"Yet"--after a pause, his thoughts thus continued:--"not here, nor now: there must be darkness on the earth before the deed is done! Hasten and hide thyself, oh sun! Thou wilt never be cursed by the sight of my living form again!" Thus did the transport of passion embrace the universe in its grasp; and the very sunlight seemed to have a pulse responsive to his own. The bright orb sunk lower; and the little western promontory, with its crowning spire, was thrown into bold relief against the glowing sky. As if some new idea were awakened, the stranger proceeded along the sands, towards the extremity of the headland. A short time before, unobserved by him, the little orphan had tripped along, and, scaling the cliff, had seated herself, as usual, beside her mother's grave. The stranger proceeded slowly, and with irregular steps. He was waiting till darkness should blind the eyes of day, which now appeared to gaze on him with intolerable scrutiny, and to read his very soul, that sickened and writhed with its burden of sin and sorrow. When out of the immediate neighbourhood of the village, he threw himself upon a fragment of rock, and--he could not be said to meditate--for that supposes some sort of voluntary action of the mind--while to him might be applied the figure of the poet, who represented himself as hunted by his own thoughts--pursued by memory, and torn to pieces, as Actæon by his own hounds. A troop of horrid recollections assailed his soul! there was no shelter, no escape! various passions, by turns, fastened themselves upon him--jealousy, disappointed love, rage, fear, and, last and worst, remorse and despair. No bodily torture, invented by revengeful tyrant, could produce agony equal to that which he had worked out for his own mind. His better nature, and the powers of his intellect, served but to sharpen and strike deeper the pangs of unavailing regret. Fool! He had foreseen nothing of all this! He had fancied that he could bend the course of fate to his own will; and that to desire with energy was to ensure success. And to what had the immutable resolve to accomplish his ends brought him? She was dead--the loveliest and best of created beings: torn from the affections and the pleasures of life! from her home, her child! He had seen her stretched dead at his feet: he had heaped the earth upon her clay-cold form; and he the cause! he the murderer!