, all his worse nature was quelled. "Yes,
good people, you do right to cover me with your scorn. But what is your
scorn to the wrath of God? The Evil One has often been with me in the
woods; the same voice that once whispered me to murder her--but here I
am--not to offer retribution--for that may not--will not--must not
be--guilt must not mate with innocence. But here I proclaim that
innocence. I deserve death, and I am willing here, on this spot, to
deliver myself into the hands of justice. Allan Calder--I call on you to
seize your prisoner."

The moral sense of the people, when instructed by knowledge and
enlightened by religion, what else is it but the voice of God! Their
anger subsided into a stern satisfaction--and that soon softened, in
sight of her who alone aggrieved alone felt nothing but forgiveness,
into a confused compassion for the man who, bold and bad as he had been,
had undergone many solitary torments, and nearly fallen in his
uncompanioned misery into the power of the Prince of Darkness. The old
clergyman, whom all reverenced, put the contrite man's hand in hers,
whom he swore to love and cherish all his days. And, ere summer was
over, Hannah was the mistress of a family, in a house not much inferior
to a Manse. Her mother, now that not only her daughter's reputation was
freed from stain, but her innocence also proved, renewed her youth. And
although the worthy schoolmaster, who told us the tale so much better
than we have been able to repeat it, confessed that the wood-ranger
never became altogether a saint--nor acquired the edifying habit of
pulling down the corners of his mouth, and turning up the whites of his
eyes--yet he assured us that he never afterwards heard anything very
serious laid to his prejudice--that he became in due time an elder of
the Kirk--gave his children a religious education--erring only in making
rather too much of a pet of his eldest born, whom, even when grown up to
manhood, he never called by any other name than the Eaglet.

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS AVIARY.

THIRD CANTICLE.

The Raven! In a solitary glen sits down on a stone the roaming
pedestrian, beneath the hush and gloom of a thundery sky that has not
yet begun to growl, and hears no sounds but that of an occasional big
rain-drop, plashing on the bare bent; the crag high overhead sometimes
utters a sullen groan--the pilgrim, starting, listens, and the noise is
repeated, but instead of a groan, a croak--croak--croa