For an hour or two after my father lay dozing, taking no notice of me save when I gave him his medicine. He seemed, indeed, to sleep very often for a few minutes at a time; but if I chanced to look away, when my glance returned to him, I invariably saw those open, living eyes, full of strength and understanding, noting all they saw with a perfect intelligence which struck me strangely. His mind was not dying. I had never seen anything that gave me such a wonderful idea of life and vigor as those glances from my father's deathbed. He looked what was approaching in the face, and quailed not at it. Change was before him, not conclusion. With his living soul he looked into a vague, vast future, and knew not what it was; but Death, as he said, was but an arbitrary term--it meant nothing to that inquiring, speculative, active soul. After a long interval he seemed to revive and strengthen, and turned his eyes upon me again. "And you are happy, Hester--are you happy?" he said, looking closely in my face. I turned my eyes away--I think it was the first lie I had ever told--and I said only, "Yes!" But he was wandering once more among his own thoughts, and heeded not my looks, nor what they meant. "Life is a strange problem," he said, with the sombre shadow which it used to wear, returning upon his face. "I am about to find the solution of it, Hester--all my existence centres in one event. I have suffered one act to overshadow my best years--that was my great error--what a fool I was! because I failed in one thing, I threw everything away." "Because the failure in that one thing poisoned all your life!" I exclaimed, "oh! do not blame yourself, father! the blame did not lie with you." "What was that to me if the penalty did?" said my father, in his old reasoning tone--a tone which contrasted so strangely with the feeble voice, and the great weakness in which he spoke. "One act should not poison life, Hester! not even for a woman, how much less for a man! There are greater things in this world than marrying, or giving in marriage." He spoke with an emphasis of scorn, which made me tremble more and more. Alas! I saw that still in his very heart rankled this poisoned sorrow; and I shuddered to think that the same doom was mine. That I would carry to my death this same bitterness--that my life was already overshadowed as his had been, and that I was ready, like him, to throw everything away. "If it should be that I am to find out the wherefore of these dark mysteries; if that is the congenial occupation in the place whither I go;" he paused suddenly when he had said so much--though I watched him eagerly, and listened, he did not continue. He fell into immediate silence, and again he began to sleep.