me. Read in this pale withered visage, these
sunken cheeks, this bent form, and this broken heart, the brief summary
of a history which cannot yet be fully known. You have seen and known
that I am not as other men--that I walk through the world a stranger
here, and that my home is in the dark dungeon of my own bitter thoughts.
Would you know what has thus severed the chain which bound me to the
world? Would you know what it is that has blighted a heart which might
have borne rich fruit, and turned it to ashes? Would you know what is
the vulture, too cruel to destroy, which feeds upon this doomed form?"

"In God's name, Mr. Hutchinson, why do you speak thus wildly?" said
Bernard, for he had never before heard such language fall from the lips
of the reserved and quiet preacher. "I know that you have had your
sorrows, for the foot-prints of sorrow are indeed on you, but I have
often admired the stoical philosophy with which you have borne the
burden of care."

"Stoical philosophy!" exclaimed the preacher, pressing his hand to his
heart. "The name that the world has given to the fire which burns here,
and whose flame is never seen. Think you the pain is less, because all
the heat is concentrated in the heart, not fanned into a flame by the
breath of words?"

"Well, call it what you will," said Bernard, "and suffer as you will,
but why reserve until to-night a revelation which you have so long
refused to make?"

"Simply because to-night I have seen and heard that which induces me to
warn you from the course that you are pursuing. Young man, beware how
you seek your happiness in a woman's smile."

"You must excuse me, my old friend," said Bernard, smiling, "if I remind
you of an old adage which teaches us that a burnt child dreads the fire.
If trees were sentient, would you have them to fly from the generous
rain of heaven, by which they grow, and live, and bloom, because,
forsooth, one had been blasted by the lightning of the storm?"

Hutchinson only replied with a melancholy shake of the head, and the two
men gazed at each other in silence. Bernard, with all his sagacity and
knowledge of human nature, in vain attempted to read the secret thoughts
of his old guardian, whose dark eyes, lit up for a moment with
excitement, had now subsided into the pensive melancholy which we have
more than once remarked. The affectionate solicitude with which he had
ever treated him, prevented Bernard from being offended at his freedom,