Death! The good alone can contemplate death with composure. Guilt is a dreadful coward. The bad dare not die. My worst sufferings are comprised in this terrible dread of death. I have prayed for annihilation; but this ever-haunting fear of after punishment forbids me to hope for that. The black darkness--the soul-scorching fire--the worm that never dies--the yells of the damned--these I might learn to endure; but this hell of conscience--this being cast out for ever from God and good--what obstinacy of will could ever teach me to bear this overwhelming, increasing sense of ill? * * * * * Ten long years have passed away; the name of Squire Carlos is almost forgotten. People used to talk over his death at alehouses, and by the roadside, but they seldom speak of him now. A splendid monument covers his mouldering dust. The farmers lounge around it on the Sabbath, and discuss their crops and the news of the village. They never glance at the marble slab, or read the tale it tells. The old Hall has passed into other hands. Sir Walter dissipated his inheritance, and died childless in a distant land. The lovely little girl is gone, no one knows whither. The homage of the rising generation is paid to the present Lord of the Manor, and the glory of the once proud family of Carlos is buried in the dust with the things that were. Why cannot I, too, forget? This night--the anniversary of the accursed night on which I first shed blood, and that the blood of a father, is as vividly impressed upon my mind as though ten long years had not intervened! How terribly long have they been to me! Is there no forgiveness for my crime? Will God take vengeance for ever? My mother still lives, but her form droops earthward. Sad, silent, and pale, her patient endurance is my perpetual reproach. I feel that my crime is known to her, that her punishment is as terrible as my own. I took up her Bible the other day from the little table on which she had left it, and unclosing the volume, my eyes were arrested by these awful words,--"The seed of the adulterous bed shall perish." I felt that I was doomed--that the sins of my parents had been visited on me; and the horrible thought brought consolation. I am but a passive instrument in the hands of an inexorable destiny. Why continue this struggle with fate? Conscience will not be cheated. Night came, and the delusion vanished: the horrors of remorse are upon me. I feel that I am responsible for the acts done in the flesh, "that as a man sows, so must he reap." The burden of my soul is intolerable; when shall I find rest? * * * * *