We know something of ends and something of intermediary occurrences, but very little of beginnings. The common eye can see the oak from a tiny sprout to its lordship of the forest, but none may behold the first movement of the germ in the buried acorn. The unnatural rebellion of Absalom, the reckless treason of Arnold, the struggle for universal empire of Napoleon, all stand out boldly on the historic page, as they appeared at the moment of culmination; but who sees the disobedient son of David when he walks out into the night with the first unfilial curse upon his lips, or the arch-traitor of the Western Continent as he starts from his sleep with the first thought of his black deed creeping under his hair and curdling his blood, or the victor of Marengo nursing his first far-off vision of the dangerous glory yet to be! We can know nothing more of the beginnings of vice in the hearts of the great criminals of private life. It can never be known, until all other secrets are unveiled before the eyes of a startled universe, whether Dr. Pomeroy, (no imaginary character, but a personage too real and very slightly disguised), in this ruin wrought by his hand had been acting the part of an unmitigated scoundrel from the beginning, a lie upon his lip and mockery in his heart when he promised the dying Nicholas Hill protection to his helpless daughter, and every act and word of his intercourse with her subtly calculated to bring about the one unholy end,--or whether he had merely _permitted_ himself, without early premeditation, to do the unpardonable evil which proved so convenient. For the welfare of the victim, it seemed a question of little consequence: for the credit of humanity, always enough disgraced, at best, by its robbers and cut-throats of the moral highway, it may be at least worth a thought. After events make it doubtful whether the very worst had not been intended and labored for from the outset; and certain it is that if there had before been one redeeming trait to temper the moral baseness of Philip Pomeroy, from the moment when that ruin was accomplished no obstacle of goodness hindered his way towards the end of the irredeemable. If he had before kept terms with Eleanor Hill and his own soul, he kept those terms no longer.