“My sight is gone,” groaned he, and fell back. I dared not meet the glance even of his clouding eyes. “They said that you were condemned to an unspeakable punishment and that the man who swept the world of you and yours did God service. In my hour of sin the tempter met me, and this day from sunrise have I lurked on your road to strike my benefactor and my lord. In the dark I lost my way in the thicket; but vengeance found me.” “My wife, my children, are they safe?” I exclaimed. He quivered, relaxed his hold, and uttering “Forgive!” two or three times, with nervous agony, expired. [Sidenote: Salathiel Finds Ruin] A single bound from this spot of death placed me on a point of rock from which I had often gazed on my little world in the valley. The moon was now bright and the view unobstructed. I looked down. Were my eyes dim? There was no habitation beneath me; the grove, the garden, were there, sleeping in the moonlight; but all that had the semblance of life was gone! I rushed down and found myself among ruins and ashes still hot. I called aloud—in terror and distraction, I yelled to the night, but no voice answered me. My foot struck upon something in the grass; it was a sword dyed with recent blood. There had been burning, plunder, slaughter here in this treasure-house of my heart; desolation had been busy in the center of what was to me life—more than life. I raved; I flew through the fields; I rushed back, to convince myself that I was not in some frightful dream. What I endured that night I never endured again; that conflict of fear, astonishment, love, and misery could be contained but once even in my bosom; in all others it must have been death. In the moment of reviving hope I had been smitten. While my spirit was ascending on the wings of justified ambition and sacred love of country, I had been dashed down to earth, a desolate and a desperate man. What I did thenceforth, or how I passed through that night, I know not; but I was found in the morning with my robe fantastically thrown over me like a royal mantle, and a fragment of half-burned wood for a scepter in my hand, performing the part of a monarch, giving orders for the rebuilding of my palace, and marshaling the movements of an army of shrubs and weeds. I was led away with the lofty reluctance of a captive sovereign, to the household of Eleazar. [Sidenote: A Fruitless Search]