felt at the thought that I
had no longer any bills to pay. Then a strong sense of indignation
towards my prosecutors mingled with the wild and bitter current of my
thoughts, and prevented me from being overpowered and destroyed. It was
now but too clear to me that I was the victim of a premeditated and
heartless scheme, the successful issue of which was to protect my
creditors from loss indeed, but to involve me in utter ruin.

I saw, with feelings I cannot and dare not utter, and which I now
confess it was sinful in me to cherish, that they had lured me on to
the centre of a great sea of ice; that they had, when their opportunity
came, broken it around me, and left me alone and helpless to struggle
against inevitable doom. Three of the six long weary months during
which I waited for trial were thus passed in a state of agony bordering
on the madness of despair. The hours seemed magnified into days, and
the weeks into years; and, as they dragged their slow length along, my
mental anguish received a new and terrible ally. Although I was as yet
in the eye of the law an innocent man, the miserable allowance of
oatmeal which constituted my chief food, and which was in all respects
inferior to the penal diet of the worst-behaved convict I ever met with
in the English prisons, became loathsome to me, and the pangs of hunger
were added to the mental torture I had till then alone endured. My cup
of misery was surely filled to the brim!

With the recollection of what I suffered then, burnt, as it were, with
a hot iron on my memory, I thank Almighty God that no fiend was ever
permitted, even in my worst and weakest hour, to whisper suicide to my
ear; but I now can understand how some have listened to the fell
deceiver, and welcomed him, as friend and deliverer, to their arms.
Fortunately for me, my early training and subsequent mode of life
preserved me from any thought of this fatal solution to the problem of
my life. I read my bible almost constantly, although my reading seemed
only to add to the bitterness of my regrets and self-reproaches. These
questions would constantly suggest themselves to me: "Could I ever have
been a Christian?" and "What will the enemies of Christianity think and
say about my fall?" Until one day about noon, as I was gazing through
the window of my lonely cell, I saw, or fancied I saw, a solitary star,
and my thoughts were gradually lifted from the cross of suffering to
the throne of Mercy, and (let p