"Is it you?" said he. "It is a man who has outlived fortune!" answered Glendower, in the exaggerated and metaphorical language which the thoughts of men who imagine warmly, and are excited powerfully, so often assume. "Then," rejoined Crauford, "you are the more suited for my purpose. A little urging of necessity behind is a marvellous whetter of the appetite to danger before, he! he!" And as he said this, his low chuckling laugh jarringly enough contrasted with the character of the night and his companion. Glendower replied not: a pause ensued; and the lightning which, spreading on a sudden from east to west, hung over the city a burning and ghastly canopy, showed the face of each to the other, working and almost haggard as it was with the conception of dark thoughts, and rendered wan and unearthly by the spectral light in which it was beheld. "It is an awful night," said Glendower. "True," answered Crauford, "a very awful night; but we are all safe under the care of Providence. Jesus! what a flash! Think you it is a favourable opportunity for our conversation?" "Why not?" said Glendower; "what have the thunders and wrath of Heaven to do with us?" "H-e-m! h-e-m! God sees all things," rejoined Crauford, "and avenges Himself on the guilty by His storms!" "Ay; but those are the storms of the heart! I tell you that even the innocent may have that within to which the loudest tempests without are peace! But guilt, you say; what have we to do with guilt?" Crauford hesitated, and, avoiding any reply to this question, drew Glendower's arm within his own, and in a low half-whispered tone said,-- "Glendower, survey mankind; look with a passionless and unprejudiced eye upon the scene which moves around us: what do you see anywhere but the same re-acted and eternal law of Nature,--all, all preying upon each other? Or if there be a solitary individual who refrains, he is as a man without a common badge, without a marriage garment, and the rest trample him under foot! Glendower, you are such a man! Now hearken, I will deceive you not; I honour you too much to beguile you, even to your own good. I own to you, fairly and at once, that in the scheme I shall unfold to you, there may be something repugnant, to the factitious and theoretical principles of education,--something hostile to the prejudices, though not to the reasonings, of the mind; but--" "Hold!" said Glendower, abruptly, pausing and fixing his bold and searching eye upon the tempter; "hold! there will be no need of argument or refinement in this case: tell me at once your scheme, and at once I will accept or reject it!"