ree
fulfilled my trust. But is it possible that I can think of an utter
failure, and not be more than troubled? And if Christianity be true,
and if I am so happy as to obtain admission to that 'blessed country
into which an enemy never entered, and from which a friend never went
away,' and she whom I loved so well should ask me why you come
not,--that she had tarried for you long,--must I say that you will
never come? that her child had wandered from the fold of the Good
Shepherd, and had gone I knew not whither? that I sought him in the
lonely glens and mountains, but found him not? I hardly know, but I
almost think--such was the love she had for you--that such reply
would shade that radiant face even amidst the glories of Paradise.
And now--let all this be a dream--suppose that not simply by your
own fault you will never see that mother more, but that from the sad
truth of your no truth--you never can; that the 'Vale, vale, in
aeternum, vale,' is all that you can say to her: yet I say this,--that
to live only in the hope of the possibility of fulfilling the better
wishes of such a friend, and rejoining her for ever in (if you will)
the fabulous 'islands of the blest,' would not only make you a happier,
but even a nobler, being than your present mood can ever make you.
My FABULOUS is better than your TRUE."

I felt that he was not unmoved. I was myself moved too much to allow
me to stay any longer, and saying that I could find my way very well
to my chamber in the dark, where I had the means of kindling a light,
I softly closed the door and left him.
____

As I was to leave very early in the morning, I had told Harrington
that I should depart for the neighboring town (whither his servant
was to drive me) without disturbing him. But I could not tear myself
away, after the singular close of our interview on the last evening,
without a more express farewell. I tapped at his chamber door, but,
receiving no reply, gently entered. He was resting in unquiet slumber.
A table, lamp, and books, by his bedside, bore witness to his
perseverance in that pernicious habit which he had early formed! I
gently drew back one of the curtains, and let in the light of the
summer morning on his pallid, but most speaking features, and gazed
on them with a sad and foreboding feeling. I recalled those days
when I used nightly to visit the slumbers of the little orphan, and
trace in his features the image of his mother. He was not aroused by