He dressed himself long before any one in the prison (and jailers are early risers) was awake; at last there were steps in the passage--bolts were drawn and voices heard. These familiar sounds recalled him to actual life, and approaching, inevitable events. His haughty soul awoke again--a dogged pride steeled his heart--he remembered the accusation--the execration in which he believed him--self to be held--and his innocence. "Retribution or atonement--I am ready to pay it as it is demanded of me for Alithea's sake--but the injustice of man is not lessened on this account; henceforth I am to be stamped with ignominy--and yet in what am I worse than my fellows? at least they shall not see that my spirit bends before them." He assumed cheerfulness, and bore all the preliminaries of preparation with apparent carelessness; sometimes his eagle eye flashed fire--sometimes fixed on vacancy, a whole life of memories passed across his mental vision; but there was no haste, no trepidation, no faltering--he never thought of danger or of death--innocence sustained him. The ignominy of the present was all that he felt that he had to endure and master--that, and the desolation beyond, when branded through life as he believed he should be, even by acquittal, he was henceforth to be looked on as an outcast. At length he was led forth to trial--pride in his heart--resolution in his eye; he passed out of the gloomy portal of the prison, and entered the sunlit street--houses were around; but through an opening he caught a glimpse of the country--uplands, and lawny fields, and tree-crested hills--the work of God himself. Sunshine rested on the scene--one used to liberty had regarded with contempt the restricted view presented by the opening; but to the prisoner, who for months had only seen his prison-walls, it seemed as if the creation lay unrolled in its majesty before him. What was man in comparison with the power that upheld the earth and bade the sun to shine? And man was to judge him? What mockery! Man and all his works were but a plaything in the hands of Omnipotence, and to that Falkner submitted his destiny. He rose above the degrading circumstances around him; he looked down upon his fate--a real, a lofty calm at last possessed his soul; he felt that naught said or done that day by his fellow-creatures could move him; his reliance was elsewhere--it rested on his own innocence, and his intimate sense that he was in no more danger now than if sheltered in the farthest, darkest retreat, unknown to man; he walked as if surrounded by an atmosphere which no storms from without could penetrate.