Surely now he will suffer his old father to visit him in his cell! "Once more only--only once more let me see him before I die!" were his words to the clergyman of the parish, whose Manse he had so often visited when a young and happy boy. That servant of Christ had not forsaken him whom now all the world had forsaken. As free from sin himself as might be mortal and fallen man--mortal because fallen--he knew from Scripture and from nature, that in "the lowest deep there is still a lower deep" in wickedness, into which all of woman born may fall, unless held back by the arm of the Almighty Being, whom they must serve steadfastly in holiness and truth. He knew, too, from the same source, that man cannot sin beyond the reach of God's mercy--if the worst of all imaginable sinners seek, in a Bible-breathed spirit at last, that mercy through the Atonement of the Redeemer. Daily--and nightly--he visited that cell; nor did he fear to touch the hand, now wasted to the bone, which, at the temptation of the Prince of the Air--who is mysteriously suffered to enter in at the gates of every human heart that is guarded not by the flaming sword of God's own Seraphim--was lately drenched in the blood of the most innocent creature that ever looked on the day. Yet a sore trial it was to his Christianity to find the criminal so obdurate. He would make no confession. Yet said that it was fit--that it was far best he should die--that he deserved death! But ever when the deed without a name was alluded to, his tongue was tied; and once in the midst of an impassioned prayer, beseeching him to listen to conscience and confess--he that prayed shuddered to behold him frown, and to hear bursting out in terrible energy, "Cease--cease to torment me, or you will drive me to deny my God!" No father came to visit him in his cell. On the day of trial he had been missing from Moorside, and was seen next morning--(where he had been all night never was known, though it was afterwards rumoured that one like him had been seen sitting, as the gloaming darkened, on the very spot of the murder)--wandering about the hills, hither and thither, and round and round about, like a man stricken with blindness, and vainly seeking to find his home. When brought into the house, his senses were gone, and he had lost the power of speech. All he could do was to mutter some disjointed syllables, which he did continually, without one moment's cessation, one unintelligible and most rueful moan! The figure of his daughter seemed to cast no image on his eyes--blind and dumb he sat where he had been placed, perpetually wringing his hands, with his shaggy eyebrows drawn high up his forehead, and the fixed orbs--though stone-blind at least to all real things--beneath them flashing fire. He had borne up bravely--almost to the last--but had some tongue syllabled his son's doom in the solitude, and at that instant had insanity smitten him?