My felicity has been of short duration. The mother of Martin has returned, and is living in our immediate neighbourhood. This bodes me no good. The raven of remorse is again flapping her black wings around my head. My sleep is haunted by frightful dreams. "There is no peace for the wicked." The sight of this woman fills me with dismay. * * * * * My wife is unhappy. She does not complain, but her cheeks are deadly pale, and she is wasted to a shadow. I dare not inquire the cause of her grief. I remember the sad, patient face of my mother, and I tremble lest Sophy has discovered my guilt. * * * * * Oh God! she knows it all. She asked me a question yesterday that has sealed my doom. Instead of falling at her feet, and pouring out the sorrows of my heart, I spoke harshly to her--even threatened to strike her if she alluded to the subject again. Will she be able to keep the dreadful secret? I tremble before a young girl,--I dare not meet her eyes. If she breathes a word to the mother of Martin, I am lost. * * * * * Here the felon's manuscript abruptly terminated. Sophy still held it tightly in her hand, although her eyes, now blinded with tears, were unable to trace a single letter of the concluding page. "My poor husband!" at last she sobbed, "the punishment of Cain was light when compared with yours. Oh! let me hope that He, who willeth not the death of a sinner, has accepted your repentance and pardoned your sin." A gentle grasp was laid upon the shoulder of the mourner; and she looked up into the dark expressive face of her deformed sister. She too had her tale of sorrow. Their mother was dead, but her end was peaceful and full of humble hope, and Mary, the pious Mary, could not wish her back. She had no home now,--she had come to share the home of her more fortunate sister. At first, she could not comprehend the cause of Sophy's tears, of her deep distress; for the news of Noah Cotton's arrest and death had not reached her, while in close attendance upon the obscure death-bed of her mother. What a mournful history Sophy had to tell; and how deeply Mary sympathised in all her afflictions! Left in comfortable and even affluent circumstances, (for the lawyer employed to wind up Noah Cotton's affairs found that he had large sums invested in several banks, and all his property was willed to his wife,) Sophy was no longer haunted by the dread of poverty, but she often was heard to say with a sigh, that poverty, though a great evil, was not the greatest she had had to contend with; that much as she had in former days murmured over her humble lot while working for daily bread, she was far happier than in the possession of wealth, that had been acquired by dishonest means, and which might emphatically be called _The wages of sin!_ "A little that the righteous hath, is better than great riches of the ungodly." CHAPTER XXIII. TRUST IN GOD.