"Oh! cruel--cruel was her conduct to me; yet what has mine been to her--for so many years! I could not tear her image from my memory--not an hour has it ceased to haunt me; since I came among these mountains, her ghost is for ever at my side. I have striven to drive it away with curses, but still there is the phantom. Sometimes--beautiful as on our marriage-day--all in purest white--adorned with flowers--it wreathes its arms around my neck--and offers its mouth to my kisses--and then all at once is changed into a leering wretch, retaining a likeness of my bride--then into a corpse. And perhaps she is dead--dead of cold and hunger: she whom I cherished in all luxury--whose delicate frame seemed to bring round itself all the purest air and sweetest sunshine--she may have expired in the very mire--and her body been huddled into some hole called a pauper's grave. And I have suffered all this to happen to her! Or have I suffered her to become one of the miserable multitude who support hated and hateful life by prostitution? Black was her crime; yet hardly did she deserve to be one of that howling crew--she whose voice was once so sweet, her eyes so pure, and her soul so innocent--for up to the hour I parted with her weeping, no evil thought had ever been hers;--then why, ye eternal Heavens! why fell she from that sphere where she shone like a star? Let that mystery that shrouds my mind in darkness be lightened--let me see into its heart--and know but the meaning of her guilt--and then may I be able to forgive it; but for five years, day and night, it has troubled and confounded me--and from blind and baffled wrath with an iniquity that remains like a pitch-black night through which I cannot grope my way, no refuge can I find--and nothing is left me but to tear my hair out by handfuls--as, like a madman, I have done--to curse her by name in the solitary glooms, and to call down upon her the curse of God. O wicked--most wicked! Yet He who judges the hearts of His creatures knows that I have a thousand and a thousand times forgiven her, but that a chasm lay between us, from which, the moment that I came to its brink, a voice drove me back--I know not whether of a good or evil spirit--and bade me leave her to her fate. But she must be dead--and needs not now my tears. O friend! judge me not too sternly--from this my confession; for all my wild words have imperfectly expressed to you but parts of my miserable being--and if I could lay it all before you, you would pity me perhaps as much as condemn--for my worst passions only have now found utterance--all my better feelings will not return nor abide for words--even I myself have forgotten them; but your pitying face seems to say, that they will be remembered at the Throne of Mercy. I forgive her." And with these words he fell down on his knees, and prayed too for pardon to his own sins. The old man encouraged him not to despair--it needed but a motion of his hand to