"Fear nothing, beautiful being. I am rough in appearance, but my heart is in the right place. I will protect you. I will be to you a friend." "Am I then alone?" she asked, in an accent of indescribable anguish. "Oh, why did you not suffer me to perish with the rest? Wretched, wretched Alice! to survive all that loved her!" "Not all, lady, for _I_ am here," I said, naïvely. "You! I know you not; all--all have perished. Forgive me," she continued, seeing the blank expression of my countenance; "I know not what I say. The wretched are excusable." "Ah!" I replied with fervor, "I am too happy in being made the instrument of serving such a being as you are to take any offense at words wrung from the over-burdened heart. Come with me, fair Alice, and I will place you in safety." I conducted her to the cottage of an old woman, who had been my nurse. Though rough and frightful, she was kindly in her nature, and I knew would do any thing to oblige me. The narrator paused, arose, and rapidly paced the floor, his hands nervously working, and the cold drops streaming from his corrugated brow. He again threw himself upon his seat, and remained so long silent that the priest ventured to speak to him: "My friend, time passes. The sun is going to his rest, and beyond that hour I can not remain." "Pardon me," said the prisoner, in a subdued tone; "but the recollections that crowd on my mind madden me. Think what it is to me, the condemned, the outcast, to speak of past happiness. It is like rending apart soul and body, to dwell on bright scenes amid the profound yet palpable darkness of guilt and woe that is ever present with me. 'The heart knoweth its own bitterness,' was once quoted to me by her lips. Ah! how overwhelmingly significant is that phrase to the guilt-stricken! My God, my God! pardon and forgive; for thou knowest the provocation." The priest breathed a few words of consolation and hope, and again the bitter waves of anguish rolled back from his soul, and left him calm. He sat a few moments silent, as if recalling the scenes he was about to depict; his brow cleared, his eyes lighted up with love and joy. For a few moments the magic of the happy past seemed to hold complete sway over his mind. He continued: Heretofore my character had been undeveloped. The master-passion was required to show me my true nature. As the warmth of the sun is needful to give life and beauty to the productions of earth, so the soul of man remains in its germ until love has aroused and expanded his being into the more perfect state of existence. All the better feelings of my nature were brought into action, for I loved a being far superior to myself; one who I felt would long ere this have perished in the atmosphere of evil in which I had been reared. Until I knew this pure girl I had never felt all the degradation, the debasing effects of my mode of life; but now I blushed before her, and resolved to rescue myself from my associates and become worthy of her.