There was a pause--an awful pause--after this declaration, such as beings feel who are held in the most agitating suspense, between life and death. Painful--very painful--was the situation in which Margaret was placed. There was a flood of overwhelming agitation. The tears stole down her cheeks. Her dark eye shone like the sun through the midst of a watery cloud, and told that it longed to burst through the mists of darkness, but could not find an opening for its beams. Faster and faster fell the big drops--heavier and heavier dropped the clouds of the eyelids, till, like a flash of lightning, burst the words from her lips-- "Oh, leave me! leave me, sir! I never can alter the pledge I have given! I never can be unfaithful! Though I may be unhappy in my choice, yet it is a choice to which I feel so bound, that nothing but death can part us. Oh, that Laud were as good as yourself! I feel, I own, the contrast; but I hope he may be better. Oh, do not urge me, sir--do not urge me to desert the only chance left for the restoration of a young man to honesty and life!" "Margaret, hear then my last words, and if they fail I will leave you. I do not believe that Laud loves you as he ought to love. Did I think there was one chance for your happiness with him, I would not urge my present suit a moment longer. Believe me, he is not worthy of you. You compel me to say he is a villain. He will betray you. He will desert you. He will bring you to want, misery, and ruin. I know you love him. Your early feelings have all been engaged in his favour; but which of those has he not disappointed? which of those feelings has he not wounded? Yet you cling to him, as if he were a safe-ground of anchorage. Believe me--believe me, Margaret, the anchor you cast there will not hold; it will suffer you to drift upon the rocks, upon which you will perish. Say in one word, will you, or will you not, consent to my offer?" "John Barry, on my knees (and she suited the action to the word) I thank you, and bless you; but I do not--I cannot--accept your offer!" "Margaret, farewell!" exclaimed he, as he raised her from the ground, "a long, a last farewell. Nevertheless, take this; it is a gift, which may some future day be of service to you. You will not refuse it, as it is the last gift of one who will never see you again. I know you cannot even read it now; but the time may come when you may be enabled so to do, and I had counted in my long voyage of teaching you so to do. It was a present to me from my mother; but I have many more like it, given me by our clergyman. Take it--take it--it can never do you hurt; and, with God's blessing, it may be the means of our meeting in another world, though we never meet again in this. God bless you, Margaret! farewell!"