We must go back to Stephen Gimlet's cottage and the preceding night. Beauchamp and Captain Hayward stood together by the table, when their two fair visitors had left them, waiting for the return of the gamekeeper, and they both remained silent for several minutes. There are times, when great things just accomplished, of whatever kind, or character, seem to oppress the spirit and keep it down, as it were, under a heavy weight. Nor is it altogether uninteresting to inquire what is the cause of this oppression--the remote, often unseen, even indistinct cause. It is not sorrow, it is not regret; for the weight of thought seems cast upon us as often by a joyful as a sorrowful event; and I speak not at all of the effect of misfortune, but simply of that which is produced upon the mind by a great deed done--great, at least, to the person who has performed it. I am inclined to think, that the sort of load which I speak of, may be traced to the consciousness of all the vast multitude of consequences of which every act is the source. Not the slightest thing we do that does not send a thrill vibrating along the endless chains of cause and effect to the utmost limit of time through the whole grand machine of future existence. Man dies, but not one of his acts ever dies, each perpetuated and prolonged for ever by interminable results, affecting some beings in every age to come--ay, even the slightest. But that which is to follow only becomes a question with man when the deed is to his own cognizance important as affecting himself and those around him. The eye of God sees all; but it is merely when the consequences are visible to our own limited ken, that we feel the strange involution of our destiny with that of others, and, when what we have just done is in its immediate results likely to affect us and those we love profoundly, that we pause to consider all the wide extent of the future which that act implies. Then we feel as if we had plunged headlong into an ocean of endless waves, and the weight of the waters oppresses the heart and spirit. We ask, what next? and then, what will follow? And in the game of chess that we are playing against Fate, look for the next move of our great adversary, and all the consequences of that which we have ourselves just made.