"Dearest friends," Valentine said, afterward, to Elisha, "these things that have occurred were obliged to happen; no power on earth could have prevented them; and the power of Heaven never intervenes to perform miracles, or to avert evil at the expense of moral free agency. I am not a predestinarian, Brother Elisha, but I know that certain causes must produce certain effects, as surely as given figures produce known results. As I told you before, I always knew that this was to be my fate. From the first moment that I was provoked to strike Oswald Waring, I have seen this crime and this fate before me, like a horrible cloud. I would try to close my eyes to it--try to forget it. In vain--for even in my brightest moments it would fall suddenly like a funeral pall around me, blackening all the light of life. When poor Oswald Waring lay dead before me, I did not realize the crime more intensely than I had by presentiment a hundred times before. And when I shall stand, as I shall very soon do, upon the scaffold's fatal drop, with the cord around my neck, and the cap that is about to shut out the last glimpse of this world's sunshine from my eyes, descending over my face--even in that supreme moment, I know I cannot feel the situation more acutely than I have done prophetically a thousand times before! "This prophetic feeling was the secret horror of my whole life. I dared not confide it to any one; therefore, it preyed upon my spirits, driving me at times almost to insanity. Yet, friends, there was nothing occult in this presentiment. It was but the swift and sure inference of certain effects from certain causes. It was rather a helpless foresight, than second sight. Well, the worst has come! I am calmer and happier now than I have been for many long, sad years. This fate is not nearly so horrible in reality as it seemed in anticipation. The only earthly trouble that I have is in the thought of my little family. Comfort them, Brother Elisha! Help them to bring all the power of religion to their support. Time and religion cures the worst of sorrows; it will cure theirs. Only, in the meantime--in the hour of their greatest trial, and the first dark days that follow it--watch over them, sustain and comfort them, and lift up their hands to God, Elisha." "I will--I will, indeed, Brudder Walley," promised the old preacher.