained him in the principles of refinement and
good taste, and given him a high standard of conventional honor; but he
passed through life lightly, and had taught his son to do the same.
Possessed of an ample fortune, which Montagu was to inherit, he troubled
himself with none of the deep mysteries of life, and

"Pampered the coward heart
With feelings all too delicate for use;
Nursing in some delicious solitude
His dainty love and slothful sympathies."

But Montagu in Edwin's sick-room and by his death bed; in the terrible
storm at the Stack, and by contact with Dr. Rowlands' earnestness, and
Mr. Rose's deep, unaffected, sorrow-mingled piety; by witnessing Eric's
failures and recoveries; and by beginning to take in his course the same
heartfelt interest which Edwin taught him--Montagu, in consequence of
these things, had begun to see another side of life, which awoke all his
dormant affections and profoundest reasonings. It seemed as though, for
the first time, he b