When I left my bed, I found my mother gliding about the house, the very spectre of her former self. Her beautiful auburn hair, of which she was so proud, and which, when a boy, I used to admire so much in its glossy bands, was as white as snow. Her bright blue loving eye had lost all its fire, and looked dim and hopeless, like the eyes of the dead. Alarmed at her appearance, I demanded if she was ill. She shook her head, and said, "that her anxiety during my illness had sadly pulled her down. But I need not ask any questions. God had humbled her greatly. Her sin had found her out." And then she hurried from me, and I heard her weeping hysterically in her own room. "Could I have betrayed myself during the ravings of fever?" I trembled at the thought; but I dared not ask. From that hour no confidence existed between me and my mother. During the day I laboured in the field, and we saw little of each other. At night, we sat for hours in silence--I with a book, and she with her work--without uttering a word. Both seemed unwilling to part company and go to bed, but we lacked the moral courage to disclose the sorrow that was secretly consuming us. Years passed on in this cheerless manner--this living death. My mother at length roused herself from the stupor of despair. She read the Bible earnestly, constantly; she wept and prayed, she went regularly to chapel, and got what the Methodists call religion. Her repentance was deep and sincere; she gradually grew more cheerful, and would talk to me of the change she had experienced, urging me, in the most pathetic manner, to confess my sins to God, and sue for pardon and peace through the blood of the Saviour. My heart was closed to conviction. I could neither read nor pray. The only thing from which I derived the least comfort was in sending from time to time large sums of money anonymously to Sir Walter Carlos, to relieve him from difficulties to which he was often exposed by his reckless extravagance. The beautiful Ella, the idol of my boyhood and youth, died in India. I heard the news with indifference; but when I saw the lovely orphan girl she had left to the guardianship of her brother, I wept bitter tears, for she reminded me of her mother at the same sinless age; and the sight of her filled my mind with unutterable anguish, recalling those days of innocent glee that the corrosive poison of guilt had blotted from my memory. My paradise was in the past, but the avenging angel guarded the closed gates with his flaming sword. My present was the gulf of black despair; my future was a blank, or worse. Oh, agony of agonies!--how have I contrived to endure so much, and yet live?