ient had fallen into a kind of
dozing sleep; and he was motioned to a seat near the bed. The light was
almost entirely excluded from the chamber; and the only other person
present was the mother of the dying lad, who was a widow. She was wasted
with grief and watching, and seemed just such a figure as a painter
would have chosen to heighten the melancholy of such a scene. As she
came round and whispered some scarcely articulate words into the
clergyman's ear, her son murmured in his sleep, became restless, and
woke as in terror. Mr. Manners spoke to him in soothing words, and
referred to a state of happiness hereafter.

"Aha!" cried he, "can I enter heaven with my hand bloody? Her spirit is
sainted. I could not go near it. Oh no--no--never--never."

"Of what is it he speaks?" inquired Mr. Manners.

"Oh, sir!" answered his mother, "his thoughts are wandering. I canna
think he killed the lassie he loved."

"Ay, mother," said the youth, with an effort, "this hand did it. O
fool!--cut it off--off with it--it is not my hand--my hand never would
have done it. Oh--oh--mother--Jessie."

Mr. Manners was dumb with amazement. It was but too evident from whence
the agony of the youth flowed, and he sat regarding him with looks of
awe and terror.

"It grows dark," continued the patient; "but, softly. You know I loved
you when you were a child; but now you love another!--ay, that's it--you
will not be mine! It grows still darker!--ha, ha, ha!--fly--fly!--it is
done! O God! if I could draw back!"

The dying man waxed wilder in his ravings. After a time, however, he
became comparatively calm; and, on Mr. Manners addressing him,
recognised his voice.

"Ah, that voice!" he said. "I have often heard it. I have not attended
to its counsel; but if it could console--oh, no, I cannot be consoled.
Your hand, sir!--forgive--forgive."

"Do not ask forgiveness of me," said Mr. Manners. "May God in his mercy
pardon you!"

The wretched youth muttered a kind of incoherent prayer, while his
mother dropped on her knees by the bed-side. All afterwards was wildness
and despair, only relieved by intervals of exhaustion. Mr. Manners
continued to administer such consolation as the circumstances of the
case admitted of, and did not leave the house till the voice of the
guilty man had become hushed in death, and nothing broke the silence but
the moanings of the afflicted mother.

Several days had now passed since Jones visited the manse; and he