The Recluse at length perceived that his companion was observing him, and arose from his half recumbent position, and stood beside him, his arms folded for an instant, and his attenuated countenance, as it reflected back the sickly rays of a hazy moon, settled in profound melancholy. He took the hand of the youth, and shook it some time in agitation before he could give utterance to his thoughts, but at length he said in a voice which betrayed the violence of his feelings, "Nathaniel, canst thou forgive me for that cruel mistake at the chapel? Oh, couldst thou know what I suffered then, and since, both on thy account and my own, thou wouldst accept it as ample atonement for the unintended wrong. I saw, on that dreadful night, her who was the queen of my manhood's fondest dreams--who had basked with me in the sunshine of youth and hope--who had given me her young affections in return for my own, when life was in its bud, and who afterward blossomed into the rich fruition of maternal love and beauty in these arms--her who was torn from me by a base deception of her kindred, and married to another. I saw her face to face, for the first time in more than twenty years, when she was about to give the offspring of her second marriage as a wife to the offspring of her first, as I supposed. Oh, what human conception can realize the torrent that broke over my soul at that fearful moment? The shadowy remembrances which had been softening and fading in the lapse of years burst at once into life and being. Time and place were forgotten--the passions of youth rushed into the contest, and I stood as the frail mortal body shall stand at the final day, when its own spirit knocks for entrance. The buried ghosts of my own passions rose from their grave, the frail cloak of stoicism which had been woven round me, was blasted into shreds and patches, and I stood and quailed before a woman's eye like Belshazzar at his feast. Thou hast felt thy heart swelling and plunging against its bony prison, but thou hast never had it gorged and choked with the dammed up waters of bitterness, gathered through long and dreary years. Thou hast felt the words stick in thy throat, and refuse to leap into life, but thou wert never struck dumb with a judgment from Heaven, like a thunderbolt scorching and searing into the very citadel of thought and vitality! Thou hast writhed when stung by the scorpion tongue of calumny, but thou hast never been outlawed and abandoned of all human kind--condemned by thy own conscience--and given up of God!" His eye shot forth vivid fires, and his arms, as they were flung abroad in violent gesticulation, cast giant shadows upon the moonlit waves of the Chesapeake. "You do both yourself and your friends grievous wrong," said Bacon, after a painful pause.