The men deposited their burdens on the ground, and the young officer, coming frankly forward to his new acquaintance, shook hands with him, saying, "This wild life has a strange charm. I think I could go on roving through these scenes as long as life and health lasted." "Do you see that sun," asked Dudley, "soaring up from the dark horizon, like an eagle from its eyry?[1] Do not, however, suppose it is that which gives the light and beauty you find in these scenes. The sun is in man's heart. You have no dark shadow on you, either innate or accidental. You have no foul thoughts to mourn, as some in these lands have. You have no black cloud hanging over fame, and blighting life, like myself. You have no disappointed hopes, and fruitless yearnings for friendships and affections lost for ever, to spread the golden pathway of the sky with a dull, gray pall. Well may all seem bright to you: you have no despair." "Man should never despair so long as there is a pure spot in his heart," replied Captain M----; "and the innocent wrongly condemned should despair least of all, knowing that there is one who sees where man sees not, and who, though in wisdom he may chastise, yet in his own good time will comfort and raise up." "It is that faith alone which gives me strength to live," replied Dudley; "but yet my fate is sad: so sad as to darken all around. Were it not for that chance of change below, which hope ever holds out to the man not utterly lost, and for that certainty of change in another world which faith affords to the believer, life here, to a man wronged and blasted as I have been, would be a boon not worth the keeping. What have I to look forward to?--a life of toilful solitude, struggling each day for bare subsistence, without companionship or sympathy, without speech, without object, without reward, and with the high privilege of thought unfruitful except of bitterness and ashes. When the time of age and sickness comes, too, what will be my fate then? But I will not think of it. I shall be an idiot before that, or worse, a savage." "Nay, I trust not," answered Captain M----. "If you are innocent, as you say, sooner or later that innocence will appear, and--" "Impossible!" replied Dudley. "I had a fair and impartial trial; there was a skilful and well-conducted defence; the jury were men of probity and sense; the judge mild and equitable. All was done that could be done, and hope on that side would be worse than vain."