"Was she _grieving_ about the cross? Why don't they get another like it, and make her think it's found!" "Oh, they wouldn't _deceive_ her! That would be agin the parson's principles. It wouldn't be right." "Don't trouble yourself about getting tea, mother. I'm not at all hungry. Lie down and take a little nap. I'll help myself, and I've got a book I want to read now." Though the words were kindly uttered, he spoke as one having authority; and without attempting a remonstrance, the mother complied with his suggestion, and was soon in a deep sleep. Early in the evening he aroused her, hurried away to the parsonage, and there left her for the night. Exhausted by the excitement to which both mind and body had been subject for the last twenty-four hours, he returned home, but not to read, nor to study. The door to his humble home made fast, he passionately flung himself upon the floor, and until the fire-light died away he lay there, his eyes glaring about like a maniac's, scanning the discolored walls, and the humble furniture, familiar to him since he first learned to take note of things, and understand the contrasts in the world. He slept not for one moment, nor could he think connectedly on any subject. His hopes were all dashing to and fro, confused and stormy as he knew the waves were, that beat along the shore on that wild night. One moment a gleam of glory, like a lightning flash, would break upon his soul, and the next the thunder-crash of the decision of Destiny and Doom, would peal through his excited intellect. He never for an instant thought of her recovery. He looked upon her death as a necessity that concerned him, and him alone, and he looked _beyond her grave_ to his own future, as though he could tread on to it across that mound alone.... He thought upon his mother, and an icy chill made him nerveless--he painted his own portrait, and stood apart from the work, and gazed upon it with a critic's eyes. It was always in the light of a Preacher that he looked upon himself; but while one of these pictured similitudes, that of the Poet-Preacher, whose parish lay in Author-Land, won him again and again, as by a siren charm, to bestow upon it one more, and _one more_ look, from the other he turned with shuddering and aversion. And while he lay on the hard floor, and thought, and groaned, and agonized through all that night, the wild and pitiless storm raged over sea and land--it was a desolating storm, but not so dreadful as that which convulsed the soul of this poor youth. All the following day he kept up his vain search along the beach, until night came again, when dizzy with the incessant watch he kept over the dashing, breaking waves, and faint from his long fasting, and suddenly mindful that there might be some new tidings of Ella waiting him, he returned from the dreary watching place.