“Do not hate me! do not forsake me!” (thus did it begin; and it seemed as if the paper was blistered with tears, so that the words were almost illegible; and thus went on the trembling words of poor Halbert’s almost incoherent letter). “I am still your brother; but they will tell you how I have fallen; they will tell you of my guilt--but none--none can tell, can comprehend my misery. I dare not come near you. I dare not return home to pollute the air you breathe with my presence. I feel myself a Cain or a Judas, branded and marked, that all men may shrink from me as from a pestilence; and I must rush out from their sight afar, and from their contact. It is enough that I feel the eye of God upon me--of that God whom I have denied and contemned, whose throne I strove to overturn with my single arm, feeble and frail as it is--continually upon me, on my secret heart burning in on the quivering spirit, my sentence of hopeless, helpless condemnation! They will tell you that I am mad. Oh, that I were, and had been so for these last months, that now I might lose the sense of my sin and of the hopeless despair which haunts me night and day! Christian, I am no infidel, or as the tempters called it, spiritualist now. I shrink and tremble just the same while alone, and when among the crowd, from that terrible Spirit that pursues and searches me out everywhere--terrible in holiness; inexorable in justice, and I cannot pray, ‘Be merciful, O thou holy and eternal One.’ “Christian, do you remember that fearful word of Scripture, ‘It is impossible to renew them again unto repentance, seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame?’ _I_ have entered into the unspeakable bitterness of its doom; it rings in my ears without intermission; ‘it is impossible to be renewed again.’ But you can pray, Christian; _you_ have not cast all hope behind you; and if it is not sin to pray for one accursed, pray for me. It may be I shall never see you again; I know not where I go; I know not what I shall do! There is no peace left for me on earth; and no peace, no hope, no refuge beyond it, that I can see. “Your brother, “HALBERT MELVILLE.”