His companions come at morning—come to look on his dead face, Come to lay him to his grave-rest, in that dreary desert place; Where the tropic sun glares fiercely on the wide, unsheltered plain, And where pour, from darkest heavens, rushing floods of winter rain! Where shall come the wild-bird’s screaming, and the whirlwind’s sounding sweep, And the tramp of herded bisons shall go thundering o’er his sleep. There are piteous sounds of mourning in a far off northern home, Where o’er childhood’s kindling dawn-light sudden clouds of darkness come— There are heard a father’s groanings, and a mother’s broken sighs— There a voiceless sorrow troubleth the clear deeps of maiden eyes. In their fearful dreams, at midnight, they behold him left to die, With the hard, hot ground beneath him, and above a brazen sky— In his fainting, in his thirsting, in his pain and wild despair, Vainly calling on his dear ones, through the heavy desert-air! Oh, the bitter self-reproaches mingled in the cup they drain! Oh, their poor hearts, pierced and tortured by a sharp, remorseful pain— That they sent their best and dearest from his home-love’s sheltering fold, In the madness of adventure, on that pilgrimage of gold. * * * * * CLIFDON. BY ANNE DRINKER. CHAPTER I. “FATHER! my father! in mercy!” “Curse you!” “My God!” “Ay, curse you. For have you not turned to poison the life whose blessing you were? Have you not dragged down my pride to the depths of shame? Have you not made your father’s name a by-word for the lips of the idle? Then curse you, Mabel Clifdon.” And Philip Mordaunt paused, exhausted by his own violence; paused, with lips trembling, with the hot blood mounting even to the white hairs brushed from his massive forehead, with his strong form shattered as a reed by the tempest of passion. “Has not my agony washed out the blot of my transgression? Do I not grovel at your feet, not for the aid I dare not hope, but for the pardon God gives the vilest? Have I not suffered till my life has been to me a torture and a curse, and a long remorse? Is it not enough, my father?” “May your lips wither when you speak the word, ‘Father.’ Out upon you!” “Merciful God!” “Away! away! Out of the home you have forsaken! Away from the threshold you pollute! May the memory of the mother murdered by your ingratitude, of the childless and wifeless old man whose love you have turned to hate, ever cling around your heart; ever poison, like a million of curses, the well-spring of your life! away!”