Where there was no sin, there was no shame. He had made the poet’s words his own-- “Oh, the wild joys of living! the leaping from rock up to rock, The strong rending of boughs from the fir trees, the cool, silver shock Of the plunge in the pool’s living waters----” He had rejoiced in his strength, as he climbed the crags of Stanwick Chase; he had joyed in his lonely rambles over the solemn moors with his gun, with which he had shot the casual grouse, or the rare falcons which haunted the highest rocks; he had revelled in the swift paces of his horse; he had loved the excitement of the manly games, in which he was himself the foremost actor. Not a star shone in the silent midnight sky, not a bird sang in the leafy copses, not a flower blossomed by the wayside, not a fern uncurled its fronds in the crevices of the rocks, that had not been to him a source of living joy. Now, all that was passed and over; the light had died out from his life, and the blackness of darkness covered his soul. Alas, that it should be so! Alas, that to some noble natures a sense of injustice received is the most crushing and most deadly of all blows that can be dealt! It was near nine o’clock in the evening when Dr. Massenger came up to Wilfred’s room. After the expression of a cold and mechanical hope that he was feeling better, the Heidelberg Doctor said, “I have come to inform you, Mr. Manwaring, that I have written to your father, and have despatched the letter by this evening’s post, to prepare him for your immediate return to the honourable home you have disgraced, as, in justice to my other pupils, I can no longer permit you to be the associate of gentlemen of noble birth and refined feelings, into whose company I confess I was wrong ever to have permitted one of your station to enter. No,” pursued the Doctor, as he saw Wilfred was attempting to speak--“no, I cannot permit any explanation or any excuses. Your manifest reluctance to have your effects examined (how widely different was the behaviour of that exemplary young man, the-heir of Lord Guttleborough!), and the fortuitously fortunate discovery of a portion of your ill-gotten plunder in the recesses of a garment which you wore when you were unsuspiciously admitted to view the Lares--the household gods, I may say--of a gentleman who is not only an ornament to society, but whom I am proud to reckon amongst the number of my own personal friends, renders all explanation superfluous and useless. The restitution of the rest of the plunder (although I fear that is rendered impossible by your recent purchase of an expensive instrument calculated to destroy life--I mean a fowling-piece) will, I apprehend, be a matter for the consideration of the legal advisers on both sides, since, with what I confess appears to me to be a misplaced leniency, my outraged friend declines to prosecute you for the criminal offence. All I have to say at present