For Roger himself, he had repented; bitterly and deeply, as became his headlong fall: no sweet luxuries of grief, no soothing sorrow, no chastened meditative melancholy--such mild penitence as this, he thought, could be but a soberer sort of joy for virgins, saints, and martyrs: no--he, bad man, was unworthy of those melting pleasures, and in sturdy self-revenge he flung them from him, choosing rather to feel overwhelmed with shame, contrition, and reproaches. A humbled man with a broken heart within him--such was our labourer, penitent in prison; and when he contrasted his peaceful, pure, and Christian course those forty years of poverty, with his blasphemous and infidel career for the one bad week of wealth, he had no patience with himself--only felt his fall the greater; and his judgment of his own guilt, with a natural exaggeration, went the length of saying--I am scarcely less guilty before God and man, than if, indeed, my hands were red with murder, and my casual finding had been robbery. He would make no strong appeals to the bar of justice, as an innocent condemned; not he--not he: innocent, indeed? his wicked, wicked courses--(an old man, too--gray-headed, with no young blood in him to excuse, no inexperience to extenuate), these deserved--did he say hanging? it was a harsher syllable--hell: and the contrite sinner gladly would have welcomed all the terrors of the gibbet, in hope to take full vengeance on himself for his wicked thirst for gold and all its bitter consequences. CHAPTER XXXVII. GOOD COUNSEL.