He sat trying to compress his head with his hands, for it ached as if it would split apart. The cool night breeze came off the sea, moist and bearing refreshment on its wings; but Duncan Leslie found no comfort in the deep draught he drank. His head burned, his heart felt on fire, and he gazed straight before him into the blackness trying to make out his path. What should he do? Act like a man, and cast her off as unworthy of a second thought, or rouse himself to the manly and forgiving part of seeking her out, dragging her from this scoundrel, and placing her back in her stricken father's arms? It was a hard fight, fought through the darkness of that terrible night, as he sat there on the rock, with the wind sighing from off the sea, and the dull, low boom of the waves as they broke at the foot of the cliff far below. It was a fight between love and despair, between love and hate, between the spirit of a true, honest man who loved once in his life, and the cruel spirits of suspicion, jealousy, and malignity, which tortured him with their suggestions of Louise's love for one who had tempted her to leave her father's home. As the day approached the air grew colder, but Duncan Leslie's brow still burned, and his heart seemed on fire. The darkness grew more dense, and the fight still raged. What should he do? The worse side of his fallible human nature was growing the stronger; and as he felt himself yielding, the greater grew his misery and despair. "My darling!" he groaned aloud, "I loved you--I loved you with all my heart." He started, alarmed at his own words, and gazed wildly round as if expecting that some one might have heard. But he was quite alone, and all was so dark right away ahead. Was there no such thing as hope for one stricken as he? The answer to his wild, mental appeal seemed to come from the far east, for he suddenly became conscious of a pale, pearly light which came from far down where sea and sky were mingled to the sight. That pale, soft light grew and grew, seeming to slowly suffuse the eastern sky, till all at once he caught sight of a fiery flake far on high, of another, and another, till the whole arc of heaven was ablaze with splendour, from which the sea borrowed glistening dyes. And as he gazed the tears rose to his eyes, and seemed to quench the burning fire in his brain, as a fragment which he had read floated through his memory-- "Joy cometh in the morning--joy cometh in the morning." Could joy ever again come to such a one as he? He asked the question half-bitterly, as he confessed that the dense blackness had passed away, and that hope might still rise upon his life, as he now saw that glittering orb of light rise slowly above the sea, and transform the glorious world with its golden touch. "No, no," he groaned, as he rose to go on at last to his desolate home. "I am broken with the fight. I can do no more, and there is no cure for such a blow as mine. Where could I look for help?"