‘My unhappy lover may have been able to withstand the severity of his accumulated and unparalleled calamities,’ observed Inez, ‘but, my poor father; oh, well am I convinced that his mind must have now become a wreck, in which case, it would be a mercy if the Almighty should be pleased to take him to Himself. Poor grey-haired old man, fondest of parents, best of human beings, shall I ever again be enfolded to thy paternal bosom, with the conviction that thou art conscious it is thy poor persecuted daughter thou dost embrace?—Alas! I fear never!’ ‘Oh, yes, Miss, you will,’ ejaculated Alice, energetically, ‘Heaven in its infinite mercy will not deny you such a blessing after the many afflictions you have so undeservedly undergone. Have you not every reason to place the firmest reliance upon its goodness, after the manner in which you have ever been preserved in the moment of the most imminent danger?’ ‘Yes, my good girl,’ replied our heroine, drying her tears, ‘indeed I have, and it is ungrateful in me thus to give way to despair. But my mind is so continually tormented, that I scarcely know what I am saying.’ ‘At any rate,’ observed her companion, ‘now that Blodget is made a prisoner you may rest yourself secure, and Jenkins, I dare say, will not be long before he returns; when you will speedily be made acquainted with intentions, which, as I have all along predicted, depend upon it, will be all in your favor.’ The ideas of Alice were too reasonable to be rejected by Inez, and she looked forward to the return of Jenkins with the greatest anxiety. A fortnight had now waned away, and still Jenkins and his companions did not return, and Gordon, who did not expect that they would be gone so long, was fearful lest some accident should have befallen them. He still kept the wretched Blodget confined in the same place, and he now became the complete victim of despair. His form had wasted away, and his countenance betrayed the deep, the intense agony which perpetually tortured his mind. How dreary were the days and nights passed in that dark cell, where he had nothing to commune but his own dreadful thoughts, and where the horrors of his own guilty conscience constantly brought to his imagination the many crimes he had committed. Conjecture cannot form but a weak picture of the mental sufferings of that man of crime. Oh, who would be guilty, did they but think upon the horrors that must sooner or later overtake them?—For the gratification of some moment of sensual pleasure; for the transitory indulgence of some ambitious wish, the unhappy wretch falls into crime, to pay for it by years of mental suffering, and ignominious death, and an eternity of torment!—Oh, how fearful the price, would but erring mortals pause and think!